Chinese and Mayan share a common language?
Doug Weller
heard claims for Chinese influence on the writing, etc. But not this
particular one. Any comments?
Thanks.
THE COMMON ORIGIN OF MAYAN AND CHINESE -tranlated from a paragraph in
-chinese linguist Chundong Hu's book <<the culture of Mayan (i am not
a good translator, so it is very crapy translation)[comment by the
translator, not me!]
Central American Mayan who created one of the ancient culture in the
world and chinese share common ancestors about 5000 years ago. This
can be seen from the imaging between mayan language and chinese
language. First let's look at the the imaging between individual
words. In each couple separated by semi colons, the one before - sign
is pronunication in today chinese, the second is pronunciation in
mayan. In the bracket is the meaning of the word in each language.
han(male)-han(son in law); tan(speak)-tan(speak); tan(charcoal)-
taan(ash); cha(fork)-cha(fork); suan(acid)-suun(acid); bao(bag)-
pauo(bag); chi(eat)-chii(eat meat); chi(teeth)-chii(mouth); chai(wood
for burning)-che(wood for burning); chuan(boat)-chem(boat);
zhong(deseminate)-chum(deseminate); tuan(round)-tom(round);
keng(hole)-kom(hole); wa(frog)-uo(frog); gan(a ancient weapon)-
kan(protect); an(me)-en(me); yi(he)-y(his); deng(stool)-tem(stool);
tan(worship place)-tem(worship place); pang(fat)-pem(fat);
If we compare ancient chinese and ancient mayan, the imaging is more
clear. The common language origin is more clear.
ka(bitter)-ka(bitter); kai(song)-kai(sing a song); hiua(rain)-
ha(rain, water); miua(no)-ma(no); tau(knife)-ta(knife); taa(belly)-
taa(belly); diek(straight)-tek(straight); piek(yard)-pak(yard);
chiak(red)-chak(red); shiuo(count)-xok(pronuciate as shok, count);
dok(read)-xok(read); biuat(chop)-bat(hachet); liang(shiny)-
lem(shiny); diang(long)-tam(long); yang(center)-yam(center);
giuan(tired)-kan(tired); giang(strong)-kan(strong); huang(yellow)-
kan(yellow); sheng(birth)-sian(birth time); dzian(front)-tan(front);
The chinese above is ancient chinese, it is from the book<<classic of
poem which is poems and songs collected around 1000 B.C. The mayan
here is mid-ancient, some are primitive ancient.
Because Pacific separated chinese and mayan, the imaging is not exact
and sometimes there is only similarity. but we can see the trace of
common origin. The amount of similar words are huge, so it is not
accidental similarity,
The commonly-used words shared by mayan and chinese, provided a way
to calculate the time these two languages are apart. Linguist use a
100 basic-words table, look for the proportion of common words and
calculate the time two languages are separate. Among 100 commonly
used basic words, 26 are shared by mayan and chinese, if we remove
four which are ambiguous, there are 22 left. The time two languages
are separate is around 5000 years. 5000 years ago is the time when
chinese and mayan people separated. This result matches the following
research result of linguistics, archeology, anthropology and history
very well.
1. Around 4600 years ago, primitive mayan language
disintegrate into mayan dialects.
2. The earlist pottery in Mayan is made around 4500.
[Note -- this seems a bit early]
3. Mayan use 3113 B.C. as the start of their
calendar which is around 5000 years ago.
4. In academic area,
scholars think mayan are the latest group arrive at central america
from asia
5. mayan saga and legend says their ancestors came from
west or north by boat.
???
Doug
Doug Weller member of moderation panel sci.archaeology.moderated
Submissions to: sci-archaeol...@medieval.org
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
Peter T. Daniels
No source is given for the "Mayan" language, nor is it stated which of
the 30 or so Mayan languages they come from.
The "Ancient Chinese" forms are not the pronunciations the words had in
1000 BCE (or whenever), but they're the modern pronunciations of
characters that I gather are used in poems that are believed to go back
that far.
