Was Narsil bronze?

[sean_q]

It isn't easy to break an iron sword...

"I [Elrond] beheld the last combat on the slopes of Orodruin, where
Gil-galad died, and Elendil fell, and Narsil broke beneath him;

If Narsil was that breakable maybe it was bronze. Here's more evidence:

Very bright was that sword when it was made whole again;
the light of the sun shone REDly in it <-----[my caps]

My thanks and acknowledgment to the late Öjevind Lång for pointing out
a reference (in Tom Bombadil's talk) to Middle Earth's Bronze Age
a while ago.

SQ

[Steve Morrison]

Túrin's sword also broke beneath him, and it was made of
meteoric iron! Possibly Dúnedain are just so tough that
swords break beneath them? ;<)

[tenworld]

On Sep 18, 8:19 am, Steve Morrison <rima...@toast.net> wrote:
> sean_q wrote:
> > It isn't easy to break an iron sword...

...

> Túrin's sword also broke beneath him, and it was made of
> meteoric iron! Possibly Dúnedain are just so tough that

> swords break beneath them? ;<)->

There isnt anything about meteoric iron that cant be duplicated with
modern metallurgy, but the implication is that magic is involved.
Same with Narsil, it didnt break because it was not strong, it broke
because of the magic associated with Sauron's blow.

Bronze would not be stronger than steel at the same thickness. A good
steel (see Damascus steel eg) with the right metallugy (carbon, metal
impurities) would be a superior weapon.

[FL Teacher]

"tenworld" wrote in message
news:0c85056b-2d9c-4b21...@s3g2000vbx.googlegroups.com...

Tying this thread to the one asking why Isildur didn't suffer
black-breath-like illness after slicing into Sauron...
Perhaps the magic innate in Narsil created a buffer protecting Isildur, yet
the strain was enough to break apart the enchantment holding Narsil
together.

just a thought,
FLT

[Bill O'Meally]

On 2011-09-19 20:35:06 -0500, FL Teacher said:
>
>
> Tying this thread to the one asking why Isildur didn't suffer
> black-breath-like illness after slicing into Sauron...
> Perhaps the magic innate in Narsil created a buffer protecting Isildur,
> yet the strain was enough to break apart the enchantment holding Narsil
> together.

And holding Elendil together??
--
Bill
"Wise Fool" -- Gandalf, _The Two Towers_
(The Wise will remove 'se' to reach me. The Foolish will not)

[Stan Brown]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:35:06 -0400, FL Teacher wrote:
> There isnt anything about meteoric iron that cant be duplicated with
> modern metallurgy, but the implication is that magic is involved.
> Same with Narsil, it didnt break because it was not strong, it broke
> because of the magic associated with Sauron's blow.

Yes, that's my reading too.

Compare to Merry's sword, which didn't shatter but dissolved. That's
magic, pure and simple. So I think the explanation for Narsil is
equally magical, not metallurgical.

I could be wrong, but my impression is that the Númenóreans were at
least as advanced technologically as say the real-life medieval
period. They would then have had good-quality carbon-steel swords.



--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen's site)
Tolkien letters FAQ:
http://mysite.verizon.net/aznirb/mtr/lettersfaq.html
FAQ of the Rings: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
Encyclopedia of Arda: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm
more FAQs: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/faqget.htm

[John W Kennedy]

On 2011-09-18 05:57:18 +0000, sean_q said:

> It isn't easy to break an iron sword...

Yes it is. I witnessed one breaking only last week.

--
John W Kennedy
"Those in the seat of power oft forget their failings and seek only the
obeisance of others! Thus is bad government born! Hold in your heart
that you and the people are one, human beings all, and good government
shall arise of its own accord! Such is the path of virtue!"
-- Kazuo Koike. "Lone Wolf and Cub: Thirteen Strings" (tr. Dana Lewis)

[sean_q]

On 9/19/2011 7:14 PM, Stan Brown wrote:

> I could be wrong, but my impression is that the Númenóreans were at
> least as advanced technologically as say the real-life medieval
> period. They would then have had good-quality carbon-steel swords.

However, Narsil wasn't made by the Numenoreans.

SQ

[Mike Scott Rohan]

On Sep 20, 4:14 am, Stan Brown <the_stan_br...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:35:06 -0400, FL Teacher wrote:
> > There isnt anything about meteoric iron that cant be duplicated with
> > modern metallurgy, but the implication is that magic is involved.
> > Same with Narsil, it didnt break because it was not strong, it broke
> > because of the magic associated with Sauron's blow.
>
> Yes, that's my reading too.
>
> Compare to Merry's sword, which didn't shatter but dissolved.  That's
> magic, pure and simple.  So I think the explanation for Narsil is
> equally magical, not metallurgical.

Yet Eowyn's sword shattered at the blow. Personally I think that both
shatterings, and Narsil's, were profoundly bound up with the nature of
Sauron and the Wraiths, whose physical form was only a cloak for their
spiritual reality; thus they could armour themselves to some extent,
except against swords imbued with magic of their own. Eowyn's probably
wasn't; Merry's, we are told, was, which might explain the delay in
its dissolution, to make the blow bite deeper. Of course, it could
dissolve in whatever the Witch-King had for blood -- move over, Alien!
-- but it doesn't read that way, no drippings and acrid odour.

Coming back to the original question, I own and have worked on swords
of both bronze and steel of various kinds, and my own novels were much
concerned with smithcraft as magic; so I believe I know something of
the relative properties. Bronze -- the "red metal" of the degenerate
petty Northern kingdom's swords -- varies greatly according to its
thickness, but swords were generally made thinner than with steel,
both because the metal was rarer and harder to work, and because it
tends to weigh more, shape for shape. I have a short thick bronze leaf-
blade which is a real test for the wrist. Thinner ones, though, tended
to bend very easily, much more so than steel; an interesting
archaeological testimony to this is in (I think) Reading Museum, where
a Roman soldier armed with a standard steel glaive has clearly taken
on a Brit with a bronze leaf-blade. The bronze blade, presumably
caught flat on, has literally wound itself around the steel like some
sort of obscene ribbon, rendering both blades useless. One guesses
they both stood staring at this prodigy for a moment, then one would
probably have kicked ihe other in the yarbles and run away. Steel has
never behaved this way; the best steel is proportionately more elastic
than rubber. So it bends, but will break, eventually, as metal fatigue
sets in.

What would make a sword shatter like a mirror, though, as it seems
Narsil does? Really only one characteristic, and that's cold, a very
low temperature indeed. Perhaps that was Old One-Eye's "body
temperature" anyhow.

The Numenoreans were indeed advanced, even to the point of achieveing
flight, Tolkien hints; they would certainly have good steel, as well
as other lost metals like mithril and its alloys.

Hope that's of some interest,

Mike

>
> I could be wrong, but my impression is that the Númenóreans were at
> least as advanced technologically as say the real-life medieval
> period.  They would then have had good-quality carbon-steel swords.
>

> --
> Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
>                                  http://OakRoadSystems.com

> Tolkien FAQs:http://Tolkien.slimy.com(Steuard Jensen's site)

[derek]

On Sep 20, 12:28 am, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> On 2011-09-18 05:57:18 +0000, sean_q said:
>
> > It isn't easy to break an iron sword...
>
> Yes it is. I witnessed one breaking only last week.

I thought so too, but I bet you only saw two pieces. Perhaps it's
just movie-memory, but I'm pretty sure Narsil's supposed to be in
"shards".

[derek]

On Sep 19, 8:45 pm, tenworld <t...@world.std.com> wrote:
> On Sep 18, 8:19 am, Steve Morrison <rima...@toast.net> wrote:
>
> > sean_q wrote:
> > > It isn't easy to break an iron sword...
> ...
> > Túrin's sword also broke beneath him, and it was made of
> > meteoric iron! Possibly Dúnedain are just so tough that
> > swords break beneath them? ;<)->
>
> There isnt anything about meteoric iron that cant be duplicated with
> modern metallurgy, but the implication is that magic is involved.

Precisely. Though Jack Whyte cleverly theorizes that Excalibur was
meteoric nickel-iron+, which provided the ingredients for stainless
steel.

> Same with Narsil, it didnt break because it was not strong, it broke
> because of the magic associated with Sauron's blow.
>
> Bronze would not be stronger than steel at the same thickness.  A good
> steel (see Damascus steel eg) with the right metallugy (carbon, metal
> impurities) would be a superior weapon.

Surely the implication of the OP was that Bronze would be _weaker_.

[JJ]

On Sep 20, 1:13 pm, Mike Scott Rohan

<mike.scott.ro...@asgardpublishing.co.uk> wrote:

> What would make a sword shatter like a mirror, though, as it seems
> Narsil does? Really only one characteristic, and that's cold, a very
> low temperature indeed.  Perhaps that was Old One-Eye's "body
> temperature" anyhow.
>

No it wasn't; it was at least red hot: 'And so Gil-Galad was
destroyed'. 'It misseth the heat of Sauron's hand, maybe' (Quotations
from memory!)

[sean_q]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm not claiming that Narsil
was bronze, only that it might have been. Although a bronze weapon
is at a disadvantage against iron, it can still be wielded
with deadly effect by a skilled swordsman such as Aragorn.

Perhaps the first question to ask is whether bronze, a copper-tin alloy
was even used in Middle Earth. We know by a number of references
that copper was known; for instance: "Mithril! All folk desired it.
It could be beaten like copper..."

There is only one mention of tin, where Merry says, "A punch from
an Ent-fist crumples up iron like thin tin."

Bronze itself is mentioned only twice: artifacts found by Tom Bombadil
in a barrow and Faramir's cups or basins in Henneth Annun.

Apparently Narsil was forged in Beleriand during the during the First
Age by the Dwarf Telchar of Nogrod, a famous weaponsmith and artificer
who also made the knife Angrist, which cut a Silmaril from the crown
of Morgoth, and the Helm of Hador later used by Túrin Turambar. [wp]

I don't know my First Age history very well, but it could have been
during Middle Earth's Bronze Age.

This would be a good place to quote Öjevind Lång, replying on July 21,
2009 to my posting "Bronze Age Middle Earth":

> You forgot one passage which, in my opinion, makes it quite clear
> that there was a Bronze Age in Middle-earth. It's from "In the House
> of Tom Bombadil", and I think it is hauntingly beautiful. Tom tells
> the hobbits about ancient times:

> "Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun
> shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords."

SQ

[FL Teacher]

"Bill O'Meally" wrote in message
news:201109192043274717-omeallymd@wiserrcom...

On 2011-09-19 20:35:06 -0500, FL Teacher said:
>
>
> Tying this thread to the one asking why Isildur didn't suffer
> black-breath-like illness after slicing into Sauron...
> Perhaps the magic innate in Narsil created a buffer protecting Isildur,
> yet the strain was enough to break apart the enchantment holding Narsil
> together.

And holding Elendil together??

