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An invention called 'the Jewish people'

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Matt Giwer

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Feb 29, 2008, 4:29:32 PM2/29/08
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As I have been saying for many years this modern Jewish thing has no basis in
reality. Here is a Jewish Israeli historian confirming the real history I have
been reciting and publish in Hebrew in Israel and reviewed in the oldest Hebrew
language newspaper in Israel. Damned antisemites are everywhere!

As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?

Haaretz

Thu., February 28, 2008 Adar1 22, 5768 Israel Time: 17:34 (EST+7)

An invention called 'the Jewish people'

Israel's Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in
the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli
schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in
70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return
after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Zand, in one
of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time.
There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also
never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories
of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt
and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all
fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State
of Israel, he asserts.

According to Zand, the Romans did not generally exile whole nations, and
most of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country. The number of
those exiled was at most tens of thousands. When the country was conquered
by the Arabs, many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among
the conquerors. It follows that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs
were Jews. Zand did not invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration
of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and
others.

If the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is it that so many of them
reached almost every country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of their own
volition or, if they were among those exiled to Babylon, remained there
because they chose to. Contrary to conventional belief, the Jewish religion
tried to induce members of other faiths to become Jews, which explains how
there came to be millions of Jews in the world. As the Book of Esther, for
example, notes, "And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the
fear of the Jews fell upon them."

Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel
but shunted out of the central discourse. He also describes at length the
Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish
Berbers in North Africa. The community of Jews in Spain sprang from Arabs
who became Jews and arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the
Christians, and from European-born individuals who had also become Jews. The
first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not come from the Land of Israel and
did not reach Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in the Khazar
Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it
was not a Jewish import from Germany, but the result of the connection
between the offspring of the Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East,
some of them as merchants.

We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and
black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According to Zand,
the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical
continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an
invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who
conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of
genetic studies conducted in Israel.

Prof. Zand teaches at Tel Aviv University. His book, "When and How Was the
Jewish People Invented?" (published by Resling in Hebrew), is intended to
promote the idea that Israel should be a "state of all its citizens" - Jews,
Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a "Jewish and
democratic" state. Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical discussion and
abundant sarcastic quips do not help the book, but its historical chapters
are well-written and cite numerous facts and insights that many Israelis
will be astonished to read for the first time.

The mosquito from Kiryat Yam

On March 27, 1948, a meeting was held in Hiafa concerning the fate of the
Bedouin of Arab al-Ghawarina in the Haifa area. "They must be removed from
there, so that they, too, will not add to our troubles," Yosef Weitz, of the
Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), wrote in his personal diary. Two
months later, Weitz reported to the organization's director, "Our Haifa Bay
has been evacuated completely and there is hardly a remnant of those who
encroached our border." They were probably expelled to Jordan; some were
allowed to remain in the village of Jisr al-Zarqa. The fate of the Arab
al-Ghawarina Bedouin has recently made the headlines thanks to Shmuel Sisso,
mayor of the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Yam. He has filed a complaint with the
police against Google. The reason is the addition that one of the site's
surfers, a resident of Nablus, attached to the center of Kiryat Yam in the
world satellite photo, stating that the city is built on the ruins of a
village that was destroyed in 1948, Arab al-Ghawarina. Sisso's complaint
says that this is slanderous.

The facts are as follows: The lands of the Zevulun Valley were purchased in
the 1920s by the JNF and by various construction companies, among them one
called Gav Yam. The Zionist Archives have the plan for the establishment of
Kiryat Yam, dated 1938, and a letter from 1945 states that there were
already 100 homes there. Government maps from the British Mandate period
identify the territory on which Kiryat Yam was built by two names: Zevulun
Valley and Ghawarina. Thus it appears that this was not a settlement but an
area in which Bedouin resided.

The Web site of the Israeli organization Zochrot (Remembering) states that
there were 720 people at the site in 1948 and that the area was divided
among three kibbutzim: Ein Hamifratz, Kfar Masaryk and Ein Hayam, today Ein
Carmel.

This story has been making the rounds on the Internet and drawing responses,
which can be summed up as follows: "If Sisso is suing Google because they
stated that he is living on a destroyed Arab village, the implication is
that he thinks this is something bad." Sisso, a lawyer of 57 who is
identified with Likud and was formerly Israeli consul general in New York,
says, "I don't think there is anything bad about it, but other people might
think it is bad, especially people abroad, and that is liable to hurt Kiryat
Yam, because people will not want to invest here. Since we are not sitting
on a Palestinian village, why should we have to suffer for no reason?"

Moroccan-born, Sisso arrived in Israel in 1955. "I wandered around the whole
region and I saw no trace of anyone's having been here before us and
supposedly expelled." He asked an American law professor how, if at all,
Google could be sued for slander or for damages. This, he says, is the
contribution of Kiryat Yam to the struggle against the right of return (of
the Palestinian refugees).

It could turn out to be the most riveting trial since Ariel Sharon sued Time
magazine, but mayor Sisso has no illusions: "Me against Google is like a
mosquito against an elephant," he said this week.

Who America belongs to

Two professors, Gabi Shefer and Avi Ben-Zvi, were guests this week on
Yitzhak Noy's "International Hour" current events program on Israel Radio.
The anchor, sounding slightly concerned, asked whether the achievements of
Barack Obama show that the United States no longer belongs to the white man.
Prof. Shefer confirmed this: Obama is an immigrant, he said. Prof. Ben-Zvi
asked to add a remark: Gabi Shefer is right, he said. They are both wrong.

If Obama were an immigrant, he would not be eligible to be elected
president. He was born in Honolulu, some two years after Hawaii became the
50th state of the union.

--
If torture works, McCain talked.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3941
http://www.giwersworld.org/environment/aehb.phtml a2

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Feb 29, 2008, 11:22:09 PM2/29/08
to
On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:

>         As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?

"Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
means 'myrtle'.

cormac

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Mar 1, 2008, 3:21:44 AM3/1/08
to

Geek is Indo-European. Hebrew is Afro-Asiatic. Inevitably, after
Alexander there was a crossover of some Greek words into the other
languages of their empire.

Cormac.

phog...@abo.fi

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Mar 1, 2008, 6:54:08 AM3/1/08
to

Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
anyway?

Sigge

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Mar 1, 2008, 8:24:04 AM3/1/08
to

No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
the Swedish for star!)

I once was shocked to see the claim by a scholar named Lewy, that the
word Europe, a girl's name appearing in Greek Mythology, was of
semitic origin. The word is obviously Greek (euros (omega) and ops
(omega again) meaning broad face, a plausible name for a girl).

The semitic etymology, invoking some combination of consonants that
reminds the consonants of Europe, comes down to meaning "Untergang der
Sonne" =(Sunset).

Bernal, in "Black Athena" made a claim about a large part of Greek
vocabulary being of semitic origin, but he was both pulverized and
even ridiculed in the article of Jasanoff and Nussbaum in Black Athena
Revisited pp 177-205 (under the title Word Games).

I was told that a certain Finn Scholar a few centuries ago claimed
that Finnish comes from Greek (he had found a word with the same
meaning that was read from right to left the same in the languages or
something like that.
Mr Phogl from Åbo Finland!
Please write two lines about that. Give the name of the scholar the
date and if possible the word.

So there are fanciful scholars that want to increase the greatness of
any group by simply imagining!

Now what are the possible words coming from Semitic languages to Indo-
European?
Certainly words about artifacts, found in semitic places but not in
Indo-European!

Do you think that the semites saw the Stars and that the Indo-
europeans did not see the Stars?
What makes you think that the Indo-Europeans had no name for the
objects in the night sky?

Greek has borrowed words for articles from its neighbours, as we have
borrowed chocolate and coffee and vodka. But not words for concepts
(as beauty is a borrowing from French). The reason is very obvious.
The superiority of the Greek Civilization.

Check the word Geometry and even the Science of Geometry. It was
borrowed by the poor jews, became something like Gematria and the
Crystal Clear Structure of Geometry, the pinnacle of Human Intellect,
was turned to numerology, codes in the bible, and play of the weak
minded idiots.

There is a special problem with languages that did not use vowels.
Their expressive power of the language-signary (meaning the number of
words that are phonetically exactly reproduced) is nil! No word can be
reproduced exactly. Etymology is hopeless and arbitrary.

Greek Linear B is far more able in representing exactly words since
there were separate signs for the syllables A E I O U.

So much for semitic etymologies!

Sigge

phog...@abo.fi

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Mar 1, 2008, 11:46:34 AM3/1/08
to
On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > On 1 maalis, 06:22, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > > > As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> > > > Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> > > > we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?
>
> > > "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
> > > means 'myrtle'.
>
> > Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
> > anyway?
>
> No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
> the Swedish for star!)

It is actually "stjarna", the Icelandic for star. And I wasn't asking
you, I was asking Mr Daniels, who should know.

And of course, I know without his help that both the words I mentioned
and the Greek word you mentioned are based on the name of the Assyro-
Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Reason: the ancient astronomical and
astrological tradition of the Babylonians.

Sigge

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 12:48:10 PM3/1/08
to
On Mar 1, 5:46 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
> On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > > On 1 maalis, 06:22, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> > > > > Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> > > > > we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?
>
> > > > "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
> > > > means 'myrtle'.
>
> > > Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
> > > anyway?
>
> > No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
> > the Swedish for star!)
>
> It is actually "stjarna", the Icelandic for star.
I admit I thought it were the Swedish word Stjärna without umlaut. I
know that in Finland Swedish is not only an official Languagee, but
absolutely necessary if you want to study History, since all Archives
are in Swedish! Especially if you come from Åbo.

But even that came from greek aster or is keen to it. There is
certainly a PIE root!

>And I wasn't asking
> you, I was asking Mr Daniels, who should know.
>

In that case you use something called vocative! But you did not! Or
you send a mail to him!
Try to be exact.

> And of course, I know without his help that both the words I mentioned
> and the Greek word you mentioned are based on the name of the Assyro-
> Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Reason: the ancient astronomical and
> astrological tradition of the Babylonians.

Since you "know without his help" why do you ask? Proctolingus?
Where have you and mr Daniels published your academic works? In
Wikipedia?

What makes Daniels and you different than Bernal, Lewy and the other
discredited pseudoscholars?

That you publish in soc.ancient.hist?
What is your main scholarly work?
On the Akkadian origins of Finnish?
It would be far easier to find words that have the same consonants in
both languages!

The problem remains! No vowels! There are no words without vowels!
What makes you think that it is Ishtar and not Ashatar or Eshter, or
Astor or ......

Playing with vowels can turn any text to practically anything!
A Mr Stern was bothered by the fact that the implied value of pi in
the Bible is 3. Mr Stern found that the passage in the kings giving
us 3 as a value of pi, can be reinterpreted so that it gives a better
approximation.

In fact there are two passages, but he did not venture to reinterpret
the other passage.

And he even published that piece of shit! And not in Wikipedia!

Sigge

Peter T. Daniels

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Mar 1, 2008, 1:12:52 PM3/1/08
to
On Mar 1, 11:46 am, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
> On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > > On 1 maalis, 06:22, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > > > >         As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> > > > > Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> > > > > we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?
>
> > > > "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
> > > > means 'myrtle'.
>
> > > Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
> > > anyway?
>
> > No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
> > the Swedish for star!)
>
> It is actually "stjarna", the Icelandic for star. And I wasn't asking
> you, I was asking Mr Daniels, who should know.

What?? You were asking _me_ a question about _Greek_?????

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 4:20:51 PM3/1/08
to
On 1 maalis, 20:12, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Mar 1, 11:46 am, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > > > On 1 maalis, 06:22, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> > > > > > Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> > > > > > we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?
>
> > > > > "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
> > > > > means 'myrtle'.
>
> > > > Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
> > > > anyway?
>
> > > No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
> > > the Swedish for star!)
>
> > It is actually "stjarna", the Icelandic for star. And I wasn't asking
> > you, I was asking Mr Daniels, who should know.
>
> What?? You were asking _me_ a question about _Greek_?????

It was mostly a rhetorical question, just to make sure that I
remembered right. I was asking you, whether the stem found in
"stella", "star", "stjarna", "estrella", and so on was an ancient
Semitic loan into IE, as I seem to recall.

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 4:28:21 PM3/1/08
to
On 1 maalis, 19:48, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 1, 5:46 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > > > On 1 maalis, 06:22, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> > > > > > Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> > > > > > we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?
>
> > > > > "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
> > > > > means 'myrtle'.
>
> > > > Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
> > > > anyway?
>
> > > No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
> > > the Swedish for star!)
>
> > It is actually "stjarna", the Icelandic for star.
>
> I admit I thought it were the Swedish word Stjärna without umlaut. I
> know that in Finland Swedish is not only an official Languagee, but
> absolutely necessary if you want to study History, since all Archives
> are in Swedish! Especially if you come from Åbo.
>
> But even that came from greek aster or is keen to it. There is
> certainly a PIE root!

The word is a very ancient loan into IE from Semitic, and it is not
universal in IE. Slavonic languages have gwiazda, zvezda, hvezda.
(Belarusian has zorka, which is an innovation.) Latin has three words:
stella, astrum (a learned loanword from Greek), and sidus (genitive
sideris), which is these days used for "constellation", but originally
means "star". The word was adopted into IE languages at a very early
stage, but is indeed cognate with Ishtar, the Babylonian name for
Venus.

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 4:41:49 PM3/1/08
to
On 1 maalis, 19:48, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 1, 5:46 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > > > On 1 maalis, 06:22, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> > > > > > Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> > > > > > we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?
>
> > > > > "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
> > > > > means 'myrtle'.
>
> > > > Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
> > > > anyway?
>
> > > No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
> > > the Swedish for star!)
>
> > It is actually "stjarna", the Icelandic for star.
>
> I admit I thought it were the Swedish word Stjärna without umlaut. I
> know that in Finland Swedish is not only an official Languagee, but
> absolutely necessary if you want to study History, since all Archives
> are in Swedish! Especially if you come from Åbo.

I am fluent in Swedish, if that is what you are aiming at.


>
> But even that came from greek aster or is keen to it. There is
> certainly a PIE root!
>
> >And I wasn't asking
> > you, I was asking Mr Daniels, who should know.
>
> In that case you use something called vocative! But you did not! Or
> you send a mail to him!
> Try to be exact.

I am posting in sci.lang, where Mr Daniels is known as a person who
knows something about Semitic languages and about writing systems in
general. I don't know you, I wasn't asking you a question, and I think
I never will.


>
> > And of course, I know without his help that both the words I mentioned
> > and the Greek word you mentioned are based on the name of the Assyro-
> > Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Reason: the ancient astronomical and
> > astrological tradition of the Babylonians.
>
> Since you "know without his help" why do you ask? Proctolingus?
> Where have you and mr Daniels published your academic works? In
> Wikipedia?

I do not need to recite my publication history to a completely unknown
person. But yes, I do sometimes write articles for the Irish-language
Wikipedia, as I am fluent in Irish.

>
> What makes Daniels and you different than Bernal, Lewy and the other
> discredited pseudoscholars?

I have not made any acquaintance with these gentlemen, and I don't
know what they have written. I merely reminisce what the standard
works about the history of the German language have to say about the
pre-Germanic history of IE.


>
> That you publish in soc.ancient.hist?

I have never published in soc.ancient.hist, as far as I know.

> What is your main scholarly work?

