European countries have had and have centralized institutions which have been the only "authorities" on history, archaeology and linguistics. It was and is very important for the institutions of the “scientific power” to define a certain attitude about languages and their origin and kept it fixed in time continuously. It was very important to make official a certain attitude in Europe and beyond because it is related to terrestrial integrity of European nations, a major interest of the rulers of all time.
Many of the “scientific” linguistic institutions were and are funded by the royal funds, state funds and religious institutions funds. Some are funded by different private donors. The source of their funding have influenced and preconditioned their linguistic status quo. Kingdoms, churches and states interests are pretty known, but also donors are not just some impartial donors. Donors wanted and want to influence, develop and form an opinion to the public in order to strengthen and keep protect their interests.
Both two groups have decided to protect the status quo of the languages and their origin because under the skin it carries their very important interests.
It is determined just a few centuries ago that the ancient Greek language writing is the source of the European language. Today, new discoveries and findings in this regard are channeled only through “government institutions”, and have not found their way of acceptance if their new discoveries destroy the linguistic status quo. New sources of the European civilization, new grounds, which can be very, cannot see the green light to “power institutions”. Many discoveries related to languages are completely ignored because they threaten the linguistic status quo.
The truth of language has been held forcibly by such “power institutions ".
And there is some evidence about the Albanian language that cannot be ignored. They should be respected started by accepting the evidence and new arguments about the evidence.
There are two Albanian words:
1.afër /close to; next to/
2. dite /day/
There is also the ancient Greek word Aphrodite (
i/æfrəˈdaɪti/ af-rə-dy-tee; Greek: Ἀφροδίτη)The etymology status quo:
"Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus.If you read about Venus, or an abstract concept of beauty, there are between other objective facts also the language facts. For example, the questions answered so about the linguistic part of Venus seem so easy, but on the other hand it is the most no sense you ever read. Can see you any logical connection between the name of a planet like Venus and the concept of beauty, or the concept of sex, or with the concept of a day of the week? The hard problem is why there are so many no sense etymological-linguistic views.
Aphrodite, perhaps altered after aphrós (ἀφρός) "foam", stems from the more archaic Cretan Aphordíta and Cypriot Aphorodíta, and was probably ultimately borrowed from Cypriot.
A number of folk etymologies have been proposed through theages. Hesiod derives Aphrodite from aphrós "foam," interpreting the name as "risen from the foam". Janda (2010), accepting this as genuine, claims the foam birth myth as an Indo-European mytheme. Janda intereprets the name as a compound aphrós "foam" + déatai "[she] seems, shines" (infinitive *déasthai), meaning "she who shines from the foam", supposedly a byname of Eos, the dawn goddess. Likewise, Mallory and Adams (1997) propose an Indo-European compound *abʰor-"very" and *dʰei- "to shine", also referring to Eos. However, etymologies based on comparison with Eos are unlikely since Aphrodite's attributes are entirely different from those of Eos (or Vedic Ushas). Finally, the medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived folk etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos (ἁβροδίαιτος), "she who lives delicately", from habrós + díaita. The alteration from b to ph is explained as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians", despite of course that the name cannot be of Macedonian origin.
A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have been suggested in scholarship. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a female demon that appears in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts. Hammarström (1921)[ looks to Etruscan, comparing (e)prϑni "lord", an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις. This would make the theonym in origin an honorific, "the lady". Hjalmar Frisk and Robert Beekes (2010) rejects this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru (from Greek Aphrō, clipped form of Aphrodite)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite)
All cases of ancient names of planets are all about goddesses. Some European ancient people applied goddesses’ names to the planets, nothing wrong with that, but why is it that all planets’ nouns and many linguistic concepts are accompanied by gods or goddesses? Why is so concentrated the presence of gods in everything?
Of course, ancient people used language to explain the world around them, but they seem to be all members of the church.
Did ancient people use to explain how and why people fell in love-get married using a planet name before explaining first the planet itself, or the love itself?