No need to have anything holding him together. Narsil acted as an insulator.
Sauron is the high voltage line, Narsil is the electrician's glove.

NYT

[Bill O'Meally]

But why would a broken Narsil protect Isildur, but an intact Narsil not
protect Elendil?

[Bill O'Meally]

On 2011-09-20 11:53:17 -0500, sean_q said:
> > You forgot one passage which, in my opinion, makes it quite clear
> > that there was a Bronze Age in Middle-earth. It's from "In the House
> > of Tom Bombadil", and I think it is hauntingly beautiful. Tom tells
> > the hobbits about ancient times:
>
> > "Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun
> > shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords."

Hauntingly beautiful indeed. It's been too long that I have read any
Tolkien. I have been reading George RR Martin lately, and though he
tells a great story, his prose just does not match up to Tolkien's for
its pure beauty.

[Morgoth's Curse]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:53:17 -0800, sean_q <no....@no.spam> wrote:

>This would be a good place to quote Öjevind Lång, replying on July 21,
>2009 to my posting "Bronze Age Middle Earth":
>
> > You forgot one passage which, in my opinion, makes it quite clear
> > that there was a Bronze Age in Middle-earth. It's from "In the House
> > of Tom Bombadil", and I think it is hauntingly beautiful. Tom tells
> > the hobbits about ancient times:
>
> > "Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun
> > shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords."

Is this passage truly evidence that the Numenorean swords were
made of bronze? We know that Tolkien was fond of using metaphors and
in this case the "red metal of their new and greedy swords" could
merely mean that the swords were stained with blood.

Morgoth's Curse

[Stan Brown]

Good point. It was made by the Noldor, who had learned metallurgy
from Aulë. I think we can take it as read that their swords were
even better than Man-made ones.

[Stan Brown]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:53:17 -0800, sean_q wrote:
> Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm not claiming that Narsil
> was bronze, only that it might have been.

I don't think even the claim that it might have been is tenable. The
Noldor had a higher level of technology.

Remember also that swords made in Gondolin, at least some of them,
shone brightly in the presence of enemies. (It might well have been
all, since even Bilbo's little knife had that property.) We can
think of steel shining, but nor bronze.

[Mike Scott Rohan]

On Sep 21, 9:53 am, Morgoth's Curse
<morgothscurse2...@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:53:17 -0800, sean_q <no.s...@no.spam> wrote:
> >This would be a good place to quote jevind L ng, replying on July 21,

> >2009 to my posting "Bronze Age Middle Earth":
>
> > > You forgot one passage which, in my opinion, makes it quite clear
> > > that there was a Bronze Age in Middle-earth. It's from "In the House
> > > of Tom Bombadil", and I think it is hauntingly beautiful. Tom tells
> > > the hobbits about ancient times:
>
> > > "Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun
> > > shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords."
>
>         Is this passage truly evidence that the Numenorean swords were
> made of bronze?  We know that Tolkien was fond of using metaphors and
> in this case the "red metal of their new and greedy swords" could
> merely mean that the swords were stained with blood.
>
> Morgoth's Curse

Except that this bronze age seems to have come *after* an age of steel
and much else, if anything a degenerate technology rather than a
developing one. That's why I think Tolkien stressed that the swords
were new, like the little north-kingdoms that arose in the ruins of
the old, but without its resources, supplies, and skills. It seems
they reverted to bronze because they no longer had the skill of
working steel, or perhaps no access to ore or raw metal through trade,
either with other men or dwarves.

Cheers,

Mike

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Yes -- but aren't both extremes possible, between outer and inner, in
a quasi-demonic body? No normal body can approach red heat, after all,
so there's no saying what Sauron's was actually like. Fire and
shadow, like the Balrog, is the closest guess, and the Balrog could
exist at both extreme heat and cold. If Sairon, pierced, went from one
to the other, that alone could shatter the blade! But that's devil's
advocate stuff; as I said, I think we have to attribute both
shattering and evaporating to different aspects of magic.

Cheers,

Mike

[derek]

On Sep 21, 5:53 am, Morgoth's Curse
<morgothscurse2...@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:53:17 -0800, sean_q <no.s...@no.spam> wrote:
> >This would be a good place to quote jevind L ng, replying on July 21,

> >2009 to my posting "Bronze Age Middle Earth":
>
> > > You forgot one passage which, in my opinion, makes it quite clear
> > > that there was a Bronze Age in Middle-earth. It's from "In the House
> > > of Tom Bombadil", and I think it is hauntingly beautiful. Tom tells
> > > the hobbits about ancient times:
>
> > > "Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun
> > > shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords."
>
>         Is this passage truly evidence that the Numenorean swords were
> made of bronze?  We know that Tolkien was fond of using metaphors and
> in this case the "red metal of their new and greedy swords" could
> merely mean that the swords were stained with blood.

I'd tend to agree. If it were just "red metal of their new swords",
I'd be sure it implied bronze, but "greedy" certainly suggests they're
covered in blood.

[derek]

On Sep 21, 8:42 am, Stan Brown <the_stan_br...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:53:17 -0800, sean_q wrote:
> > Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm not claiming that Narsil
> > was bronze, only that it might have been.
>
> I don't think even the claim that it might have been is tenable.  The
> Noldor had a higher level of technology.
>
> Remember also that swords made in Gondolin, at least some of them,
> shone brightly in the presence of enemies.  (It might well have been
> all, since even Bilbo's little knife had that property.)  We can
> think of steel shining, but nor bronze.

That "shining" appears to be actual emission of light, not reflection,
so why would steel do it any more than bronze? However, bronze is
certainly reflective enough to be considered "shiny". Bronze was used
for mirrors in bronze-age Greece (and no doubt elsewhere, but I know
of Greek examples).

[derek]

On Sep 21, 8:42 am, Stan Brown <the_stan_br...@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:53:17 -0800, sean_q wrote:
> > Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm not claiming that Narsil
> > was bronze, only that it might have been.
>
> I don't think even the claim that it might have been is tenable.  The
> Noldor had a higher level of technology.
>
> Remember also that swords made in Gondolin, at least some of them,
> shone brightly in the presence of enemies.  (It might well have been
> all, since even Bilbo's little knife had that property.)  We can
> think of steel shining, but nor bronze.

[Mike Scott Rohan]

You're right, of course -- "Telchar wrought it in the deeps of
time..." But I think it would still be steel, of some kind. Unless the
elves made swords of lighter metal, mithril maybe, rather as modern
movie swords are made of aircraft aluminium alloys (in Ladyhawke, for
example). But there's nothing to suggest it was so peculiar; and isn't
Boromir's sword described as being "like to Anduril but of less
lineage"? (from memory). If it were of some wholly arcane metal, it
would surely have been mentioned in the description of its reforging.
(Although this is kept almost offhand, admittedly, presumably because
Tolkien didn't want to be seen imitating Wagner's Siegfried.)

Cheers,

Mike

[Paul S. Person]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2011 06:09:33 -0700 (PDT), derek <de...@pointerstop.ca>
wrote:

It's the Elvish technology ("magic") that produces the shining, not
the steel. So you are correct, of course; it is not the steel as such
that shines when enemies are near.

Bronze mirrors were not very good -- hence "through a glass, darkly".
--
"I begin to miss Öjevind."
"I have missed him long since."

[derek]

On Sep 21, 1:57 pm, Paul S. Person <psper...@ix.netscom.com.invalid>
wrote:

Sure, and silvered mirrors aren't very good as mirrors either when
they get a little tarnish - but they're still shiny. A polished
bronze mirror, no matter how flawed, can do a pretty good job of
dazzling you when it reflects sunlight.

[sean_q]

On 9/21/2011 3:42 AM, Stan Brown wrote:

>> I'm not claiming that Narsil
>> was bronze, only that it might have been.
>
> I don't think even the claim that it might have been is tenable.

I can't prove it was bronze, but can you support the above by
demonstrating that it couldn't have been?

> The Noldor had a higher level of technology.

Narsil was made by a dwarf, not the Noldor; back in the First Age
and perhaps with some magical properties. We know that the dwarves
can work at least some magic:

There were toys the like of which they had never seen before,
all beautiful and some obviously magical. Many of them had indeed
been ordered a year before, and had come all the way from
the Mountain and from Dale, and were of real dwarf-make.

SQ

[Jim Heckman]

On 20-Sep-2011, sean_q <no....@no.spam>
wrote in message <oH2eq.35785$OO1....@newsfe02.iad>:

[...]

> Bronze itself is mentioned only twice: artifacts found by Tom Bombadil
> in a barrow and Faramir's cups or basins in Henneth Annun.

To my dismay, I seem to have mislaid my copy of UT. But wasn't one
of the 7(?) gates on the hidden path to Gondolin made of bronze, as
told in the Coming of Tuor to Gondolin?

[...]

--
Jim Heckman

[Bill O'Meally]

On 2011-09-21 06:40:38 -0500, Stan Brown said:

>
> Good point. It was made by the Noldor, who had learned metallurgy

> from Aulė. I think we can take it as read that their swords were

> even better than Man-made ones.

Sorry Stan, but Narsil was forged in First-Age Nogrod by the Dwarf Telchar.

[Steve Morrison]

Good catch.

After a little space they came to a wall yet higher and
stronger than before, and in it was set the Third Gate, the
Gate of Bronze: a great twofold door hung with shields and
plates of bronze, wherein were wrought many figures and strange
signs. Upon the wall above its lintel were three square towers,
roofed and clad with copper that by some device of smith-craft
were ever bright and gleamed as fire in the rays of the red
lamps ranged like torches along the wall. Again silently they
passed the gate, and saw in the court beyond a yet greater
company of guards in mail that glowed like dull fire; and the
blades of their axes were red. Of the kindred of the Sindar of
Nevrast for the most part were those that held this gate.
["Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin"]

[Stan Brown]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:02:55 -0500, Bill O'Meally wrote:
>
> On 2011-09-21 06:40:38 -0500, Stan Brown said:
>
> >
> > Good point. It was made by the Noldor, who had learned metallurgy
> > from Aulė. I think we can take it as read that their swords were
> > even better than Man-made ones.
>
> Sorry Stan, but Narsil was forged in First-Age Nogrod by the Dwarf Telchar.

Thanks for the correction. I don't think it actually destroys my
main point, though. Weren't the Dwarves, at least at their height,
equal in metalworking to the greatest of the Noldor?

[Thomas Koenig]

Mike Scott Rohan <mike.sco...@asgardpublishing.co.uk> schrieb:

> Bronze -- the "red metal" of the degenerate
> petty Northern kingdom's swords

I have wondered through this thread - why would bronze be described
as red? Copper, yes, but bronze?

[Mike Scott Rohan]

On Sep 24, 7:47 am, Thomas Koenig <tkoe...@netcologne.de> wrote:
> Mike Scott Rohan <mike.scott.ro...@asgardpublishing.co.uk> schrieb:

Well, my bronze sword, Scottish-forged, has a definitely reddish
lustre -- much darker than some Thai bronze cutlery I brought back
many years ago, so the aspect seems to change with the alloy. And when
the sun catches the sword on the stairway wall the flash is distinctly
red. Museum swords, where not too tarnished to tell, generally tend to
a darker, redder shade, too.

