quote:Nope you are stretching different terms in order to create a nonexistent entity from DIFFERENT populations with DIFFERENT names and DIFFERENT backgrounds, I am not saying that there werent darker skinned people in these areas in ancient times, but that they werent called KUSHITES, implying a SINGLE identity, culture and background for them all, which is absolutely false.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
What are you talking about. They were called Kushites.
If you notice I did not include Indians. I only include the people known as Kushites.
William Leo Hansberry gives a great discussion of the evidence of African Kushites ruling in Asia and Africa. Some ancient scholars noted that the first rulers of Elam were of Kushite ( Kerma ? ) origin. According to Strabo, the first Elamite colony at Susa was founded by Tithnus, a King of Kush. Strabo in Book 15, Chapter 3728 wrote that in fact it is claimed that Susa was founded by Tithonus Memnon's father, and his citadel bore the name Memnonium. The Susians are also called Cissians. Aeschylus, calls Memnon's mother Cissia.
quote:I have presented the names of these people. Please cite the counter evidence illustrating that these people were not related to the Kushites of Africa. Right now you are only expressing your opinion.
Originally posted by Doug M:
quote:Nope you are stretching different terms in order to create a nonexistent entity from DIFFERENT populations with DIFFERENT names and DIFFERENT backgrounds, I am not saying that there werent darker skinned people in these areas in ancient times, but that they werent called KUSHITES, implying a SINGLE identity, culture and background for them all, which is absolutely false.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
What are you talking about. They were called Kushites.
If you notice I did not include Indians. I only include the people known as Kushites.
William Leo Hansberry gives a great discussion of the evidence of African Kushites ruling in Asia and Africa. Some ancient scholars noted that the first rulers of Elam were of Kushite ( Kerma ? ) origin. According to Strabo, the first Elamite colony at Susa was founded by Tithnus, a King of Kush. Strabo in Book 15, Chapter 3728 wrote that in fact it is claimed that Susa was founded by Tithonus Memnon's father, and his citadel bore the name Memnonium. The Susians are also called Cissians. Aeschylus, calls Memnon's mother Cissia.
quote:I agree, the Ancient Elamites were most likely a dark-skinned group...but you should use more evidence than mythological sources to frame your argument in saying the Elamites derived directly from Kush. Do the languages match, or cultural customs?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
What are you talking about. They were called Kushites.
If you notice I did not include Indians. I only include the people known as Kushites.
William Leo Hansberry gives a great discussion of the evidence of African Kushites ruling in Asia and Africa. Some ancient scholars noted that the first rulers of Elam were of Kushite ( Kerma ? ) origin. According to Strabo, the first Elamite colony at Susa was founded by Tithnus, a King of Kush. Strabo in Book 15, Chapter 3728 wrote that in fact it is claimed that Susa was founded by Tithonus Memnon's father, and his citadel bore the name Memnonium. The Susians are also called Cissians. Aeschylus, calls Memnon's mother Cissia.
.
quote:
Originally posted by King_Scorpion:
quote:I agree, the Ancient Elamites were most likely a dark-skinned group...but you should use more evidence than mythological sources to frame your argument in saying the Elamites derived directly from Kush. Do the languages match, or cultural customs?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
What are you talking about. They were called Kushites.
If you notice I did not include Indians. I only include the people known as Kushites.
William Leo Hansberry gives a great discussion of the evidence of African Kushites ruling in Asia and Africa. Some ancient scholars noted that the first rulers of Elam were of Kushite ( Kerma ? ) origin. According to Strabo, the first Elamite colony at Susa was founded by Tithnus, a King of Kush. Strabo in Book 15, Chapter 3728 wrote that in fact it is claimed that Susa was founded by Tithonus Memnon's father, and his citadel bore the name Memnonium. The Susians are also called Cissians. Aeschylus, calls Memnon's mother Cissia.
.
quote:The Bible, as a source, is next to useless...