> 1. Around 4600 years ago, primitive mayan language
> disintegrate into mayan dialects.
The modern Maya languages would differ a lot more than they do if the
split were that far back.
> 2. The earlist pottery in Mayan is made around 4500.
>
> [Note -- this seems a bit early]
>
> 3. Mayan use 3113 B.C. as the start of their
> calendar which is around 5000 years ago.
Start of the current cycle, not the creation of the universe or anything
like that.
> 4. In academic area,
> scholars think mayan are the latest group arrive at central america
> from asia
What scholars? I thought the latest group was the Esquimaux.
> 5. mayan saga and legend says their ancestors came from
> west or north by boat.
"West or north" of Maya territory is still within the Caribbean.
> ???
Yup, that's the right reaction.
BTW the Sumerologist Robert Whiting claimed that Chinese influence on
Maya writing is "clear" from the structure of Maya glyph blocks. (It
soon turned out that Bob doesn't know much about the structure of Maya
glyph blocks.)
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Jacques Guy
> I found this on a mailing list. I've heard the claims about Mande, I've
> heard claims for Chinese influence on the writing, etc. But not this
> particular one. Any comments?
Just the usual bogus comparative linguistics, like showing
how Navaho and Basque are related. Knowing no Navaho nor
Basque to speak of helps a lot, too. There is a fellow who
claims that Etruscan shares a 100% cognates with Dravidian,
too (yes, he finds a Dravidian cognate for every single
word in his Etruscan list). Let's see this one, quickly
>First let's look at the the imaging between individual
> words. In each couple separated by semi colons, the one before - sign
> is pronunication in today chinese, the second is pronunciation in
> mayan. In the bracket is the meaning of the word in each language.
But I really don't feel like reaaching for my Mayan books, so...
> han(male)-han(son in law); tan(speak)-tan(speak); tan(charcoal)-
> taan(ash); cha(fork)-cha(fork); suan(acid)-suun(acid); bao(bag)-
> pauo(bag); chi(eat)-chii(eat meat); chi(teeth)-chii(mouth); chai(wood
> for burning)-che(wood for burning); chuan(boat)-chem(boat);
> zhong(deseminate)-chum(deseminate); tuan(round)-tom(round);
> keng(hole)-kom(hole); wa(frog)-uo(frog); gan(a ancient weapon)-
> kan(protect); an(me)-en(me);
yi(he)-y(his);
Wot??? "He" is Chinese yi, "his" Mayan y??? All the other
Chinese words are recognizable modern Mandarin pronunciations.
"He" is Mandarin "ta", "his" is Mayan "u-".
As for the rest, even granting that they are right, I have
time and again played this game with great success, finding
40% cognates between Siouan and Austronesian for instance,
when I was doing my PhD 30 years ago. Just the other day,
looking in forgotten crannies of my hard disk, I found a
post by Miguel Carrasquer showing such "cognates" between
Etruscan and... modern Dutch!
> If we compare ancient chinese and ancient mayan, the imaging is more
> clear. The common language origin is more clear.
> ka(bitter)-ka(bitter); kai(song)-kai(sing a song); hiua(rain)-
> ha(rain, water); miua(no)-ma(no); tau(knife)-ta(knife); taa(belly)-
> taa(belly); diek(straight)-tek(straight); piek(yard)-pak(yard);
Like PTD wrote, that's no ancient Chinese, at best it's
reconstituted Chinese about the time of Mencius (350 BC).
> The chinese above is ancient chinese, it is from the book<<classic of
> poem which is poems and songs collected around 1000 B.C.
Bullshit!
> The amount of similar words are huge, so it is not
> accidental similarity,
The usual result when consonants count for little,
vowels for much less, and tones for nothing. I did
even better comparing French and Japanese. Ignoring
the evidence of other Romance languages does help a
lot there, as French has undergone considerable
phonological decay. Chinese, BTW, has undergone
far, far more.