Cheers,

Mike

[Stan Brown]

I don't understand literary color descriptions in general. "The
wine-dark sea"? Unless Homer was familiar with blue wine, or the sea
was red, I don't get it.

And while Tolkien's "red metal" is unique in my experience, I
remember seeing several authors use the phrase "red gold". I'm
sorry, but in the words of Lord Blackadder, "The color of gold ... is
gold."

[Taemon]

Stan Brown wrote:

> I don't understand literary color descriptions in general. "The
> wine-dark sea"? Unless Homer was familiar with blue wine, or the sea
> was red, I don't get it.
> And while Tolkien's "red metal" is unique in my experience, I
> remember seeing several authors use the phrase "red gold". I'm
> sorry, but in the words of Lord Blackadder, "The color of gold ... is
> gold."

Well, there is such a thing as red gold... Hey, look what I saw on
Wikipedia: "During ancient times, due to impurities in the smelting process,
gold frequently turned a reddish color. This is why many Greco-Roman texts,
and even many texts from the Middle Ages, describe gold as "red".[citation
needed]"

I think "olive skin" is the weirdest of them all.

T.

[Thomas Koenig]

Taemon <Tae...@zonnet.nl> schrieb:

> Well, there is such a thing as red gold... Hey, look what I saw on
> Wikipedia: "During ancient times, due to impurities in the smelting process,
> gold frequently turned a reddish color. This is why many Greco-Roman texts,
> and even many texts from the Middle Ages, describe gold as "red".[citation
> needed]"

So, the swords in question were made from gold. I don't know of any other
gold swords except in Minecraft, but even those don't last very long.

No wonder the petty kindoms fell, if this was their dominant weapons
technology.

[Taemon]

Thomas Koenig wrote:

> Taemon <Tae...@zonnet.nl> schrieb:
>> Well, there is such a thing as red gold... Hey, look what I saw on
>> Wikipedia: "During ancient times, due to impurities in the smelting
>> process, gold frequently turned a reddish color. This is why many
>> Greco-Roman texts, and even many texts from the Middle Ages,
>> describe gold as "red".[citation needed]"
> So, the swords in question were made from gold. I don't know of any
> other gold swords except in Minecraft, but even those don't last very
> long.

There was no mention of golden swords.

Anyway, bronze can be red, can it not? Depending on the amount of copper in
the alloy?

T.

[sean_q]

On 9/25/2011 7:46 AM, Taemon wrote:

> Anyway, bronze can be red, can it not? Depending on
> the amount of copper in the alloy?

As well as impurities, intentional or otherwise.

SQ

[Paul S. Person]

On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:45:14 -0400, Stan Brown
<the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:

>On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 06:47:08 +0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>
>> Mike Scott Rohan <mike.sco...@asgardpublishing.co.uk> schrieb:
>> > Bronze -- the "red metal" of the degenerate
>> > petty Northern kingdom's swords
>>
>> I have wondered through this thread - why would bronze be described
>> as red? Copper, yes, but bronze?
>
>I don't understand literary color descriptions in general. "The
>wine-dark sea"? Unless Homer was familiar with blue wine, or the sea
>was red, I don't get it.

In the long-departed Days of My Youth, I once read a book on
Spiritualism, written by an "expert".

He suggested that, in the course of time, the human being's senses
become more sensitive, explaining why really subtle things like auras
(IIRC; it could have been spirit guides) only became detectable in the
19th century (Madame Ouspenskaya, IIRC).

One of the "proofs" of this argument was, precisely, Homers' "wine-red
sea", which was alleged to show that man's sense of sight could not
distinguish between red and blue in Homer's time but had become far
more sensitive since them.

As to the phrase itself, presumably, it was a traditional
catch-phrase, quite possibly much older than Homer. Or (in Homeric
Greek, of course) it just fit the scansion better than anything else
the old boy could come up with. Poetry, after all, is rife with such
oddities. Incomprehensible phrases that fit the meter and improbable
rhymes are quite common, indeed, are almost required for the poem to
be considered "art".
--
"'If God foreknew that this would happen,
it will happen.'"

[O. Sharp]

Taemon <Tae...@zonnet.nl> writes:

> Stan Brown wrote:
>
>> And while Tolkien's "red metal" is unique in my experience, I
>> remember seeing several authors use the phrase "red gold". I'm
>> sorry, but in the words of Lord Blackadder, "The color of gold ... is
>> gold."
>
> Well, there is such a thing as red gold... Hey, look what I saw on
> Wikipedia: "During ancient times, due to impurities in the smelting process,
> gold frequently turned a reddish color. This is why many Greco-Roman texts,
> and even many texts from the Middle Ages, describe gold as "red".[citation
> needed]"

You don't even have to go back that many years. K's engagement ring, which
came down a couple generations of our family, is gold with a reddish
tinge. When I first took it to get it resized for her, the jeweler
described it as "rose-gold", which evidently is the official designation.

I'm not sure I would want to use Blackadder as a definitive research
source. :)

-------------------------------------------------------------------
o...@panix.com "_Lord Of The Rings_, Baldrick? Of _course_ I've
read it! Some Ring throws a Dwarf into a fire or
something."

[Dworkin]

On Sep 18, 7:57 am, sean_q <no.s...@no.spam> wrote:
> It isn't easy to break an iron sword...
>
>    "I [Elrond] beheld the last combat on the slopes of Orodruin, where
>    Gil-galad died, and Elendil fell, and Narsil broke beneath him;
>
> If Narsil was that breakable maybe it was bronze. Here's more evidence:
>
>    Very bright was that sword when it was  made whole again;
>    the light of the sun shone REDly in it <-----[my caps]
>
> My thanks and acknowledgment to the late Öjevind Lång for pointing out
> a reference (in Tom Bombadil's talk) to Middle Earth's Bronze Age
> a while ago.
>
> SQ

In my knowledge the color of a metal's appearance is not only
determined by the color of the metal itself but can also be a
consequence of the surface treatment.
I can not imagine why a warrior would choose a copper alloy over
tempered steel for a sword, unless he is suicidal.
A steel sword may be hardened on the cutting edge by means of a hot
tempering treatment, which improves the toughness after quenching,
but, dependent of the tempering agent, may also influence the color of
the metal surface.
A black sword, for instance, may contain about 0.8 % carbon which
renders it very strong and tough. On etching with nitric acid, this
steel turns black. So there is no need to refer to meteoritic iron,
assumed that the forgers (elves, dwarves, numenoreans) knew how to
prepare steel.
Steel can also turn yellowish or brown under phosphates, bright
yellow under chromates, and personally I have seen it turn slightly
pink under perchlorate. All these agents serve to prevent rusting, so
might be reapplied after rehardening and grinding.
Why did Narsil break? I do not think about a flaw in the steel. When
bent over the wrong axis any steel blade can break.
Still it is tempting to consider if Sauron had special magic powers to
crumble or vaporize steel, like the Wizard King did to Frodo's sword,
even from a distance. It occurs to me that the power of evil is often
associated with iron.
Then why could Sauron, assumed he had wielded his magic to damage
Narsil, be taken by surprise by an enemy and a sword he thought he had
slain?

What did he reach for that brought him into the swing of Isildur?
What was on the cutting edge of Narsil that did not crumble and even
cut through the hide and armor of Sauron?

[John W Kennedy]

On 2011-09-25 17:17:02 +0000, Paul S. Person said:
> He suggested that, in the course of time, the human being's senses
> become more sensitive, explaining why really subtle things like auras
> (IIRC; it could have been spirit guides) only became detectable in the
> 19th century (Madame Ouspenskaya, IIRC).
>
> One of the "proofs" of this argument was, precisely, Homers' "wine-red
> sea", which was alleged to show that man's sense of sight could not
> distinguish between red and blue in Homer's time but had become far
> more sensitive since them.

Exploded by linguists long ago. There are languages even today with no
words for colors beyond "light" and "dark", but the speakers of those
languages can perceive colors just as accurately as we can; they just
don't have names for 'em. Even in the industrialized world, there are
differences. Few languages have a word for "pink", and the word
"orange" entered English only a few centuries ago. On the other hand,
Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
of a blueberry, while in Welsh grass and the sky are traditionally the
same color (though, under cultural pressure from English, Welsh colors
are realigning).

--
John W Kennedy
"You can, if you wish, class all science-fiction together; but it is
about as perceptive as classing the works of Ballantyne, Conrad and W.
W. Jacobs together as the 'sea-story' and then criticizing _that_."
-- C. S. Lewis. "An Experiment in Criticism"

[John W Kennedy]

That assumption is a big one. Back in 1980, the NJ State Council on the
Arts decided to make one grant do double duty by paying a craft
blacksmith to make swords and then donating them to the NJ Shakespeare
Festival (1963-1990, R.I.P.). Within 24 hours of their delivery, half
had broken, and the rest were bent--the hard way. It seems that swords
are a little more difficult to make than horseshoes.

--
John W Kennedy
Having switched to a Mac in disgust at Microsoft's combination of
incompetence and criminality.

[derek]

On Sep 24, 4:45 pm, Stan Brown <the_stan_br...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 06:47:08 +0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig wrote:
>

> > Mike Scott Rohan <mike.scott.ro...@asgardpublishing.co.uk> schrieb:

> > > Bronze -- the "red metal" of the degenerate
> > > petty Northern kingdom's swords
>
> > I have wondered through this thread - why would bronze be described
> > as red?  Copper, yes, but bronze?
>
> I don't understand literary color descriptions in general.  "The
> wine-dark sea"?  Unless Homer was familiar with blue wine, or the sea
> was red, I don't get it.

You haven't spent as much time as I have, washing out wine glasses.
Take a glass with just a trace of red wine in it, add a drop of
water. What you get is invariably _blue_. I'm still trying to figure
that out, but I suspect there's a causal relationship here.

> And while Tolkien's "red metal" is unique in my experience, I
> remember seeing several authors use the phrase "red gold".  I'm
> sorry, but in the words of Lord Blackadder, "The color of gold ... is
> gold."

Yes, I've always loved that one. Fantasy writers are completely in-
love with the concept of "red gold" - to the extent that Stephen
Donaldson felt it worthwhile to make "white gold" the centre of his
masterwork.

[derek]

On Sep 25, 5:01 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:

> On the other hand,
> Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
> of a blueberry

I always love these.

English has different words for the color of the sky and the color of
blueberries, too. Blueberries, in my experience, are blue. The sky,
however, may be azure or cerulean. Or red.

And Eskimos (silly, that, since "Eskimos" have a number of different
languages) have 47 words for snow. Of course, you can probably work
out that many in English, too.

