Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Kosh · 09-30-2006, 09:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seeker2000

Well, can anybody here say anything about the accuracy of this statement? Unfortunately I don't know that much about the development of the languages.

Just tell him: nicht geht!

premjan · 09-30-2006, 10:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Working from biblical chronology, the Tower of Babel episode was less than 3000 years before this era. The first writings from Sumer were from around 3200 BCE. Now the Sumerian language is totally unrelated to the Semitic languages, the Indo-European languages, the Finno-Ugric languages and many others. How can the Tower of Babel story explain the existence of Sumerian with relation to the other languages?
spin

Maybe Sumerian is the root language (just kidding)?

spin · 09-30-2006, 11:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by premjan

Maybe Sumerian is the root language (just kidding)?

I guess that's real confusion of languages.

spin

mopc · 10-01-2006, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GIDEON MAGE

The stories probably came from two diffeent traditions, both of which were extant when the hebrew scriptures began to be written down. This happened many times, like the two different creation stories in Genesis I and II. Much of these things are symbolic, and we need to understand the symbolism, instead of pretending the original authors intended a literal interpretation. A lot of we have in the bible are left over from mysteries used in ancient initiatory cults, and were never intended to be taken literally.

No problem with that, which means of course that the Bible is as much history and truth as the Iliad, if that much.

Alf · 10-02-2006, 07:05 AM

The biblical description of language evolution is on par with its description of evolution of species.

Completely off the mark in other words.

Languages has evovled as a result of people being separated form each other and evolving divergent forms. There are several factors that influence this.

In older days - before writing was invented, and in particular fonetic writing - words that was perhaps similar originally diverged simply by people living away from each others. We see exactly the same happening every day around us - first they start out as variant forms, then dialects etc etc. According to the biblical view, american and english should have been identical if it weren't for some tower of babel consturct or other divine intervention to ensure that they differred. Yet, they are similar enough that an american has in general no problem understanding a brittish and vice versa so as a means of defeating communication it would be pointless.

In scandinavia people originally spoke the same language in sweden, denmark and finland and before that it was the same language as in northern germany. The scandinavian languages evolved away from northern germany and became a separate language. Then in mideval times education improved and we got states that started schools and teaching people the national language. Thus, in sweden they learned swedish and if you happened to grow up in Norway you learned Danish at the time (Norway was under danish rule). However, people near the border between norway and sweden spoke more or less the same language. However, as a result of the schooling influence their spelling and grammar diverged and followed the national forms rather than the dialectal forms that was similar on both side of the border. In the 19th century Norway experienced a growing nationalism and people wanted to re-establish "norwegian" as they recognized the language spoken in the cities to be heavily influenced by danish. Thus, Ivar Aasen went around rural areas and gathered words and grammatical rules and from this created a language called "landsmaal" or (national language). To counter this move, people in the cities who wanted to keep their forms created a language they called "riskmaal" (national language) which was originally essentially very close to danish but still distinct from it.

When translated to english the names for both languages becomes "national language" and that was because "land" = country while "rike" is also a word for "country" with each their separate etymology where "risk" is similar to the german word "reich" and "land" is similar to many other germanic language's word as the english word for "land"). The word land also have a double meaning in that it can also mean "rural area" as opposed to "urban area" and I guess that was also intentional.

However, even those two langauges has evolved. The landsmaal evolved into "nynorsk" (new norwegian) while riskmaal has evolved into "bokmaal" (book language) and both langauges and forms are used in Norway today. That is why a passport in norway has both the name "Norge" (bokmaal for norway) and "Noreg" (nynorsk for Norway) written on it. In addition we also have sami language which is spoken by the sami people in Norway and that language is completely different as it is not even a germanic language but belong to the same language family as finnish and hungarian.

The tower of babel story cannot explain the differences between egnlish english and australian english. Yet a modern theory as to how and why languages evolves has no problem to explain it. There are many processes that occur that causes language to change over time. You see it every day. The slang today is different from how it was 50 years ago. or even 20 years ago. That is language in evolution as you watch!

