Re: Indo European Origins

[Steve Furlong]

On Tuesday 14 January 2003 15:23, Bill Stewart wrote:

> ...You might as well argue that Esperanto** is just
> a rapidly evolved Indo-European.

> ** You probably _can't_ argue that about Logban; hacking the grammar
>  to make it yacc-parseable is pretty radical surgery.

Allow me to introduce myself: coi rodo mi'e stivn. (Lojban: Hey, all, 
I'm Steve.) I might have something to contribute to this subthread.

Lojban (not Logban; that's a conflation of the names Loglan and Lojban) 
isn't LALR-1. The grammar can be parsed by yacc only through creative 
use of the error-catching mechanism. It's a very impressive feat of 
yacc-hacking, don't get me wrong, but it's a hack nonetheless. And the 
grammar was indeed crafted to fit in a hacked yacc parser. A real 
parser which can properly handle grammatical errors in a chunk of 
Lojban text needs a more powerful language.

Given that, Bill's point is correct: Lojban's gammar has practically 
nothing in common with any natural language.

co'o rodo
stivn.

-- 
Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel

You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher
moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know
that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged.
--Michael Shirley

Re: Indo European Origins (language mutability, efficiency)

[R. A. Hettinga]

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At 2:56 PM -0800 on 1/14/03, Bill Stewart wrote:


> And while some of the edges have been bashed off of irregular
> verbs, if you'd a-been fixin' to talk about some verb forms being
> simpler, you shouldn't'a started out pickin' Southern grammar as an
> example.

Heck, even southern pronunciation is fun, viz, "a parcel of
victuals", for you Max Baer, Jr. fans...

Cheers,
RAH
Who has several good friends these days who are much easier to
understand in print than they are in person, and whose principal
attraction to the Jack Aubrey books (after all the sailing stuff, and
the feminist-orthogonal worldview), was the language...

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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Indo European Origins (language mutability, efficiency)

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 02:48 PM 1/14/03 -0800, Michael Motyka wrote:

>I guess bifurcation points and speciation seem very clear because of
the aliasing
>problems in our sampling methods. The speciation exists but is prolly (
probably ) often
>fuzzier than we think. Almost everyone would say that an American Bison
and a Scot's
>Highland are two different species but they can hybridize. Maybe we
non-Biologists
>measure the distance between "species" inaccurately.

Probably not.  Lay knowledge usually has substantial truth.  (The major
problem with lay knowledge
in bio/geo/climatology is lack of scale ---no sense that things change,
and this is a snapshot, so don't get
so attached.)

A species is operationally defined as a population that can't breed with

another.  The layman and/or farmer knows this, or learns this upon
trying to cross things :-)
Its empirically verifiable.

On forking: Nature's RCS is distributed.  Un-interoperable forks
(species) are documented by those wetboy cladistics folks,
gnostic Linneans.   And these days the sequencemensch and their
fluorescing machines,
ravers dancing to evolution's endlessly refined tune..

>Is the evolution towards a more efficient language an active or passive
process? Is it
>driven by an internal inclination towards expansion, freeing up system
resources as it
>were, or is it a coping mechanism for sensory overload?

A major job of Mr Brain is finding efficient representations (ie by
finding regularity).
At every level, from sensory to conceptual.

Humans are also very very good at imitation and linguistic acquisition.
(The same ready
programmability is maladaptive when e.g., religion infests the mind...)

.

Summary: It is adaptive for a critter to maximize the bits/baud over a
given channel.

Xerox errors in the genome try lots of things.  Similarly with memes &
culture & linguistics.  Some things work better.
You can get hurt if you misunderstand.  You might not have children if
you get hurt.  Do the math :-)

Re: Indo European Origins (language mutability, efficiency)

[Bill Stewart]

At 12:47 PM 01/14/2003 -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

Some of this is natural.  I've adopted the southern "y'all" because
English has no plural third person and this
ambiguity is annoying when you're emailing to several people.  Note also
the efficiency of the contraction.