Well, I had a long article in German about the Irish language today
accepted for publication a couple of weeks ago, and I am currently
editing a Finnish-Irish dictionary. Does that count as scholarly
work?

> On the Akkadian origins of Finnish?

Finnish is a modern Finno-Ugric language, Akkadian is an ancient
Semitic language. So, Finnish and Akkadian are not and cannot be
related in any meaningful way.

> It would be far easier to find words that have the same consonants in
> both languages!

What are you trying to say?

>
> The problem remains! No vowels! There are no words without vowels!

What has this to do with anything?

> What makes you think that it is Ishtar and not Ashatar or Eshter, or
> Astor or ......

I told you: I read it in the introductory chapters of several works on
the history of the German language, when I was studying German.

>
> Playing with vowels can turn any text to practically anything!
> A Mr Stern was bothered by the fact that the implied value of pi in
> the Bible is 3. Mr Stern found that the passage in the kings giving
> us 3 as a value of pi, can be reinterpreted so that it gives a better
> approximation.
>
> In fact there are two passages, but he did not venture to reinterpret
> the other passage.
>
> And he even published that piece of shit! And not in Wikipedia!

I have no idea whatsoever of what you are talking about. I reckon you
think I am taking sides in some debate which you feel strongly about.
I am not: I just wanted Mr Daniels, as an esteemed expert of renown,
to confirm that received textbook wisdom regarding the origins of the
word "star", "Stern", "stjarna", "stella" was what I thought it was.


Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 4:46:36 PM3/1/08
to
> Semitic loan into IE, as I seem to recall.-

I'll try to make it clearer. Why would you ask _me_ a question about
the etymology of a Greek word?

The only Semitic 'star' word I know offhand is *kabkab- (e.g., Hebr.
kokhabh).

Doug Weller

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 4:46:21 PM3/1/08
to

Poor research skills?
Peter D Daniels:
# 2006. On beyond alphabets. In Script Adjustment and Phonological
Awareness, edited by Martin Neef and Guido Nottbusch. Written Language &
Literacy. 9(1): 7–24. ISSN: 1387-6732
# 1997 Classical Syriac phonology. In Phonologies of Asia and Africa,
edited by Kaye. Eisenbrauns, Warsaw, IN.
# 1997 The Protean Arabic Abjad. In Fs. George Krotkoff. Eisenbrauns,
Warsaw, IN.
# 1997 Surveys of languages of the world. In Fs. William Bright. de
Gruyter.
# 1996 The World's Writing Systems (with William Bright). Oxford
University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0
# 1995 translation: Gotthelf Bergsträsser. Introduction to the Semitic
Languages: Text specimens and grammatical sketches. Second edition.
Eisenbrauns, Warsaw, IN. ISBN: 0-931464-10-2
# 1994 An overlooked ethological datum bearing on the evolution of human
language. In LACUS Forum 1994. Linguistic Association of Canada and the
United States.
# 1993 Linguistics in the American library classification systems. In
LACUS Forum 1993. Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States.
# 1992 The Syllabic Origin of Writing and the Segmental Origin of the
Alphabet. In Linguistics of Literacy, edited by Downing, Lima, and Noonan.
John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
# 1991 Ha, La, Ha or Hoi, Lawe, Haut: The Ethiopic letter names. In Fs.
Wolf Leslau. Arrassowitz.
# 1991 Is a structural grammatology possible? In LACUS Forum 1991.
Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States.
# 1990 Fundamentals of grammatology. Journal of the American Orient
Society.
# 1983 translation: Gotthelf Bergsträsser. Introduction to the Semitic
Languages: Text specimens and grammatical sketches. Eisenbrauns, Warsaw,
IN.
# translation: Pierre Briant. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the
Persian Empire. Eisenbrauns, Warsaw, IN
http://www1.elsevier.com/homepage/sal/ell2/daniels.html
Elsevier's section editor for Writing Systems:
"Peter T. Daniels is one of the world's few scholars specializing
exclusively in the study of writing systems. With degrees in linguistics
from Cornell University and the University of Chicago, he has taught at
the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee and Chicago State University and
presented invited lectures on three continents. His translations include
Introduction to the Semitic Languages, by Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and From
Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, by Pierre Briant
(both published by Eisenbrauns). He is author of numerous articles and
reviews on writing and on the topic of languages of the world; co-editor
and principal contributor to The World's Writing Systems (Oxford, 1996);
and consulting editor for issues of the children's magazines Calliope and
AppleSeeds devoted to writing, to appear in 2004. He lives in New York
City."


>What makes Daniels and you different than Bernal, Lewy and the other
>discredited pseudoscholars?
>
>That you publish in soc.ancient.hist?
>What is your main scholarly work?
>On the Akkadian origins of Finnish?
>It would be far easier to find words that have the same consonants in
>both languages!
>
>The problem remains! No vowels! There are no words without vowels!
>What makes you think that it is Ishtar and not Ashatar or Eshter, or
>Astor or ......
>
>Playing with vowels can turn any text to practically anything!
>A Mr Stern was bothered by the fact that the implied value of pi in
>the Bible is 3. Mr Stern found that the passage in the kings giving
>us 3 as a value of pi, can be reinterpreted so that it gives a better
>approximation.
>
>In fact there are two passages, but he did not venture to reinterpret
>the other passage.
>
>And he even published that piece of shit! And not in Wikipedia!
>
>Sigge

--
Doug Weller --
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk
Amun - co-owner/co-moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 4:50:25 PM3/1/08
to
On Mar 1, 4:41 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
> On 1 maalis, 19:48, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > What makes Daniels and you different than Bernal, Lewy and the other
> > discredited pseudoscholars?
>
> I have not made any acquaintance with these gentlemen, and I don't
> know what they have written. I merely reminisce what the standard
> works about the history of the German language have to say about the
> pre-Germanic history of IE.

Martin Bernal is a friend of mine, who had a good idea and went astray
in the details. (I don't have his third volume yet.)

I don't know who "Lewy" is, but Hildegard & Julius Lewy were mid-20th-
century Assyriologists (who published in the Hebrew Union College
Annual) specializing in Old Assyrian texts. She is more highly
regarded than he.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 4:54:17 PM3/1/08
to
On Mar 1, 4:46 pm, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>
wrote:

> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:48:10 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Sigge wrote:

> >Where have you and mr Daniels published your academic works? In
> >Wikipedia?
>
> Poor research skills?
> Peter D Daniels:

Hmm, you're referring to someone else above, but you list some of my
articles below.

> # 2006. On beyond alphabets. In Script Adjustment and Phonological
> Awareness, edited by Martin Neef and Guido Nottbusch. Written Language &

> Literacy. 9(1): 7-24. ISSN: 1387-6732

Hey, it's not like I didn't do anything for a decade! Where'd you get
this list?

> Persian Empire. Eisenbrauns, Warsaw, INhttp://www1.elsevier.com/homepage/sal/ell2/daniels.html

Trond Engen

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 5:11:28 PM3/1/08
to
phog...@abo.fi skreiv:

> It was mostly a rhetorical question, just to make sure that I
> remembered right. I was asking you, whether the stem found in
> "stella", "star", "stjarna", "estrella", and so on was an ancient
> Semitic loan into IE, as I seem to recall.

FWIW, Hellquist (1922) mentions the uncertain possibility of a Semitic
loan. In Bjorvand and Lindeman (2000) there's a long entry for 'stjerne'
with no mention of Semitic (and they do mention such a possibility under
'Tyr'). May the Hettite evidence of a laryngeal have ended the speculation?

--
Trond Engen
- vill du se en stjärna, se på mig

Paul J Kriha

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 10:23:37 PM3/1/08
to
<phog...@abo.fi> wrote in message
news:01c2af1d-f9e7-456a...@e23g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

>On 1 maalis, 19:48, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>> It would be far easier to find words that have the same consonants in
>> both languages!
>
>What are you trying to say?
>
>> The problem remains! No vowels! There are no words without vowels!
>
>What has this to do with anything?

And apart from that, it's not true anyway.
Only a few hundred miles from where he lives people speak
ordinary IE languages with frequent vowelless words. :-)

pjk

[...]


Paul J Kriha

unread,
Mar 1, 2008, 10:38:02 PM3/1/08
to
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:8ec85a69-df87-4384...@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

>On Mar 1, 4:46 pm, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>
>wrote:
>> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:48:10 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Sigge wrote:
>
>> >Where have you and mr Daniels published your academic works? In
>> >Wikipedia?

ROTFL

>> Poor research skills?
>> Peter D Daniels:
>
>Hmm, you're referring to someone else above, but you list some of my
>articles below.
>
>> # 2006. On beyond alphabets. In Script Adjustment and Phonological
>> Awareness, edited by Martin Neef and Guido Nottbusch. Written Language &
>> Literacy. 9(1): 7-24. ISSN: 1387-6732
>
>Hey, it's not like I didn't do anything for a decade! Where'd you get
>this list?

You see, PTD you cannot hide the fact that this was the decade
you spent publishing your academic work in Wikipedia. :-))))))

Actually, what Sigge wrote gave me a good belly laugh.
In found the thought of P.T.Daniels publishing his academic work
in Wikipedia hilariously funny.

pjk

mb

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 12:43:15 AM3/2/08
to

Without being PTD, I suppose one can still remark that there is some
kind of general interpretation as it being IE *ster (in a semantic
field of "scatter": strew) w/ gk astér, lat ster[u]la, snsk astr- etc,
and that the only reason for the (mainly German) rumor about a Sem.
loan seemed to be the presence of an Ishtar elsewhere and the presence
of a highly impressionistic Herr Professor. To which John D. Davis
counters in "A Dictionary of the Bible", 1911: "There is, however, no
need to think of Ishtar at all; since Esther, as a Persian word, is
the good name Stella, a star."

Doug Weller

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 2:07:22 AM3/2/08
to
On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 13:54:17 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Peter T.
Daniels wrote:

>On Mar 1, 4:46 pm, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>
>wrote:
>> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:48:10 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Sigge wrote:
>
>> >Where have you and mr Daniels published your academic works? In
>> >Wikipedia?
>>
>> Poor research skills?
>> Peter D Daniels:
>
>Hmm, you're referring to someone else above, but you list some of my
>articles below.
>

No, I don't know why I typed D instead of T. I meant T.

Doug Weller

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 2:07:55 AM3/2/08
to
On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 13:54:17 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Peter T.
Daniels wrote:

>On Mar 1, 4:46 pm, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>
>wrote:
>> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:48:10 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Sigge wrote:
>
>> >Where have you and mr Daniels published your academic works? In
>> >Wikipedia?
>>
>> Poor research skills?
>> Peter D Daniels:
>
>Hmm, you're referring to someone else above, but you list some of my
>articles below.
>
>> # 2006. On beyond alphabets. In Script Adjustment and Phonological
>> Awareness, edited by Martin Neef and Guido Nottbusch. Written Language &
>> Literacy. 9(1): 7-24. ISSN: 1387-6732
>
>Hey, it's not like I didn't do anything for a decade! Where'd you get
>this list?

Wikipedia, want me to edit it?

lora...@cs.com

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 2:25:10 AM3/2/08
to
On Mar 1, 2:11 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:
> phogl...@abo.fi skreiv:

Forget Hellquist an 1922..

The 'oldest' IE language group, Baltic, has 'star' meaning 'ray of
light'.
Case closed.. it's IE.

John Atkinson

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 2:41:42 AM3/2/08
to
<phog...@abo.fi> wrote...

>On 1 maalis, 19:48, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mar 1, 5:46 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>> > On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
>> > > > Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from
>> > > > Semitic
>> > > > anyway?
>
>> > > No! your list comes from greek aster!

[...]


>
>> But even that came from greek aster or is keen to it. There is
>> certainly a PIE root!

> The word is a very ancient loan into IE from Semitic, and it is not
> universal in IE. Slavonic languages have gwiazda, zvezda, hvezda.
> (Belarusian has zorka, which is an innovation.) Latin has three words:
> stella, astrum (a learned loanword from Greek), and sidus (genitive
> sideris), which is these days used for "constellation", but originally
> means "star". The word was adopted into IE languages at a very early
> stage, but is indeed cognate with Ishtar, the Babylonian name for
> Venus.

My understanding is that this is still a subject of debate. As Sigge
says, there is a good PIE etymology, *h2ste:r, "ember", from *h2eh-s-,
"burn" , with suffix -ter. Hittite hasterza is attested from about
2000 BC, the same date as Akkadian istar.

Proto-Semitic *aTtar is floating around there somewhere too, but I
gather this isn't cognate with Akk istar.

John.

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 3:22:12 AM3/2/08
to
On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 07:41:42 GMT, John Atkinson
<john...@bigpond.com> wrote in
<news:WSsyj.21327$421....@news-server.bigpond.net.au> in
soc.history.ancient,sci.archaeology,sci.lang:

> <phog...@abo.fi> wrote...

[...]

>> The word is a very ancient loan into IE from Semitic, and it is not
>> universal in IE. Slavonic languages have gwiazda, zvezda, hvezda.
>> (Belarusian has zorka, which is an innovation.) Latin has three words:
>> stella, astrum (a learned loanword from Greek), and sidus (genitive
>> sideris), which is these days used for "constellation", but originally
>> means "star". The word was adopted into IE languages at a very early
>> stage, but is indeed cognate with Ishtar, the Babylonian name for
>> Venus.

> My understanding is that this is still a subject of debate. As Sigge
> says, there is a good PIE etymology, *h2ste:r, "ember", from *h2eh-s-,
> "burn" , with suffix -ter.

And as Piotr Gasiorowski pointed out on Cybalist several
years ago, the Semitic name refers only to Venus, which is
not the case with IE words derived from *h2sté:r.

> Hittite hasterza is attested from about 2000 BC, the same
> date as Akkadian istar.

On Cybalist some time back Miguel gave it as <hasterz>, and
mentioned that /haste:r/ is also found.

[...]

Brian

Dušan Vukotić

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 4:48:25 AM3/2/08
to
On Mar 2, 8:41 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> <phogl...@abo.fi> wrote...

Istar, Ishtar, Astoreth (Venus) is related to the following Serbian
words: Zornjača (Venus; cf. Sirius), iskra (sparkle), sutra (tommorow;
Gr. αύριον), jutro (morning; Gr. όρθρος; Latin aurora); from zoriti
(to dawn); from Sur-Hor basis (Serb. sa-goreti; iz-goreti /burn down/
=> iskriti (to sparkle); cf. Germanic divinities Surtr and Aesir
(Surtr is a leader of fire giants; Aesir is the collective name of the
Norse gods), as well as Asgard (homeland of the Aesir; word related to
Serbo-Slavic zgrada /bilding/, zagrada /bracket, fence/; the highest
of the nine worlds).

It means that Serbian zvezda (star; Gr. αστήρ; Ger. Stern; Russ.
звезда; Czech; Litu. žvaigždė; Cz. hvězda, hvězdičkový) is related to
Serbian gizdarenje/kinđurenje/kićenje (adornment, ornamentation) and
gazda /ga-zdarica (host, hostess). In order to understand the above
words and their relations we must go back to the primal agglutination
and ur-syllables Gon-Bel-Gon; where the Serbian words as nebo (sky),
zemlja (Earth), kaplja (droplet), oblak (cloud), Latin nebula (cloud),
gleba/humus (earth) appeared from; including Latin aqua, Serb. kvasiti
(soak), gvožđe (iron), okov (fetter), negve (fetters). Now it becomes
clear that Slavic zvezda/hvezda is also derived from the same Gon-Bel-
Gon basis as IE words for sky, cloud, earth and heaven.