Originally posted by Bettyboo:
You can read that in the Bible. The "Cushite" tribe/empire/ethnicity/race/nation or whatever you want to call it didn't exist until the splitting of families due to confusion of language. At that time black people were already in Asia and after "Babel" they formed there own nations there and they weren't cushite people.
quote:That's your opinion. The bible don't teach world history, but you can read about civilizations and nations in the scriptures. According to the bible there were people already in Asia before a "Cushite" nation was formed.
Originally posted by Nay-Sayer:
quote:The Bible, as a source, is next to useless...
Originally posted by Bettyboo:
You can read that in the Bible. The "Cushite" tribe/empire/ethnicity/race/nation or whatever you want to call it didn't exist until the splitting of families due to confusion of language. At that time black people were already in Asia and after "Babel" they formed there own nations there and they weren't cushite people.
quote:You keep saying this but you have failed to provide any citations supporting this conclusion. My references are include in my post which show that they called themselves Kushites.
Originally posted by Doug M:
^^Well Mr. Winters suffice to say you are drifting off into the realm of the ridiculous.
There were darker skinned populations in parts of Iran, Mesopotamia and the Levant in ancient times. That is a fact. However they were NOT called Kushites and the people who WERE referred to Kushites came MUCH LATER during the time of the ACTUAL EMPIRE of Kush, which was IN AFRICA and, for a time expanded North past Egypt into the Levant and east towards India. But that is NOT the same as the dark skinned populations and groups who existed in Iran, Mesopotamia and the Levant thousands of years prior to the golden age of Kush.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
Of course all the smart people in here know that most of the Asiatics Clyde lists are NOT black, and that those who were have NOTHING to do with the Neolithic Sahara.
quote:Okay, I think I have an idea now. This does make a lot of sense.
Originally posted by alTakruri:
Kushite comes from a Semitic root K-W-SH which
those speakers applied to all extremely dark
skinned people of whatever nation.
In all likelihood K-W-SH is a loan from another
Afrisan language. The ancient north and central
Sudanese applied a word QEVS (per Leo Hansberry)
to themselves.
Primary documentation reveals which nations in
antiquity, other than QEVS/Kesh/Kush proper,
called themselves K-W-SH-I.
Semitic speakers and Graeco-Latin writers referred
to all extemely dark skinned and darker skinned
individulas and nations as Kushites/Aithiopians
without regard to geographic location or actual nationality.
Maybe some few such nations were related to each
other by common descent but I suspect that the far
majority of them had little more in common than their colour.
As far as Kush and Aithiopia being synonymous, of
course there were Asian Kushites. For the Hebrews
nearly all of what today we call the Arabian
Peninsula was inhabited by Kushites. And the Greeks
call the southern Levant Aithiopia (see for instance the
Andromeda myth where Joppa -- today's Tel Aviv --
is the capital of one Aethiopia).
quote:Truth hurts a Troll. Only fools will follow your ignorant leadership
Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ What you have here is another example of Clyde Winters black Nationalism (supremacy) at work. And as usual all of his claims are not only false but hilarious.
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
It is clear that many people believe that the name Kush was invented by the Egyptians and Hebrews. This is wrong this name was used by the Meroites and earlier Sudanic Blacks.
Laszlo Torok, in The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization (Handbook of Oriental Studies, New York:Brill,1997) out lines the history of the term Kush in relation to the Kushites on pages 2-3.
Torok points out that the name for the first
ruler of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, Kashta, probably meant "the Kushite". He also noted that Kush, also appears as the ancestral kingdom of Piya in his Sandstone Stela and King Arqamani in the Second Century BC received the mortuary Horus name "The Kushite whose-coming-into-being -is divine".
In the Meroitic text the Meroites refer to themselves as Qes(h)( see: Torok, p.2-3: and J.Leclant:Recherches sur latoponymie meroitique, Tran. Centre de Recherche sur le Porche-Orient 4, (1975), p.105)in the Hamadab and Tanyidamani Stelas.