"You" and "Y'all" and "Youse guys" and similar forms are second person;
third person is he/she/it/they/ dem guys.

Thou shouldst know that "You" is already plural,
having been adopted as more formal than the
second person familiar single "Thee / Thou"
and replacing the nominative second person plural "ye".
The analogy in German is "Sie" used as formal singular/plural
as opposed to "du" and "ihr".

And while some of the edges have been bashed off of irregular verbs,
if you'd a-been fixin' to talk about some verb forms being simpler,
you shouldn't'a started out pickin' Southern grammar as an example.

Re: Indo European Origins

[Michael Motyka]

Harmon Seaver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote :
>You don't even have to read 14th Cent. lit to experience that. Read
>"A
> Clockwork Orange" -- most folks find they read about 1/3 to 1/2 before
> they go back and start over. Gibson, at least the earlier stuff, like
> "Neuromancer", is a bit like that, but Burgess really almost invented
> a new language. 
>
I read a few Burgess novels as a teenager - A Clockwork Orange, The Eve of St. 
Venus, One Hand Clapping, The Wanting Seed and I don't remember them that way. I 
remember them reading smoothly and clearly without a great struggle. Probably time to 
revisit one or two just to double-check my old brain.

>   Language evolves more rapidly than the yours (and Tim's) examples
>   tho -- look
> at innercity blackspeak, especially Chicago. Forget the ebonics jokes
> -- this is a genuine language change. Or look at other areas of the
> country with older language evolution -- Gullah in So. Caroline, for
> instance, a much earlier language specialization. When I was at the
> Univ. of So. Alabama in Mobile, I came across a group of country
> blacks in a grocery store whose language was totally incomprehensible,
> at least to me. I asked black friends about it, and they could mimic
> it a bit, but confessed that they too had a lot of difficulty
> understanding it, and they were native Mobilians. 
> I was raised, for the most part, in the deep South, but I've also
> come
> across many whites there whose speech was very difficult to
> understand, and which, I'm sure, if one tried to read an accurate
> phonetic rendition, without benefit of body language, would seem be
> essentially a foreign language. 
> 
I know the experience -  in the southern US, in Scotland - it's all English. Really? 
People 
are probably creating language constantly like a software evolutionary experiment. 
Much of it probably dies out. What remains appears to be "speciation". Write much 
Forth lately?

Mike

Re: Indo European Origins (language mutability, efficiency)

[Michael Motyka]

"Major Variola (ret)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote :
>On Ken's
>> > All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are
>> > the same age.
>
>At first this parsed because I was thinking in the sense of
>"all organisms have ancestries going back the same amount of
>time".  (And humans aren't the 'goal' of evolution.)  Not sure
>if non-bioheads got this.  Anyway others' complaints clarified
>"speciation" --if you are willing to identify a bifurcation point
>then you *can* age a species or any other fork --Linux 2.4,
>Latin, Corvettes, etc.
>
I guess bifurcation points and speciation seem very clear because of the aliasing 
problems in our sampling methods. The speciation exists but is prolly ( probably ) 
often 
fuzzier than we think. Almost everyone would say that an American Bison and a Scot's 
Highland are two different species but they can hybridize. Maybe we non-Biologists 
measure the distance between "species" inaccurately.

>At 10:36 AM 1/14/03 -0800, Michael Motyka wrote:
>>An interesting question that arises out of the observation that some
>languages
>>are relatively static and others - like English - have been changing
>steadily. Is
>>there any connection between the evolution behavior of the language and
>the
>>vitality of the culture? I think so.
>
>"Vitality" is fuzzy.  
>
Choose your measure : population? power? innovation? environmental impact? rate of 
change?

The US seems more vital by some measures. Less so by others. More dangerous to 
the species by others.  

>Clearly America admitting everyone (cf Japanese) helps.
>Clearly not having an Acadamie Anglaise helps (cf surrender-monkeys).
>Electronic media probably help.
>
>There's an even more interesting technical evolution:
>English is also undergoing "entropic refinement" or Hamming-like coding,
>as speakers prune or invent for efficiency.
>
>As it is, it takes fewer letters in English to say something than every
>other common language.
>Look at the instruction manuals for your domestic appliances.
>
That is interesting.