Above Serbian word gazda (host, master) is related to the older form
gos(p)odar/gospar (host, master; Lat. hospes -pitis): cf. Serbian
gopodarstvo/gazdinstvo (economy) and Russian государство/gasudarstva
(state).

DV

John Atkinson

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 5:13:55 AM3/2/08
to

"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
news:19hy2gkf828rm$.h7imav0n9t1i.dlg@40tude.net...

At a guess, in the Hittite cuneiform syllabic script it would be
something like HA-AS-TE-IR-ZA, which could be read as either /hasterz/
or /hasterza/ -- their system had problems with final consonant
clusters.

Again, Miguel might have meant the stem hasterz- without the nominative
ending -a or -as (not sure which it would be for a stem ending
in -rz-). -rz isn't a possible ending for a declined noun, AFAIK.

> and mentioned that /haste:r/ is also found.

This would be one of those famous r/n stems I suppose?

Anyway, as someone else has mentioned, the initial laryngial makes it
pretty unlikely that it derives from "ishtar"

John.

John Atkinson

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 6:00:05 AM3/2/08
to
<lora...@cs.com> wrote...

>On Mar 1, 2:11 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:
>> phogl...@abo.fi skreiv:
>
>> > It was mostly a rhetorical question, just to make sure that I
>> > remembered right. I was asking you, whether the stem found in
>> > "stella", "star", "stjarna", "estrella", and so on was an ancient
>> > Semitic loan into IE, as I seem to recall.
>
>> FWIW, Hellquist (1922) mentions the uncertain possibility of a
>> Semitic
>> loan. In Bjorvand and Lindeman (2000) there's a long entry for
>> 'stjerne'
>> with no mention of Semitic (and they do mention such a possibility
>> under
>> 'Tyr'). May the Hettite evidence of a laryngeal have ended the
>> speculation?
>
Forget Hellquist an 1922..

> The 'oldest' IE language group, Baltic, has 'star' meaning 'ray of

> ight'.

No such word in my Lithuanian dictionary. "Ray of light" is spindulis
or pros^vaiste..

> Case closed.. it's IE.

I agree with you, I think, whether or not it appears in Baltic.

J.

Sigge

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 7:26:21 AM3/2/08
to
On Mar 1, 10:28 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
> On 1 maalis, 19:48, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Mar 1, 5:46 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > > On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > > > > On 1 maalis, 06:22, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> > > > > > > Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> > > > > > > we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?
>
> > > > > > "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
> > > > > > means 'myrtle'.
>
> > > > > Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
> > > > > anyway?
>
> > > > No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
> > > > the Swedish for star!)
>
> > > It is actually "stjarna", the Icelandic for star.
>
> > I admit I thought it were the Swedish word Stjärna without umlaut. I
> > know that in Finland Swedish is not only an official Languagee, but
> > absolutely necessary if you want to study History, since all Archives
> > are in Swedish! Especially if you come from Åbo.
>
> > But even that came from greek aster or is keen to it. There is
> > certainly a PIE root!

That there is a PIE root does not mean that ALL IndoEuropean languages
use it currently.
(The greek word for horse is currently hippos, but in Linear B it was
equus as in Latin. Had Ventris not deciphered Linear B you would come
up with more arguments of the sort!)
As a person who is fluent in many languages you should have understood
that. Unless you only write catalogues, as you do here, without
understanding the structure, since that requires some other type of
education than yours and surely a better brain.


> stella, astrum (a learned loanword from Greek),

Is stella and astrum of different origin? Stella, aster? Falling away
vowels like the initial a? r and l being originally the same or as in
Chinese? Are you kidding? You must be a joke! I come from Stockholm or
according to Juan from Estocolma! how on hell did we get this E?
there must be some linguistic explanation! Let us ask Mr Phogl from
Åbo!

>The word was adopted into IE languages at a very early
> stage, but is indeed cognate with Ishtar, the Babylonian name for
> Venus.

Prove it! (This is what we say in Mathematics, when somebody comes
with outrageous statements. Phogl.. has inside information, possibly
from a G-d.)

The same argumentation as Bernal!
So the Greeks and the others did not have a word for Star before
coming in contact with with the Babylonians! Mr linguist, find the
word, prove that it is different from the one used nowadays and then
make your pronouncement.
Of course this is impossible! That is why you speculate about the
imagined homes of Jews and their linguistic abilities.

You use a language the terminology of which contains Greek words.
Where do you get paid from?

As a mathematician, I can tell you, that people with a political
agenda and imagination can prove that all words with three syllables
come from semitic!
As Gelb noted every sign stands for a consonant sign followed by any
vowel or not.
With 20 signs you cover almost all consonant sounds and with only a
few thousand three-sign-words almost all the combinations ever
produced.

But this is not the reality. The reality is that no borrowings from
semitic languages can be ascertained unless it is about artefact found
in Semitic places and not in Indoeuropean.

100 years ago there was no question whether Linear B was Greek or not!
It was Semitic! Those who suggested that it might be Greek were
thrown out of the expedition! But a guy, with a good education, not
the Linguistic mumbo-jumbo that you consider education, using
scientific methods, not the approval of friends and the money of their
masters, proved that it was after all Greek! Poor Ventris, he had to
apologise for his audacity! The semitic wolves were there to devour
him. But his findings still stand. With the exception of the Cyrus
Gordon gang, all accept Ventris findings and the indoeoropean literacy
is extended considerably.

But the propaganda goes on. Imagined homes and word games. White
Goddess, Black Athena and other outrageous theories to be sold to the
uneducated public, through Wikipedia, obscure journals, and
journalists with agendas.

Mr Phogl...! THe babylonians had astrology (Not astronoky). massive
observations. Yet the simplest fact where the whole Science of
Astronomy is based on, that of the sphericity of the Earth was alien
to them! It was after Alexander the Great that they got to know that
the Earth was round!

Your Linguistic mumbo-jumbo is the same! Astrology! Not Astronomy!

Sigge

Dušan Vukotić

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 8:11:23 AM3/2/08
to
On Mar 2, 12:00 pm, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> <lorad...@cs.com> wrote...
> J.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Latvian stars (beam, ray); from the verbs izstarot, starot (to ray, to
beam);

DV

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 8:33:24 AM3/2/08
to
On Mar 2, 2:41 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:

> Proto-Semitic *aTtar is floating around there somewhere too, but I
> gather this isn't cognate with Akk istar.

Why not? *T > S in Akk.

(*th > sh)

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 8:37:16 AM3/2/08
to
On Mar 2, 7:26 am, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 100 years ago there was no question whether Linear B was Greek or not!
> It was Semitic!  Those who suggested that it might be Greek were
> thrown out of the expedition! But a guy, with a good education, not
> the Linguistic mumbo-jumbo that you consider education, using
> scientific methods, not the approval of friends and the money of their
> masters, proved that it was after all Greek! Poor Ventris, he had to
> apologise for his audacity! The semitic wolves were there to devour
> him. But his findings still stand. With the exception of the Cyrus
> Gordon gang, all accept Ventris findings and the indoeoropean literacy
> is extended considerably.

Er, no, everyone (including Ventris) expected Linear B to be akin to
Etruscan.

Cyrus Gordon interpreted Linear A as Semitic but didn't have much
success in persuading anyone.

If you don't know the difference between Linear A and Linear B,
perhaps you shouldn't be posting to sci.lang.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 8:38:55 AM3/2/08
to
On Mar 2, 2:07 am, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>

wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 13:54:17 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Peter T.
>
>
>
>
>
> Daniels wrote:
> >On Mar 1, 4:46 pm, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>
> >wrote:
> >> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:48:10 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Sigge wrote:
>
> >> >Where have you and mr Daniels published your academic works? In
> >> >Wikipedia?
>
> >> Poor research skills?
> >> Peter D Daniels:
>
> >Hmm, you're referring to someone else above, but you list some of my
> >articles below.
>
> >> # 2006. On beyond alphabets. In Script Adjustment and Phonological
> >> Awareness, edited by Martin Neef and Guido Nottbusch. Written Language &
> >> Literacy. 9(1): 7-24. ISSN: 1387-6732
>
> >Hey, it's not like I didn't do anything for a decade! Where'd you get
> >this list?
>
> Wikipedia, want me to edit it?

Is the accuracy of wkpd. important to you? How long would it last?

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 8:45:35 AM3/2/08
to
> the good name Stella, a star."-

If Esther is a Persian name in Greek, then the translator who assigned
it to the Jewish heroine Hadassah obviously failed to understand the
entire point of the story.

Trond Engen

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 9:13:20 AM3/2/08
to
John Atkinson skreiv:

> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
> news:19hy2gkf828rm$.h7imav0n9t1i.dlg@40tude.net...
>
>> On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 07:41:42 GMT, John Atkinson
>> <john...@bigpond.com> wrote in
>> <news:WSsyj.21327$421....@news-server.bigpond.net.au> in
>> soc.history.ancient,sci.archaeology,sci.lang:
>>
>>> <phog...@abo.fi> wrote...
>>>

>>>> [...] The word was adopted into IE languages at a very early

>>>> stage, but is indeed cognate with Ishtar, the Babylonian name for
>>>> Venus.
>>
>>> My understanding is that this is still a subject of debate. As
>>> Sigge says, there is a good PIE etymology, *h2ste:r, "ember", from
>>> *h2eh-s-, "burn" , with suffix -ter.
>>
>> And as Piotr Gasiorowski pointed out on Cybalist several years ago,
>> the Semitic name refers only to Venus, which is not the case with IE
>> words derived from *h2sté:r.
>>
>>> Hittite hasterza is attested from about 2000 BC, the same date as
>>> Akkadian istar.
>>
>> On Cybalist some time back Miguel gave it as <hasterz>,
>
> At a guess, in the Hittite cuneiform syllabic script it would be
> something like HA-AS-TE-IR-ZA, which could be read as either
> /hasterz/ or /hasterza/ -- their system had problems with final
> consonant clusters.
>
> Again, Miguel might have meant the stem hasterz- without the
> nominative ending -a or -as (not sure which it would be for a stem
> ending in -rz-). -rz isn't a possible ending for a declined noun,
> AFAIK.

Bjorvand & Lindeman: <ha-as-te-er-za>. They seem, tentatively, to prefer
a reading /hstr-ts/ < *hstr-s, where *-s is the nominative case ending.
(They tend to dig deep into the Anatolian evidence. Lindeman has spent
most of his carrier on Hittite.)

>> and mentioned that /haste:r/ is also found.
>
> This would be one of those famous r/n stems I suppose?

Is there an -n- anywhere? Most branches have *-r with some suffix. PToch
*s´cär-, attested with an -n-suffix in Toch A and a -ya-suffix in Toch
B. Armenian <astL> and Latin <stella> seem to point to an r/l alteration
-- or different suffixes.

To me (and thus probably thoroughly wrong) it could look like an old
adjective. *H2(e)s-té(:)r- "the more glowing", with l's and n's added
later (as diminutives or something) in the various branches. This would
go along with the "ember" etymology quoted above, but avoid the rather
doubtsome agent suffix *-tér.

> Anyway, as someone else has mentioned, the initial laryngial makes it
> pretty unlikely that it derives from "ishtar"

What is the favoured point of articulation for *h2 nowadays? I read
somewhere recently that it might have been a German ich-sound, but I
can't see how that can turn anything into an /a/. I used to think of it
as something close to an uvular r.

Follow-up set to sci.lang only.

--
Trond Engen
- attributing it all to Jeremy Cricket

Martin Edwards

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 10:22:58 AM3/2/08
to
Sigge wrote:

> On Mar 1, 5:46 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>> On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>>>> On 1 maalis, 06:22, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>>> On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>>>>>> As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
>>>>>> Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
>>>>>> we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?
>>>>> "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
>>>>> means 'myrtle'.
>>>> Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
>>>> anyway?
>>> No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
>>> the Swedish for star!)
>> It is actually "stjarna", the Icelandic for star.
> I admit I thought it were the Swedish word Stjärna without umlaut. I
> know that in Finland Swedish is not only an official Languagee, but
> absolutely necessary if you want to study History, since all Archives
> are in Swedish! Especially if you come from Åbo.
>
In fact Sibelius did not speak Finnish till he went to high school.

--
Corporate society looks after everything. All it asks of anyone, all it
has ever asked of anyone, is that they do not interfere with management
decisions. -From “Rollerball”

Dušan Vukotić

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 10:32:16 AM3/2/08
to
On Mar 2, 1:26 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > > I admit I thought it were the Swedish word Stjärna without umlaut. I
> > > know that in Finland Swedish is not only an official Languagee, but
> > > absolutely necessary if you want to study History, since all Archives
> > > are in Swedish! Especially if you come from Åbo.
>
> > > But even that came from greek aster or is keen to it. There is
> > > certainly a PIE root!
>
> That there is a PIE root does not mean that ALL IndoEuropean languages
> use it currently.
> (The greek word for horse is currently hippos, but in Linear B it was
> equus as in Latin.

But if you start from the common source (gob) you will see that the
both words (hippos, equus) are derived from the same basis (Gon-Bel);
Eng. cow, Serb. gov-edo (cattle), Lat, ovis (sheep; from hovis; Serb.
ovan, ovca); as you can see horse, cow and ovis are hoofed animals;
compare hoof (Serb. kopito /hoof/ => govedo /cattle/) and hippos/equus/
cow/ovis

>Had Ventris not deciphered Linear B you would come
> up with more arguments of the sort!)
> As a person who is fluent in many languages you should have understood
> that. Unless you only write catalogues, as you do here, without
> understanding the structure, since that requires some other type of
> education than yours and surely a better brain.
>
> > stella, astrum (a learned loanword from Greek),
>
> Is stella and astrum of different origin? Stella, aster?  Falling away
> vowels like the initial a? r and l being originally the same or as in
> Chinese? Are you kidding? You must be a joke! I come from Stockholm or
> according to Juan from Estocolma! how on hell did we get this E?
> there must be some linguistic explanation! Let us ask Mr Phogl from
> Åbo!

Interesting. Greek σιδηρος/sideros (iron) is related to αστήρ/aster
(star; Lat. sidus -eris /star/) in the same way as Serbian adjectives
gvozdeno (iron) is related to zvezdano (starry). It just crossed my
mind that Latin stella and English steel could somehow be related? ;-)

>
> >The word was adopted into IE languages at a very early
> > stage, but is indeed cognate with Ishtar, the Babylonian name for
> > Venus.
>
> Prove it! (This is what we say in Mathematics, when somebody comes
> with outrageous statements. Phogl.. has inside information, possibly
> from a G-d.)

There are two key words that could solve the "star-enigma": English
stare (AS starian) and Serbian zurenje (stare); Serb. Zornjača /Venus/
= English star; obviously, the Serbian word zora (dawn; cf. Arabic
zuhra /Venus/) is derived from Sur-Gon basis (the sun, Serb. sunce;
from <= su(r)nce => zornica => Zornjača /Venus/).