> The commonly-used words shared by mayan and chinese, provided a way
> to calculate the time these two languages are apart. Linguist use a
> 100 basic-words table, look for the proportion of common words and
> calculate the time two languages are separate.
Lexicostatics rears its lovely head. It has been proved wrong,
again, again, and again. To quote Robert Blust, the foremost
Austronesianist: "Lexicostatics is a hydra. You have to keep
cutting off its heads". I see they've grown back. No
surprise.
> Among 100 commonly
> used basic words, 26 are shared by mayan and chinese, if we remove
> four which are ambiguous, there are 22 left. The time two languages
> are separate is around 5000 years.
Granting that lexicostatics _is_ right, log(0.22)/2log(0.81)=3.6
i.e. 3600 years.
> 1. Around 4600 years ago, primitive mayan language
> disintegrate into mayan dialects.
No evidence for that date. Or perhaps Bishop Usher's
dating of the fall of the Babel tower?
> 2. The earlist pottery in Mayan is made around 4500.
"Disintagration" into dialects and pottery??? What's
the relationship?
> 3. Mayan use 3113 B.C. as the start of their
> calendar which is around 5000 years ago.
And the Jews' starting date for their calendar,
is that the time of the split of Hebrew from...
Egyptian? And the Christians', is that the time
of...? And the Muslims, is that the time of...?
> 4. In academic area,
> scholars think mayan are the latest group arrive at central america
> from asia
Complete fabrication.
The only shred of evidence of remotely possible
contact between Chinese and Mayas is not mentioned.
So I won't mention it. Let someone else feed the
bullshit mill.
Doug Weller
I noticed that in the bit of research I did before posting.
>The "Ancient Chinese" forms are not the pronunciations the words had in
>1000 BCE (or whenever), but they're the modern pronunciations of
>characters that I gather are used in poems that are believed to go back
>that far.
Thanks.
>> 1. Around 4600 years ago, primitive mayan language
>> disintegrate into mayan dialects.
>
>The modern Maya languages would differ a lot more than they do if the
>split were that far back.
>
>> 2. The earlist pottery in Mayan is made around 4500.
>>
>> [Note -- this seems a bit early]
>>
>> 3. Mayan use 3113 B.C. as the start of their
>> calendar which is around 5000 years ago.
>
>Start of the current cycle, not the creation of the universe or anything
>like that.
>
>> 4. In academic area,
>> scholars think mayan are the latest group arrive at central america
>> from asia
>
>What scholars? I thought the latest group was the Esquimaux.
Er, Central America, but even so I don't know what this is referring to.
>
>> 5. mayan saga and legend says their ancestors came from
>> west or north by boat.
>
>"West or north" of Maya territory is still within the Caribbean.
Agreed.
>
>> ???
>
>Yup, that's the right reaction.
>
>BTW the Sumerologist Robert Whiting claimed that Chinese influence on
>Maya writing is "clear" from the structure of Maya glyph blocks. (It
>soon turned out that Bob doesn't know much about the structure of Maya
>glyph blocks.)
Thanks for all of the above, particularly the latter -- where can I find
out more about that? I've run into the claim, but nothing more than the
claim.
Dylan Sung
"Jacques Guy" <jg...@guess.where> wrote in message
news:3DA1AD...@guess.where...
> Doug Weller wrote:
>
> > If we compare ancient chinese and ancient mayan, the imaging is more
> > clear. The common language origin is more clear.
>
> > ka(bitter)-ka(bitter); kai(song)-kai(sing a song); hiua(rain)-
> > ha(rain, water); miua(no)-ma(no); tau(knife)-ta(knife); taa(belly)-
> > taa(belly); diek(straight)-tek(straight); piek(yard)-pak(yard);
>
> Like PTD wrote, that's no ancient Chinese, at best it's
> reconstituted Chinese about the time of Mencius (350 BC).