The bottom line is that the tower of babel story is so completely off the mark that it is not even funny. If you go to a linguistic centre and ask them about the tower of babel and its influence on languages you will most likely be met with some odd smiles here and there unless they out right laugh at you.

Languages evolve and if two groups are seaparated over time, they will most likely evolve in different direction. At first they will have variant forms, later the forms will diverge more and over time you will see completely different languages.

This process is somewhat slowed in modern times because of global communication, oranized education etc. Writing systems using phonetic as basis also helps preserve the pronounciation of words and hinder radical changes unless they really are necessary. However, this is not absolute. For example many old english towns have a spelling which seems very odd and out of place when you hear how they are pronounced today. Leicester for example is pronounced more like "Lester" than how it is spelled. Yet, they have kept the spelling but changed the pronounciation. Life situation also causes language to change. An eskimo may not have many words to describe different types of sand but he has many words to describe different types of snow. People who work with a certain type of problems will often invent or find short ways to convey their particular problem to other people working in the same field. Look at all the abbreviations used in modern language for example in science or economics or politics.

The tower of babel story may be an amusing story similar to other ancient stories but its truth value is exactly zip.

Alf

lpetrich · 10-02-2006, 10:59 AM

The Tower of Babel is a

Just-so story, pure and simple.

As Alf notes, what happens is much more like biological evolution. Tracing English back in time, one finds Middle English and then Old English, which is essentially a foreign language to Modern English speakers. Yet there is plenty of continuity in grammar and in at least the more basic vocabulary.

Likewise, one can trace the Romance languages back to the Latin of the Roman Empire; they have plenty of grammatical and vocabulary continuity also.

And as one goes back in time, one finds plenty of sound shifts, but they are often very regular, and one can put together tables of sound correspondences.

We can extrapolate past the first written records of a language and infer that many languages had ancestral languages whose speakers had no way of writing them. One can even use linguistic and historical clues to try to work out where they had lived.

Thus, one finds that the speakers of the ancestral Germanic languages likely lived in northern Germany and southern Denmark about 2500 - 2000 years ago, and that they were likely the Jastorf culture of that place and time.

Looking back further, we find that Latin/Romance, Germanic, and several others are related in a group called the Indo-European languages.

Several Middle Eastern languages, like Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Akkadian, are related in a group called the Semitic languages; however, they have little or no discernible connection with the Indo-European ones except for some possible early borrowings like "six", "seven", and "bull". Its closest relatives are other Afro-Asiatic languages like Ancient Egyptian and the Berber, Chadic, and Cushitic languages.

There are several other such families known, like Uralic, Altaic, Sino-Tibetan, Dravidian, Austronesian, Niger-Congo, Uto-Aztecan, etc. as well as languages without any close relatives like Basque, Etruscan, and Sumerian.

This makes a patchwork that is rather difficult to explain with the Tower of Babel hypothesis; Rawlinson was wrong.

Alf · 10-03-2006, 12:29 AM

Just one little correction.

Not sure why I worte what I did. It is of course the languages of Norway, Sweden and Denmark that was virtually identical.

In Finland they speak a completely different language more related to hungarian and sami.

Just noticed it now as I read my own post. Oh well, too late to edit.

Alf

Gamera · 10-06-2006, 01:19 AM

Languages exist in related groups. There is no evidence they derived from a common source. Or rather, it is clear they did not. The Basque language, for instant, is totally unrelated to any other language on the planet.

I don't know if that would convince a literalist like your friend, who might say, "see, God produced a bunch of unrelated languages at Babel."

It's impossible to argue with this kind of "logic."

Alf · 10-09-2006, 06:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

Languages exist in related groups. There is no evidence they derived from a common source. Or rather, it is clear they did not. The Basque language, for instant, is totally unrelated to any other language on the planet.

I don't know if that would convince a literalist like your friend, who might say, "see, God produced a bunch of unrelated languages at Babel."

It's impossible to argue with this kind of "logic."

Actually - we have lots of evidence for that.