Star is a clear-cut IE word, but it seems that Semitic languages used
the same "matrix" (Aramaic ʾstyrh star) and it would not be impossible
that IE and Semitic once started from the same well-generator of human
speech. A few more examples that could corroborate above "hypothesis":
Hebrew mizrak (east; from zarakh' shine, rise up; to come up, appear);
Arabic sharq (east), sahar (sunrise, dawn); all these words are
clearly related to the Serbian words zora (dawn), Zornjača (dawning
star; Venus), sunce (sun; from surnce, zornica) and žarko (hot; Serb.
žarko leto = hot summer)

DV

Sigge

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 10:38:16 AM3/2/08
to

Mr Daniels you cannot be serious! Where did you see Linear A in my
writings?
It seems that even in real life you interpolate vowels (in this
particular case A) at will!
Imagining things is a no-no for Scientists but maybe a legitimate
method for you and your kind.
I hope that in your academic papers you are better than that.

We discuss here, in soc.history.ancient and not sci.lang as you
claimed, the topic "An invention called Jewish people". The desperate
effort of propagandists to invent races, history and languages. Some
of the propagandists invoked your linguistic skills and credentials
to prove that aster comes from Ishtar.

You came into the picture as an expert!
You claimed somewhere else that Bernal is a friend of yours. Before
1985 (First vol of Black Athena) or after?

If you were a friend of his before 1985 and given that the poor guy is
not a linguist, then you should have dissuaded him not to publish his
linguistic escapades, among the rest of the stupidities!

It might be that he even consulted you in linguistic matters. In that
case Jasanoff and Nussbaum pulverized and ridiculed YOU not Bernal.

The third and the fourth volume of Black Athena will come out when
the critics are silenced or bought over to your propagandist gang.

Sigge

Doug Weller

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 11:35:08 AM3/2/08
to
On Sun, 2 Mar 2008 05:38:55 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Peter T.
Daniels wrote:

>On Mar 2, 2:07 am, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>
>wrote:
>> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 13:54:17 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Peter T.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Daniels wrote:
>> >On Mar 1, 4:46 pm, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>
>> >wrote:
>> >> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:48:10 -0800 (PST), in sci.archaeology, Sigge wrote:
>>
>> >> >Where have you and mr Daniels published your academic works? In
>> >> >Wikipedia?
>>
>> >> Poor research skills?
>> >> Peter D Daniels:
>>
>> >Hmm, you're referring to someone else above, but you list some of my
>> >articles below.
>>
>> >> # 2006. On beyond alphabets. In Script Adjustment and Phonological
>> >> Awareness, edited by Martin Neef and Guido Nottbusch. Written Language &
>> >> Literacy. 9(1): 7-24. ISSN: 1387-6732
>>
>> >Hey, it's not like I didn't do anything for a decade! Where'd you get
>> >this list?
>>
>> Wikipedia, want me to edit it?
>
>Is the accuracy of wkpd. important to you? How long would it last?

It's often the first port of call for people, and yes, I like to keep the
bits I am interested in accurate. The system allows you to monitor
changes, I think it would last while I'm around.

Doug

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 12:17:47 PM3/2/08
to
On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:13:20 +0100, Trond Engen
<tron...@engen.priv.no> wrote in
<news:GJCdnbvY_-W...@telenor.com> in
soc.history.ancient,sci.archaeology,sci.lang:

> John Atkinson skreiv:

>>>> <phog...@abo.fi> wrote...

I doubt it: he's pretty careful and would almost certainly
have written the hyphen.

> Bjorvand & Lindeman: <ha-as-te-er-za>.
> They seem, tentatively, to prefer a reading /hstr-ts/ <
> *hstr-s, where *-s is the nominative case ending.

Brian D. Joseph, in a paper on Hitt. <andurza> 'inside,
indoors':

From a phonological standpoint, there is reason
to believe that this combination of -r plus -s
would be expected to yield, as its regular outcome,
graphic <-r-za>, a sequence which presumably is
to be interpreted phonetically as [-rts] with an
epenthetic t having developed between the liquid
and the sibilant. The parallel for this development,
showing it to be the regular outcome, comes from
the nominative <ha-as-te-ir-za> “star”, which
derives from the Indo-European r-stem noun
(continued directly, for example, in Greek Δasthvr)
but with an innovative sigmatic nominative. The
relevant pre-form for hasterza is thus *H2ster-s,
with the -rs sequence developing into <-r-za>
([-rts]), as also, possibly, in andurza.

(There's some bad encoding in the .pdf; I assume that
<Δasthvr> is <'asté:r>.)

Birgit Anette Olsen in _The Noun in Biblical Armenian:
Origin and Word Formation_ writes it <hasterza> but
interprets this as /hsters/. She goes into a little more
detail about the PIE r-stem, saying that *h2sté:r appears to
'belong to the system of animate, hysterodynamic stems in
*-r, the type of *h2né:r/*h2n.rós 'man', i.e., nom.sg.
*h2sté:r (> Gk. <'asté:r>), acc.sg. *h2stér-m. (> Gk.
<'astéra>), gen.sg. *h2str-ós, inst.pl. *h2str.-bHís (-->
Skt. <str.'bhih> with secondary columnal accentuation)'.

Jaan Puhvel's _Hittite Etymological Dictionary_ gives
<ha-as-te-ir-za>, writing nom. sg. <hasterza> /haster-s/.
He specifically rejects the interpretation /hsters/ on the
basis of Greek and Armenian, which he thinks require a
full-grade *A1est(e)r/l- beside *A1ster/l-. I imagine that
his *A1 corresponds to a subset of standard *h2, and he
appears to think that there could be original *-l-.

Beekes, in his Greek etymological dictionary that's in
progress and available on-line, writes <hasterza> /hsterz/.
Matasovic, in his etymological lexicon of Proto-Celtic
that's also in progress and on-line has <haster-z>.

> (They tend to dig deep into the Anatolian evidence.
> Lindeman has spent most of his carrier on Hittite.)

Is B&L still available? I did a very brief search a while
back without success.

>>> and mentioned that /haste:r/ is also found.

>> This would be one of those famous r/n stems I suppose?

> Is there an -n- anywhere?

> Most branches have *-r with some suffix. PToch *s´cär-,
> attested with an -n-suffix in Toch A and a -ya-suffix in
> Toch B. Armenian <astL> and Latin <stella> seem to point
> to an r/l alteration -- or different suffixes.

Olsen:

If <astL> were an archaism, which remains rather
unlikely, this would imply that a stem-final *-r-
replaced *-l- independently in at least six branches
of the IE family, including Anatolian where l-stems
are not particularly uncommon, and since we have
no further examples of a spontaneous development
of final *-r > *-L in Armenian, <astL> clearly calls
for an analogical explanation.

In a footnote she says that there seems to be no evidence
for IE primary l-stems or root nouns in *-l, though there is
at least one *-l/n- heteroclitic, *sáh2wl/suh2éns? 'sun',
and *-tel-/-tol- existed as a variant of the agent noun
suffix *-ter-/-tor.

She also says that Latin <stella> 'should be interpreted as
*h2ster-lah2 rather than *stel-nah2 on account of the
supplementary evidence of <septentrio:nes>', while Beekes
writes 'Lat. stella < *ste:r-la: or rather *ste:l-na:'.
Michael Weiss, in his _Outline of the Historical and
Comparative Grammar of Latin_, says that PIE *-rl- > Lat.
-ll- regularly, offering *h2ste:r-leh2 > ste:lla and
*agro-lo- 'a small plot of land' > *agr2lo > agerlo >
agellus. The suffix *-lah2 is collective.

> To me (and thus probably thoroughly wrong) it could look
> like an old adjective. *H2(e)s-té(:)r- "the more
> glowing", with l's and n's added later (as diminutives
> or something) in the various branches. This would go
> along with the "ember" etymology quoted above, but avoid
> the rather doubtsome agent suffix *-tér.

I've seen the suggestion that it's from the zero-grade
*h2eh1- 'to burn' with an *-s- extension and the agent
suffix.

>> Anyway, as someone else has mentioned, the initial
>> laryngial makes it pretty unlikely that it derives from
>> "ishtar"

> What is the favoured point of articulation for *h2
> nowadays?

The suggestion that I've seen most often is [x] or [X].

> I read somewhere recently that it might have been a German
> ich-sound, but I can't see how that can turn anything
> into an /a/. I used to think of it as something close to
> an uvular r.

That would more or less go along with [X].

Brian

Sigge

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 12:29:02 PM3/2/08
to
On Mar 1, 10:41 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
> On 1 maalis, 19:48, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > On the Akkadian origins of Finnish?
>
> Finnish is a modern Finno-Ugric language, Akkadian is an ancient
> Semitic language. So, Finnish and Akkadian are not and cannot be
> related in any meaningful way.
>
Mr phogl....
Well everybody knows that!
To the point, now!
How come your ancestor, Snällman Rydberg or whatever his name, tried
to prove that Finnish comes from Greek??
Are you that limited that you do not see the IRONY of the question on
the Akkadian origins of Finnish?

Sigge

Trond Engen

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 1:56:24 PM3/2/08
to
Brian M. Scott skreiv:

She's a new acquaintance. I see that some of her publications are
available online. I'll have a look. 'Hysterodynamic' is a nice word.

Applying the same interpretation to *H2ntér- (Why doesn't she have a -t-
there?) as i did to H2stér-, it could be a cognate of 'other' and have
meant something like "fellow" or "neighbour".

> Jaan Puhvel's _Hittite Etymological Dictionary_ gives
> <ha-as-te-ir-za>, writing nom. sg. <hasterza> /haster-s/.
> He specifically rejects the interpretation /hsters/ on the
> basis of Greek and Armenian, which he thinks require a
> full-grade *A1est(e)r/l- beside *A1ster/l-. I imagine that
> his *A1 corresponds to a subset of standard *h2, and he
> appears to think that there could be original *-l-.

B&L discussing Puhvel's view:

"Puhvel rekonstruerer i HED 3 (239) uten diskusjon på grunnlag av
hettittisk og armensk og gresk en stamme *H2ester/l- med to e-trinn, noe
som er høyst irrugulært."

"Puhvel reconstructs in HED 3 (239), without discussion, based on
Hittite, Armenian and Greek, a stem *H2ester/l- with two e-grades, a
highly irregular situation."

> Beekes, in his Greek etymological dictionary that's in
> progress and available on-line, writes <hasterza> /hsterz/.
> Matasovic, in his etymological lexicon of Proto-Celtic
> that's also in progress and on-line has <haster-z>.

We may conclude that no consensus is achieved.

>> (They tend to dig deep into the Anatolian evidence.
>> Lindeman has spent most of his carrier on Hittite.)
>
> Is B&L still available? I did a very brief search a while
> back without success.

A new edition last year, apparently:
<http://www.bokkilden.no/SamboWeb/produkt.do?produktId=2926230&rom=MP>.
It's almost 300 pages -- 25% -- longer than mine, so there seems to have
been a substantial extension.

>>>> and mentioned that /haste:r/ is also found.
>>>
>>> This would be one of those famous r/n stems I suppose?
>>
>> Is there an -n- anywhere?
>>
>> Most branches have *-r with some suffix. PToch *s´cär-,
>> attested with an -n-suffix in Toch A and a -ya-suffix in
>> Toch B. Armenian <astL> and Latin <stella> seem to point
>> to an r/l alteration -- or different suffixes.
>
> Olsen:
>
> If <astL> were an archaism, which remains rather
> unlikely, this would imply that a stem-final *-r-
> replaced *-l- independently in at least six branches
> of the IE family, including Anatolian where l-stems
> are not particularly uncommon, and since we have
> no further examples of a spontaneous development
> of final *-r > *-L in Armenian, <astL> clearly calls
> for an analogical explanation.
>
> In a footnote she says that there seems to be no evidence
> for IE primary l-stems or root nouns in *-l, though there is
> at least one *-l/n- heteroclitic, *sáh2wl/suh2éns? 'sun',
> and *-tel-/-tol- existed as a variant of the agent noun
> suffix *-ter-/-tor.

Hm. I'll withdraw my hint to a "doubtsome agent suffix -tér", then. I
was under the impression that it was probably a newer invention.

And I wish they'd come up with a good explanation for the l/n-alteration
in the 'sun'-word, so it's somewhat disappointing if there are more of
the kind.

> She also says that Latin <stella> 'should be interpreted as
> *h2ster-lah2 rather than *stel-nah2 on account of the
> supplementary evidence of <septentrio:nes>', while Beekes
> writes 'Lat. stella < *ste:r-la: or rather *ste:l-na:'.
> Michael Weiss, in his _Outline of the Historical and
> Comparative Grammar of Latin_, says that PIE *-rl- > Lat.
> -ll- regularly, offering *h2ste:r-leh2 > ste:lla and
> *agro-lo- 'a small plot of land' > *agr2lo > agerlo >
> agellus. The suffix *-lah2 is collective.

It's nice to see a professional going for the -l-suffix and -rl- > -ll-.
A collective for stars is reasonable, and collectives individualized as
feminines are common as dirt. (That's Bjorvand's field, actually. Wonder
where I've stuck his book?). Why couldn't that have happened in Armenian
as well?

"Small plot of land" looks more like a straightforward diminutive with
an irregular loss of -r-, though. Unprofessionally speaking.

>> To me (and thus probably thoroughly wrong) it could look
>> like an old adjective. *H2(e)s-té(:)r- "the more
>> glowing", with l's and n's added later (as diminutives
>> or something) in the various branches. This would go
>> along with the "ember" etymology quoted above, but avoid
>> the rather doubtsome agent suffix *-tér.
>
> I've seen the suggestion that it's from the zero-grade
> *h2eh1- 'to burn' with an *-s- extension and the agent
> suffix.

I took the *H2es- root from B&L's mention of that suggestion. B&L points
to Lindeman 1997 for quotes from literature on this "speculative
interpretation". I haven't followed it any further.

>>> Anyway, as someone else has mentioned, the initial
>>> laryngial makes it pretty unlikely that it derives from
>>> "ishtar"
>>
>> What is the favoured point of articulation for *h2
>> nowadays?
>
> The suggestion that I've seen most often is [x] or [X].
>
>> I read somewhere recently that it might have been a German
>> ich-sound, but I can't see how that can turn anything
>> into an /a/. I used to think of it as something close to
>> an uvular r.
>
> That would more or less go along with [X].

Thanks. It was sort of disturbing to know of dialects where the uvular
/r/ is being being turned into a deep /a/ and wonder why this evidence
was overlooked. Maybe what I read was just the result of confusion of
the numbers.

--
Trond Engen
- pretending to understand what it's all about

mb

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 2:52:57 PM3/2/08
to

It is of course a Persian name in the middle of a Greek text
(otherwise it would have been the hapax Astér in a time, that of the
translation, when this kind of personal name was highly improbable in
Greek). As for the point of the story, I suppose it is still
controversial: Sayce had been attacked for not approving the thesis
that the figures in that story were all representations of existing
Babylonian deities, with Esther for Ishtar, Mordecai for Marduk, etc,
and the letting-go of the Jews some allegory for an episode in the
local mythology; that is what John Davis was answering in that passage.

Matt Giwer

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 7:08:11 AM3/2/08
to
Matt Giwer wrote:
> As I have been saying for many years this modern Jewish thing has no
> basis in reality. Here is a Jewish Israeli historian confirming the real
> history I have been reciting and publish in Hebrew in Israel and
> reviewed in the oldest Hebrew language newspaper in Israel. Damned
> antisemites are everywhere!