>
> > The chinese above is ancient chinese, it is from the book<<classic of
> > poem which is poems and songs collected around 1000 B.C.
>
> Bullshit!
Agreed. The character ku3 <bitter> appears only 16 times in the entire
corpus of Shijing ('The Book of Poetry'). Not one is followed by the
character ge1 <song>. Unless of course, I've identified these characters
wrongly from the reconstructed Chinese sounds above.
Dyl.
mike
@worldnet.att.net:
good work, peter. -- you notice he forgot to mention the Olmec being
founded and organized by a Nubian sea captain who got blown off course on
his way to atlantis?
Doug Weller
>
>THE COMMON ORIGIN OF MAYAN AND CHINESE -tranlated from a paragraph in
>-chinese linguist Chundong Hu's book <<the culture of Mayan (i am not
>a good translator, so it is very crapy translation)[comment by the
>translator, not me!]
Found a continuation of the above claims:
On the other hand, from the aspects of sound and
grammar, the two languages also share comman features.
Here is a brief introduction.
1. Both are tone languages. Ancient chinese
has 'flat', 'up', 'leave'(down), 'enter'(quick) four
tones. 'enter' tone is the short sound of a word ended
with p, t, k. Today in cantonese dialect these tones
are still kept. Mayan language also has low, high,
down, quick tones, completely matches chinese.
Differentiate meaning with tones is one of the most
distinct characteristic of china-tibet phylum. This is
the very strong evidence of the close relationship of
the two languages.
2. In the dialects of two languages, both has the
phenomenon of 'n', 'ng' rhinolalia(nose sound)
consonant variety. For example, a lot of rhinolalia in
beijing mandarin(standard chinese) does not appear in
southern chinese dialects. In Mayan language, Yucatan
language can be regarded as the stardard as mandarin
chinese, because mayan ancient books reflects yucatan
language. But the words with nose consonant in yucatan
is only a breathing out sound without rhinolalia. The
variety of word-end rhinolalia is a rule in chinese
sound evolution. The same rule existing in mayan
language shows the tie of two languages.
3. The evolution of mayan and chinese shows the vowel
heightening effect, in other words, "a"(in class)
changing to "o"(in close), "o"(in close) changing
to "u"(in flute), "e"(in k-e-rnel) changing to "i"(in
hit). Again, we see the evolution of two languages
sharing same rule. The only plausible explanation is
that two closely related languages sharing the same
rule in evolution.
4. Both in mayan and chinese there are a lot of
repetition sound phenomenon, especially in dialects.
In chinese "tan tan" means every day. In
mayan, "kinkin" has the same meaning. "hon-hon"(very
red) in chinese has the saming meaning as "chac-chak"
in mayan. On the other hand, mayan and chinese share
the same repetition phase structure. "hun-chan-
chan"(yellow-orange-ish) in chinese is equivalent
to mayan "kan-tel-tel". "bye-shin-shin"(white-ish) is
equivalent to mayan "sak-tin-tin". There are a lot of
instances like these. They are not only the same in
structure and meaning but also similar in ear-feeling.
5. Mayan and chinese use a large amount of unit noun,
or quantifier. we can generally find corresponding
quantifier from a chinese quantifier. For example, in
chinese, the frequently used quantifiers for counting
animals in chinese are "koe", "toe", "pee". The
corresponding mayan quantifiers
are "kot", "tul", "pok". For vegetable, popular
quantifiers are "tsee", "kur", "tsu", popular mayan
vegetable quantifiers are "tsit", "kek", "xek"(x
pronuncated as "sh"). quantifier used for rope
is "kun" in chinese while in mayan it is "kan". "su"
described things that are bundled together, in mayan,
it is "chuy". They are similar in pronuncation and and
meaning. Unit noun or quantifier is a distintive
feature of china-tibet phylum. Mayan also shares this
feature.
Mayan and chinese sound and grammar share other
features. For example, mainly based on monophthong
etyma, lacking tense transformation. The full-scale
parallelism indicate the tie of two languages.