Norwegian, swedish and danish are today three distinct languages. However, it is obvious that they have a common origin - as we have written literature from a time when they were near identical and the differences were only dialects rather than separate languages.

Similar situations can be found elsewhere. English for example is today found in several forms. American english, australian english and brittish english. They are close enough so that anyone from any of those groups have little problem understanding other people from other groups. If they had been isolated for a couple of centuries they would probably evolve into completely different languages. English today is very different from english 400 years ago for example. Again, they most certainly have a common origin but they are in the process of evolving into separate languages right before our eyes. The only thing that can stop that is global communication - thus it is possible that a couple of centuries in the future we will all speak a language that is mostly based on english but have various words from other languages built into it and with a writing style that is heavily influenced by net-speak.

Take a look at various communities on the network and see how they have developed abbreviations that are specific to their situation. For example, when IRC first occurred, it almost instantly developed a heavy usage of emoticons such as

and :-) and other smilies and heavy usage of abbreviations such as brb (be right back), cu l8r (see you later) etc. This is the formation of a new language and it has become quite widespread today.

There is plenty of evidence that languages have a common origin. That origin may be far back and it is not necessarily so that all languages have a shared common origin (there might not have been a single language that all humans spoke at some way back time). However, languages like basque etc is not evidence that languages appear instantaneously and without relation to other languages. It is only evidence that whatever other languages that would be related to it has died out.

Alf

hatsoff · 10-09-2006, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mopc

Besides, in chapter 10 of Genesis, the Bible says that the descendants of Noah were divided each according to his language. The Tower of Babel episode is narrated in chapter 11....

Right, but the Babel episode comes chronologically before the genealogies.

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10-02-2006, 07:05 AM	#15
Alf Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 3,189	The biblical description of language evolution is on par with its description of evolution of species. Completely off the mark in other words. Languages has evovled as a result of people being separated form each other and evolving divergent forms. There are several factors that influence this. In older days - before writing was invented, and in particular fonetic writing - words that was perhaps similar originally diverged simply by people living away from each others. We see exactly the same happening every day around us - first they start out as variant forms, then dialects etc etc. According to the biblical view, american and english should have been identical if it weren't for some tower of babel consturct or other divine intervention to ensure that they differred. Yet, they are similar enough that an american has in general no problem understanding a brittish and vice versa so as a means of defeating communication it would be pointless. In scandinavia people originally spoke the same language in sweden, denmark and finland and before that it was the same language as in northern germany. The scandinavian languages evolved away from northern germany and became a separate language. Then in mideval times education improved and we got states that started schools and teaching people the national language. Thus, in sweden they learned swedish and if you happened to grow up in Norway you learned Danish at the time (Norway was under danish rule). However, people near the border between norway and sweden spoke more or less the same language. However, as a result of the schooling influence their spelling and grammar diverged and followed the national forms rather than the dialectal forms that was similar on both side of the border. In the 19th century Norway experienced a growing nationalism and people wanted to re-establish "norwegian" as they recognized the language spoken in the cities to be heavily influenced by danish. Thus, Ivar Aasen went around rural areas and gathered words and grammatical rules and from this created a language called "landsmaal" or (national language). To counter this move, people in the cities who wanted to keep their forms created a language they called "riskmaal" (national language) which was originally essentially very close to danish but still distinct from it. When translated to english the names for both languages becomes "national language" and that was because "land" = country while "rike" is also a word for "country" with each their separate etymology where "risk" is similar to the german word "reich" and "land" is similar to many other germanic language's word as the english word for "land"). The word land also have a double meaning in that it can also mean "rural area" as opposed to "urban area" and I guess that was also intentional. However, even those two langauges has evolved. The landsmaal evolved into "nynorsk" (new norwegian) while riskmaal has evolved into "bokmaal" (book language) and both langauges and forms are used in Norway today. That is why a passport in norway has both the name "Norge" (bokmaal for norway) and "Noreg" (nynorsk for Norway) written on it. In addition we also have sami language which is spoken by the sami people in Norway and that language is completely different as it is not even a germanic language but belong to the same language family as finnish and hungarian. The tower of babel story cannot explain the differences between egnlish english and australian english. Yet a modern theory as to how and why languages evolves has no problem to explain it. There are many processes that occur that causes language to change over time. You see it every day. The slang today is different from how it was 50 years ago. or even 20 years ago. That is language in evolution as you watch! The bottom line is that the tower of babel story is so completely off the mark that it is not even funny. If you go to a linguistic centre and ask them about the tower of babel and its influence on languages you will most likely be met with some odd smiles here and there unless they out right laugh at you. Languages evolve and if two groups are seaparated over time, they will most likely evolve in different direction. At first they will have variant forms, later the forms will diverge more and over time you will see completely different languages. This process is somewhat slowed in modern times because of global communication, oranized education etc. Writing systems using phonetic as basis also helps preserve the pronounciation of words and hinder radical changes unless they really are necessary. However, this is not absolute. For example many old english towns have a spelling which seems very odd and out of place when you hear how they are pronounced today. Leicester for example is pronounced more like "Lester" than how it is spelled. Yet, they have kept the spelling but changed the pronounciation. Life situation also causes language to change. An eskimo may not have many words to describe different types of sand but he has many words to describe different types of snow. People who work with a certain type of problems will often invent or find short ways to convey their particular problem to other people working in the same field. Look at all the abbreviations used in modern language for example in science or economics or politics. The tower of babel story may be an amusing story similar to other ancient stories but its truth value is exactly zip. Alf