>Forms (memory requirements) get simpler ---can you believe that the
>surrender-monkeys retain
>a gender-bit for every friggin object-- and phonetically simpler too.
>The sounds get more orthogonal.
>Also the influence of immigrants and children and lazy native speakers
>who can't tell a "v" from a "w" or "d" from "th",
>or remember the 150 irregular verbs.
>
>Some of this is natural.  I've adopted the southern "y'all" because
>English has no plural third person and this
>ambiguity is annoying when you're emailing to several people.  Note also
>the efficiency of the contraction.
>You hear "data" used as singular enough times, you say fuck it, I'll
>have a beer, or several beer [sic].  Talk to
>Eastern Europeans long enough, you'll start dropping your articles,
>though you may miss the FEC/prompting
>and flash back to Boris & Natasha cartoons...
>
Is the evolution towards a more efficient language an active or passive process? Is it 
driven by an internal inclination towards expansion, freeing up system resources as it 
were, or is it a coping mechanism for sensory overload?

Mike

Re: Indo European Origins

[Harmon Seaver]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 10:36:46AM -0800, Michael Motyka wrote:
> Very true. Communicating with a 14th century Englishman would be difficult. I 
> took a similar major's course with Robert Kaske in the 80's without the benefit of 
> the side-by-side. It was as close to learning a new language as I got without 
> having it count towards my foreign language requirement. I think a modern reader 
> would recognize a fair number of words and structures. In a good bit of that they 
> would be mistaken in their understanding and overall would be hard-pressed to 
> comprehend the texts in any depth. 

   You don't even have to read 14th Cent. lit to experience that. Read "A
Clockwork Orange" -- most folks find they read about 1/3 to 1/2 before they go
back and start over. Gibson, at least the earlier stuff, like "Neuromancer", is
a bit like that, but Burgess really almost invented a new language. 
  Language evolves more rapidly than the yours (and Tim's) examples tho -- look
at innercity blackspeak, especially Chicago. Forget the ebonics jokes -- this is
a genuine language change. Or look at other areas of the country with older
language evolution -- Gullah in So. Caroline, for instance, a much earlier
language specialization. When I was at the Univ. of So. Alabama in Mobile, I
came across a group of country blacks in a grocery store whose language was
totally incomprehensible, at least to me. I asked black friends about it, and
they could mimic it a bit, but confessed that they too had a lot of difficulty
understanding it, and they were native Mobilians. 
I was raised, for the most part, in the deep South, but I've also come
across many whites there whose speech was very difficult to understand, and
which, I'm sure, if one tried to read an accurate phonetic rendition, without
benefit of body language, would seem be essentially a foreign language. 



-- 
Harmon Seaver   
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com

Re: Indo European Origins

[Tim May]

On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 08:25  AM, Ken Brown wrote:


Tim May wrote:


All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are
the same age.


This statement is so silly it leaves me speechless...

Getting my breath back,


Of course some might change more slowly than others (Greek seems to
have
a;ltered less than Latin in 2500 years), or might remain in one place
longer than others (it is silly to say that Welsh is an older 
language
than English, but it is older in Britain)


Nonsense. Icelandic is little changed from the Old Norse of 1000 A.D.
Icelanders can easily read the sagas without help; modern Danes and
Norwegians cannot. English, by contrast, is substantially different
from just the Middle English of Chaucer, let alone the Old English of
Beowulf.


Er, that's  exactly what I said - they are the same age, but some 
change
more slowly than others...
and I did warn that I was being unreasonably pedantic.

Modern English is only a few centuries old, you seem to agree (with 
your comments about Old and Middle English). Arabic is basically what 
it was at the time Mohammed wrote the Koran.

Comparing the ages, then, of English with Arabic, or Chinese with 
Japanese, or Urdu with German, and then saying "they are the same age," 
is silly.