--------------------------------------------
I've also found this site:
http://www.siu.edu/worda/persp/sp97/itza.html
Suggests the Mayan languages started diversifying from Proto-Mayan 4000
years ago.
Lee Sau Dan
Jacques> yi(he)-y(his);
Jacques> Wot??? "He" is Chinese yi, "his" Mayan y???
Yes, in Hokkien/Taiwanese "he" is "yi" (伊). And this "yi" can be
traced back to Middle/Old Chinese.
Jacques> All the other Chinese words are recognizable modern
Jacques> Mandarin pronunciations. "He" is Mandarin "ta", "his" is
Jacques> Mayan "u-".
Yeah! That's a very obvious mistake of the argument. How come they
would use the modern Mandarin pronunciations for such a comparison?
The only reasonable answer is that the person making the claim has
completely no clues about what he's talking about; IOW, 不知所謂.
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
Lee Sau Dan
Doug> On the other hand, from the aspects of sound and grammar,
Doug> the two languages also share comman features. Here is a
Doug> brief introduction.
Doug> 1. Both are tone languages. Ancient chinese has 'flat',
Doug> 'up', 'leave'(down), 'enter'(quick) four tones. 'enter' tone
Doug> is the short sound of a word ended with p, t, k. Today in
Doug> cantonese dialect these tones are still kept. Mayan language
Doug> also has low, high, down, quick tones, completely matches
Doug> chinese.
Vietnamese also show such tone distinctions, and its tone system has a
very systematic mapping with that of Middle Chinese (or modern
Cantonese/Hokkien/Hakka). Does that suggest to you that Vietnamese
and Chinese are in the same language family?
Zhuang and Hmong also show similar tone categories. So, are they in
the same family as Chinese?
What family do you think Thai belongs to?
Doug> Differentiate meaning with tones is one of the
Doug> most distinct characteristic of china-tibet phylum. This is
Doug> the very strong evidence of the close relationship of the
Doug> two languages.
Tones in Tibetan is a very recent development. Even today, tones in
Tibetan is a phenomenon mainly confined to the regions near Lhasa, and
is not yet "fully functional" in distinguishing meanings.
Doug> 2. In the dialects of two languages, both has the phenomenon
Doug> of 'n', 'ng' rhinolalia(nose sound) consonant variety. For
Doug> example, a lot of rhinolalia in beijing mandarin(standard
Doug> chinese) does not appear in southern chinese dialects. In
Doug> Mayan language, Yucatan language can be regarded as the
Doug> stardard as mandarin chinese, because mayan ancient books
Doug> reflects yucatan language.
Then, comparing it to Mandarin is comparing oranges with apples.
Ancient Chinese books are in Classical Chinese, which is closer to
Cantonese and Hokkien than to Mandarin.
Doug> 3. The evolution of mayan and chinese shows the vowel
Doug> heightening effect, in other words, "a"(in class) changing
Doug> to "o"(in close), "o"(in close) changing to "u"(in flute),
Doug> "e"(in k-e-rnel) changing to "i"(in hit).
Could you quote some examples in Chinese?
Doug> 4. Both in mayan and chinese there are a lot of repetition
Doug> sound phenomenon, especially in dialects. In chinese "tan
Doug> tan" means every day.
That's <tian1 tian1>. Even this basic word is spelt wrong. That
reveals how credible your knowledge about the subject is!
Doug> In mayan, "kinkin" has the same meaning. "hon-hon"(very red)
Doug> in chinese has the saming meaning as "chac-chak" in
Doug> mayan.
Again, you got the Chinese word wrong. It's <hong2hong2>.
Doug> On the other hand, mayan and chinese share the same
Doug> repetition phase structure.
Reduplication is a very common phenomenon in the world's languages,
just not that common in the IE family.
Doug> "hun-chan-
Doug> chan"(yellow-orange-ish) in chinese is equivalent to mayan
Doug> "kan-tel-tel".