[derek]

On Sep 25, 3:37 pm, "O. Sharp" <o...@panix.com> wrote:

> I'm not sure I would want to use Blackadder as a definitive research
> source.  :)

Get out! Next you'll be saying I can't rely on Wikipedia.

[Steve Morrison]

derek wrote:

> And Eskimos (silly, that, since "Eskimos" have a number of different
> languages) have 47 words for snow. Of course, you can probably work
> out that many in English, too.

Well, that last factoid is questionable, since the Arctic languages
are polysynthetic, meaning they can and do form an indefinite number
of words from any given root. This page has a decent discussion:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.html

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> On Sep 25, 5:01 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>> On the other hand,
>> Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
>> of a blueberry
>
> I always love these.
>
> English has different words for the color of the sky and the color of
> blueberries, too. Blueberries, in my experience, are blue. The sky,
> however, may be azure or cerulean. Or red.

The point is so-called "primary colour terms". In English, azure and
cerulean are not primary - anything that is either of those, is also
blue. In Russian, something that we would call "blue" is
(supposedly) necessarily either "sinij" (синий) `deep blue, indigo' or
"goluboj" (голубой) `(light) blue'.
However, the word for blueberry (or other blue berries) is голубика.

Curiously, голубой is transparently derived from the word for pigeon,
and is etymologically just "the colour of a pigeon's (neck?)
plumage". However, like "orange" in English (from the fruit), it's now
seen as a primary colour term.

If anybody's really curious, I could subject one of my Russian friends
to a colour matching test...

[derek]

On Sep 26, 5:03 am, Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>
> > On Sep 25, 5:01 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >> On the other hand,
> >> Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
> >> of a blueberry
>
> > I always love these.
>
> > English has different words for the color of the sky and the color of
> > blueberries, too.  Blueberries, in my experience, are blue.  The sky,
> > however, may be azure or cerulean.  Or red.
>
> The point is so-called "primary colour terms". In English, azure and
> cerulean are not primary - anything that is either of those, is also
> blue. In Russian, something that we would call "blue" is
> (supposedly) necessarily either "sinij" (синий) `deep blue, indigo' or
> "goluboj" (голубой) `(light) blue'.

OK, I see your point (and note your hint of scepticism), but I'm sure
if I disturb the little gray cells a little I can think of more than
one similar example where in English we have two different words where
another language uses only one. Or vice versa.

[derek]

On Sep 26, 1:20 am, Steve Morrison <rima...@toast.net> wrote:
> derek wrote:
> > And Eskimos (silly, that, since "Eskimos" have a number of different
> > languages) have 47 words for snow.  Of course, you can probably work
> > out that many in English, too.
>
> Well, that last factoid is questionable, since the Arctic languages
> are polysynthetic, meaning they can and do form an indefinite number
> of words from any given root.

Of COURSE it's questionable! That was rather my point. I was
questioning the idea that Russian has merely two different words for
blue in sky and blueberries (it could be true, it just seems unlikely
to someone who knows a fair bit about English etymology but nothing
about Russian). It's not the sort of thing you can accurately say
about many languages. English is not - if I understand you correctly
- "polysynthetic", but it isn't above creating an indefinite number of
words from any root (that is, we commonly turn phrases into
hyphenations, and then into single compounds - it's a slower process
than German [which I presume _is_ polysynthetic] which would simply
add an entire sentence and drop the spacing). Additionally, I'd be
really surprised if there aren't 47 different local English variants
of words for snow derived from other languages

[Paul S. Person]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 18:04:14 -0700 (PDT), derek <de...@pointerstop.ca>
wrote:

>On Sep 24, 4:45 pm, Stan Brown <the_stan_br...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>> On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 06:47:08 +0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>
>> > Mike Scott Rohan <mike.scott.ro...@asgardpublishing.co.uk> schrieb:
>> > > Bronze -- the "red metal" of the degenerate
>> > > petty Northern kingdom's swords
>>
>> > I have wondered through this thread - why would bronze be described
>> > as red?  Copper, yes, but bronze?
>>
>> I don't understand literary color descriptions in general.  "The
>> wine-dark sea"?  Unless Homer was familiar with blue wine, or the sea
>> was red, I don't get it.
>
>You haven't spent as much time as I have, washing out wine glasses.
>Take a glass with just a trace of red wine in it, add a drop of
>water. What you get is invariably _blue_. I'm still trying to figure
>that out, but I suspect there's a causal relationship here.

Newton (I happen to be reading his /Optics/ at the moment) would
explain it (if I understand him correctly) by the addition of water
changing the reflectivity (if you are looking at it) or refrangibility
(if you are looking through it) of the wine and/or changing which rays
are being absorbed. He's pretty vague because he has figured out that
it isn't that the rays are bouncing off of the actual surface, but
that leaves ... nothing to be causing it -- that is, some unspecified
property, not related to the surface or the particles composing the
substance, is said to be causing it, but he has no idea what it might
be.

If you are wondering why it can't be the surface, he points out that a
polished glass surface, which is a very good mirror, is, in fact, a
complete mass of defects and only looks smooth because the defects are
so small. If, then, the light bounced off the surface, it would be
scattered by these defects in all directions, while, in fact, it
bounces back and forms a coherent image. And it cannot be the
components because, if the components of a transparent object affected
the light, then that object would not be transparent but, at best,
milky and, at worst, opaque.

Since light is (if I have this right) in current theory (and quite
likely in reality as well, given how well this theory works) a set of
electromagnetic waves, rather than a collection of "rays", presumably
the effect involves a change in some electromagnetic property of the
liquid.

[Paul S. Person]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:01:25 -0400, John W Kennedy
<jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:

>On 2011-09-25 17:17:02 +0000, Paul S. Person said:
>> He suggested that, in the course of time, the human being's senses
>> become more sensitive, explaining why really subtle things like auras
>> (IIRC; it could have been spirit guides) only became detectable in the
>> 19th century (Madame Ouspenskaya, IIRC).
>>
>> One of the "proofs" of this argument was, precisely, Homers' "wine-red
>> sea", which was alleged to show that man's sense of sight could not
>> distinguish between red and blue in Homer's time but had become far
>> more sensitive since them.
>
>Exploded by linguists long ago. There are languages even today with no
>words for colors beyond "light" and "dark", but the speakers of those
>languages can perceive colors just as accurately as we can; they just
>don't have names for 'em. Even in the industrialized world, there are
>differences. Few languages have a word for "pink", and the word
>"orange" entered English only a few centuries ago. On the other hand,
>Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
>of a blueberry, while in Welsh grass and the sky are traditionally the
>same color (though, under cultural pressure from English, Welsh colors
>are realigning).

The assertion was not that they didn't have the words needed to do so;
the assertion was that THEY COULD NOT SEE THE DIFFERENCE WITH THEIR
VERY OWN EYES. Sorry for shouting at you. I realize that the proposal
is so ludicrous that you naturally took it to mean something other
than what it actually meant.

I very much doubt that linguists have anything to say about this
except, perhaps, to note that, if the colors could not be
distinguished, there would be no need for separate words.

Evolutionary biologists, on the other hand, would surely regard it as
unlikely that human visual perception could develop from not seeing
any difference between blue and red to the point where they could do
so today in so short a time (Homer would have been, what, 800 BC? 2900
years ago?).

Of course, not everyone sees colors the same way. Many forms of color
blindness, as I understand it, exist, depending on just what colors
can and can not be distinguished.

As to the phrase itself, I believe it is simply a catch-phrase, that
is, a description of the deep sea which had become traditional long
before Homer and is used by him (or them, there is, IIRC, some doubt
as to an actual Homer existing) simply because it is expected, not
because it is intended to convey any actual meaning.

Russian also has two different phrases for "Red Square"; if you are
only familiar with one of them, read the Arkady Renko novel /Red
Square/ and you will learn of the other.

At some point I heard an interesting story: in the mid-19th century, a
certain group of workers were given privileged positions. These
workers could tell, by looking a the steel, when it was ready to pour,
something most workers could not do. They could see many more shades
of color than most people could. And it was hereditary: their sons
often had the same trait (their daughters, of course, did not work in
steel mills in the middle of the 19th century).

[John W Kennedy]

On 2011-09-26 01:10:18 +0000, derek said:

> On Sep 25, 5:01 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>> On the other hand,
>> Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
>> of a blueberry
>
> I always love these.
>
> English has different words for the color of the sky and the color of
> blueberries, too. Blueberries, in my experience, are blue. The sky,
> however, may be azure or cerulean. Or red.

"Azure" and "cerulean" are not basic color words in the way that "pink"
is. We do not object to hearing azure and cerulean things called
"blue", but we only call pink things "red" when we're trying to win an
argument.

[John W Kennedy]

On 2011-09-26 13:04:12 +0000, derek said:

> On Sep 26, 1:20 am, Steve Morrison <rima...@toast.net> wrote:
>> derek wrote:
>>> And Eskimos (silly, that, since "Eskimos" have a number of different
>>> languages) have 47 words for snow.  Of course, you can probably work
>>> out that many in English, too.
>>
>> Well, that last factoid is questionable, since the Arctic languages
>> are polysynthetic, meaning they can and do form an indefinite number
>> of words from any given root.
>
> Of COURSE it's questionable! That was rather my point. I was
> questioning the idea that Russian has merely two different words for
> blue in sky and blueberries (it could be true, it just seems unlikely
> to someone who knows a fair bit about English etymology but nothing
> about Russian).

Etymology has nothing to do with it at all; it's a question of the
mental model.

> It's not the sort of thing you can accurately say
> about many languages. English is not - if I understand you correctly
> - "polysynthetic", but it isn't above creating an indefinite number of
> words from any root (that is, we commonly turn phrases into
> hyphenations, and then into single compounds - it's a slower process
> than German [which I presume _is_ polysynthetic] which would simply
> add an entire sentence and drop the spacing).

Neither German nor English is polysynthetic. A polysynthetic language
is one in which it is difficult or impossible to make a clear
distinction between the concepts of "word" and "sentence".

> Additionally, I'd be
> really surprised if there aren't 47 different local English variants
> of words for snow derived from other languages

Mere borrowings aren't the issue at hand, which rather involves words
like "snow", "slush", "sleet", "flurries", "powder", etc..

[John W Kennedy]

On 2011-09-26 08:03:01 +0000, Julian Bradfield said:

> On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>> On Sep 25, 5:01 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>> On the other hand,
>>> Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
>>> of a blueberry
>>
>> I always love these.
>>
>> English has different words for the color of the sky and the color of
>> blueberries, too. Blueberries, in my experience, are blue. The sky,
>> however, may be azure or cerulean. Or red.
>
> The point is so-called "primary colour terms". In English, azure and
> cerulean are not primary - anything that is either of those, is also
> blue. In Russian, something that we would call "blue" is
> (supposedly) necessarily either "sinij" (синий) `deep blue, indigo' or
> "goluboj" (голубой) `(light) blue'.
> However, the word for blueberry (or other blue berries) is голубика.

