[Frey]

(Original post by KingMessi)
Bookmarked.

yayyy! thought you'd like them

[KingMessi]

(Original post by Frey)
OHHH, I like grapes too!
I know, I'm a fruit monster

Odd use of the emoticon... Fruit fetishes?

(Original post by Frey)
yes yes, it's very complicated haha, I know some were distressed, my way of phrasing wasn't the best way to put it..oops , what I meant was more 'care enough to act'.

Indeed. Ah, fair enough. I should've perhaps picked up on that. It very much got to me when I first heard about it, because I was sure that I would've refused...but...

(Original post by Frey)

no. 2 everyone

heheh...I'm sure they will.

If you say so. Again, an intriguing use of the face...

I have no words.

[Frey]

(Original post by KingMessi)
Odd use of the emoticon... Fruit fetishes?

yes, Jack, fruit fetishes; a way to a woman's libido is oranges, always remember that son

(Original post by KingMessi)
Indeed. Ah, fair enough. I should've perhaps picked up on that. It very much got to me when I first heard about it, because I was sure that I would've refused...but...

Human beings a fairly scary and simple underneath it all....

(Original post by KingMessi)
If you say so. Again, an intriguing use of the face...

I have no words.

no words are needed..

(ok I'm actually making myself feel uncomfortable now.....)

[Frey]

(Original post by candide)
I'm not so sure its that they've adapted to their environment, I think its that there is no selection pressure acting on them to keep them simple. e.g. when proto-whales entered the sea, they no longer had to worry about gravity, and retained (and indeed developed) their hugely complicated ungulate-like digestive system even tho for a krill-eating baleen whale this kind of complexity was un-necessary. But with bouyancy acting against the typical selective pressure of 'don't make it too heavy!', there was selection against heavy and useless winding digestive systems.

Similarly, say we have an ancestral language group of 5000 people, and twelve speakers dissappear into the darkest jungle to found a tribe. We could end up with a monoglot speaker population of 200 people, all speaking the same language, permanently isolated from the original population. Over hundreds of years, the jungle language evolves and gets way more complicated. One day someone invents a new gender, or tries out a new tense, or adds a new suffix for emphasis, and it catches on in the community. Because the only 200 people I know in the world speak this language, I'm obliged to speak the language, whatever frippery has been added - there is no pressure to keep it simple because no one from outside our jungle community speaks the language, we don't need to write it down, our children have all the time in the world to learn grammar rules... this happened with navajo, I think - a child wasn't fluent til they were 12, unlike English where we manage it by six.

So I suppose what I'm getting at is that in the 21st century there is tremendous pressure on speakers to keep English simple, standardized, easy to learn, but for my jungle language - used only by the community, associated intimately with their way of life - it can get as complicated as it likes and it will in no away affect its rate of proliferation cos no one was gonna learn it anyway!

Language is complex and beautiful and brilliant, but I think with 90% of the world pop speaking just 20 world languages, we're gonna see a decline in diversity and craziness. All the more reason to learn random languages like Anutan (or Gaidhlig for that matter!)

haha, I wasn't being literal there I was using it in an artsy fasrty abstracty way...or was trying.. I like whales

I agree completely.

I really should learn Gaidhlig...

[The Lyceum]

(Original post by candide)
Yeah, i would use 'craobh daraich' or 'darach' for an oak. ('dair' is fairly archaic, it appears in druid at least: oakseers, apparently - a Roman combination of dair and draoigh). That is so cool. I think I might be right in saying a Sanskritter like you would agree with my view that William Jones made a conceptual and indeed scientific discovery on par with the likes of Darwin?

Ohh, I love Proto and just plain Indo-European, even if some of the reconstructions are somewhat dubious.. one of my favourite claims is the way it (apparently) sheds light on the way these people lived. So I came across some people saying that Indo-European has no root words for agricultural tools, but it does for horse-related stuff, therefore the Indo Europeans were the nomads who domestricated the horse. (On the other hand, Cavalii-Sorza the famous geneticist was big on the idea that it was the Indo Europeans who in fact introduced agriculture to Europe!).

Well, not for me to interrupt, but that is just to patently untrue and out of date. The idea that they were definitely nomads etc, we are able to reconstruct a large series of vocabulary related to fixed abodes, indeed the majority of sacral vocabulary attests to this. Also there are several problems with the horse/chariot idea i.e can't work outside of part of (central and south) Asia and there is no need to associate PIE speakers with any serious changes in Europe. Genetics with PIE populations and Europe is such a gigantic dead end because none of the groupings we associate with them are significantly attested here, outside of a few Slavic places.

So your earlier comment about much of the reconstruction being dubious is spot on, but then we can indeed learn a lot about them. It depends how you take it. So, that we can reconstruct sentences like "I fart loudly and then kill my mother in law" is not useful but certain other things are.

[Frey]

(Original post by The Lyceum)
Well, not for me to interrupt, but that is just to patently untrue and out of date. The idea that they were definitely nomads etc, we are able to reconstruct a large series of vocabulary related to fixed abodes, indeed the majority of sacral vocabulary attests to this. Also there are several problems with the horse/chariot idea i.e can't work outside of part of (central and south) Asia and there is no need to associate PIE speakers with any serious changes in Europe. Genetics with PIE populations and Europe is such a gigantic dead end because none of the groupings we associate with them are significantly attested here, outside of a few Slavic places.