Again, you got the Chinese words wrong. I guess you wanted to said
<huang2cheng3cheng3>.
Doug> "bye-shin-shin"(white-ish) is equivalent to
Doug> mayan "sak-tin-tin".
<bai2sue2sue2>. Home come you've got the "-n" there?
Doug> There are a lot of instances like
Doug> these. They are not only the same in structure and meaning
Doug> but also similar in ear-feeling.
Yeah, there are many flaws like this in your theory.
Doug> 5. Mayan and chinese use a large amount of unit noun, or
Doug> quantifier.
So do Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Malay.
Doug> Unit noun or quantifier is a distintive feature of
Doug> china-tibet phylum.
It's not distinctive. (Did you mean "distinctive"?) Japanese has
them. Malay has them. Thai and Vietnamese have them, too!
benlizross
>
> >>>>> "Jacques" == Jacques Guy <jg...@guess.where> writes:
>
> Jacques> yi(he)-y(his);
>
> Jacques> Wot??? "He" is Chinese yi, "his" Mayan y???
>
> traced back to Middle/Old Chinese.
>
> Jacques> All the other Chinese words are recognizable modern
> Jacques> Mandarin pronunciations. "He" is Mandarin "ta", "his" is
> Jacques> Mayan "u-".
>
> Yeah! That's a very obvious mistake of the argument. How come they
> would use the modern Mandarin pronunciations for such a comparison?
> The only reasonable answer is that the person making the claim has
>
> --
> Lee Sau Dan §őŚu´°(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
>
> E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
> Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
It's probably also significant that when he shifts to comparing ancient
Chinese with Mayan he uses a completely different set of words, instead
of following the same words back. Whether similarities converge or
diverge as you go back in time is a useful indicator of whether you're
dealing with a real historical relationship.
Ross Clark
Peter T. Daniels
> Lexicostatics rears its lovely head. It has been proved wrong,
> again, again, and again. To quote Robert Blust, the foremost
> Austronesianist: "Lexicostatics is a hydra. You have to keep
> cutting off its heads". I see they've grown back. No
> surprise.
>
> > Among 100 commonly
> > used basic words, 26 are shared by mayan and chinese, if we remove
> > four which are ambiguous, there are 22 left. The time two languages
> > are separate is around 5000 years.
>
> Granting that lexicostatics _is_ right, log(0.22)/2log(0.81)=3.6
> i.e. 3600 years.
Don't equate lexicostatistics with its illegitimate offspring
glottochronology.
BTW does Blust claim that Dyen's branchings (arrived at by
lexicostatistics) are incorrect? We've been waiting over 20 years for
his *Austronesian* in the Cambridge Language Surveys series.
Peter T. Daniels
And why did you remove the cross-posting to sci.arch? Doug will never
see what you wrote!
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Sun, 06 Oct 2002 21:09:44 GMT, in sci.lang, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >Doug Weller wrote:
> >>
> >> I found this on a mailing list. I've heard the claims about Mande, I've
> >> heard claims for Chinese influence on the writing, etc. But not this
> >> particular one. Any comments?
> >>
> >> Thanks.
> >>
> >> THE COMMON ORIGIN OF MAYAN AND CHINESE
> >BTW the Sumerologist Robert Whiting claimed that Chinese influence on
> >Maya writing is "clear" from the structure of Maya glyph blocks. (It
> >soon turned out that Bob doesn't know much about the structure of Maya
> >glyph blocks.)
>
> Thanks for all of the above, particularly the latter -- where can I find
> out more about that? I've run into the claim, but nothing more than the
> claim.
He wouldn't say where the idea came from, but he was writing as though
it were a well-known hypothesis. The first I heard of it was a couple of
weeks ago on the Ancient Near East discussion list.
Peter T. Daniels
> good work, peter. -- you notice he forgot to mention the Olmec being
> founded and organized by a Nubian sea captain who got blown off course on
> his way to atlantis?