> As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means
> shield.) In Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different
> languages how are we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of
> coincidences?

> Haaretz
> Thu., February 28, 2008 Adar1 22, 5768 Israel Time: 17:34 (EST+7)
> An invention called 'the Jewish people'

Thank you for participating in this test.

Every time I have expressed the substance of the book review I am met with
denial by way of faith. So when I present it a modest example of a departure
from the currently popular language classification that dominates the responses.
Now I can say I presented the invention of the Jewish People to these audiences
and received no disagreement with it. I can attribute that to someone other than
myself saying the same thing.

--
Funny thing about those condemned for questioning the official 9/11 theory.
There is no official 9/11 theory.
An official theory exists only in the minds of those who attack the
questioners.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3838
http://www.giwersworld.org/israel/bombings.phtml a5

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 4:30:27 PM3/2/08
to
On Mar 2, 10:38 am, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 2, 2:37 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Mar 2, 7:26 am, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > 100 years ago there was no question whether Linear B was Greek or not!
> > > It was Semitic!  Those who suggested that it might be Greek were
> > > thrown out of the expedition! But a guy, with a good education, not
> > > the Linguistic mumbo-jumbo that you consider education, using
> > > scientific methods, not the approval of friends and the money of their
> > > masters, proved that it was after all Greek! Poor Ventris, he had to
> > > apologise for his audacity! The semitic wolves were there to devour
> > > him. But his findings still stand. With the exception of the Cyrus
> > > Gordon gang, all accept Ventris findings and the indoeoropean literacy
> > > is extended considerably.
>
> > Er, no, everyone (including Ventris) expected Linear B to be akin to
> > Etruscan.
>
> > Cyrus Gordon interpreted Linear A as Semitic but didn't have much
> > success in persuading anyone.
>
> > If you don't know the difference between Linear A and Linear B,
> > perhaps you shouldn't be posting to sci.lang.
>
> Mr Daniels you cannot be serious! Where did you see Linear A in my
> writings?

THAT'S THE PROBLEM. EVERYTHING YOU SAID ABOUT "LINEAR B" IS ACTUALLY
ABOUT LINEAR A.

> It seems that even in  real life you interpolate vowels (in this
> particular case A) at will!
> Imagining things is a no-no for Scientists but maybe a legitimate
> method for you and your kind.
> I hope that in your academic papers you are better than that.
>
> We discuss here, in soc.history.ancient and not sci.lang as you
> claimed, the topic "An invention called Jewish people". The desperate
> effort of propagandists to invent races, history and languages. Some
> of the propagandists invoked your  linguistic skills and credentials
> to prove that aster comes from Ishtar.
>
> You came into the picture as an expert!
> You claimed somewhere else that Bernal is a friend of yours. Before
> 1985 (First vol of Black Athena) or after?

Before.

BA 1 was published in 1987 (not 1985) in Britain, a bit later in the
US.

I was instrumental in getting his *Cadmaean Letters* published (it
came out in 1990 but the initial discussions were considerably
earlier).

> If you were a friend of his before 1985 and given that the poor guy is
> not a linguist, then you should have dissuaded him not to publish his
> linguistic escapades, among the rest of the stupidities!

I explained that I didn't believe a word of *Cadmaean Letters* but it
ought to be published.

> It might be that he even consulted you in linguistic matters. In that
> case  Jasanoff and Nussbaum pulverized and ridiculed YOU not Bernal.

You've obviously never read their article (nor are you equipped to
understand it), only seen that it was commended and reprinted by
Lefkowitz and Rodgers. I reviewed the L&R volume at considerable
length in the newsgroup HarperCollins set up ostensibly to foster
discussion of the question.

> The third and the fourth volume of Black Athena  will come out when
> the critics are silenced or bought over to your propagandist gang.

You really are pathetic. The third and last volume of BA came out at
least a year ago (maybe already in 2006); I don't have it because it's
so far hardcover only and wouldn't match the rest of my set.

lora...@cs.com

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 5:22:48 PM3/2/08
to
On Mar 2, 3:00 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> <lorad...@cs.com> wrote...

Baltic does not consist of Lithuanian alone..

Latvian 'star | s' = 'ray of light'
Verbal form; 'star | ot' =to shine'

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 6:06:20 PM3/2/08
to
On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:56:24 +0100, Trond Engen
<tron...@engen.priv.no> wrote in
<news:AMednYNyqsL...@telenor.com> in sci.lang:

> Brian M. Scott skreiv:

>> On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:13:20 +0100, Trond Engen
>> <tron...@engen.priv.no> wrote in
>> <news:GJCdnbvY_-W...@telenor.com> in
>> soc.history.ancient,sci.archaeology,sci.lang:

>>> John Atkinson skreiv:

>>>> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
>>>> news:19hy2gkf828rm$.h7imav0n9t1i.dlg@40tude.net...

>>>>> On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 07:41:42 GMT, John Atkinson
>>>>> <john...@bigpond.com> wrote in
>>>>> <news:WSsyj.21327$421....@news-server.bigpond.net.au> in
>>>>> soc.history.ancient,sci.archaeology,sci.lang:

[...]

>>>>>> As Sigge says, there is a good PIE etymology,
>>>>>> *h2ste:r, "ember", from *h2eh-s-, "burn" , with
>>>>>> suffix -ter.

[...]

>>>>>> Hittite hasterza is attested from about 2000 BC, the
>>>>>> same date as Akkadian istar.

>>>>> On Cybalist some time back Miguel gave it as <hasterz>,

>>>> At a guess, in the Hittite cuneiform syllabic script it
>>>> would be something like HA-AS-TE-IR-ZA, which could
>>>> be read as either /hasterz/ or /hasterza/ -- their
>>>> system had problems with final consonant clusters.

[...]

>> Birgit Anette Olsen in _The Noun in Biblical Armenian:
>> Origin and Word Formation_ writes it <hasterza> but
>> interprets this as /hsters/. She goes into a little more
>> detail about the PIE r-stem, saying that *h2sté:r appears to
>> 'belong to the system of animate, hysterodynamic stems in
>> *-r, the type of *h2né:r/*h2n.rós 'man', i.e., nom.sg.
>> *h2sté:r (> Gk. <'asté:r>), acc.sg. *h2stér-m. (> Gk.
>> <'astéra>), gen.sg. *h2str-ós, inst.pl. *h2str.-bHís (-->
>> Skt. <str.'bhih> with secondary columnal accentuation)'.

> She's a new acquaintance. I see that some of her
> publications are available online. I'll have a look.

I believe that she's the wife of Jens Elmegård Rasmussen; a
very IE family!

> 'Hysterodynamic' is a nice word.

Also called 'hysterokinetic', just as 'proterodynamic' is
also called 'proterokinetic'. Fortson's version (courtesy
of an extract at Google Books, since I've not yet got round
to buying it):

Acrostatic: the root is accented throughout the paradigm,
with ablaut distinction between the strong and weak cases
(nom. *nókW-t-s 'night', gen. *nékW-t-s).

Proterokinetic: the root has full grade and the accent in
the strong cases, and both shift to the suffix in the weak
cases (nom. *mén-ti-s 'thought', gen. *mn-téi-s).

Hysterokinetic: the suffix is accented in the strong cases,
the accent shifting to the ending in the weak cases (nom.
*ph2-tér-s > *ph2-té:r, gen. ph2-tr-és).

Amphikinetic: the accent is on the root in the strong cases
and on the ending in the weak cases; the suffix in the nom.
sing. is typically in the lengthened o-grade, and in the
acc. sing. the o-grade (nom. *h2éus-o:s 'dawn', gen.
*h2us-s-és).

> Applying the same interpretation to *H2ntér- (Why doesn't
> she have a -t- there?)

It's Gk. <'ane:r>; the /d/ in gen. <'andrós> is epenthetic,
like the /b/ in English <thimble> (OE <þy:mel>).

> as i did to H2stér-, it could be a cognate of 'other' and
> have meant something like "fellow" or "neighbour".

[...]

> We may conclude that no consensus is achieved [on the
> phonemic interpretation of <hasterz(a)>].

Well, there does seems to be pretty general agreement that
the <-a> is purely orthographic

[...]

>> Is B&L still available? I did a very brief search a
>> while back without success.

> A new edition last year, apparently:
> <http://www.bokkilden.no/SamboWeb/produkt.do?produktId=2926230&rom=MP>.
> It's almost 300 pages -- 25% -- longer than mine, so there
> seems to have been a substantial extension.

Ah, thank you. I've also now found it at norli.no, which
(a) claims to have it as 'lagervare' and (b) makes my life a
little easier by giving complete ordering instructions in
English.

>> Olsen:

In Václav Blaz^ek's review of B&L at
<http://www.phil.muni.cz/linguistica/art/blazek/bla-005.pdf>
he suggests in connection with *ag^(H)no-/*og^(H)no- 'lamb'
that 'it is possible to think about the primary
l/n-heterclitic paradigm of the type nom. *h2óg^Hl. : gen.
*h2ég^Hn.s', which would then cover such forms as Breton
<eal> 'foal', MWelsh <ael> 'cubbing, breed, race', OIr <ál>
'offspring, cubbing', all representing a PCelt. *aglo-
'brood, litter'.

>> She also says that Latin <stella> 'should be interpreted as
>> *h2ster-lah2 rather than *stel-nah2 on account of the
>> supplementary evidence of <septentrio:nes>', while Beekes
>> writes 'Lat. stella < *ste:r-la: or rather *ste:l-na:'.
>> Michael Weiss, in his _Outline of the Historical and
>> Comparative Grammar of Latin_, says that PIE *-rl- > Lat.
>> -ll- regularly, offering *h2ste:r-leh2 > ste:lla and
>> *agro-lo- 'a small plot of land' > *agr2lo > agerlo >
>> agellus. The suffix *-lah2 is collective.

> It's nice to see a professional going for the -l-suffix
> and -rl- > -ll-. A collective for stars is reasonable,
> and collectives individualized as feminines are common
> as dirt. (That's Bjorvand's field, actually. Wonder
> where I've stuck his book?). Why couldn't that have
> happened in Armenian as well?

Perhaps *-lah2 would have left traces? I wasn't thinking
about it when I had the page in front of me, I'm afraid.

[...]

Brian

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 7:00:48 PM3/2/08
to

Are you aware that you are insulting me personally?

>
> > stella, astrum (a learned loanword from Greek),
>
> Is stella and astrum of different origin? Stella, aster? Falling away
> vowels like the initial a? r and l being originally the same or as in
> Chinese? Are you kidding? You must be a joke! I come from Stockholm or
> according to Juan from Estocolma! how on hell did we get this E?
> there must be some linguistic explanation! Let us ask Mr Phogl from
> Åbo!

You are obviously a ranting lunatic. You should find a psychiatrist.

>
> >The word was adopted into IE languages at a very early
> > stage, but is indeed cognate with Ishtar, the Babylonian name for
> > Venus.
>
> Prove it! (This is what we say in Mathematics, when somebody comes
> with outrageous statements. Phogl.. has inside information, possibly
> from a G-d.)

I am merely repeating received textbook truths.

>
> The same argumentation as Bernal!

Who is this Bernal you are talking about?

> So the Greeks and the others did not have a word for Star before
> coming in contact with with the Babylonians!

Non sequitur.

Mr linguist, find the
> word, prove that it is different from the one used nowadays and then
> make your pronouncement.
> Of course this is impossible! That is why you speculate about the
> imagined homes of Jews and their linguistic abilities.

I fail to see what relevance Jews have here.

>
> You use a language the terminology of which contains Greek words.
> Where do you get paid from?

I do not think you have any business asking questions about that.

> As a mathematician, I can tell you, that people with a political
> agenda and imagination can prove that all words with three syllables
> come from semitic!

As a mathematician, you should keep to your numbers and leave
linguistics to people who know something about languages. I am not
telling you how to do mathematics, either.

[rest of lunatic rantings snipped]

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 7:06:33 PM3/2/08
to
On 2 maalis, 19:29, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 1, 10:41 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > On 1 maalis, 19:48, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On the Akkadian origins of Finnish?
>
> > Finnish is a modern Finno-Ugric language, Akkadian is an ancient
> > Semitic language. So, Finnish and Akkadian are not and cannot be
> > related in any meaningful way.
>
> Mr phogl....
> Well everybody knows that!
> To the point, now!
> How come your ancestor, Snällman Rydberg or whatever his name, tried
> to prove that Finnish comes from Greek??

There is no "Snällman Rydberg", as far as I know. Snellman is Johan
Vilhelm Snellman, the father of Finnish independence, and Rydberg is
Viktor Rydberg, the Swedish romantic poet, who wrote "Athenarnes
sång".

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 7:10:02 PM3/2/08
to
On 2 maalis, 07:43, mb <azyth...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Mar 1, 1:20 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 1 maalis, 20:12, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Mar 1, 11:46 am, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > > > On Mar 1, 3:24 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Mar 1, 12:54 pm, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > > > > > On 1 maalis, 06:22, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > On Feb 29, 4:29 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > > As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> > > > > > > > Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> > > > > > > > we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?
>
> > > > > > > "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
> > > > > > > means 'myrtle'.
>
> > > > > > Isn't "star", "estrella", "stella", "stjarna" a loan-word from Semitic
> > > > > > anyway?
>
> > > > > No! your list comes from greek aster! (Thanks for including stjärna,
> > > > > the Swedish for star!)
>
> > > > It is actually "stjarna", the Icelandic for star. And I wasn't asking
> > > > you, I was asking Mr Daniels, who should know.
>
> > > What?? You were asking _me_ a question about _Greek_?????
>
> > It was mostly a rhetorical question, just to make sure that I
> > remembered right. I was asking you, whether the stem found in
> > "stella", "star", "stjarna", "estrella", and so on was an ancient
> > Semitic loan into IE, as I seem to recall.
>
> Without being PTD, I suppose one can still remark that there is some
> kind of general interpretation as it being IE *ster (in a semantic
> field of "scatter": strew) w/ gk astér, lat ster[u]la, snsk astr- etc,
> and that the only reason for the (mainly German) rumor about a Sem.
> loan seemed to be the presence of an Ishtar elsewhere and the presence
> of a highly impressionistic Herr Professor. To which John D. Davis
> counters in "A Dictionary of the Bible", 1911: "There is, however, no
> need to think of Ishtar at all; since Esther, as a Persian word, is
> the good name Stella, a star."

I see. Well, the "star comes from Ishtar" story has been told in
several books about the history of the German language, and my
understanding of IE is mostly based on what I have gleaned from those
books.

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 7:11:30 PM3/2/08
to
On 2 maalis, 09:25, lorad...@cs.com wrote:
> On Mar 1, 2:11 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:
>
> > phogl...@abo.fi skreiv:
>
> > > It was mostly a rhetorical question, just to make sure that I
> > > remembered right. I was asking you, whether the stem found in
> > > "stella", "star", "stjarna", "estrella", and so on was an ancient
> > > Semitic loan into IE, as I seem to recall.
>
> > FWIW, Hellquist (1922) mentions the uncertain possibility of a Semitic
> > loan. In Bjorvand and Lindeman (2000) there's a long entry for 'stjerne'
> > with no mention of Semitic (and they do mention such a possibility under
> > 'Tyr'). May the Hettite evidence of a laryngeal have ended the speculation?
>
> > --
> > Trond Engen
> > - vill du se en stjärna, se på mig

>
> Forget Hellquist an 1922..
>
> The 'oldest' IE language group, Baltic, has 'star' meaning 'ray of
> light'.