Did they discover Venus before having nouns for love, or beauty?
If they discovered Venus later, when they discovered Venus did they form a new noun like they did before for other concrete object of the world around them, or applied to it the old noun for beauty?
Now, we think that Venus is the only planet in the Solar System that is named after a female figure.
As we see, linguistic analysis of this word is not concerned with its deeper meaning structure which may give it the sense we know today. European linguists did not concern what Aphrodite means in a deeper level. Linguists never question the first take on the Aphrodite’s meaning and try to find out more possible interpretations of it.
John Rupert Firth wrote "Speech context have to apprehended in their context, as shaped by the creativity acts of a speaking person". I think it is true for now and has been for all the time.
According to his theory the words that are used with a certain word or phrase and help to explain its meaning are highly relevant for the determination of the meaning of the word.
Venus can be seen from the earth. It shines brightly in the dark sky. It is the second brightest planet in the sky, where the sun is the first.
Venus was known to ancient civilizations both as the "morning star" and as the "evening star. Babylonians called the planet Ishtar, referred to in an tablet as the "bright queen".
Ancient Hebrews called it Noga ("luminous"), Helel ("clear").
In Sanskrit is known as Shukra ("clear, clean").
The Mycenaean name was Aphrodite, Goddess of love and beauty, mother and wife of Apollo the God of Light also called Adonis/Adonai.
The Greeks names were Phosphorus, the morning aspect, and Hesperus. The Romans designated the morning aspect of Venus as Lucifer ("Luci means light"), and the evening aspect as Vesper, both translations of the Greek names.
It is clear its name accompanied by the light-day concept.
But there is no Aphrodite name? Where it came from?
Most of scholars when they analyze the mythical words, they link them only with the myth, not with the language itself.
Every language has a word for *dawn. In Albanian the dawn concepts has many words to explain that physical world situation:
But there is no Aphrodite name? Where it came from?
Most of scholars when they analyze the mythical words, they link them only with the myth, not with the language itself.
Every language has a word for *dawn. In Albanian the dawn concepts has many words to explain that physical world situation:
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The dawn physical world situation is so simple.
1. Something starts, begins.
2. Something change the color of what the eyes see out from black to white (Zbardh/ from the adjective bardh ”white”
3. Something brightens the place, shines. The language itself personifications the light with its word
4. Something gives birth. It is the word itself that gives the signification of the something new is coming in live.
First of all, it is an intermediate situation. It is not completely dark, or the opposite of it. It is a mix of night and day. It is border between the night and the day. The word for dawn simply signals and defines a variable physical world situation, a relation with night and day, when the awkward night is going away and the beautiful light of the sun is coming in.
The verb “agon is used first to highlight a physical world aspect, which on the other side it is correlated with positively things for people such as light, warm, better protection because you can see everything around you, etc.
I will translate you some albanian words and will leave you to decide about the Aphrodite name. Is it a female figure, a goddess, or a concept shaped by the creativity of ancient albanian language speakers?
1.afër /close to; next to/2. dite, dita /day/
3. drite,drita /light/
4. diell, dielli/ sun
5. pishtar/ torch
It is so simple to find out, and it is so difficult to desegregate the name of aphrodite to borrow two words-concept which are very important for every language.
Michael Janda in his book “Die Musik nach dem Chaos” 2010, Pg.65 wrote:
“Der Name der Aphrodite setz ich aus aphrós "Schaum" und -dité, einem partizip zu dem by Homer bezeugten Verbum déato "schien", zusammen und verrät den religiongeschichtlichen Ursprung der Göttin”.
Janda intereprets the name as a compound aphrós "foam" and déato "seem, shine", with the resultant meaning "she who shines from the foam".
Janda went so close to the translation but unfortunately Janda does not know Albanian, or can not overcome the etymology status quo.
Homer gives us clearly the words which are combined in this name:
*aphrós- "approach" which in modern albanian is the passive form of the verb afrohet, afroeç, and it is not accidently in the same form in English -approach.