Sorry, guy, no seegar. The Olmecs are on the *Pacific* side of Mexico.
mike
> mike wrote:
>
>> good work, peter. -- you notice he forgot to mention the Olmec being
>> founded and organized by a Nubian sea captain who got blown off course
>> on his way to atlantis?
>
> Sorry, guy, no seegar. The Olmecs are on the *Pacific* side of Mexico.
waat!? when they vacationed in aculpulco?
Doug Weller
[snip]
>
>Could you quote some examples in Chinese?
I didn't write the stuff and don't buy into it.
Doug Weller
>Why are you writing as though Doug was making those claims about Mayan?
>And why did you remove the cross-posting to sci.arch? Doug will never
>see what you wrote!
Thanks Peter, but I've come to sci.lang to read it.
I saw that stuff about Mayan glyphs in ANE, by the way.
Jacques Guy
> Found a continuation of the above claims:
> grammar, the two languages also share comman features.
> Here is a brief introduction.
>
> 1. Both are tone languages. Ancient chinese
> has 'flat', 'up', 'leave'(down), 'enter'(quick) four
> tones. 'enter' tone is the short sound of a word ended
> with p, t, k.
It is not a tone, it is the absence of tone in syllables
ending with an oral stop (e.g. p, t, k)
>Today in cantonese dialect these tones
> are still kept.
They are not. They have multiplied.
> Mayan language also has low, high,
> down, quick tones, completely matches chinese.
_Some_ Mayan languages have tones. If you pool
together the tones of all Mayan languages, yes,
perhaps you would find four to match the list
above. As for those four, they are reconstructions,
and reconstructions are dodgy, reconstructed
tones and vowels especially.
> Differentiate meaning with tones is one of the most
> distinct characteristic of china-tibet phylum. This is
> the very strong evidence of the close relationship of
> the two languages.
"Differentiate meaning with tones" is also a
characteristic on many African languages. And
of Japanese. And of Norwegian and Swedish.
> 2. In the dialects of two languages, both has the
> phenomenon of 'n', 'ng' rhinolalia(nose sound)
> consonant variety. For example, a lot of rhinolalia in
> beijing mandarin(standard chinese) does not appear in
> southern chinese dialects.
Go figure what he means. Probably syllable-final
nasals, i.e. /m/ and /ng/ in Mandarin. A lot do
not appear in southern Chinese??? Where is Canton?
North of Manchuria?
> But the words with nose consonant [nasal consonants] in yucatan
> is only a breathing out sound without rhinolalia [=oral].
As far as I can tell, that means that nasals in Maya have
become denasalized. Whence all the nasal in the bogus
comparative wordlist posted yesterday, eh?
> The
> variety of word-end rhinolalia is a rule in chinese
> sound evolution. The same rule existing in mayan
> language shows the tie of two languages.
Complete nonsense. In one sentence the fellow says
that Maya is "without rhinolalia" [nasals], then
in the next sentence that "word-end rhinolalia"
is a rule in Maya.
I see no need to go further into this heap
of brainless drivel.
camilo estrada
Mścisław Wojna-Bojewski
> I found this on a mailing list. I've heard the claims about Mande, I've
> heard claims for Chinese influence on the writing, etc. But not this
> particular one. Any comments?
dide...@gmail.com
when i visited Yucatan many times and reading some of the books, i cant help feeling the names are worded in English becoming so hard to pronounce like something started with "X", for example president "Xi", somehow it maybe easier for me as a Chinese to pronounce it, that why i got curious in this. Another small example, the counting within 10, made with the dots and dash, to me straight forward it's just first decimal place of abacus.
"Mayan: A Sino-Tibetan Language? A Comparative Study "by Bede Fahey , Also checking this but i dont think the old chinese is accurate neither, in ancient books black was not called "Hei", more of "qian黔"(mayan: qeq) or "xuan" . BTW BlackHeaded people 黔首 can be trasnlated as "Schwarzkopf" haha. sorry for didnt contribute much.