> Case closed.. it's IE.

Nobody has asked you anything. Do you want to know where you can put
your bloody Latvian?

Matt Giwer

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 5:23:21 PM3/2/08
to
Sigge wrote:
...

> 100 years ago there was no question whether Linear B was Greek or not!
> It was Semitic! Those who suggested that it might be Greek were
> thrown out of the expedition! But a guy, with a good education, not
> the Linguistic mumbo-jumbo that you consider education, using
> scientific methods, not the approval of friends and the money of their
> masters, proved that it was after all Greek! Poor Ventris, he had to
> apologise for his audacity! The semitic wolves were there to devour
> him. But his findings still stand. With the exception of the Cyrus
> Gordon gang, all accept Ventris findings and the indoeoropean literacy
> is extended considerably.

In the sales business there is (or was) something called the Ben Franklin
closing in the US. When trying to close a sale and the buyer is undecided you
simple get him to agree to make a list of the pros and cons of buying. You make
pro suggestions for him to write down, you get him to write down his pro
reasons. When a con comes up move on to a pro before he can write it down. After
a while have him compare the number of items pro and con.

So too if there is an academic position to support simply collecting many
things in favor of one position and not looking for those against that position
easily makes a position look rock solid when it is really nothing but a highly
selective collection of facts.

Even the hard sciences are susceptible to this. Is it any wonder the
non-sciences go from fad to fad over the years?

--
If torture works, McCain talked.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3941
http://www.giwersworld.org/disinfo/occupied-2.phtml a6

VtSkier

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 8:25:24 PM3/2/08
to

A possible connection:
Maybe the first steel was made from meteoric iron?

John Atkinson

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 9:56:27 PM3/2/08
to
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote...

> (*th > sh)

Don't know. I only saw it in Mallory and Adams, which says:

"In 1923 Gunther Ipsen [...] proposed that PIE *h2ste:r 'star' [...] be
derived from Akkadian _istar_, [...] and not from any other earlier
Semitic form, e.g PS *at_tar ~ *aTtar." (where t_ is underlined t).

I may have been reading something into that that they didn't intend
(viz, that istar isn't from *aTtar).

Are there cognates in other Semitic languages?

John.

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 10:06:04 PM3/2/08
to
On Mar 3, 1:26 am, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 100 years ago there was no question whether Linear B was Greek or not!
> It was Semitic! Those who suggested that it might be Greek were
> thrown out of the expedition! But a guy, with a good education, not
> the Linguistic mumbo-jumbo that you consider education, using
> scientific methods, not the approval of friends and the money of their
> masters, proved that it was after all Greek! Poor Ventris, he had to
> apologise for his audacity! The semitic wolves were there to devour
> him. But his findings still stand. With the exception of the Cyrus
> Gordon gang, all accept Ventris findings and the indoeoropean literacy
> is extended considerably.

That's funny, I don't recall Ventris having to "apologise", still less
any "semitic wolves".
And what's this...?
"Ventris's decipherment of Linear B as Greek was not only well done
but in general well received...."
- Cyrus Gordon, Forgotten Scripts (1968), p.131
Why do some people feel they have to rewrite reality as a cheap movie
script?

Ross Clark

John Atkinson

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 10:32:31 PM3/2/08
to
<lora...@cs.com> wrote...

> "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> > <lorad...@cs.com> wrote...
[...]

>
>> > The 'oldest' IE language group, Baltic, has 'star' meaning 'ray of
>> > ight'.
>
> No such word in my Lithuanian dictionary. "Ray of light" is spindulis
> or pros^vaiste..
>
>> > Case closed.. it's IE.
>
>> I agree with you, I think, whether or not it appears in Baltic.

> Baltic does not consist of Lithuanian alone..

Of course not. I don't have a Latvian dictionary at hand, but the books
I do have listing IE cognates of "star" don't list a cognate in Latvian.
That doesn't mean the words you give below aren't cognates though --
they probably are, IMO -- although those books are generally pretty
comprehensive, and don't miss much.

You'll notice I said "whether or not it appears in Baltic". That means
exactly what it says, namely: "If it appears in Baltic, it's probably
IE, and if it doesn't appear in Baltic, it's still probably IE".

I never said, or intended to imply, that it did or didn't appear in
Baltic -- I just mentioned that it wasn't in modern Lithuanian.

> Latvian 'star | s' = 'ray of light'
> Verbal form; 'star | ot' =to shine'

John.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 11:25:29 PM3/2/08
to
On Mar 2, 9:56 pm, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote...

> On Mar 2, 2:41 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> >> Proto-Semitic *aTtar is floating around there somewhere too, but I
> >> gather this isn't cognate with Akk istar.
> >Why not? *T > S in Akk.
> > (*th > sh)
>
> Don't know.  I only saw it in Mallory and Adams, which says:
>
> "In 1923 Gunther Ipsen [...] proposed that PIE *h2ste:r 'star' [...] be
> derived from Akkadian _istar_, [...] and not from any other earlier
> Semitic form, e.g PS *at_tar ~ *aTtar." (where t_ is underlined t).
>
> I may have been reading something into that that they didn't intend
> (viz, that istar isn't from *aTtar).

They are saying that the IE form had to come from a -sh- and not a -
th-, but they and Ipsen seem unaware that *T > *S in Hebrew as well as
Akkadian (> t in Aramaic and > T in Arabic).

> Are there cognates in other Semitic languages?

Of course. The Giwer has been giving them for months. Ishtar/Ashtarte/
Astarte.

Kendall K. Down

unread,
Mar 2, 2008, 1:47:05 PM3/2/08
to
In message <07226778-7b21-42d0...@47g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

> >         As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means shield.) In
> > Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different languages how are
> > we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of coincidences?

> "Esther" is Greek. Her original name in Hebrew is "Hadassah," which
> means 'myrtle'.

You know that, Peter; I know that too, but it is a bit much to expect Matt
the Pratt to have any knowledge whatsoever - and if he did, he would lie
about it.

Ken Down

--
================ ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS ===============
| Australia's premier archaeological magazine |
| http://www.diggingsonline.com |
========================================================

Sigge

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 7:30:52 AM3/3/08
to
On Mar 3, 4:06 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> On Mar 3, 1:26 am, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > 100 years ago there was no question whether Linear B was Greek or not!
> > It was Semitic! Those who suggested that it might be Greek were
> > thrown out of the expedition! But a guy, with a good education, not
> > the Linguistic mumbo-jumbo that you consider education, using
> > scientific methods, not the approval of friends and the money of their
> > masters, proved that it was after all Greek! Poor Ventris, he had to
> > apologise for his audacity! The semitic wolves were there to devour
> > him. But his findings still stand. With the exception of the Cyrus
> > Gordon gang, all accept Ventris findings and the indoeoropean literacy
> > is extended considerably.
>
> That's funny, I don't recall Ventris having to "apologise", still less
> any "semitic wolves".

From "The story of Decipherment" Maurice Pope, page 172
QUOTE
We now come to the justifiably famous Work-Note 20 (1 June 1952)
entitled
"Are the Knossos Tablets Written in Greek?"
IT BEGINS AND ENDS WITH AN APOLOGY FOR VENTURING ON SUCH PERILOUS
SPECULATION.
It may seem strange to a layman that any apology should have been
necessary when suggesting that written documents found in Greece in
the very cities described in Ancient Greek epic might perhaps be
written in the Greek language. STRANGE INDEED IT IS.
ENDQUOTE

Capitalization mine to help the Mr Clark!
That's funny, MR Ross Clark! you don't recall Ventris having to
"apologise" !
It is really funny that you do not recall! Your AGE? 102?

> And what's this...?
> "Ventris's decipherment of Linear B as Greek was not only well done
> but in general well received...."
> - Cyrus Gordon, Forgotten Scripts (1968), p.131

Your copying is irrelevant! It does not described how he himself took
it. On the contrary the guy is crazy about things being semitic!
Cyrus Gordon even announced in the New York Times (how on Earth did
they trust such a fanatic?) his discovery of proof positive that a
group of Phoenicians had landed in Brazil!
The story of falsification (how come these semitists falsify so
often?) is well known!
And yet this fanatic had his piece printed in New York Times. I guess
your journals are not better than that!

Going back to Linear B.
Ventris was communicating with a few Linguists (among them the best
Swedish linguist at that time, I cannot recall his name, you see I am
103 years old, but I recalled his admiration about Ventris
brilliance). You see Ventris work is scientific!
Mathematics applied to linguistics! Science trying to help your mumbo-
jumbo.
This is the reason it was received well. Cyrus Gordon's
characterization of Ventris' work as "well done" is an understatement!
The Linguists of the twentieth century do not have so much else to be
proud of!

Apropos!
A guy called Fisher applied Ventris method on the Phaistos Disc.
Since you are from the same area you should tell us the story about
the Decipherment of the Phaistos Disc. What your semitic wolves (you
do not seem to read the signs well mr Clark) have come with about the
Phaistos Disc is that it is imported!

IMAGINATION? NO! COMPULSIVE LYING! PIA FRAUS!
Imported from WHERE?
Nothing similar has been found anywhere else but on Crete!
Who on hell can believe assholes that make such claims?!

Ventris had several thousand of tablets to confirm his decipherment.
Fisher has only one! But he uses the Scientific method!
Time will show! More things will be unearthed!
And it seems there is only one direction!
Bible unearthed (It should be Bible dead and buried). LIES!
Homer, not only fiction! Historical truths in the greatest piece of
IndoEuropean Literature.
Soon some more thousand linear A tablets will be unearthed. And guess
what!

In the mean time Mr Clarc.
Write some cheap movie script! You can have it published in New York
Times as Cyrus Gordon did!
After all you have to survive! Ask Fisher about that!
Sigge

What on earth are you linguists doing mr Clark?
Are you writing cheap pieces for

Trond Engen

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 9:08:41 AM3/3/08
to
Sigge skreiv:

This isn't strange at all. He didn't _have to_ apologise. He _chose to_,
because he wasn't sure of the validity of his own solution, based as it
was on what he himself regarded as a mere whim, and was nervously
awaiting the independent opinion of other scholars. Until his
breakthrough, there was nothing in particular that pointed to the
existence of a Greek writing system several centuries earlier than the
alphabet. The fact that the writing system fell out of use was --
reasonably -- interpreted as a sign of the opposite -- that a culture
and a language was overrun by newcomers who later were to be known as
Greek. Odd in hindsight, maybe, that it took so long, but that's how
hindsight works.

And there were no "Semitic wolves", no matter how much a "riace" warrior
would want it. IIRC, there were attempts to read the language in light
of both Semitic and Coptic, both reasonable enough given the geographic
proximity, but if there were anything like a consensus, it was in favour
of Etruscan.

> [Cutting endless ranting]

It's almost a given fact that decipherment takes both a brilliant
analytical brain, knowledge of language and a moment of inspiration.
Most histories of decipherment also seem to include several stages, with
one person or a group going as far as their inspiration takes them and
somebody else adding to it years or decades later. There are bound to be
far more wrong suggestions than there are good ones, also from those who
do good work. So what?

Decryption also attracts all sorts of intelligent cranks with an
ideological project. More so now, it seems, than ever before. They don't
solve anything, of course, but they make lots of noise along the way.

--
Trond Engen
- not always proud to be Scandinavian

Trond Engen

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 9:20:26 AM3/3/08
to
Trond Engen skreiv:

> IIRC

Hmm. Since a substantial part of what I remember is derived from the
chapter on decryption in The World's Writing Systems, I would probably
have been better advised to leave the remembering to its author.

--
Trond Engen
- to quick and too late

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 9:30:51 AM3/3/08
to
On Mar 3, 9:08 am, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:
> Sigge skreiv:

> > From "The story of Decipherment" Maurice Pope, page 172
> > QUOTE
> > We now come to the justifiably famous Work-Note 20 (1 June 1952)
> > entitled
> > "Are the Knossos Tablets Written in Greek?"
> > IT BEGINS AND ENDS WITH AN APOLOGY FOR VENTURING ON SUCH PERILOUS
> > SPECULATION.
> > It may seem strange to a layman that any apology should have been
> > necessary when suggesting that written documents found in Greece in
> > the very cities described in Ancient Greek epic might perhaps be
> > written in the Greek language. STRANGE INDEED IT IS.
> > ENDQUOTE
>
> This isn't strange at all. He didn't _have to_ apologise. He _chose to_,
> because he wasn't sure of the validity of his own solution, based as it
> was on what he himself regarded as a mere whim, and was nervously
> awaiting the independent opinion of other scholars. Until his
> breakthrough, there was nothing in particular that pointed to the
> existence of a Greek writing system several centuries earlier than the
> alphabet. The fact that the writing system fell out of use was --
> reasonably -- interpreted as a sign of the opposite -- that a culture
> and a language was overrun by newcomers who later were to be known as
> Greek. Odd in hindsight, maybe, that it took so long, but that's how
> hindsight works.

I suspect that what Ventris was apologizing for was wasting the time
of the various people he had been distributing his Work Notes to, for
not having realized sooner that he ought to have tried Greek earlier
on.

I. J. Gelb was a recipient of the Work Notes, but when I asked if I
could see his set (a good 25 years later), he didn't know where they
had been filed; and when they were published, the price was
astronomical and I couldn't afford a copy -- and the pages were too
large for photocopiers (which didn't have "Reduce" settings in those
days).

Note that "Sigge" has still not acknowledged that everything he said
about Linear B was actually about Linear A.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 9:32:35 AM3/3/08
to
On Mar 3, 9:20 am, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:
> Trond Engen skreiv:
>
> > IIRC
>
> Hmm. Since a substantial part of what I remember is derived from the
> chapter on decryption in The World's Writing Systems, I would probably
> have been better advised to leave the remembering to its author.

I recommend Pope's book _except_ as it deals with the decipherment of
Mesopotamian cuneiform: the second edition acknowledges my work on
Edward Hincks, but if he had actually read it, he couldn't have left
the text precisely as it was in the first edition.

Sigge

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 1:41:51 PM3/3/08
to
On Mar 3, 3:30 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

> Note that "Sigge" has still not acknowledged that everything he said
> about Linear B was actually about Linear

Sigge wrote:
QUOTE

100 years ago there was no question whether Linear B was Greek or not!
It was Semitic! Those who suggested that it might be Greek were
thrown out of the expedition! But a guy, with a good education, not
the Linguistic mumbo-jumbo that you consider education, using
scientific methods, not the approval of friends and the money of
their
masters, proved that it was after all Greek! Poor Ventris, he had to
apologise for his audacity! The semitic wolves were there to devour
him. But his findings still stand. With the exception of the Cyrus
Gordon gang, all accept Ventris findings and the indoeoropean
literacy
is extended considerably.

ENDQUOTE

NOTA BENE! Ventris, Linear B.

Can any normal person associate Ventris with Linear A? Can any but a
blind (or semitist) person miss the B in Linear B and transform it
into A? Can any normal person draw the conclusion from the above that
the person who writes the text does not know the difference between
Linear A and Linear B?
The questions are rhetoric. The answer is a definite NO!
Yet Daniels answered
QUOTE


Er, no, everyone (including Ventris) expected Linear B to be akin to
Etruscan.