Arabic is older than both English and Middle English, but roughly the 
same age as Old English. Some world languages are definitely younger 
than others. Japanese, for example, did not even exist in any 
recognizable form until long after Confucian-era texts which are still 
readable today.

How then can a claim be made that Japanese and Chinese are the same age?

--Tim May
"Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and
strangled with her panty hose,  is somehow morally superior to a woman 
explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound"

Re: Indo European Origins (language mutability, efficiency)

[Major Variola (ret)]

On Ken's
> > All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are

> > the same age.

At first this parsed because I was thinking in the sense of
"all organisms have ancestries going back the same amount of
time".  (And humans aren't the 'goal' of evolution.)  Not sure
if non-bioheads got this.  Anyway others' complaints clarified
"speciation" --if you are willing to identify a bifurcation point
then you *can* age a species or any other fork --Linux 2.4,
Latin, Corvettes, etc.


At 10:36 AM 1/14/03 -0800, Michael Motyka wrote:
>An interesting question that arises out of the observation that some
languages
>are relatively static and others - like English - have been changing
steadily. Is
>there any connection between the evolution behavior of the language and
the
>vitality of the culture? I think so.

"Vitality" is fuzzy.  Clearly America admitting everyone (cf Japanese)
helps.
Clearly not having an Acadamie Anglaise helps (cf surrender-monkeys).
Electronic media probably help.

There's an even more interesting technical evolution:
English is also undergoing "entropic refinement" or Hamming-like coding,

as speakers prune or invent for efficiency.

As it is, it takes fewer letters in English to say something than every
other common language.
Look at the instruction manuals for your domestic appliances.

Forms (memory requirements) get simpler ---can you believe that the
surrender-monkeys retain
a gender-bit for every friggin object-- and phonetically simpler too.
The sounds get more orthogonal.
Also the influence of immigrants and children and lazy native speakers
who can't tell a "v" from a "w" or "d" from "th",
or remember the 150 irregular verbs.

Some of this is natural.  I've adopted the southern "y'all" because
English has no plural third person and this
ambiguity is annoying when you're emailing to several people.  Note also
the efficiency of the contraction.
You hear "data" used as singular enough times, you say fuck it, I'll
have a beer, or several beer [sic].  Talk to
Eastern Europeans long enough, you'll start dropping your articles,
though you may miss the FEC/prompting
and flash back to Boris & Natasha cartoons...

Re: Indo European Origins

[Bill Stewart]

At 04:25 PM 01/14/2003 +, Ken Brown wrote:

> > All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are
> > the same age.

> This statement is so silly it leaves me speechless... []
> Nonsense. Icelandic is little changed from the Old Norse of 1000 A.D.
> Icelanders can easily read the sagas without help; modern Danes and
> Norwegians cannot. English, by contrast, is substantially different
> from just the Middle English of Chaucer, let alone the Old English of
> Beowulf.

Er, that's  exactly what I said - they are the same age, but some change
more slowly than others...
and I did warn that I was being unreasonably pedantic.


If you're going to be pedantic, it would be nice if you start by
defining the objects you're measuring the age of,
because otherwise I have to strongly agree with Tim's statement -
I don't see how you could claim either that all natural languages
date from the year X BC when Mitochondrial Mama Eve learned to talk,
or that all biological species have been extent since our
first cellular ancestors crawled their way up out of the primordial soup
to declare themselves to be the prime-time slime.

The one set of definitions I'm familiar with that would lead
to statements like yours is creationism, in the 4004BC Big Bang sense,
with a subdefinition that "anything created the same week is
the same age", since of course the plants, animals, and humans
were created on different days.  In modern scientific creationism*,
the same events occurred stretch out over a longer and earlier time,
with plants and animals and humans showing up in different periods,
so they're much different ages.  But neither one of those definitions
makes all _languages_ the same age; at minimum there are the languages
descended from what Noah's family spoke and the different languages
that appeared after the Tower of Babel  (unless you want to argue that
those are supernatural languages?)  but I don't see Biblical evidence
asserting that other languages didn't appear as people needed them.