My mistake. I was trying to think of a natural object that is
unquestionably "blue" in English, and there aren't very many.

[John W Kennedy]

I gave you one in the first place: "pink".

[tenworld]

On Sep 25, 6:04 pm, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
.
>
> You haven't spent as much time as I have, washing out wine glasses.
> Take a glass with just a trace of red wine in it, add a drop of
> water.  What you get is invariably _blue_.  I'm still trying to figure
> that out, but I suspect there's a causal relationship here.

There is blue pigment in red wine just as there is blue in many
roseblooms even though no one has figured out how to grow a true blue
rose.
Any dark red color must have more tha just the primary red. Since
black is a combo of red-green-blue than yes blue is there in wine.

As for the wine-dark sea, well I often drink wine in a darkened room
and a good red really is as dark as a stormy ocean.

[John W Kennedy]

I didn't get the assertion wrong, I merely said that it is proven false.

> I very much doubt that linguists have anything to say about this
> except, perhaps, to note that, if the colors could not be
> distinguished, there would be no need for separate words.
>
> Evolutionary biologists, on the other hand, would surely regard it as
> unlikely that human visual perception could develop from not seeing
> any difference between blue and red to the point where they could do
> so today in so short a time (Homer would have been, what, 800 BC? 2900
> years ago?).

That is also true.

>
> Of course, not everyone sees colors the same way. Many forms of color
> blindness, as I understand it, exist, depending on just what colors
> can and can not be distinguished.

>
>
> As to the phrase itself, I believe it is simply a catch-phrase, that
> is, a description of the deep sea which had become traditional long
> before Homer and is used by him (or them, there is, IIRC, some doubt
> as to an actual Homer existing) simply because it is expected, not
> because it is intended to convey any actual meaning.
>
> Russian also has two different phrases for "Red Square"; if you are
> only familiar with one of them, read the Arkady Renko novel /Red
> Square/ and you will learn of the other.
>
> At some point I heard an interesting story: in the mid-19th century, a
> certain group of workers were given privileged positions. These
> workers could tell, by looking a the steel, when it was ready to pour,
> something most workers could not do. They could see many more shades
> of color than most people could. And it was hereditary: their sons
> often had the same trait (their daughters, of course, did not work in
> steel mills in the middle of the 19th century).

Some people have four types of cone, instead of three. To them, the
"color solid" is a tesseract. They are, in fact, mostly women. If you
know someone, probably a woman, who insists that all color photographs
and television are horribly wrong, she is quite possibly a tetrachromat.

[sean_q]

On 9/26/2011 9:02 AM, Paul S. Person wrote:

> Since light is (if I have this right) in current theory (and quite
> likely in reality as well, given how well this theory works) a set of
> electromagnetic waves

Photons are quantum objects and exhibit both particle and
wave-like properties.

Does Tolkien's Universe conform to the Quantum Theory?
Or is it Newtonian, or what? This has been debated both here
and elsewhere. For instance:

At first he [Sam] could see nothing. In his great need he drew
out once more the phial of Galadriel, but it was pale and cold
in his trembling hand and threw no light into that stifling dark.
He was come to the heart of the realm of Sauron and the forges
of his ancient might, greatest in Middle-earth; all other powers
were here subdued.

This is wonderfully dramatic writing, but debatable physics.
How can that "stifling dark" be explained; was Sammath Naur
an Event Horizon, or were the walls made of some (near) ideal
blackbody material?

SQ

[derek]

On Sep 26, 2:56 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> On 2011-09-26 13:04:12 +0000, derek said:

> Neither German nor English is polysynthetic. A polysynthetic language
> is one in which it is difficult or impossible to make a clear
> distinction between the concepts of "word" and "sentence".

Er... like in German ?

> >   Additionally, I'd be
> > really surprised if there aren't 47 different local English variants
> > of words for snow derived from other languages
>
> Mere borrowings aren't the issue at hand, which rather involves words
> like "snow", "slush", "sleet", "flurries", "powder", etc..

Well, that's just silly. Of _course_ "mere borrowings" are important
in this context - without them, English wouldn't be English. The
"mere borrowings" are one of the significant reasons why English will
continue to win out over other choices as the world's most important
"second" language.

The real difference in numbers of words for snow in English and
Inuktitut is more closely aligned to mathematics' concept of
"countable" and "uncountable" infinities.

[derek]

On Sep 26, 3:02 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> On 2011-09-26 13:07:21 +0000, derek said:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sep 26, 5:03 am, Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> >> On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>
> >>> On Sep 25, 5:01 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >>>> On the other hand,
> >>>> Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
> >>>> of a blueberry
>
> >>> I always love these.
>
> >>> English has different words for the color of the sky and the color of
> >>> blueberries, too.  Blueberries, in my experience, are blue.  The sky,
> >>> however, may be azure or cerulean.  Or red.
>
> >> The point is so-called "primary colour terms". In English, azure and
> >> cerulean are not primary - anything that is either of those, is also
> >> blue. In Russian, something that we would call "blue" is
> >> (supposedly) necessarily either "sinij" (синий) `deep blue, indigo' or
> >> "goluboj" (голубой) `(light) blue'.
>
> > OK, I see your point (and note your hint of scepticism), but I'm sure
> > if I disturb the little gray cells a little I can think of more than
> > one similar example where in English we have two different words where
> > another language uses only one. Or vice versa.
>
> I gave you one in the first place: "pink".

Good one - but you didn't actually "give" me that until I'd already
made my post. Even if you think you did, and timestamps confirm the
precedence, Usenet is not sequential - my post may well reach you
hours after you put yours on the net, but yours may still be
propagating through the ether when I send mine.

[derek]

On Sep 26, 2:47 pm, tenworld <t...@world.std.com> wrote:
> On Sep 25, 6:04 pm, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> .
>
>
>
> > You haven't spent as much time as I have, washing out wine glasses.
> > Take a glass with just a trace of red wine in it, add a drop of
> > water.  What you get is invariably _blue_.  I'm still trying to figure
> > that out, but I suspect there's a causal relationship here.
>
> There is blue pigment in red wine just as there is blue in many
> roseblooms even though no one has figured out how to grow a true blue
> rose.

Yes, I presumed that. After all, many grapes have almost black skins,
and it's mostly the skin that provides the pigment.
However, it's the fact that in a weak solution the red disappears that
surprises me. I suspect that Paul & Newton are correct about the
cause, but I can't say I understood it.

[tenworld]

just proves that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable
from the technology of the world in question

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 2:56 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>> On 2011-09-26 13:04:12 +0000, derek said:
>
>> Neither German nor English is polysynthetic. A polysynthetic language
>> is one in which it is difficult or impossible to make a clear
>> distinction between the concepts of "word" and "sentence".
>
> Er... like in German ?

No. Nobody has any difficulty distinguishing words from sentences in
German.
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
for example is just a noun. It's not a sentence of any kind.

I suspect that the weirdness of polysynthesis is overstated, but I've
never learned such a language, so I don't know.

> The real difference in numbers of words for snow in English and
> Inuktitut is more closely aligned to mathematics' concept of
> "countable" and "uncountable" infinities.

I can't understand this in any way that doesn't make it utter
nonsense. What do you mean?

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2011-09-26, Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> The point is so-called "primary colour terms". In English, azure and
> cerulean are not primary - anything that is either of those, is also
> blue. In Russian, something that we would call "blue" is
> (supposedly) necessarily either "sinij" (синий) `deep blue, indigo' or
> "goluboj" (голубой) `(light) blue'.
> However, the word for blueberry (or other blue berries) is голубика.

Pavel Iosad tells me in another place:
I have trouble describing colours. Dark blue (think 0000ff) is
definitely синий and light blue is definitely голубой (66ccff is a
good example for me), but it's definitely a prototype thing (isn't it
always?); especially the greenish hues are difficult to categorize
(for instance 0099ff - I seriously don't know).
As for the berries, it's hopeless. "Official" plant names are a mess,
and different dialects will give you different results, not to mention
that most city-dwellers like myself probably don't know their arse
from their elbow in this respect. *If* we are on the same wavelength,
a blueberry is vaccinium cyanococcus, which we don't really have;
голубика is vaccinium uliginosum, which is "bog bilberry| (according
to Wikipedia). For what it's worth, the long list of vernacular names
for the latter on the Russian Wikipedia does include синика (which I
have never heard, but what do I know).
Another species that's called bilberry is vaccinium myrtillus, which
is черника in Russian, and it's not black at all. On the other hand,
it's darker than the other ones; *I* actually call all those bluish
berries черника, because I don't know the difference.

[For the non-Russian speakers, черни is the stem for "black".]

[John W Kennedy]

On 2011-09-26 19:54:36 +0000, Julian Bradfield said:

> On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>> On Sep 26, 2:56 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>> On 2011-09-26 13:04:12 +0000, derek said:
>>
>>> Neither German nor English is polysynthetic. A polysynthetic language
>>> is one in which it is difficult or impossible to make a clear
>>> distinction between the concepts of "word" and "sentence".
>>
>> Er... like in German ?
>
> No. Nobody has any difficulty distinguishing words from sentences in
> German.
> Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
> for example is just a noun. It's not a sentence of any kind.
>
> I suspect that the weirdness of polysynthesis is overstated, but I've
> never learned such a language, so I don't know.

I think Tolkien may have intended Entish to be a polysynthetic
language. The one example he gives translates literally into English as
a noun phrase, but he goes on to give an idiomatic translation that is
a claim.

[John W Kennedy]

No, you saw my first mention of "pink", and replied to the posting it
was in; it's in the quote chain of this very message.

[derek]

On Sep 26, 4:54 pm, Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>
> > On Sep 26, 2:56 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >> On 2011-09-26 13:04:12 +0000, derek said:
>
> >> Neither German nor English is polysynthetic. A polysynthetic language
> >> is one in which it is difficult or impossible to make a clear
> >> distinction between the concepts of "word" and "sentence".
>
> > Er... like in German ?
>
> No. Nobody has any difficulty distinguishing words from sentences in
> German.
> Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
> for example is just a noun. It's not a sentence of any kind.

Julian - get a sense of humor. I did get the difference.

> > The real difference in numbers of words for snow in English and
> > Inuktitut is more closely aligned to mathematics' concept of
> > "countable" and "uncountable" infinities.
>
> I can't understand this in any way that doesn't make it utter
> nonsense. What do you mean?

Do you know what a countable or uncountable infinity is? If you
don't, it would be nonsense. If you're a mathematician, it should
make sense.

The realm of Natural numbers is a countable infinity. 1,2,3,4... It
goes on forever. The realm of Real numbers is an uncountable
infinity: Pick a real number - what's the next real number? It too
goes on forever, but it's clearly "infinitely" larger than the realm
of Natural numbers. Do I really need to explain how that relates?