The textual evidence make it obvious that the people of Meroe, and earlier rulers of Egypt from the same region, called themselves Kushites.
The Egyptians and Hebrews called the Meroites Kushites because it was the name they called themselves.
The Asian Kushites also called themselves Kushite as noted above.
quote:
Originally posted by alTakruri:
I wonder if both Torok and Hansberry's sources
ultimately rely on the same Meroitic text for
Qes/QEVS?
Hansberry says that Sayce and Griffith, of Oxford, based
on an inscription, the people under question themselves
used Qevs as the designation of their own country.
Unfortunately William Leo Hansberry died before he
could publish the information in Africa & Africans
himself and the published book's editor, Joseph
Harris, occluded footnotes.
However I did find this in the biblio:
Griffith, F. L.
Meroitic Studies III and IV
Journal of Egyptian Archeaology v4
London, 1917
pp. 21-24, 159-173
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
It is clear that many people believe that the name Kush was invented by the Egyptians and Hebrews. This is wrong this name was used by the Meroites and earlier Sudanic Blacks.
Laszlo Torok, in The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization (Handbook of Oriental Studies, New York:Brill,1997) out lines the history of the term Kush in relation to the Kushites on pages 2-3.
Torok points out that the name for the first
ruler of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, Kashta, probably meant "the Kushite". He also noted that Kush, also appears as the ancestral kingdom of Piya in his Sandstone Stela and King Arqamani in the Second Century BC received the mortuary Horus name "The Kushite whose-coming-into-being -is divine".
In the Meroitic text the Meroites refer to themselves as Qes(h)( see: Torok, p.2-3: and J.Leclant:Recherches sur latoponymie meroitique, Tran. Centre de Recherche sur le Porche-Orient 4, (1975), p.105)in the Hamadab and Tanyidamani Stelas.
The textual evidence make it obvious that the people of Meroe, and earlier rulers of Egypt from the same region, called themselves Kushites.
The Egyptians and Hebrews called the Meroites Kushites because it was the name they called themselves.
The Asian Kushites also called themselves Kushite as noted above.
quote:I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about linguistic relations to Kush? Did they speak an Afro-Asiatic language? Actually, if they were Kushite, then shouldn't their language be very similiar to Meroitic?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:
Originally posted by King_Scorpion:
quote:I agree, the Ancient Elamites were most likely a dark-skinned group...but you should use more evidence than mythological sources to frame your argument in saying the Elamites derived directly from Kush. Do the languages match, or cultural customs?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
What are you talking about. They were called Kushites.
If you notice I did not include Indians. I only include the people known as Kushites.
William Leo Hansberry gives a great discussion of the evidence of African Kushites ruling in Asia and Africa. Some ancient scholars noted that the first rulers of Elam were of Kushite ( Kerma ? ) origin. According to Strabo, the first Elamite colony at Susa was founded by Tithnus, a King of Kush. Strabo in Book 15, Chapter 3728 wrote that in fact it is claimed that Susa was founded by Tithonus Memnon's father, and his citadel bore the name Memnonium. The Susians are also called Cissians. Aeschylus, calls Memnon's mother Cissia.
.
Yes the languages match. See:
web page
.
- ELAMITE ENGLISH MANDING
-ak and ka
turna know, awaken kuna, fori
sahri death sa
murta to erect kura
-mar from a place ma
li give di
tela to go tara
Nap God Nala
tus habitation du
husu ill-omened dyugu
kuta lance keru
lan,lani silver dala
ki one killi
ta place ta
kik sky,heaven ka
sari sculpter se
ufat steel tuufa
tela to go ta
khali great ka
dau help deema
ko king,lord ka
na say na
para to watch fere-ke
quote:Most likely Afrasian, but their language hasn't been classified yet.
EDIT: Nevermind, Kush the empire came later. But what language family were they in?
quote:We may never know what language was spoken by the Meroites. The Kushite empire was a Confederation. The Kushites are archaeologically usually associated with the C-Group. The C-Group was made up of numerous groups including Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Conger speakers. All of these Superlanguage families have their origin in Nubia.
