The Lingo Lounge

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FishbellykanakaDude
Posts: 1313
Joined: Tue Jan 09, 2018 8:07 pm

The Lingo Lounge

Post by FishbellykanakaDude »

OK,.. here's my weird hypothesis:

The Indo-european language "idea" (the "proto" versions before any "nation"/tribe adopted them as their "national/tribal" language per se) was "created" by users of the then-most-popular language idea, which was agglutinative type languages, as a pidgin "lingua franca" simplified version of their "native language(s)",.. because the "creators" of the pidgin needed a quickly learnable language for use between their "subservient" populations and themselves,.. and the pidgin was quite popular with "the masses" (as it was "easier") and eventually became the "standard tongue" of some "nations"/tribes INCLUDING the ruling class!

Agglutinative languages are VERY idiosyncratic and "specifically localized" to generally smallish areas of stable (long history) population. They are that way because the POINT of language to very localized tribal populations is to tell US from THEM.

Everyday language (to agglut speakers) is to ENCODE "normal language" in a form that is hard for "foreigners" to understand and, more importantly, to MIMIC,.. so that neighbors are easily distinguished, especially since ones neighbors look nearly identical to your family/tribe/"nation".

Agglutinative language is more "normal" and "natural" for human beings than "the alternative".

The Austronesian family of languages, especially in places such as New Guinea and Australia, are great examples of this property.

When societies begin to be more and more "Empire-ical", meaning containing more than a very-few "cultures" under an Emperor (or Khan), they find it increasingly more urgent to prioritize "understanding" over "discrimination".

My contention is that "Proto-Indoeuropean" was the purposeful creation of the worlds most widespread culture of the time, which had just begun to realize that it had a natural "edge" because of new technologies, and needed a pidgin language to unite it's disparate sub-cultures under an "Imperial Cultural Idea".

..the pidgin got out of control, or course, and eventually overtook the "mother tongue", and the "mother culture", largely because it was more efficient and ecumenical.

And, thus, the present world.

John
Posts: 11479
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
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Re: The Lingo Lounge

Post by John »

Well, this is a whole nother interpretation of languages. I
personally have difficulty believing that any culture can successfully
guide the evolution of its language in any political way. My
experience is that language changes occur because teenagers want to
distinguish themselves from their parents.

FishbellykanakaDude
Posts: 1313
Joined: Tue Jan 09, 2018 8:07 pm

Re: The Lingo Lounge

Post by FishbellykanakaDude »

John wrote:Well, this is a whole nother interpretation of languages. I
personally have difficulty believing that any culture can successfully
guide the evolution of its language in any political way. My
experience is that language changes occur because teenagers want to
distinguish themselves from their parents.
I'm (somewhat sarcastically) overplaying the "conscious creation" of PIE (proto-indoeuropean) as an "Imperial" lingua franca, but something "kinda" similar did happen in Hawai'i (and the Caribbean, and other places) to help "manage" a poly-glottal worker population.

This is my contribution to the Post-Sumerian Period Conspiracy Theory community! :)

..at least I'm not proposing that the Reptilian Sumerians from Space forced Indo-European on the world to create a slave race of Human-Super-Warriors to further their conquest of Earth while they hide out out on the hollow inside of the planet, developing other nefarious schemes, to eventually reappear with their Nazi Space Monkeys in flying saucers (made on the Moon) and serve us all up, ala Thulsa Doom, as People Veal (Soylent Pink) at their Feasts and Fun Faires!

That'd be just.... CRAZY! :)

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