Hawai'ian pidgen simply didn't exist until Europeans moved into
Polynesian territory and started trading with them,
and unlike the evolution of English since Shakespeare and/or Chaucer,
the languages that emerged from the collision of English Anglo-Saxon
and Norman after the Conquest (plus the collisions of Anglo and Saxon
and Latin and Celtic and Pictish-if-it's-different that happened before)
are sufficiently different from what either side spoke beforehand that I
can't see any pedagogue worth his salarium asserting that they're still
instantiations of the same Original Linguistic Object.   You might as well
argue that Esperanto** is just a rapidly evolved Indo-European.

Were you trying to make some different point your pedagogue taught you,
about the age of all these things being Brand New Every Day?
Or is there something fundamental that I'm just missing that you had in mind?


* Stop giggling, the difference is important to my point here...
** You probably _can't_ argue that about Logban; hacking the grammar
to make it yacc-parseable is pretty radical surgery.

Re: Indo European Origins

[Michael Motyka]

Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote :
>English, by contrast, is substantially different 
>from just the Middle English of Chaucer, let alone the Old 
English of 
>Beowulf.  I took a class in "The Canterbury Tales," in the 
original 
>with a side-by-side translation, from a Chaucer scholar. A 
few 
>recognizable words, a few familar patterns. But quite 
clearly there has 
>been significant evolution of English in the past half-
millennium. By 
>contrast, the Koran is readable in the original by modern 
Arabs.
>
>--Tim May
>
Very true. Communicating with a 14th century Englishman would be difficult. I 
took a similar major's course with Robert Kaske in the 80's without the benefit of 
the side-by-side. It was as close to learning a new language as I got without 
having it count towards my foreign language requirement. I think a modern reader 
would recognize a fair number of words and structures. In a good bit of that they 
would be mistaken in their understanding and overall would be hard-pressed to 
comprehend the texts in any depth. 

An interesting question that arises out of the observation that some languages 
are relatively static and others - like English - have been changing steadily. Is 
there any connection between the evolution behavior of the language and the 
vitality of the culture? I think so.

m

Re: Indo European Origins

[Tim May]

On Monday, January 13, 2003, at 07:42  AM, Ken Brown wrote:


"R. A. Hettinga" wrote:


At 4:25 PM -0500 on 1/9/03, Trei, Peter wrote:


Basque is unique, as you say


I remember someone saying somewhere, probably on PBS, that Basque is 
*very*
old, paleolithic, and lots of popular mythology has cropped up that 
it's
the closest living relative to some other ur-language, which even
Indo-European is derived from.



All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are 
the
same age.

This statement is so silly it leaves me speechless...

Getting my breath back,



Of course some might change more slowly than others (Greek seems to 
have
a;ltered less than Latin in 2500 years), or might remain in one place
longer than others (it is silly to say that Welsh is an older language
than English, but it is older in Britain)


Nonsense. Icelandic is little changed from the Old Norse of 1000 A.D. 
Icelanders can easily read the sagas without help; modern Danes and 
Norwegians cannot. English, by contrast, is substantially different 
from just the Middle English of Chaucer, let alone the Old English of 
Beowulf.  I took a class in "The Canterbury Tales," in the original 
with a side-by-side translation, from a Chaucer scholar. A few 
recognizable words, a few familar patterns. But quite clearly there has 
been significant evolution of English in the past half-millennium. By 
contrast, the Koran is readable in the original by modern Arabs.

Other such examples abound.


--Tim May

Re: Indo European Origins

[Ken Brown]

"R. A. Hettinga" wrote:
> 
> At 4:25 PM -0500 on 1/9/03, Trei, Peter wrote:
> 
> > Basque is unique, as you say
> 
> I remember someone saying somewhere, probably on PBS, that Basque is *very*
> old, paleolithic, and lots of popular mythology has cropped up that it's
> the closest living relative to some other ur-language, which even
> Indo-European is derived from. 



All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are the
same age.