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about linguistic relations to Kush? Did they speak an Afro-Asiatic language? Actually, if they were Kushite, then shouldn't their language be very similiar to Meroitic?
EDIT: Nevermind, Kush the empire came later. But what language family were they in?
quote:Based on what? No serious linguist has proposed Kushite language to be Afrasan. We've been through this.
Originally posted by Yonis:
Most likely Afrasian, but their language hasn't been classified yet.
quote:What proof do you have that Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo have their origin in the Sudan?
The C-Group was made up of numerous groups including Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Conger speakers. All of these Superlanguage families have their origin in Nubia .
quote:When I use Nubia, it is in reference to parts of Egypt and the Sudan idetified by this toponym by most researchers.
Originally posted by Hotep2u:
Greetings:
Clyde Winters wrote:
quote:What proof do you have that Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo have their origin in the Sudan?
The C-Group was made up of numerous groups including Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Conger speakers. All of these Superlanguage families have their origin in Nubia .
When you use Nubia do you mean the Nuba ethnic group?
Hotep
quote:^Good find. This is the first time I've actually seen you refer to numerous other scholars outside of yourself...lol.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:When I use Nubia, it is in reference to parts of Egypt and the Sudan idetified by this toponym by most researchers.
Originally posted by Hotep2u:
Greetings:
Clyde Winters wrote:
quote:What proof do you have that Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo have their origin in the Sudan?
The C-Group was made up of numerous groups including Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Conger speakers. All of these Superlanguage families have their origin in Nubia .
When you use Nubia do you mean the Nuba ethnic group?
Hotep
The Nuba have nothing to do with the Kushites. The Nuba only began to enter the Meroitic Empire in Roman times. Before then they lived north of the Meroitic empire.
The Nubian origin of Niger-Congo is based on the research of Welmers. See:Welmers,Wm.1971. "Niger-Congo Mande". Current Trends in Linguistics , 7:113-140.
Controversy surrounds the classification of the Niger-Congo Superfamily, especially the Mande group. Greenberg (1963) popularized the idea that the Mande subset was a member of the Niger-Congo Superset of Africa languages.
The position of Mande in the Niger-Congo Superset has long been precarious and today it is given a peripheral status to the Niger-Congo Superset (Bennett & Sterk 1977; Dalby 1988). Murkarovsky (1966) believes that the Mande group of languages does not belong in the Niger-Congo Superset, while Welmers (1971) and Bennett and Sterk (1977) has advanced the idea that Mande was the first group to break away from Niger-Congo, because of its loss of the noun class system.
The Mande languages are closely related to Songhay (Blench,1995; Mukarovsky 1976/77; Zima 1989), Nilo-Saharan ( Boyd 1978; Creissels 1981; Bender 1981) and the Chadic group. Zima (1989) compared 25 Songhay and Mandekan terms from the cultural vocabulary to highlight the correspondence between these two language groups.
Zima (1989:110) made it clear that "the lexical affinities between the Songhay and Mande languages are evident".This view was confirmed by Creissels (1981) who has provided many morphological and lexical similarities between Songhay and Mande, which are too numerous to be accounted for by chance.
Blench (1995)and B. Heine and D. Nurse, African Languages: An Introduction (pp.16-17) believes that the Niger-Congo (Mande) is especially closely united with Central Sudani and Kabu within Nilo-Saharan.
Mukarovsky (1987) has presented hundreds of analogous Mande and Cushitic terms. Due to the similarities between the Mande and Cushitic language families Mukarovsky (1987) would place Mande into the Afro-Asiatic Superset of languages.
This view is not surprising since the Mande languages are closely connected to Coptic as well.
This linguistic evidence makes it clear that the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Cushitic speakers originally lived intimate contact. It also confirms the general theory advanced by Obenga and Diop that a Black African family exist, which includes Egyptian and the majority of African languages spoken in Africa today.