Cyrus Gordon interpreted Linear A as Semitic but didn't have much
success in persuading anyone.

If you don't know the difference between Linear A and Linear B,
perhaps you shouldn't be posting to sci.lang

ENDQUOTE.

In spite of Daniels display of an embarrassing confusion of mind
Sigge answered almost politely

QUOTE


Mr Daniels you cannot be serious! Where did you see Linear A in my
writings?

It seems that even in real life you interpolate vowels (in this
particular case A) at will!
Imagining things is a no-no for Scientists but maybe a legitimate
method for you and your kind.
I hope that in your academic papers you are better than that.

We discuss here, in soc.history.ancient and not sci.lang as you
claimed, the topic "An invention called Jewish people".

ENDQUOTE

Daniels should apologise but he goes on!

He answers, in Capitals!!!
QUOTE

THAT'S THE PROBLEM. EVERYTHING YOU SAID ABOUT "LINEAR B" IS ACTUALLY
ABOUT LINEAR A

ENDQUOTE

Sigge answers:

Only an idiot would associate Ventris and Linear A!
You have problems in understanding a little text! Are you
Embasichytros?

You boast being a friend of the big shots like Bernal and Gelb. You
are Phusignathos!
Bernal, if he were your friend, would have sent you his new book with
a dedication.
He didn't! You could at least buy it! You do not!
You cannot even afford to buy the book! You are waiting for the cheap
edition!
Poor you! You are not only an idiot, you are a poor one! You are
Leichopinax!
In my department I would tell the librarian to buy the book and he
would do it promptly.
If it were written by a friend of mine I would have a copy long in
advance!

You write about Gelb's correspondence with Ventris


"the price was astronomical and I couldn't afford a copy -- and the
pages were too
large for photocopiers (which didn't have "Reduce" settings in those
days)."

The most important thing that happened in the area and you cannot
afford to copy it?! Something that couples Gelb with Ventris and you
have no money? Psicharpax, son of Troxartes and Leichomule, daughter
of Pternotroctes!
It cannot be true!! You must be Borborokoites!

What a poor, cheap thing you are! And you boast! A real Kraugasides!

Most likely you never met Gelb not even the wretched guy Bernal,
unless you delivered pizzas to them.

What is wrong with you? You are simply a liar!
IDIOT, POOR, and LIAR! And most likely a delivery boy!

What else can we establish from your writings?

You even write
QUOTE


Note that "Sigge" has still not acknowledged that everything he said
about Linear B was actually about Linear A.

ENDQUOTE

Shall I acknowledge that everything I said about Linear B was actually
about Linear A?
I gave you the chance to Retract and you insist! READ the text! Twice!
You seem to be slow!

Farewell Nymph! Most likely you are even KNDS!

Sigge

Sigge

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 2:08:03 PM3/3/08
to
On Mar 3, 3:08 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:

Trond skrev:


> The fact that the writing system fell out of use was --
> reasonably -- interpreted as a sign of the opposite -- that a culture
> and a language was overrun by newcomers who later were to be known as
> Greek. Odd in hindsight, maybe, that it took so long, but that's how
> hindsight works.

Stupidities!You do not draw the right conlusions!
First serious mistake! Passages in Homer and later allude the
existence of writing during the second millenium. Homer is confirmed
on Trojan war and the cities in Crete! They were inhabited by Greeks
according to Homer. Yet the idiots 100 years ago claim it cannot be
Greek! Collective assholes! The Language must be something else!
Second serious mistake!
Instead of learning a lesson and scrutinize the Greeks you continue
with your mumbo-jumbo of
"Dark Ages". The explanation is very simple!
The tablets found were baked by fire. They were no fires during the
"Dark AGES". No newcomers. Nothing to report but a peaceful life.
Archaeology confirms that. The tablets withered away! No fire to bake
them!

It is only the die-hards that insist on Dark Ages, invasions etc.
You simply listen to the wolf-pack!


> --
> Trond Engen
> - not always proud to be Scandinavian

Here in Sweden we have jokes about you!
Do you, Norwegians, have any real reason to be proud?

Sigge

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 2:17:52 PM3/3/08
to

Your wording suggested that others "forced" Ventris to apologize after
he had published his hypothesis, as if he had done something bad. Your
quote indicates, however, that he accompanied the proposal with an
apology because it was such an unexpected idea. It's certainly true
that people in general (Ventris himself included) did not expect
Linear B to be Greek, that he tried it almost out of perversity and
was surprised when it yielded positive results.

>
> > And what's this...?
> > "Ventris's decipherment of Linear B as Greek was not only well done
> > but in general well received...."
> > - Cyrus Gordon, Forgotten Scripts (1968), p.131
>
> Your copying is irrelevant! It does not described how he himself took
> it.

The passage I quoted contradicts your picture of Ventris being savaged
by bigoted critics. As for Gordon himself, if you read what follows
there is no doubt that he accepts Ventris's decipherment as valid and
indeed a brilliant achievement.


On the contrary the guy is crazy about things being semitic!
> Cyrus Gordon even announced in the New York Times (how on Earth did
> they trust such a fanatic?) his discovery of proof positive that a
> group of Phoenicians had landed in Brazil!
> The story of falsification (how come these semitists falsify so
> often?) is well known!
> And yet this fanatic had his piece printed in New York Times. I guess
> your journals are not better than that!

No, it just has nothing to do with the point at issue.

Are you on some kind of drug?

Ross Clark

VtSkier

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 2:38:39 PM3/3/08
to

Uhm, yes, it was called "standing up to the
Nazis" which, if history serves, the Swedes
did not. This according to my Norwegian aunt.

Trond Engen

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 3:20:29 PM3/3/08
to
Sigge skreiv:

> On Mar 3, 3:08 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@engen.priv.no> wrote:
>
> Trond skrev:
>
>> The fact that the writing system fell out of use was -- reasonably
>> -- interpreted as a sign of the opposite -- that a culture and a
>> language was overrun by newcomers who later were to be known as
>> Greek. Odd in hindsight, maybe, that it took so long, but that's how
>> hindsight works.
>
> Stupidities!You do not draw the right conlusions!
> First serious mistake!

Counting exclamation marks.

> Passages in Homer and later allude the existence of writing during
> the second millenium. Homer is confirmed on Trojan war and the cities
> in Crete! They were inhabited by Greeks according to Homer. Yet the
> idiots 100 years ago claim it cannot be Greek! Collective assholes!
> The Language must be something else!

Still counting.

> Second serious mistake!
> Instead of learning a lesson and scrutinize the Greeks you continue
> with your mumbo-jumbo of "Dark Ages".

What are the Greeks hiding from us?

> The explanation is very simple! The tablets found were baked by
> fire. They were no fires during the "Dark AGES".

That certainly explains the darkness.

> No newcomers. Nothing to report but a peaceful life. Archaeology
> confirms that. The tablets withered away! No fire to bake them!
>
> It is only the die-hards that insist on Dark Ages, invasions etc.
> You simply listen to the wolf-pack!

Did I express an opinion on Greek prehistory? Didn't we speak of a
situation before some of our accepted truths became obvious?

>> Trond Engen
>> - not always proud to be Scandinavian

(We seem to produce more than our fair share of usenet kooks)

> Here in Sweden we have jokes about you!

No kidding.

> Do you, Norwegians, have any real reason to be proud?

No. And that goes for national pride everywhere.

--
Trond Engen
- the number is 13 (of 23)

Sigge

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 3:22:10 PM3/3/08
to
On Mar 3, 8:17 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

>
> Your wording suggested that others "forced" Ventris to apologize after
> he had published his hypothesis, as if he had done something bad.

No! He was not forced! But the climate was different.
Had anyone taken seriously Homeros (especially after Schliemann and
the excavations in Crete) and other Greek data, it would have been
unthinkable that anyone would suggest that the Language was anything
but Greek! According to Homeros and all Greek Historians and Writers,
it was Greeks in Pylos, Greeks in Crete and everywhere the tablets
were found!
And yet!
Who on earth suggested that it could be anything else? Find out!

You seem to have missed a point! I post on soc.history.ancient.

Our topic is "The invention of a people called Jewish". I do not post
on lang.sci on any other topic. Someone called on Daniels as an
expert and coupled the two topics. I simply answered to some posts!

To be more clear! THE POINT AT ISSUE is different than you think. We
discuss the propagandists who find semites in Brazil, Jews in Egypt,
and semite things and origins everywhere. Falsifiers!

How do you explain that this piece of shit (Phoenicians in Brazil)
loathed already in the 19th century can be published anew and become
an issue when almost anyone except Cyrus Gordon and most likely even
he knows it is a falsification?!

> Are you on some kind of drug?

How come? I am really old. I make some typos and English is a language
that I used professionally only for Mathematics. Typical phrases, well
defined terminology. I am sick and tired to see "experts" disagreeing
on elementary things. Examine your area, to see that I am right!
I am also sick and tired of falsifications. Precious time is lost.
Humanity has more important tasks to tackle.

For Scientists and Mathematicians in particular, your behaviour and
quarrels and pseudoscientific attitudes are deplorable.

Brilliant guys like Newton were dealing with necromancy, talmudic
mumbo-jumbo and publishing (albeit posthumously) papers that
contradict the Chronology derived from Manetho simply because the
people of the God should be older than Egyptians. He should be solving
problems instead.
The same thing is happening now. Instead of tackling serious problems
we discuss religious fanatics.

Sigge

You did not tell us the Story of Glyphbreakers. There are some nice
points in it.
idem

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 3:47:34 PM3/3/08
to
On Mar 4, 9:22 am, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 3, 8:17 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Your wording suggested that others "forced" Ventris to apologize after
> > he had published his hypothesis, as if he had done something bad.
>
> No! He was not forced!

You used the word "forced".

The point at issue was your statement:

"With the exception of the Cyrus Gordon gang, all accept Ventris
findings and the indoeoropean
literacy is extended considerably."

The passage I quoted indicates that Gordon himself accepted Ventris's
findings.

> Our topic is "The invention of a peo.ple called Jewish". I do not post


> on lang.sci on any other topic. Someone called on Daniels as an
> expert and coupled the two topics. I simply answered to some posts!
>
> To be more clear! THE POINT AT ISSUE is different than you think.

The point at issue is what I said above. I have shown that you were
wrong on that point. I have no wish to argue whatever be concerning
you about the Jews, etc etc

That might account for it.

I make some typos and English is a language
> that I used professionally only for Mathematics. Typical phrases, well
> defined terminology.

I don't mean errors in language. I mean raving. Like what follows.
I suppose one could try to find out whether your obvious contempt for
linguistics is based on anything substantial.
But apparently you would rather not be cross-posted to sci.lang
anyway. So who cares?

Ross Clark

Harlan Messinger

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 4:01:06 PM3/3/08
to
Matt Giwer wrote:
> As I have been saying for many years this modern Jewish thing has no
> basis in reality. Here is a Jewish Israeli historian confirming the real
> history I have been reciting and publish in Hebrew in Israel and
> reviewed in the oldest Hebrew language newspaper in Israel. Damned
> antisemites are everywhere!

>
> As a side note, Ester as in book of, means star. (Mogen means
> shield.) In Greek, star is Aster. If Greek and Hebrew are such different
> languages how are we to explain this? Another of the hundreds of
> coincidences?

Gosh, what are we to make of the fact that the English word "sushi" that
refers to raw fish prepared with rice for eating is the same as the
Japanese word meaning the same thing, while the Japanese term for "web
page" is "uebbu peiji"?

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 4:06:15 PM3/3/08
to
On Mar 3, 1:41 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> You write about Gelb's correspondence with Ventris
> "the price was astronomical and I couldn't afford a copy -- and the
> pages were too
> large for photocopiers (which didn't have "Reduce" settings in those
> days)."

You really are an idiot. It wasn't "Gelb's correspondence with
Ventris." It was Ventris's Work Notes.

There is no evidence that Gelb ever responded to Ventris's mailings;
he received them because he was a well-known scholar of writing
systems.

Sigge

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 4:17:16 PM3/3/08
to

Only a pseudoscientist makes diagnoses from afar.

Do yourself a favour. Read some good books.
1) Higher Superstition
2) The Flight from Science and Reason
3) Prometheus Bedeviled
4) Intellectual Impostors

There is a nice Australian guy. His name David Stove. Read his works.

Try to get the message! Science against pseudoscience!
Which side are you on?

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 6:38:28 PM3/3/08
to

I'll admit that a diagnosis of senility, or some other mental illness,
would require more evidence than what you write.
So on what basis do you diagnose me as in need of your course of
readings on science and pseudoscience?
All I did was to point out some inaccuracies in your account of
Ventris's decipherment of Linear B.

Ross Clark

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 11:18:12 PM3/3/08
to
On Mar 3, 6:38 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> I'll admit that a diagnosis of senility, or some other mental illness,
> would require  more evidence than what you write.
> So on what basis do you diagnose me as in need of your course of
> readings on science and pseudoscience?
> All I did was to point out some inaccuracies in your account of
> Ventris's decipherment of Linear B.

The funny thing is, just about everything he said (except the mentions
of Ventris) was true of Linear A.

lora...@cs.com

unread,
Mar 3, 2008, 11:31:30 PM3/3/08
to

Don't be such an idiot.
As you sit on you corner tuffet adoring your betters blowing erudite
bubbles re origins of 'star'...

I merely demonstrate the prior existence of the original word and
meaning in the most conservative of all IE languages..
Which makes all of those erudite blown bubbles seem extremely funny.
Doesn't it?

Lighten up, clown.
Enjoy the joke.

cormac

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 3:12:52 AM3/4/08
to

> > Trond Engen
> > - not always proud to be Scandinavian
>
> Here in Sweden we have jokes about you!
> Do you, Norwegians, have any real reason to be proud?
>
> Sigge

Ethnic jokes demean those who repeat them.

Cormac.

cormac

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 3:18:38 AM3/4/08
to

>
> >> --
> >> Trond Engen
> >> - not always proud to be Scandinavian
>
> > Here in Sweden we have jokes about you!
> > Do you, Norwegians, have any real reason to be proud?
>
> Uhm, yes, it was called "standing up to the
> Nazis" which, if history serves, the Swedes
> did not. This according to my Norwegian aunt.

The second world war was a lot more complex than your aunt's memory of
it. Most countries including the USA remained neutral until they were
attacked.

In spite of overwhelming odds the Finns fought on until they had no
more ammunition.

Cormac.

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 5:54:40 AM3/4/08
to
On Mar 3, 9:08 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Here in Sweden we have jokes about you!
> Do you, Norwegians, have any real reason to be proud?

Here in Finland, we have jokes about all Swedes being homosexual.

And, as you were asking it, here is a fabulous joke:

A Frenchman, an Englishman, a Swede, a Finn, and a Norwegian were
flying on board of an aeroplane. The plane began to lose altitude, and
the pilot said:

- We are losing altitude. Somebody must sacrifice himself.

The Frenchman jumped out of the plane, yelling:

- Vive la Liberté! Vive la France! Vive la République!

But soon, the plane again began to lose altitude. The Englishman
jumped out, shouting:

- Long live the Queen!

However, the situation soon repeated itself. The Finn and the
Norwegian looked at each other, grabbed the Swede, and dropped him off
the plane, shouting:

- Long live the Nordic cooperation!