So your earlier comment about much of the reconstruction being dubious is spot on, but then we can indeed learn a lot about them. It depends how you take it. So, that we can reconstruct sentences like "I fart loudly and then kill my mother in law" is not useful but certain other things are.

tis all just curious thought and speculation

someone is a bit of a thread stalker..

[KingMessi]

(Original post by Frey)
yes, Jack, fruit fetishes; a way to a woman's libido is oranges, always remember that son

Thank you for that sound, albeit dubious, advice...noted...

(Original post by Frey)
Human beings a fairly scary and simple underneath it all....

Yes, definitely...

(Original post by Frey)
no words are needed..

(ok I'm actually making myself feel uncomfortable now.....)

I'm not surprised. You're also making me feel uncomfortable. Enough, foul beldame...

Oh, and I'm sleeping now. We're having building work done and I need to be up to let the builders in. Consider your poetry/the size of your task in convincing me of your trustworthiness...

[Frey]

(Original post by KingMessi)
Thank you for that sound, albeit dubious, advice...noted...

that's mahboy

(Original post by KingMessi)
I'm not surprised. You're also making me feel uncomfortable. Enough, foul beldame...

I promise not to use the pervy face for at least another 4 posts... if Medbh comes online, I can't promise that

(Original post by KingMessi)
Oh, and I'm sleeping now. We're having building work done and I need to be up to let the builders in. Consider your poetry/the size of your task in convincing me of your trustworthiness...

ew....

if you're expecting an epic poem by tomorrow you may be disappointed..

[doloroushazy]

(Original post by zog)

Yeah I'm really looking forward to it, a couple of my friends went last year too and really liked it. Some of my favorite bands are playing - have you heard of The Skints?
Why don't you steward as well? then you meet people through that and get the tickets for free

I haven't!! what are they like? i never really get too bothered about music at festivals really cause i just love the vibes~~ or whatever, but it helps hahah. like i'm quite disappointed by the leeds lineup this year, what did you think of it? and oohhh i hadn't thought of stewarding for it, i'd be quite scared to go by myself though aha lame

[candide]

(Original post by The Lyceum)
Well, not for me to interrupt, but that is just to patently untrue and out of date. The idea that they were definitely nomads etc, we are able to reconstruct a large series of vocabulary related to fixed abodes, indeed the majority of sacral vocabulary attests to this. Also there are several problems with the horse/chariot idea i.e can't work outside of part of (central and south) Asia and there is no need to associate PIE speakers with any serious changes in Europe. Genetics with PIE populations and Europe is such a gigantic dead end because none of the groupings we associate with them are significantly attested here, outside of a few Slavic places.

So your earlier comment about much of the reconstruction being dubious is spot on, but then we can indeed learn a lot about them. It depends how you take it. So, that we can reconstruct sentences like "I fart loudly and then kill my mother in law" is not useful but certain other things are.

Oh I know that Sforza's ideas about PIEs radiating out of Anatolia at the end of the Neolithic are fairly out of date. Just because farming spread in that time doesn't mean that farmers had to, or just because the farmers' language spread doesn't mean it was the farmers doing the spreading. Even in Britain, if you take the Anglo-saxon "invasions," you get a giant linguistic shift, and yet all you're dealing with is 50,000 saxons compared to 3 million romano-britons - there's a huge language change, but the change in absolute population makeup is fairly tiny. Similar thing happened in Fortriu at the time, the Picts all start speaking Gaidhlig, and for hundreds of years historians say the Scots exterminated them, when of course they'd just been culturally and linguistically co-opted. I suppose this is the same idea behind the macho, horse-riding hordes from the east, come to exterminate europe, sparing but the basques. So long as the PIEs end up in charge (whether by horse or by plough or by luck), that's reason enough to adopt their language!

[fluteflute]

(Original post by Frey)
kinda clogged up the thread, sorry guys...

I go away for three days and the thread grows by ten pages :-o

(Ah well, there was a time when it was growing ten pages in three hours )

[AnimalSpirit]

Has this turned into a classics thread?

[Frey]

(Original post by AnimalSpirit)
Has this turned into a classics thread?

[Frey]

(Original post by fluteflute)
I go away for three days and the thread grows by ten pages :-o

(Ah well, there was a time when it was growing ten pages in three hours )

I had too much time on my hands...

[fluteflute]

(Original post by Frey)
I had too much time on my hands...

Yeah, that revision stuff is overrated... almost similarly, I was on holiday in Dublin and took no revision
(Now lets hope you haven't got an an unconditional offer, because what I've just said would be nonsense...)

I'm another SJC person btw

[KingMessi]

(Original post by Frey)
I had too much time on my hands...

Clearly you don't, as I'm still awaiting my epic poem...

[Frey]

(Original post by fluteflute)
Yeah, that revision stuff is overrated... almost similarly, I was on holiday in Dublin and took no revision
(Now lets hope you haven't got an an unconditional offer, because what I've just said would be nonsense...)

I'm another SJC person btw

yeah totally.. only for nerds...

(I have an unconditional offer ... I'm sitting an exam in my gap year though which is in like 2 weeks )

yayyyyyyyy! can't wait!

[Frey]

(Original post by KingMessi)
Clearly you don't, as I'm still awaiting my epic poem...

I need divine inspiration....

[KingMessi]

(Original post by Frey)
I need divine inspiration....

One would hope it comes soon...

[Frey]

(Original post by KingMessi)
One would hope it comes soon...

I'm not allowed to ask the 'bum-head' oracle for advice though, I'm assuming?