*dité- "day" which interestingly is not changed in modern Albanian, and it has only one meaning in Albanian as the part of the daylight-night time when the light from the sun can be seen, or the period of time from sunrise to sunset.
The meaning is " The daylight-approaching".
Mallory and Adams went so close to the basic concept of the Aphrodite word. They found out that *dʰei i correlated with the concept of " to shine", which in fact is the "daylight concept, but also Mallory and Adams unfortunately do not know Albanian, or they can not overcome the etymology status quo even though they admit about its obscure origin and the "popular etymology" given as the "foam-born" αφρό-διτη.
I want a scientific theory of the language to work. The language is fundamental. The language elements as nouns, adjectives couldn't be explained from goddesses. Linguistics can’t do science with it. The language has a fundamental which should be researched and found out.
References:
1.^ Janda, Michael, Die Musik nach dem Chaos, Innsbruck 2010, Pg.65.
2.^ J. P. Mallory, Douglas Q. Adam, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, London, 1997, Pg.358
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The Proto-Albanian forms of 'afër' and 'dita' were *apsera and *dītā where the macrons over the vowels mean long vowels. In Ancient Greek, /ph/ was a different /p/ sound, not an /f/, and not /ps/. Those two /p/ and /pʰ/ were different in their ears, but sound the same to someone untrained. They had a /ps/ sound, and they also had long vowels, lost in Modern Greek. Yet, Aphrodites name is never written with long vowels or /ps/, so it cannot be borrowed from Albanian.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand check out the word Ξάνθος (xanthos) meaning 'yellow', that seemsto be borrowed from the Albanian word for moon (T) 'hënë' ~ (G) 'hân' where the circumflex means nasal vowel. We know from Slavic loanwords in Albanian that /ks/ became /h/ over time thus the original form of the word for moon was *ksandā, the short vowel became /ë/ in Tosk, and /â/ in Gheg, while the long vowel became /ë/ in Tosk (all nasal vowels became ë, Tosk has less than half the vowels of Gheg), but lost in Gheg. Greek /x/ today is differnt, but once it was pronounced /ks/. We know from Anatolian loanwrds in Ancient Greek, /nd/ became /nth/, so *ksandā > Ξάνθος is very plausible. Keep in mind Albanian uses a taboo name for the moon, referring to a color, different from the word for 'month' 'muaj'.
About p, b, f, and v sounds:
ReplyDeleteComparing the pronunciation of the p sound and b sound to the f sound and v sound.
All four of these sounds require lip position, and the substitution of one sound for another is a common phonetic transformation. In addition.
The p sound is an unvoiced stop, the b sound is the similar voiced stop, and the f sound is the similar unvoiced fricative.
The f sound and v sound are fricatives and the p sound and b sound are stops.
The difference between them:
Fricatives are created when the vocal tract is restricted and air is forced through a small opening. The stop sounds require the vocal tract to be closed. With stop sounds, the sound is created when the air is released.
The f sound and p sound are alike in that both sounds are unvoiced. This means that the vocal cords do not vibrate during the production of the sound. In contrast, the v sound and b sound are voiced and do include vibration of the vocal cords during the sounds. Since non-native speakers often substitute one voiced sound for another voiced sound, or one unvoiced sound for another unvoiced sound, it is often helpful to practice sounds in those pairs.
The f sound and v sound sounds are articulated when the backside of the bottom lip is placed close to the bottom of the top front teeth. When air is pushed between the bottom lip and the top teeth, friction occurs and sound is created. The p sound and b sound are articulated by pressing the front lips together and stopping the air, then quickly releasing it. When the p sound is at the beginning of a word, its release is aspirated (accompanied by a puff of air). If this aspiration is not strong enough, a listener may hear a v sound, even if the air was adequately stopped before the release.
http://www.philology-upatras.gr/en/department/glossology
This is very insightful information. As a fellow Albanian thank you for teaching me about our small yet great country's history.
ReplyDelete