Of course some might change more slowly than others (Greek seems to have
a;ltered less than Latin in 2500 years), or might remain in one place
longer than others (it is silly to say that Welsh is an older language
than English, but it is older in Britain)

I don't know. The youth of today. They should make them all do
cladistcs.

Re: Indo European Origins and other stuff

[Mike Rosing]

On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Tyler Durden wrote:

> I'd also point out the need to be deliberately oblique. I'm not sure we
> aren't actually headed towards a time where any of us can be carted away for
> expressing how we really think. I also don't kid myself about whether
> "someone could be listening". And I'm also not convinced that those
> techniques our boys at the School of the Americas have been teaching might
> not start to be used here at home "for our own good". You know, I really
> don't want to be tortured.

Some people think list-servs are a form of torture :-)

The main thrust of destroying the constitution was completed in the 70's
with RICO and polished off with the WoD in the 80's.  By 2000 even some
congress critters were noticing and were actually trying to slow down
forfiture law.  But it's all out the window now, and the precedents are
set.  The "illegal combatant" fiction is just one more small step in a few
decades of totalitarian crap.

Fortunatly dictators are incompetent idiots.  It's not that hard to stay
out of their way.  But it seems to me it's safe to assume the US is a
totalitarian state and act accordingly.  Be a bureaucrat to survive,
and maybe we'll get a Gorbachev to tear the whole thing down.  Only
another 40 years to go!

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike

RE: Indo European Origins

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 4:25 PM -0500 on 1/9/03, Trei, Peter wrote:


> Basque is unique, as you say

I remember someone saying somewhere, probably on PBS, that Basque is *very*
old, paleolithic, and lots of popular mythology has cropped up that it's
the closest living relative to some other ur-language, which even
Indo-European is derived from.  Jerod Diamond, of "Guns, Germs and Steel",
is excerpted here about Proto-Indo-European languages in Europe. (among
other things, like the advent of horse warfare)
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/diamond.html

Speaking of horse culture :-), the other thing I was reminded of, for some
reason, is the discovery of Celtic tombs in central Asia above India
somewhere, in China, I think, mummies with red hair, plaid and all, from
some time long before the Celts were eventually pushed into Europe, Celts,
meeting, the Basques, as the first people to do so.

Of course, Himmler, and other "aryan"-worshippers then and now, have spun
all this into a massive pseudogenetic fantasy, as Diamond has noted above.


Cheers,
RAH


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Indo European Origins

[Steve Mynott]

On Thursday, Jan 9, 2003, at 20:32 Europe/London, Tyler Durden wrote:


"Steve" wrote...


I would imagine so since ironically the Aryans came from what is now 
Northern India
and Iran up to about 1000BC.

The word is even derived from Sanskrit.

Read the Rig Veda and break out the soma (if you know what it was).

"Soma"? Despite the fact that I've read large chunks of the Rig Vedas, 
I don't remember anything called "Soma" (unless this is a Brave New 
World Reference). Of course, the Bhagavad Gita is a subsection of the 
Mahabaratabut I don't imagine this is what you are referring to...

Huxley got the name from the Rig Veda (I believe also the name was a 
trademark of some prescription drug).

There are numerous references to soma in the Rig Veda, eg.

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~jng2d/enlt255/texts/intro/rig.htm

and from The Britannica 2003

Soma

"in ancient Indian cult worship, an unidentified plant, the juice of 
which was a fundamental offering of the Vedic sacrifices. The stalks of 
the plant were pressed between stones, and the juice was filtered 
through sheep's wool and then mixed with water and milk. After first 
being offered as a libation to the gods, the remainder of the soma was 
consumed by the priests and the sacrificer. It was highly valued for 
its exhilarating, probably hallucinogenic, effect. The personified 
deity Soma was the “master of plants,” the healer of disease, and the 
bestower of riches.