John Atkinson

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 5:56:57 AM3/4/08
to
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote...

OK. Please take the following into account:
(1) My knowledge of Semitic languages and the ancient Middle East is
fairly pathetic;
(2) I make a serious effort (not always successful, unfortunately)
never to read anything written by Giwer (and a few other people here).
That being so, my questions are: What languages are Ashtarte and
Astarte from? When were they first attested (compared with Ishtar at
~2000 BC)?

John


Sigge

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 6:04:41 AM3/4/08
to

I simply mentioned a fact!
Trond put the term Scandinavian juxtaposed with "proud to be" in the
discussion.
In a linguistic context it is ridiculous to name Scandinavia.
I simply answered.

Sigge

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 6:32:49 AM3/4/08
to
On Mar 4, 1:04 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In a linguistic context it is ridiculous to name Scandinavia.
>

Why exactly? Scandinavia sure is a linguistically interesting part of
the world. Take the linguistic situation of Norway. It certainly
attracts interested linguists from all over the scholarly world.

Sigge

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 6:39:59 AM3/4/08
to

Nice! I have heard the same joke with many variations!

But I do not think that Swedes have a particular reputation of being
homosexuals!
Maybe Finns think so! But Finns had a particular complex towards the
Swedes due to the very long History of Swedish Domination over
Finland.

We are famous for Beautiful women. Yes! Homosexuality No! I think that
the English are famous for Homosexuality.

My personal experience is different (personal statistics are mostly
false, but I have cross-checked with other guys).
I find Norwegian women more beautiful (it might be that I have
experienced them during summer) and Finnish women more fiery in bed
(it might be that I have experienced them during the long dark nights
of winter).

Going back to the thread! Who is the Finnish scholar that tried to
produce evidence about Finnish related to Greek? Give us a name! Or is
the whole story untrue?

Sigge

Sigge

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 6:49:25 AM3/4/08
to

Mr Daniels! You seem to have lost contact with reality! The moment
anyone mentions Ventris, Linear B pops up. If Linear B is also
mentioned in the text then only a severely damaged brain would
associate ("everything he wrote") Linear A with the text.

It seems that reading without vowels has caused irreparable damage to
your poor brain.
You mentioned you cannot afford to buy necessary books.
It seems that you cannot afford to buy glasses? Are you that poor?

Sigge

A R:nen

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 6:58:25 AM3/4/08
to
Sigge <Riace....@gmail.com> writes:

> Going back to the thread! Who is the Finnish scholar that tried to
> produce evidence about Finnish related to Greek? Give us a name! Or is
> the whole story untrue?

Sigurd Wettenhovi-Aspa (Wetterhoff-Asp), except it wasn't specifically
Greek, and he wasn't exactly considered a scholar even back then.

On the other hand, up until the second half of the 19th century,
Finnish grammar was generally described in heavily Latinate terms
(eg with a system of 6 cases of which some just happened to have
many different forms for each word), but I guess that was commonplace
for other languages as well at the time.

VtSkier

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 7:12:00 AM3/4/08
to

And I responded to Mr. Sigge on 3/3/08 thus:

>
> Here in Sweden we have jokes about you!
> Do you, Norwegians, have any real reason to be proud?

Uhm, yes, it was called "standing up to the


Nazis" which, if history serves, the Swedes
did not. This according to my Norwegian aunt.

To which he has apparently decided not to respond.

Sigge

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 7:12:45 AM3/4/08
to
On Mar 4, 12:58 pm, oronk...@ling.helsinki.fi (A R:nen) wrote:

Mr R:nen!
At last ! A human being as Diogenes with his lamp would surprisingly
shout.

I shall copy your post and try to find more details.
Out of all this almost meaningless shit that goes on here with
enormous egos to defend here comes a straightforward answer.

That is what the usenet is about. Ask a question and get some help
from an honest person that happens to know better

Thank you, Mr R:nen. Kiittos paljon!

Sigge

Trond Engen

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 7:11:39 AM3/4/08
to
cormac skreiv:

>> Here in Sweden we have jokes about you!
>> Do you, Norwegians, have any real reason to be proud?
>>
>> Sigge
>
> Ethnic jokes demean those who repeat them.

Nah. The Swedish-Norwegian jokes are harmless. Most of them are not even
fun, though, if that's what you mean.

--
Trond Engen
- the jokes about Finns, OTOH, ...

VtSkier

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 7:20:09 AM3/4/08
to

Yes it is... a lot more complex, that is.

The Finns were fighting the Russians, not the Nazis.
and then sat out the war as allies of the Germans.
Much as the Spanish did after Franco won his civil war.

Declaring neutrality as the Swedes and the Swiss did
was generally seen as collaboration especially by
Norwegians who were overrun by the Germans who then
put in their puppet, Mr. Quisling.

From everything I've read of Mr. Sigge's, it appears
to me that he is a racist and uses ad hominem attacks
to try and further his point of view when simple
argument with cites would make better reading.

VtSkier

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 7:25:03 AM3/4/08
to

You simply answered with a racist slur.

Sigge

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 8:01:11 AM3/4/08
to

Mr Cormac! I think I answered to your post! But my input must have
been misplaced either by me or the system here.
I repeat my answer and try to expand it to a larger perspective.

Finns were famous as brave warriors already during the Swedish period.
When Sweden invaded Europe the best soldiers were the fierce
hakkapelites. ( I do not know the English term if there is any).

Finns fought bravely both against Russians/Soviets and against nazis.
But ..They lost both wars! They lost to Russia significant parts of
their country and Rovaniemi was destroyed by the nazis.

A particular feature of the recent Finnish History is that Finland had
to pay enormous war compensations to Russia/Soviet. Finns did it with
style, enormous effort, hard work, sacrifices but they turned, what
would be an economic catastrophe for any other nation, to a STORY OF
ENORMOUS SUCCESS. Brilliant! Not only the Finnish people but also the
Finnish Politicians. Soviets were impressed by the quality of Finnish
products and would buy everything Finnish. They would pay back with
oil. Finnland had never had any problems like we had with the oil
prices.

So Finland lost both wars but won the PEACE after.

On the opposite side we have Sweden. Staying out of WWII. Making money
both from Nazis and Allies. Having an industry in full, to sell all
products to a reconstructing Europe and making enormous profits.
During the post war period poor Finns came to rich Sweden to find
jobs. But during the last 20 years or so, Finland has produced a
miracle. It has surpassed Sweden in GNP.

The Finns are doing a great job building a free homogeneous (they are
rather restrictive with the influx of non western elements) society
that are on the way to perfection.

The West has a lot to learn from the Finns.

We arrogant Swedes have lost the Nordic spirit of hard work and show
already signs of succumbing to oriental laziness and curious ideas.

Sigge

Sigge

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 8:39:03 AM3/4/08
to

No Mr Vtskier! I have responded somewhere else to mr Cormac. I thought
that would be enough.
However, here is my direct answer to you.

I am not proud and most Swedes are not proud of succumbing to Nazi
pressure, during WW II. Especially since we profited enormously
because we stayed neutral when others were fighting and sacrificing.
True! We kept silent and even helped Nazi Germany with transporting
soldiers to attack Norwegians and provided Nazis with iron ore. Good
quality! So we are partly responsible for German successes. On the
other hand we sold even to the allies.

No, Swedes are (should be) ashamed for WW II. Nordic people in
general! Only Norwegians made a real Resistance! Denmark surrendered
9th of April 10 o'clock after firing three shots ("lay down like a
Dane" became a phrase). But Norwegians resisted fiercely with the help
of the British.

Tell your aunt the following story that has impressed me quite a lot.
It is fictional.. but..

After seeing the film "Zorba the Greek" I read some of the novels of
Kazantzakis!

In one of them there is guy living isolated in the mountains of Crete.
He comes down to the village from time to time to get some provisions,
sell his cheese and milk and learn about the world.
He is told that the Germans attacked Scandinavia and took Denmark but
Norway still stands!
He goes back to his hut and after some time he sees on the opposite
side of the mountain a person. He wants to communicate and find out
about what has happened in the World! He shouts!

Eh You! Is Norway still standing?

I was really moved by the little man's love of Freedom!

Greetings to your aunt
Sigge

The problems we are discussing here extend far back and over thousands
of years. Scandinavia is insignificant in such time-scales. Maybe you
misunderstood my remark or it was not properly formulated.
idem

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 8:48:45 AM3/4/08
to

No idea. Probably somewhere in Hebrew.

These days there are lots of dictionaries of ancient deities (none of
which I own).

VtSkier

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 8:53:41 AM3/4/08
to

Mr. Sigge,
You seem to be a lot more reasonable than some of your
recent posts would indicate. Some of what you said in
this and other posts sounded very racist to me.

I appologize if I have misjudged you.
VtSkier

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 8:53:55 AM3/4/08
to
On Mar 4, 6:49 am, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 4, 5:18 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > On Mar 3, 6:38 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
> > > I'll admit that a diagnosis of senility, or some other mental illness,
> > > would require  more evidence than what you write.
> > > So on what basis do you diagnose me as in need of your course of
> > > readings on science and pseudoscience?
> > > All I did was to point out some inaccuracies in your account of
> > > Ventris's decipherment of Linear B.
>
> > The funny thing is, just about everything he said (except the mentions
> > of Ventris) was true of Linear A.
>
> Mr Daniels! You seem to have lost contact with reality! The moment
> anyone mentions Ventris, Linear B pops up. If Linear B is also
> mentioned in the text then only a severely damaged brain would
> associate ("everything he wrote") Linear A with the text.

Continuing to repeat lies (like Giwer) does not make the lies true.

Everyone, including Ventris, expected Linear B would be Etruscan-like.

Cyrus Gordon never suggested that Linear B was Semitic.

Cyrus Gordon never objected to Ventris's decipherment of Linear B as
Greek.

Cyrus Gordon _did_ believe that Linear A was Semitic (and also the
very sparsely attested _other_ Aegean epigraphic remains, such as
"Eteocretan" and "Minoan").

You have claimed to be very, very elderly, so perhaps you should
recognize that you don't remember things as you used to. Stick to your
sexual fantasies about decades long past -- and stop sharing them with
us.

phog...@abo.fi

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 9:01:14 AM3/4/08
to

Latvian has been heavily influenced by Finnic languages and it is by
no objective measure the most conservative of all IE languages. It has
even word-initial accent, which comes from Finnic.

Trond Engen

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 9:29:31 AM3/4/08
to
VtSkier skreiv:

> cormac wrote:
>
>> The second world war was a lot more complex than your aunt's memory
>> of it. Most countries including the USA remained neutral until they
>> were attacked.
>>
>> In spite of overwhelming odds the Finns fought on until they had no
>> more ammunition.
>

> Yes it is... a lot more complex, that is.
>
> The Finns were fighting the Russians, not the Nazis.
> and then sat out the war as allies of the Germans.

Actually, it's even more complex than that. In the first phase of the
war, there were at least three parties, the West, Germany/Italy and the
Soviet Union, and Finland was an ally of the west. It wasn't all clear
-- to the west, anyway -- which way the Soviet Union would turn.

(The Finnish situation could be qualified towards infinity, but I'll
stop here.)

> Much as the Spanish did after Franco won his civil war.

Not really a parallel, I think.

> Declaring neutrality as the Swedes and the Swiss did
> was generally seen as collaboration especially by
> Norwegians who were overrun by the Germans who then
> put in their puppet, Mr. Quisling.

It's not all that simple. The feelings towards the Swedes were not
unanimously hostile. Neutral Sweden became a refuge for many Norwegians,
and the Swedish humanitarian efforts towards the end of the war were
broadly appreciated.

And I don't think one can say that German forces put in the Quisling
puppet regime. Not just like that, anyway. Quisling, a former minister
of defence who'd become the leader of a small nationalist party,
declared himself leader of government in the vacuum of the day of
invasion, when the king and the government were evacuated. As far as I
know, he did so on his own initiative, without any prior arrangement
with the Germans. The Germans had hoped to take Oslo by surprise and
achieve a similar situation as in Denmark, where king, government and
parliament sat throughout the war. Both the German military leadership
and the evacuated Norwegian government wanted to avoid a despised regime
of local traitors, and for some time there were efforts from both sides
to establish a temporary cabinet of ministery officials.

(Again, this can be built out forever, but I'll stop here)

> From everything I've read of Mr. Sigge's, it appears
> to me that he is a racist and uses ad hominem attacks
> to try and further his point of view when simple
> argument with cites would make better reading.

What he said about Norwegians is harmless. He do, however, seem to have
ideas of racial purity and a Jewish conspiracy. Apart from that, I've no
idea what he's up to. Not that I think it matters.

--
Trond Engen
- off topic in three groups, stopping here

Paul J Kriha

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 9:40:51 AM3/4/08
to
<phog...@abo.fi> wrote in message
news:bc6403bb-7b1e-40d4...@n36g2000hse.googlegroups.com...

If this is the beginning of another Thirty Years' War, let's make
bloody sure it doesn't finish the same way again.

pjk

Sigge

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 11:33:30 AM3/4/08
to

Why don't you answer the long one I wrote to you? There are a lot of
arguments there about Linguists theorizing and not!

Admit it! You never met any of the Big Shots Gelb, Bernal. You only
imagine things!
Unless you delivered pizza to them!

Bernal did not send you the book with dedication. (If you were his
friend as you have claimed he would have done it). If you were working
for some department you would have told the librarian to buy it. (As I
did many times and as it is customary in research places).
You cannot even afford to buy the book of your friend. You are
awaiting for the cheap edition.

What a cheap idiot you are!

Sigge

Sigge

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 11:38:16 AM3/4/08
to

By the way Mr Trond! Since you mention Quisling, did you know that his
name has become a word in many languages synonymous to traitor,
collaborator?
The Norwegian Linguistic contribution, to be proud? ashamed?

Sigge

Sigge

unread,
Mar 4, 2008, 3:41:13 PM3/4/08
to
On Mar 3, 10:06 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Mar 3, 1:41 pm, Sigge <Riace.Warr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > You write about Gelb's correspondence with Ventris
> > "the price was astronomical and I couldn't afford a copy -- and the
> > pages were too
> > large for photocopiers (which didn't have "Reduce" settings in those
> > days)."
>
> You really are an idiot. It wasn't "Gelb's correspondence with
> Ventris." It was Ventris's Work Notes.
>
> There is no evidence that Gelb ever responded to Ventris's mailings;
> he received them because he was a well-known scholar of writing
> systems.
>
> > The most important thing that happened in the area and you cannot
> > afford to copy it?! Something that couples Gelb with Ventris and you
> > have no money?

What is the essential part of the argument mr Daniels?
If it were correspondence between Ventris and Gelb or just the Work
papers of Ventris alone (with Gelb's notes?)

The essential part is that you had access to the most important
documents of the greatest thing that happened to Linguistics. And you
claim you could buy (but the price was astronomical) or copy but
"Reduce" did not exist/work at the copying machine!!.
Can that be true? Certainly not!
The most important document on Linguistics and you cannot copy or
buy?
You either are extremely incompetent and/or poor, OR simply lying.
One of those who pretend they are in friendly terms with the big Shots
but simply imagine situations.
A safe bet, you never met Gelb or Bernal, unless you delivered pizza
to them!

Sigge

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