.
quote:^ Indeed, we've been through this for like, what?.. 50 to 60 times now?
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Based on what? No serious linguist has proposed Kushite language to be Afrasan. We've been through this.
Originally posted by Yonis:
Most likely Afrasian, but their language hasn't been classified yet.
quote:Here on Egyptsearch, many of us have by now come to grips with the Eurocentric ruse of "Nubia", and hence, no need to dumben it down. Lazily, it is on this basis that some use the term in quotation marks. Progress is the way to go.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
When I use Nubia, it is in reference to parts of Egypt and the Sudan idetified by this toponym by most researchers.
quote:Many of the contemporary so-called Nubian speakers are remnants of Kushites. You have no evidence that they have been wiped out. We've also been through this issue.
Clyde Winters:
The Nuba have nothing to do with the Kushites. The Nuba only began to enter the Meroitic Empire in Roman times. Before then they lived north of the Meroitic empire.
quote:The Niger-Congo superfamily has it roots somewhere in the Sahara, likely in the central portion. Eastern Sahara cannot be excluded.
Clyde Winters:
The Nubian origin of Niger-Congo is based on the research of Welmers. See:Welmers,Wm.1971. "Niger-Congo Mande". Current Trends in Linguistics , 7:113-140.
quote:Essentially proposing that it is a distinct language family on its own?
Clyde Winters:
Controversy surrounds the classification of the Niger-Congo Superfamily, especially the Mande group. Greenberg (1963) popularized the idea that the Mande subset was a member of the Niger-Congo Superset of Africa languages.
The position of Mande in the Niger-Congo Superset has long been precarious and today it is given a peripheral status to the Niger-Congo Superset (Bennett & Sterk 1977; Dalby 1988). Murkarovsky (1966) believes that the Mande group of languages does not belong in the Niger-Congo Superset, while Welmers (1971) and Bennett and Sterk (1977) has advanced the idea that Mande was the first group to break away from Niger-Congo, because of its loss of the noun class system.
quote:So, Songhay wouldn't be considered part of the Niger-Congo family either?
Clyde Winters:
The Mande languages are closely related to Songhay (Blench,1995; Mukarovsky 1976/77; Zima 1989), Nilo-Saharan ( Boyd 1978; Creissels 1981; Bender 1981) and the Chadic group. Zima (1989) compared 25 Songhay and Mandekan terms from the cultural vocabulary to highlight the correspondence between these two language groups.
quote:And what cognates does he propose for this?
Clyde Winters:
Mukarovsky (1987) has presented hundreds of analogous Mande and Cushitic terms. Due to the similarities between the Mande and Cushitic language families Mukarovsky (1987) would place Mande into the Afro-Asiatic Superset of languages.
quote:Naturally, given the relatively recent divergances of these major African languages, and historic interactions between the groups in them, they are bound to be related to some degree or another. This doesn't however preclude the yet relatively closer relationships between groups under the family.
Clyde Winters:
This linguistic evidence makes it clear that the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Cushitic speakers originally lived intimate contact.
quote:What then is the "non-black" African family?
Clyde Winters:
It also confirms the general theory advanced by Obenga and Diop that a Black African family exist, which includes Egyptian and the majority of African languages spoken in Africa today.
quote:This would not be news to you if you had read any of the almost 200 articles I have published over the years.
Originally posted by King_Scorpion:
quote:^Good find. This is the first time I've actually seen you refer to numerous other scholars outside of yourself...lol.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:When I use Nubia, it is in reference to parts of Egypt and the Sudan idetified by this toponym by most researchers.
Originally posted by Hotep2u:
Greetings:
Clyde Winters wrote:
quote:What proof do you have that Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo have their origin in the Sudan?
The C-Group was made up of numerous groups including Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Conger speakers. All of these Superlanguage families have their origin in Nubia .
When you use Nubia do you mean the Nuba ethnic group?