The soma cult exhibits a number of similarities to the corresponding 
haoma cult of the ancient Iranians and is suggestive of shared beliefs 
among the ancient Indo-Europeans in a kind of elixir of the gods. Like 
haoma, the soma plant grows in the mountains, but its true origin is 
believed to be heaven, whence it was brought to earth by an eagle. The 
pressing of soma was associated with the fertilizing rain, which makes 
possible all life and growth. In the post-Vedic classical period, soma 
is identified with the moon, which wanes when soma is drunk by the gods 
but which is periodically reborn."

Claims have been made that soma was ephedra (like modern haoma), blue 
lily, mushrooms,
cannabis or even alcohol.

An Indian friend says the name "soma" now refers to alcohol in modern 
India.

--
Steve Mynott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: Indo European Origins

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 03:32 PM 1/9/03 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote:
>"Soma"? Despite the fact that I've read large chunks of the Rig Vedas,
I
>don't remember anything called "Soma" (unless this is a Brave New World

>Reference). Of course, the Bhagavad Gita is a subsection of the
>Mahabaratabut I don't imagine this is what you are referring to...

Well then do a fucking google on the word in the Indian context.

Maybe your highschool has firewalled off anything that will lead
you to Hoffman, Ott, Huxley, etc.

Hmm, the 21st century: all the world's libraries at your fingertips, but

now you're obligated to use them!

...

>Of course Hitler and the gang appropriated this term and pumped it with
some
>very different meanings,

LIST: even playing with a kitten and a laser pointer get tiring
eventually.

Tyler, we know this shit.  We're not undergrads doing September here.
Next you're going to tell us how the swastik was a groovy Amerind sign
before it was coopted by Austrians. Or continue to slog through the
history
of the old world tribes.  See _guns germs and steel_, btw.


including notions of "racial purity". I was curious
>as to whether Tim May meant this version of the term or what (and all
that
>is concomittant, including hoped-for genocides), in which case
bludgeoning
>him with a heavy, blunt object in the base of the skull would be a
break for
>all humanity.
>
>-TD

Here's a very general clue: Tim has a clue.

Tim's exposed himself under that nym for some time now, do some
research.

Another hint: keep your irony meter powered up when reading posts here.
Carefully remove the sarcasm filter from the satire window to detect
tongue-in-cheek rays.

Bigger hint: you might have saved us all some
once-ever-so-precious-bandwidth
by writing off Aryan as a simple sound pun: Bay Area -an, get it?

Finally, here's something to keep in mind: culture != race.  You can
slam a culture --after all, values are choices-- pretty rationally,
thought there's not much evidence for slamming gene-based human groups.
You can decry zionist colonialism without animosity towards hebrews.
You can mock decrepit urban negro, or appalachian caucasoid, or
suburban soccermom culture without impugning the genome of the actors.

But this explaining of the obvious is becoming painful,
please assume we're a group of at least peers, if not
polite tolerant but decreasingly amused elders.

Merci

RE: Indo European Origins

[Trei, Peter]

> Tyler Durden[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote:
> 
> Most of the people from the British Isles over to Northern India speak a 
> variant of the original Indo-European language, with Sanskrit and
> Lithuanian 
> likely being the closest languages surviving. Some interesting exceptions
> (I 
> believe) are the Basque in Spain, Hungarians, The (Italian) Etruscans, and
> 
> (as far as I remember) the Flemish. 
> 
Basque is unique, as you say. The main other European 
non-IE group is the Finno-Ugric,  comprising Finnish, 
Estonian, Hungarian and a handful of other minor 
languages  (I'm half Estonian by ancestry). Flemish is 
firmly in the IE group, somewhere between German 
and Anglo-Saxon.

See http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2282/finno.html
for more info on the Finno-Ugric languages.

(No, I don't speak Estonian)

Peter Trei

Re: Indo European Origins

[Meyer Wolfsheim]

On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Tyler Durden wrote:

> "Soma"? Despite the fact that I've read large chunks of the Rig Vedas, I
> don't remember anything called "Soma" (unless this is a Brave New World
> Reference). Of course, the Bhagavad Gita is a subsection of the
> Mahabaratabut I don't imagine this is what you are referring to...