[derek]

On Sep 26, 10:17 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> On 2011-09-26 19:42:31 +0000, derek said:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sep 26, 3:02 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >> On 2011-09-26 13:07:21 +0000, derek said:
>

> >>> On Sep 26, 5:03 am, Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> >>>> On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>

No, really, I didn't.

[Morgoth's Curse]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 12:34:26 -0700 (PDT), Dworkin
<u.fe...@pl.hanze.nl> wrote:

> Why did Narsil break? I do not think about a flaw in the steel. When
>bent over the wrong axis any steel blade can break.
>Still it is tempting to consider if Sauron had special magic powers to
>crumble or vaporize steel, like the Wizard King did to Frodo's sword,
>even from a distance. It occurs to me that the power of evil is often
>associated with iron.
> Then why could Sauron, assumed he had wielded his magic to damage
>Narsil, be taken by surprise by an enemy and a sword he thought he had
>slain?
>
> What did he reach for that brought him into the swing of Isildur?
>What was on the cutting edge of Narsil that did not crumble and even
>cut through the hide and armor of Sauron?

Every smith knows that the strength of any particular metal
depends on the temperature. That is why metal must be heated in order
to shape it. It seems plausible that Elendil stabbed and hacked
Sauron with Narsil numerous times and we know that Sauron's body was
very hot. It is thus possible that the rapid change in temperature
was sufficient to weaken the structural integrity of the blade--not
enough to cause the metal to flow, of course, but sufficiently that
Narsil broke beneath the weight of Elendil and Sauron as he fell upon
it. Moreover the blade certainly would have been stressed at several
points from where it had struck the armor of Elendil's enemies--and he
had been using it for at least seven years. (It is unlikely that
Elendil the opportunity to repair it during that time as he was
evidently always in the camps of the forces besieging Barad-dur.)

One final point which has been hitherto overlooked: Sauron's
last combat took place on the slopes of Mt. Doom. Tolkien
specifically notes that Orodruin was the heart of Sauron's realm and
the place where he was strongest. Therefore it seems likely that his
inherent strength (along with that of the Ring) would be greater than
it was elsewhere.

Morgoth's Curse

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2011-09-27, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>> > The real difference in numbers of words for snow in English and
>> > Inuktitut is more closely aligned to mathematics' concept of
>> > "countable" and "uncountable" infinities.
>>
>> I can't understand this in any way that doesn't make it utter
>> nonsense. What do you mean?
>
> Do you know what a countable or uncountable infinity is? If you
> don't, it would be nonsense. If you're a mathematician, it should
> make sense.

I am a mathematician - and moreover a mathematician who sometimes
works in set theory and philosophical logic - and it doesn't make
sense.

> The realm of Natural numbers is a countable infinity. 1,2,3,4... It
> goes on forever. The realm of Real numbers is an uncountable
> infinity: Pick a real number - what's the next real number? It too
> goes on forever, but it's clearly "infinitely" larger than the realm
> of Natural numbers. Do I really need to explain how that relates?

You don't understand the difference between cardinality and density.
The property of there being no "next" real number is density of the
ordering, not uncountability of the set. The rationals, which are
countable, are also dense.
And the fact that the cardinality of the reals is larger than that of
the naturals, so far from being clear, was one of the great advances
in mathematics, which was hotly contested at the time by leading
mathematicians who considered it repugnant.
Nowadays we teach the diagonal proof, and it seems clear, but that's only
because we hide the deeper discussions about what it depends on until
later in the philosophy of mathematics or logic courses.

So yes, you do need to explain how it relates. (Unless it's another
attempt at a joke - in which case I'm sorry, but there are too many
cranks in the world who try to abuse transfinite numbers (they're
almost as popular with cranks as Gödel's theorems), so those of us in
logic have rather itchy trigger fingers.)

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2011-09-27, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> On Sep 26, 10:17 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>> On 2011-09-26 19:42:31 +0000, derek said:
>> > On Sep 26, 3:02 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>> >> On 2011-09-26 13:07:21 +0000, derek said:
>>
>> >>> On Sep 26, 5:03 am, Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>> >>>> On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>>
>> >>>>> On Sep 25, 5:01 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:

*******>> >>>>>> On the other hand,
*******>> >>>>>> Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
*******>> >>>>>> of a blueberry

>> >>>>> I always love these.
>> >>>>> English has different words for the color of the sky and the color of
>> >>>>> blueberries, too.  Blueberries, in my experience, are blue.  The sky,
>> >>>>> however, may be azure or cerulean.  Or red.
>>
>> >>>> The point is so-called "primary colour terms". In English, azure and
>> >>>> cerulean are not primary - anything that is either of those, is also
>> >>>> blue. In Russian, something that we would call "blue" is
>> >>>> (supposedly) necessarily either "sinij" (синий) `deep blue, indigo' or
>> >>>> "goluboj" (голубой) `(light) blue'.
>>
>> >>> OK, I see your point (and note your hint of scepticism), but I'm sure
>> >>> if I disturb the little gray cells a little I can think of more than
>> >>> one similar example where in English we have two different words where
>> >>> another language uses only one. Or vice versa.
>>
>> >> I gave you one in the first place: "pink".
>>
>> > Good one - but you didn't actually "give" me that until I'd already
>> > made my post.  Even if you think you did, and timestamps confirm the
>> > precedence, Usenet is not sequential - my post may well reach you
>> > hours after you put yours on the net, but yours may still be
>> > propagating through the ether when I send mine.
>>
>> No, you saw my first mention of "pink", and replied to the posting it
>> was in; it's in the quote chain of this very message.
>
> No, really, I didn't.

Yes you did. In the quote chain above, the part I've marked with
asterisks is a quote that you snipped from John's message. In the
preceding sentence (which you excised) he mentioned "pink" as an
example of something that English has and others don't.

[derek]

So, you still don't see that "really, I didn't"...

[Mike Scott Rohan]

On Sep 24, 8:45 pm, Stan Brown <the_stan_br...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 06:47:08 +0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig wrote:
>
> > Mike Scott Rohan <mike.scott.ro...@asgardpublishing.co.uk> schrieb:
> > > Bronze -- the "red metal" of the degenerate
> > > petty Northern kingdom's swords
>
> > I have wondered through this thread - why would bronze be described
> > as red?  Copper, yes, but bronze?
>
> I don't understand literary color descriptions in general.  "The
> wine-dark sea"?  Unless Homer was familiar with blue wine, or the sea
> was red, I don't get it.

There's been a lot of discussion about this. Did less sophisticated
cultures see colours differently? Not distinguish as much? Linguistic
evidence does suggest this. Old Norse sagas refer to what we'd call
black men as blamenn (minus accent), blue men. And there's at least
one language that doesn't distinguish between blue and green. I
suspect it's oriental, but my wife, a Philadelphia Welshie, thinks
Welsh; could even be both. She adds that the word "glas" can mean blue
(most usually); green ; grey; pale; young; or even raw. Make of that
what you like.

The "wine-dark sea" one has attracted an especial level of
controversy. My own private explanation comes from some experience of
sailing; the Mediterranean in particular, but almost all seas at some
point, display two colours -- light fresh green under direct sunlight,
dark bluish under cloud. You can often watch them change as the cloud
shadows run across the surface. The Med is usually a bit flatter than
the Atlantic or Pacific, with lower swell, so the effect's more
apparent there. Now if you read Homer, one thing stands out -- the
ancient Greeks always *mixed* their wine, white (which is actually
greenish-yellow) and red in the same bowl, usually metal. Both wines
were poured in simultaneously, with some ceremony, so they mingled.
The alternating swirls of dark and light might well suggest a bright
but cloudy sea. Just a guess, but I've never heard much of an
alternative.
>
> And while Tolkien's "red metal" is unique in my experience, I
> remember seeing several authors use the phrase "red gold".  I'm
> sorry, but in the words of Lord Blackadder, "The color of gold ... is
> gold."

No, it does have distinct colours. White gold is not uncommon, as I
think someone's already pointed out. Gold from different areas and
ores has different tints, especially when pure; riverine gold from
Scotland and Wales is definitely redder than the everyday alloyed
stuff in mass-produced jewellery. Certainly "red gold" is a very
respectably archaic phrase, 16th century or earlier. My guess -- not
really supported, except by observations -- is that yellow then meant
something paler and less lustrous, like dead leaves or thin ale, and
that the warm light of redder gold (especially under torch or
lamplight) led authors to prefer that colour.

Cheers,

Mike

[Taemon]

John W Kennedy wrote:

> Some people have four types of cone, instead of three. To them, the
> "color solid" is a tesseract. They are, in fact, mostly women. If you
> know someone, probably a woman, who insists that all color photographs
> and television are horribly wrong, she is quite possibly a
> tetrachromat.

Tetrachromacy occurs in humans?! Wow. That is fascinating!

/off to Wikipedia

Hmmm... it's not like in birds, who are truly tetrachromatical, but still,
apparently it's possible for some women to have an extra... kind of...
receptor.

Wow :-)

Oh, my. Some animals are pentachromats.

Again, I say wow.

T. (wowed)

[Paul S. Person]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:21:09 -0700 (PDT), derek <de...@pointerstop.ca>
wrote:

>On Sep 26, 4:54�pm, Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>> On 2011-09-26, derek <de...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>>
>> > On Sep 26, 2:56�pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>> >> On 2011-09-26 13:04:12 +0000, derek said:
>>
>> >> Neither German nor English is polysynthetic. A polysynthetic language
>> >> is one in which it is difficult or impossible to make a clear
>> >> distinction between the concepts of "word" and "sentence".
>>
>> > Er... like in German ?
>>
>> No. Nobody has any difficulty distinguishing words from sentences in
>> German.

>> Rindfleischetikettierungs�berwachungsaufgaben�bertragungsgesetz

>> for example is just a noun. It's not a sentence of any kind.
>
>Julian - get a sense of humor. I did get the difference.
>
>> > The real difference in numbers of words for snow in English and
>> > Inuktitut is more closely aligned to mathematics' concept of
>> > "countable" and "uncountable" infinities.
>>
>> I can't understand this in any way that doesn't make it utter
>> nonsense. What do you mean?
>
>Do you know what a countable or uncountable infinity is? If you
>don't, it would be nonsense. If you're a mathematician, it should
>make sense.
>
>The realm of Natural numbers is a countable infinity. 1,2,3,4... It
>goes on forever. The realm of Real numbers is an uncountable
>infinity: Pick a real number - what's the next real number? It too
>goes on forever, but it's clearly "infinitely" larger than the realm
>of Natural numbers. Do I really need to explain how that relates?

Which does nothing to explain the relation of countable/uncountable
infinity to how many words for "snow" a given language has.

[Paul S. Person]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:10:41 -0400, John W Kennedy

You said it was proven false /by linguists/.

Since when have linguists been experts on what people can actually
see? That is what was wrong with your claim.

Now, if you had said that it has been proven false by evolutionary
biologists ... at least it is within their field of expertise.