10-02-2006, 10:59 AM	#16
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	The Tower of Babel is a Just-so story, pure and simple. As Alf notes, what happens is much more like biological evolution. Tracing English back in time, one finds Middle English and then Old English, which is essentially a foreign language to Modern English speakers. Yet there is plenty of continuity in grammar and in at least the more basic vocabulary. Likewise, one can trace the Romance languages back to the Latin of the Roman Empire; they have plenty of grammatical and vocabulary continuity also. And as one goes back in time, one finds plenty of sound shifts, but they are often very regular, and one can put together tables of sound correspondences. We can extrapolate past the first written records of a language and infer that many languages had ancestral languages whose speakers had no way of writing them. One can even use linguistic and historical clues to try to work out where they had lived. Thus, one finds that the speakers of the ancestral Germanic languages likely lived in northern Germany and southern Denmark about 2500 - 2000 years ago, and that they were likely the Jastorf culture of that place and time. Looking back further, we find that Latin/Romance, Germanic, and several others are related in a group called the Indo-European languages. Several Middle Eastern languages, like Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Akkadian, are related in a group called the Semitic languages; however, they have little or no discernible connection with the Indo-European ones except for some possible early borrowings like "six", "seven", and "bull". Its closest relatives are other Afro-Asiatic languages like Ancient Egyptian and the Berber, Chadic, and Cushitic languages. There are several other such families known, like Uralic, Altaic, Sino-Tibetan, Dravidian, Austronesian, Niger-Congo, Uto-Aztecan, etc. as well as languages without any close relatives like Basque, Etruscan, and Sumerian. This makes a patchwork that is rather difficult to explain with the Tower of Babel hypothesis; Rawlinson was wrong.

10-03-2006, 12:29 AM	#17
Alf Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 3,189	Just one little correction. Not sure why I worte what I did. It is of course the languages of Norway, Sweden and Denmark that was virtually identical. In Finland they speak a completely different language more related to hungarian and sami. Just noticed it now as I read my own post. Oh well, too late to edit. Alf

10-06-2006, 01:19 AM	#18
Gamera Banned Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Palm Springs, California Posts: 10,955	Languages exist in related groups. There is no evidence they derived from a common source. Or rather, it is clear they did not. The Basque language, for instant, is totally unrelated to any other language on the planet. I don't know if that would convince a literalist like your friend, who might say, "see, God produced a bunch of unrelated languages at Babel." It's impossible to argue with this kind of "logic."

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