Then you need to read the Vedas [there is only one Rig-Vega, which is the
oldest of the four Vedas] again more closely. Soma is mentioned repeatedly
throughout the Vedic hyms. Soma is both an intoxicating elixir, and the
god that represents it. Soma is sometimes thought to have been alcohol, a
mead-like substance, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, or other nourishing
substances. (The composition of soma is hotly debated by scholars -- I
have no firm answer myself.) Soma is said to have nourishing properties,
and even the power to instill immortality. (C.f. the eclipse myth of the
Hindu demon Rahu.)

And, as you mention, "soma" is a "prozac/valium" or MDEA-like socially
acceptable drug in Huxley's classic, as well as a brand name for the
muscle relaxant "carisoprodol" (whose effects are a great disappointment,
if one is expecting it to be anything like the Hindu or Huxley substance
of the same name.)

The original poster was, no doubt, refering to the original Soma, however.


-MW-

Indo European Origins

[Tyler Durden]

"Steve" wrote...


I would imagine so since ironically the Aryans came from what is now 
Northern India
and Iran up to about 1000BC.

The word is even derived from Sanskrit.

Read the Rig Veda and break out the soma (if you know what it was).

"Soma"? Despite the fact that I've read large chunks of the Rig Vedas, I 
don't remember anything called "Soma" (unless this is a Brave New World 
Reference). Of course, the Bhagavad Gita is a subsection of the 
Mahabaratabut I don't imagine this is what you are referring to...

As for the ultimate origin of the "Aryans", it is far older than 1,000BC. As 
far as I understand it, the Aryans emanated from the lower reaches of the 
Caucus Mountains, and moved into Greece, Europe, Asia Minor, Central Asia, 
and the Northern Part of the Indian subcontinent. (I've read wildly 
conflicting reports as to when, but I remember ending up believing it 
happened around 13,000BC.) Early theories were that the Aryans had learned 
horseback-based military tactics before the indigenous peoples, but emerging 
theories have them slowly growing out of Asia minor via agricultural 
advances.

Most of the people from the British Isles over to Northern India speak a 
variant of the original Indo-European language, with Sanskrit and Lithuanian 
likely being the closest languages surviving. Some interesting exceptions (I 
believe) are the Basque in Spain, Hungarians, The (Italian) Etruscans, and 
(as far as I remember) the Flemish. As I remember too, the Greek 'Linear A' 
script seems to be a pre-Indo-European leftover, and 'Linear B' shows the 
clear input of I-Es.

(That the Basque and other groups claiming to be 'unique' has apparently 
been confirmed via the use of mitochondrial DNA techniques, which can 
determine when various human sub-populations diverged. this apparently 
mirrors the linguisitic evidence quite precisely.)

So what current users of the term "Aryan" seem to be unaware of is that 
Iranians, Afghans, and tons of others are actually Indo European and hence 
"Aryans". (Meanwhile, Iraqis, Saudis and all other Arabs along with Jews are 
Semites and not IndoEurpoean at all.) Of course, they DO tend to have 
somewhat lighter skin than many of the 'locals' (in fact, the Indian caste 
system seems to have codified this fact). But those who use the term "Aryan" 
these days seem to have inherited all of the Nazi bullshit mythological 
baggage. Now there may be exceptions, so that's why I asked.

Of course Hitler and the gang appropriated this term and pumped it with some 
very different meanings, including notions of "racial purity". I was curious 
as to whether Tim May meant this version of the term or what (and all that 
is concomittant, including hoped-for genocides), in which case bludgeoning 
him with a heavy, blunt object in the base of the skull would be a break for 
all humanity.

-TD






From: Steve Mynott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Tyler Durden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 19:41:42 +


On Wednesday, Jan 8, 2003, at 22:10 Europe/London, Tyler Durden wrote:


Tim May wrote...

"Cowboy hats are much more common in Cypherpunks Bay Aryan meetings"

Uh...do you actually hold "Aryan" meetings? Is this a "white" "supremist" 
thing, or will the following be welcome:

Iranians
Afghans
Most people hailing from Northern India
Turks



--
Steve Mynott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



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