But how would it be proven? Did they invent a time machine, go back,
obtain a specimen, and run some tests? No? Then how, exactly, did they
/prove/ that human beings in the age of Homer could distinguish blue
(or green) and red with their eyes?

If the assertion were that Homeric Greek did not have separate words
for red and blue (or green), then /that/ could be proven wrong. But
that was not what was asserted. Homeric Greek could have 15 words for
various shades of red, 85 for various shades of blue, and 120 for
various shades of green /and the assertion would still be that human
beings at the time of Homer could not SEE THE DIFFERENCE between red
and blue (or green) WITH THEIR EYES/.

So, yes, your invocation of linguists to prove a fact about the human
visual system clearly shows that you did not understand what was being
asserted. But not by me, just by the author of a book I read long ago.
You made a mistake. Deal with it.

<snippo, although tetrachromaticism is interesting>

[Paul S. Person]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:45:58 -0700 (PDT), derek <de...@pointerstop.ca>
wrote:

Newton didn't understand it, really, as is clear from the /Optics/, so
join the club!

[Taemon]

Mike Scott Rohan wrote:

> Now if you read Homer, one thing stands out -- the
> ancient Greeks always *mixed* their wine, white (which is actually
> greenish-yellow) and red in the same bowl, usually metal.

Now, that is barbaric!

> No, it does have distinct colours. White gold is not uncommon, as I
> think someone's already pointed out. Gold from different areas and
> ores has different tints, especially when pure; riverine gold from
> Scotland and Wales is definitely redder than the everyday alloyed
> stuff in mass-produced jewellery. Certainly "red gold" is a very
> respectably archaic phrase, 16th century or earlier. My guess -- not
> really supported, except by observations -- is that yellow then meant
> something paler and less lustrous, like dead leaves or thin ale, and
> that the warm light of redder gold (especially under torch or
> lamplight) led authors to prefer that colour.

Hm. Well, rose-gold certainly is beautiful. Like copper, but... stronger? I
guess I think that because pure copper doesn't hold its colour, turns into
that hideous light green. Rose-gold is an alloy, of course. I haven't seen
reddish gold that isn't an alloy, I wonder what that looks like.

Never cared for yellow gold, myself. Wouldn't pick it up if I saw it lying
on the street :-)

T.

[John W Kennedy]

Since they studied the issue to determine the truth of the hypothesis.

> Now, if you had said that it has been proven false by evolutionary
> biologists ... at least it is within their field of expertise.

No it isn't, in fact; in its pure form, it's a question for field
physical anthropologists. But in this case, linguists took on the
matter, because it involved serious questions in their work.

> But how would it be proven? Did they invent a time machine, go back,
> obtain a specimen, and run some tests? No? Then how, exactly, did they
> /prove/ that human beings in the age of Homer could distinguish blue
> (or green) and red with their eyes?

They didn't. But they proved that complete, normal color vision can and
does coexist with a highly limited color vocabulary, which makes the
entire hypothesis pointless, a contrived "explanation" for an anomaly
that isn't anomalous.

>
> If the assertion were that Homeric Greek did not have separate words
> for red and blue (or green), then /that/ could be proven wrong. But
> that was not what was asserted. Homeric Greek could have 15 words for
> various shades of red, 85 for various shades of blue, and 120 for
> various shades of green /and the assertion would still be that human
> beings at the time of Homer could not SEE THE DIFFERENCE between red
> and blue (or green) WITH THEIR EYES/.

I suggest you familiarize yourself with the concept known as "burden of
proof". Any clever eight-year-old can invent contrafactuals that cannot
(or cannot conveniently) be disproven.

[Paul S. Person]

On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:37:38 -0400, John W Kennedy

Not responsive.

Just because a famous physicist studies Vitamin C and determines that
lots and lots of it is good for you does not make it "proven".

Experts can only "prove" things that are within their field of

expertise.

>> Now, if you had said that it has been proven false by evolutionary
>> biologists ... at least it is within their field of expertise.
>
>No it isn't, in fact; in its pure form, it's a question for field
>physical anthropologists. But in this case, linguists took on the
>matter, because it involved serious questions in their work.

But you did not cite field physical anthropologists. You cited
linguists.

>> But how would it be proven? Did they invent a time machine, go back,
>> obtain a specimen, and run some tests? No? Then how, exactly, did they
>> /prove/ that human beings in the age of Homer could distinguish blue
>> (or green) and red with their eyes?
>
>They didn't. But they proved that complete, normal color vision can and
>does coexist with a highly limited color vocabulary, which makes the
>entire hypothesis pointless, a contrived "explanation" for an anomaly
>that isn't anomalous.

No claim was made that that was not the case. No claim was made that a
lack of vocabulary /existed/ in Homeric Greek, let alone that it
reflected what colors could be /seen/.

So your linguists proved something which, however interesting in
itself, is not relevant to the assertion I mentioned. Which, again, is
not mine.

That couldn't have taken much "proof": people can distinguish as least
256 shades from white through gray to black, but English has only
those three color-words to apply to them, with the help of a few
modifiers ("off", "light", "dark", "very", "extremely", "like,
unbelievably, man"). So it pretty obvious to anyone who thinks about
it that people can see far more distinct colors than any language is
ever likely to have words for.

I have identified the source: Colin Wilson, /The Occult: A History/,
which, despite it's title, is actually a history of modern
spiritualism, starting with Madame Blavetsky. In other words, the
title is a flat-out lie: spiritualism is not part of "the occult".
Kabbalah, on the other hand, is part of "the occult", as are many
other topics. It is interesting that an advocate of spiritualism would
try to tie it into the occult, however; presumably, he was searching
for a way to enhance spiritualism's legitimacy by sneaking it into a
well-established field.

Now that everyone can check it out, I would be interested in learning
(since I discarded the book long ago and have no desire to encounter
it again) whether I remembered his argument correctly or whether he
did, indeed, argue from a lack of color-words in Homeric Greek (if any
such lack exists) to the theory that human beings could not see as
many colors way back then. I don't remember it that way, but it has
been a very long time since I read it.

By the way, since linguists can only work with what they have, they
can say how many color words are in Homeric Greek by counting those
used in Homer, but they cannot say (as a fact) how many other color
words existed in Homeric Greek but were never used in Homer (unless
other texts in Homeric Greek exist, in which case, of course, they can
identify those that are used in those non-Homeric Homeric Greek
texts). They can, of course, argue reasonably that color terms that
existed in, say, Attic Greek and which existed in whatever languages
Homeric Greek is related to/derived from very likely existed in
Homeric Greek as well, but that is not "proof".

>> If the assertion were that Homeric Greek did not have separate words
>> for red and blue (or green), then /that/ could be proven wrong. But
>> that was not what was asserted. Homeric Greek could have 15 words for
>> various shades of red, 85 for various shades of blue, and 120 for
>> various shades of green /and the assertion would still be that human
>> beings at the time of Homer could not SEE THE DIFFERENCE between red
>> and blue (or green) WITH THEIR EYES/.
>
>I suggest you familiarize yourself with the concept known as "burden of
>proof". Any clever eight-year-old can invent contrafactuals that cannot
>(or cannot conveniently) be disproven.

You asserted that linguists could /prove/ something about the
capabilities of the human visual system. The burden of proof is yours.
And your clarification above is /not/ sufficient to do this. To be
sufficient, they would have to prove that humans 3000 years ago could
distinguish red from blue (or green) when they saw it, not that humans
who were able to do so need not have separate words for those colors.
The result you cite is the opposite of what is needed.

I see no reason to believe that you understand the position reported.
I see no reason to believe that you, recognizing correctly that the
position reported is ludicrous beyond belief, have replaced it with
another position that linguists could address.

This is an odd situation: the position reported is so ludicrous that I
am surprised that anyone would do anything but laugh at it, and was
intended simply to illustrate how Homer's catch-phrase has been used
by at least one idiot. The argument has devolved into whether or not
linguists can prove something about how many colors people could /see/
(not name, but /see/) about 3000 years ago.

[Paul S. Person]

On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:37:43 +0200, "Taemon" <Tae...@zonnet.nl> wrote:

>Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>
>> Now if you read Homer, one thing stands out -- the
>> ancient Greeks always *mixed* their wine, white (which is actually
>> greenish-yellow) and red in the same bowl, usually metal.
>
>Now, that is barbaric!

I may be wrong, but I've always understood that they mixed wine with
water. Which, given alcohol's ability to kill microorganisms and the
state of their water supply, was not at all a bad idea.

And I was told at some point (in studying Classic Greek, IIRC) that
"barbarian" was originally a Greek word designating speakers of a
Semitic language that used "bar" for "son of" (Aramaic?). They were
called "barbarians" because, to the Greeks, they appeared to be saying
"bar bar bar bar bar" all the time.

So a "barbaric" practice would be one involving either speaking
Aramaic (?) or saying "bar bar" a lot.

[Steve Morrison]

Paul S. Person wrote:

> I have identified the source: Colin Wilson, /The Occult: A History/,
> which, despite it's title, is actually a history of modern
> spiritualism, starting with Madame Blavetsky. In other words, the
> title is a flat-out lie: spiritualism is not part of "the occult".
> Kabbalah, on the other hand, is part of "the occult", as are many
> other topics. It is interesting that an advocate of spiritualism would
> try to tie it into the occult, however; presumably, he was searching
> for a way to enhance spiritualism's legitimacy by sneaking it into a
> well-established field.
>
> Now that everyone can check it out, I would be interested in learning
> (since I discarded the book long ago and have no desire to encounter
> it again) whether I remembered his argument correctly or whether he
> did, indeed, argue from a lack of color-words in Homeric Greek (if any
> such lack exists) to the theory that human beings could not see as
> many colors way back then. I don't remember it that way, but it has
> been a very long time since I read it.

You know, this notion sounded familiar, and I now know where I read
about it before; in this old Straight Dope column:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/4u8aca6

Apparently the idea that ancient people could only distinguish a
limited number of colors goes back go Gladstone.

[JimboCat]

I have an alternate explanation for the red wine turning blue when
highly diluted: it's an effect of the pH change.

Wine is very acidic. In many locations, the water is "hard", meaning
it contains dissolved salts (mainly calcium and magnesium). These
compounds are basic - the opposite of acidic. And it is well-known
that many organic dyes are red in an acid environment and blue in a
basic one: this is in fact the basis of the archetypal "litmus test"!

You can do the experiment yourself very easily. Put a few drops of
purple grape juice or red wine into glasses of water. Into one, add a
little vinegar: it will go red. Into another, add some lye, or some
wood ash, or some soap: it will go blue. You can make a whole range of
pretty colors this way.

Oh, and BTW: I read somewhere that "wine-dark sea" is, perhaps, even
more confusing than the discussion here has captured, because ancient
Greek wines were . . . wait for it . . . GREEN!

Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"Any design problem can be solved by adding an additional level of
indirection, except for too many levels of indirection." [Cargill]

[derek]

On Oct 3, 1:55 pm, JimboCat <103134.3...@compuserve.com> wrote:

> Oh, and BTW: I read somewhere that "wine-dark sea" is, perhaps, even
> more confusing than the discussion here has captured, because ancient
> Greek wines were . . . wait for it . . . GREEN!

Hmmm. I wonder about that. The Portuguese have "vinho verde", but
it's not green in the sense of color, but of age. It's a young wine.
There are white wines with a greenish tint, but it seems unlikely to
me that that was the only tint they had in white wines.

[Paul S. Person]

On Mon, 3 Oct 2011 12:01:18 -0700 (PDT), derek <de...@pointerstop.ca>
wrote:

And the sea can be green rather than blue under some conditions.

I still prefer the "traditional tag" theory. And I still think the
"fits the scansion" theory is the best alternate. Actually relating
the color of wine to that of the sea is, at best, theory #3.

[Mike Scott Rohan]

On Oct 3, 5:55 pm, JimboCat <103134.3...@compuserve.com> wrote:

>
> > Yes, I presumed that.  After all, many grapes have almost black skins,
> > and it's mostly the skin that provides the pigment.
> > However, it's the fact that in a weak solution the red disappears that
> > surprises me.  I suspect that Paul & Newton are correct about the
> > cause, but I can't say I understood it.
>
> I have an alternate explanation for the red wine turning blue when
> highly diluted: it's an effect of the pH change.
>
> Wine is very acidic. In many locations, the water is "hard", meaning
> it contains dissolved salts (mainly calcium and magnesium). These
> compounds are basic - the opposite of acidic. And it is well-known
> that many organic dyes are red in an acid environment and blue in a
> basic one: this is in fact the basis of the archetypal "litmus test"!
>
> You can do the experiment yourself very easily. Put a few drops of
> purple grape juice or red wine into glasses of water. Into one, add a
> little vinegar: it will go red. Into another, add some lye, or some
> wood ash, or some soap: it will go blue. You can make a whole range of
> pretty colors this way.

That would fit in well enough with my point about mixing wines, too.

>
> Oh, and BTW: I read somewhere that "wine-dark sea" is, perhaps, even
> more confusing than the discussion here has captured, because ancient
> Greek wines were . . . wait for it . . . GREEN!

They are today, many of them, and so are several others -- the common
Viennese leg-dissolver Gruner Veltliner, for example.
In general I * think* it's common to wine from young grapes, only
slightly aged. Older wine turns yellower, I think; but I 'm not
speaking with any authority.

Cheers,

Mike
>

[Mike Scott Rohan]

On Sep 28, 6:33 pm, Paul S. Person <psper...@ix.netscom.com.invalid>
wrote:

> On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:37:43 +0200, "Taemon" <Tae...@zonnet.nl> wrote:
> >Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>
> >> Now if you read Homer, one thing stands out -- the
> >> ancient Greeks always *mixed* their wine, white (which is actually
> >> greenish-yellow) and red in the same bowl, usually metal.
>
> >Now, that is barbaric!
>
> I may be wrong, but I've always understood that they mixed wine with
> water. Which, given alcohol's ability to kill microorganisms and the
> state of their water supply, was not at all a bad idea.

The Romans usually used water -- Tiberius's name, Tiberius Claudius
Nero, was altered by wits to (if I remember correctly) Biberius
Caldius Mero, implying that he drank unwatered wine -- but the Greeks
mixed both colours. Odd; but then this is the nation that invented
retsina and perfumed wine.

>
> And I was told at some point (in studying Classic Greek, IIRC) that
> "barbarian" was originally a Greek word designating speakers of a
> Semitic language that used "bar" for "son of" (Aramaic?). They were
> called "barbarians" because, to the Greeks, they appeared to be saying
> "bar bar bar bar bar" all the time.
>
> So a "barbaric" practice would be one involving either speaking
> Aramaic (?) or saying "bar bar" a lot.

That's right, but so far as I know it wasn't just Aramaic in
particular -- it's the way any language sounds to a non-speaker; hence
the word "babble" in English, from Hebrew (as in Tower of...),
"balbuter" in French, "blab" from (apparently) Yiddish. People
apparently tend to compare foreign speech in their heads to the kind
of bubbling b-sounds babies make -- a very Chomskian example of the
common origins of language. Mind you, that's a relic of what I was
taught some decades back, and they may have different or more complete
theories now!

Cheers,

Mike

[Troels Forchhammer]

In message
<ba7784f7-d8cb-4da8...@z18g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>
Mike Scott Rohan <mike.sco...@asgardpublishing.co.uk> spoke
these staves:
>
> On Sep 20, 4:14 am, Stan Brown <the_stan_br...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:35:06 -0400, FL Teacher wrote:
>>>

I thought I might anticipate Christopher Kreuzer and try to come up
with a list of destroyed blades in the legendarium (though it is
certain to be incomplete)

- Angrist snapping as Beren tried to pry a second Silmaril from
the Iron Crown
- Androg breaking his bow on the insistence of Mîm
- Túrin's black blade breaking under him as he threw himself upon it
- Narsil breaking beneath Elendil 'as he fell'
- Many broken swords and axe-heads in the Chamber of Mazabul
- The morgul-knife leaving a shard inside Frodo
- Frodo's sword being broken at a distance by the Witch-king
- Gandalf's staff breaking asunder as he smote the Bridge of
Khazad-dûm
- Boromir's sword breaking
- Broken swords left by the Rohirrim next to the fire where they
burned the dead orcs
- Gandalf breaking Saruman's staff
- The Southron that Sam sees die held a broken sword
- Sam breaking his walking-staff on Gollum's back
- The broken sword of Baldor on the Paths of the Dead
- Merry's sword dissolving
- Éowyn's sword breaking 'sparkling into many shards'

>>> There isnt anything about meteoric iron that cant be duplicated
>>> with modern metallurgy, but the implication is that magic is
>>> involved. Same with Narsil, it didnt break because it was not
>>> strong, it broke because of the magic associated with Sauron's
>>> blow.
>>
>> Yes, that's my reading too.

I don't think Narsil broke as a result of magic: it didn't break from
striking Sauron, but because Elendil fell upon it. Elrond describes
it in 'The Council of Elrond':
I beheld the last combat on the slopes of Orodruin, where
Gil-galad died, and Elendil fell, and Narsil broke beneath
him
And in 'Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age' it is described
thus:
[Sauron] wrestled with Gil-galad and Elendil, and they both
were slain, and the sword of Elendil broke under him as he
fell

The breaking of Gurthang appears to have been of the same sort -- it
broke because of the dead weight of Túrin upon it. Of course in both
cases there is a symbolism attached to the breaking of the sword (one
which also plays into the reforging of the shards of Narsil), but
this seems to me related to the question of fate rather than magic.

>> Compare to Merry's sword, which didn't shatter but dissolved.
>> That's magic, pure and simple.  So I think the explanation for
>> Narsil is equally magical, not metallurgical.
>
> Yet Eowyn's sword shattered at the blow.
>
> Personally I think that both shatterings, and Narsil's, were
> profoundly bound up with the nature of Sauron and the Wraiths,
> whose physical form was only a cloak for their spiritual
> reality;

Well, I don't think it is entirely fair to put Sauron and the Witch-
king (possibly including the rest of the Ringwraiths) on the same
footing here: Sauron was an Ainu -- a self-arrayed eäla that had
become bound to his form, while the Ringwraiths were still Men, men
with material bodies that had become invisible -- there may have been
other changes to their material bodies involved (they don't appear to
need sustenance), but in essence they are still the intended
combination of a hröa and an indwelling fëa.

Narsil, as I say above, was /not/ broken because it was used to
strike at Sauron, but because Elendil fell upon it, and there is, as
far as I remember, no evidence that any other weapon used to strike
at Sauron (or other incarnate Ainur of evil, including Morgoth)
suffered any ill effects from being used for that.

> thus they could armour themselves to some extent, except against
> swords imbued with magic of their own.

I believe that the only known case of this is the Witch-king, but
there are many for whom the issue must remain unsettled because they
were either never struck by a metal weapon, or that weapon had some
kind of magic (the Balrog, for instance, is struck only by Glamdring,
the magical sword out of Gondolin).

Overall, however, I do think that the evidence suggests that it is
only the Witch-king who is protected in this way:
Aragorn explicitly specifies the Witch-king:
A foot above the lower hem there was a slash. 'This was the
stroke of Frodo's sword,' he said. 'The only hurt that it
did to his enemy, I fear; for it is unharmed, but all
blades perish that pierce that dreadful King. More deadly to
him was the name of Elbereth.' (LotR I,11 'A Knife in the Dark')

Also in an excerpt from 'The Hunt for the Ring' published in Hammond
& Scull's /Reader's Companion/ the implication is that of personal
danger to the Witch-king himself:
But above all the timid and terrified Bearer had resisted
him, had dared to strike at him with an enchanted sword
made by his own enemies long ago for /his/ destruction.
(emphasis added, RC, comments for p. '196 (I: 208).')

> Eowyn's probably wasn't; Merry's, we are told, was, which might
> explain the delay in its dissolution, to make the blow bite
> deeper.

> Of course, it could dissolve in whatever the Witch-King had for
> blood -- move over, Alien! -- but it doesn't read that way, no
> drippings and acrid odour.

;-) I agree -- that is not the impression one gets here. Such might
have been the case with Glaurung or Shelob, but neither of the swords
that bit into these were affected, though the wielders, Túrin and
Sam, were affected by whatever seeped from the monster (Túrin is
burned by the venom in Glarung's blood and Sam reels under the stench
from Shelob).

<snip very interesting discourse on the relative properties of steel
and bronze blades -- thank you!>

> What would make a sword shatter like a mirror, though, as it seems
> Narsil does? Really only one characteristic, and that's cold, a
> very low temperature indeed. Perhaps that was Old One-Eye's "body
> temperature" anyhow.

I don't think we know exactly /how/ Narsil broke in Tolkien's
imagination, only that it broke when Elendil fell upon it and the
resultant pieces are called 'shards'. I imagine that the 'shards'
were perhaps a couple of pieces of the blade in addition to the hilt-
shard. Though my knowledge of metallurgy is mainly atomic (literally:
I know something about what happens at an atomic level <GG>), I know
very little about the dynamic and static qualities of a blade, so I
can't say if such would be consistent with the blade being trapped
under a falling man.

Gurthag, on the other hand, seems to have snapped a little below the
hilt, which seems to me rather reasonable based on the dead weight of
Túrin being applied on the flat of the blade.

--
Troels Forchhammer <troelsfo(a)googlewave.com>
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was
standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Sir Isaac Newton

[Rast]

Troels Forchhammer wrote...

> I thought I might anticipate Christopher Kreuzer and try to come up
> with a list of destroyed blades in the legendarium (though it is
> certain to be incomplete)

> - Gandalf's staff breaking asunder as he smote the Bridge of
> Khazad-dûm

The Balrog's sword vs Gandalf.

Also Fingolfin's shield.