Hotep
The Nuba have nothing to do with the Kushites. The Nuba only began to enter the Meroitic Empire in Roman times. Before then they lived north of the Meroitic empire.
The Nubian origin of Niger-Congo is based on the research of Welmers. See:Welmers,Wm.1971. "Niger-Congo Mande". Current Trends in Linguistics , 7:113-140.
Controversy surrounds the classification of the Niger-Congo Superfamily, especially the Mande group. Greenberg (1963) popularized the idea that the Mande subset was a member of the Niger-Congo Superset of Africa languages.
The position of Mande in the Niger-Congo Superset has long been precarious and today it is given a peripheral status to the Niger-Congo Superset (Bennett & Sterk 1977; Dalby 1988). Murkarovsky (1966) believes that the Mande group of languages does not belong in the Niger-Congo Superset, while Welmers (1971) and Bennett and Sterk (1977) has advanced the idea that Mande was the first group to break away from Niger-Congo, because of its loss of the noun class system.
The Mande languages are closely related to Songhay (Blench,1995; Mukarovsky 1976/77; Zima 1989), Nilo-Saharan ( Boyd 1978; Creissels 1981; Bender 1981) and the Chadic group. Zima (1989) compared 25 Songhay and Mandekan terms from the cultural vocabulary to highlight the correspondence between these two language groups.
Zima (1989:110) made it clear that "the lexical affinities between the Songhay and Mande languages are evident".This view was confirmed by Creissels (1981) who has provided many morphological and lexical similarities between Songhay and Mande, which are too numerous to be accounted for by chance.
Blench (1995)and B. Heine and D. Nurse, African Languages: An Introduction (pp.16-17) believes that the Niger-Congo (Mande) is especially closely united with Central Sudani and Kabu within Nilo-Saharan.
Mukarovsky (1987) has presented hundreds of analogous Mande and Cushitic terms. Due to the similarities between the Mande and Cushitic language families Mukarovsky (1987) would place Mande into the Afro-Asiatic Superset of languages.
This view is not surprising since the Mande languages are closely connected to Coptic as well.
This linguistic evidence makes it clear that the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Cushitic speakers originally lived intimate contact. It also confirms the general theory advanced by Obenga and Diop that a Black African family exist, which includes Egyptian and the majority of African languages spoken in Africa today.
.
quote:No can you tell us more about them.
Originally posted by abdulkarem3:
dr clyde have you seen the bassa(liberia) claim of being part of the kushite empire
quote:Please elaborate. The idea seems interesting.
The Niger-Congo superfamily has it roots somewhere in the Sahara, likely in the central portion. Eastern Sahara cannot be excluded.
quote:There are three non-African family languages spoken in Africa:
What then is the "non-black" African family?
quote:Please cite any source dating to Roman times or later that associates the Nuba with the Meroitic Empire. Tyhe Nubians did not live in the Meroitic Empire.
Many of the contemporary so-called Nubian speakers are remnants of Kushites. You have no evidence that they have been wiped out. We've also been through this issue.
quote:Right. Songhay is classed as a Nilo-Saharan language.
So, Songhay wouldn't be considered part of the Niger-Congo family either?
quote:My assessment is mainly based on 'correlative' observation between lineage biohistory and distribution, and language distribution.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:Please elaborate. The idea seems interesting.
The Niger-Congo superfamily has it roots somewhere in the Sahara, likely in the central portion. Eastern Sahara cannot be excluded.
quote:These are not African languages; they are and/or direct derivatives of languages with origins elsewhere, rendering your calling them African language families, a non-starter.
Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:There are three non-African family languages spoken in Africa:
What then is the "non-black" African family?
1.Afrikans in South Africa
2. English and French which is spoken among millions of Africans.
3. Arabic
quote:Immaterial. In a previous topic, you were ask to confront linguistic reconstructions of Nilo-Saharan affiliation with Kushitic terms, referencing Rilly's work, as well as the dubious connections with Tocharian et al., but you couldn't deliver. You were also asked to confront genetic evidence, and you failed. You have no evidence whatsoever that Nile Valley populations, particularly Kushites/Meroites, were wiped out leaving no descendants.
Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:Please cite any source dating to Roman times or later that associates the Nuba with the Meroitic Empire. Tyhe Nubians did not live in the Meroitic Empire.
Many of the contemporary so-called Nubian speakers are remnants of Kushites. You have no evidence that they have been wiped out. We've also been through this issue.
quote:Apparently there were various cultural shifts throughout history along the Nile Valley, but no evidence of population displacement. What biological and genetic evidence do you have of this?
Clyde Winters:
David O'Connor makes it clear in Ancientr Nubia: Egypt's Rival in Africa (1993), that the Nubians or Nobatai "adopted a Romano-Egyptian culture very different from that of Meroitic Lower Nubia" (p.72).Welsby, in The Kingdom of Kush,also believes the area was not fully occupied by Meroites.
quote:Based on what specific factors, including cognates, which are common to Songhay and Nilo-Saharan but presumably absent in the Niger-congo superfamily?
Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:Right. Songhay is classed as a Nilo-Saharan language.
So, Songhay wouldn't be considered part of the Niger-Congo family either?
quote:Nevermind. I double-checked on this particular point, and it seems to be consistent with what you said. That said, I look forward to feedback on the rest of the issues under discussion.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Based on what specific factors, including cognates, which are common to Songhay and Nilo-Saharan but presumably absent in the Niger-congo superfamily?
Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:Right. Songhay is classed as a Nilo-Saharan language.
So, Songhay wouldn't be considered part of the Niger-Congo family either?
quote:The origin of the language has nothing to do with where it is spoken and nativized. For example, the North American language is English. It originated elsewhere but it is recognized as the North American language since it is spoken by most people in the United States and Canada.
quote:Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:
What then is the "non-black" African family?
There are three non-African family languages spoken in Africa:
1.Afrikans in South Africa
2. English and French which is spoken among millions of Africans.
3. Arabic
These are not African languages; they are and/or direct derivatives of languages with origins elsewhere, rendering your calling them African language families, a non-starter.
quote:I don't follow you.
The origin of the language has nothing to do with where it is spoken and nativized. For example, the North American language is English. It originated elsewhere but it is recognized as the North American language since it is spoken by most people in the United States and Canada.
quote:Who needs any biological or genetic evidence. Bones and mtDNA can not tell you what language a person speaks. It can only show you what population they may be associated with.
quote:Clyde Winters:
David O'Connor makes it clear in Ancientr Nubia: Egypt's Rival in Africa (1993), that the Nubians or Nobatai "adopted a Romano-Egyptian culture very different from that of Meroitic Lower Nubia" (p.72).Welsby, in The Kingdom of Kush,also believes the area was not fully occupied by Meroites.
Apparently there were various cultural shifts throughout history along the Nile Valley, but no evidence of population displacement. What biological and genetic evidence do you have of this?
quote:The problem with the above is that most langauges throughout most of their history offer no textual [written] evidence.
Bones and mtDNA can not tell you what language a person speaks.
The textual evidence relating to the rise and expansion of the Nubian speakers is all the evidence you need to support this truth.
quote:What genetic evidence exist of the actual mtDNA and Y chromosomes of the Meroites recovered from Meroitic graves? There is none. As a result, researchers are speculating on population genetics 3000 years ago, based on genetic material carried by contempory Sudanic people. Call this "evidence" what it is: i.e., pure speculation and conjecture.
Immaterial. In a previous topic, you were ask to confront linguistic reconstructions of Nilo-Saharan affiliation with Kushitic terms, referencing Rilly's work, as well as the dubious connections with Tocharian et al., but you couldn't deliver. You were also asked to confront genetic evidence, and you failed. You have no evidence whatsoever that Nile Valley populations, particularly Kushites/Meroites, were wiped out leaving no descendants.
quote:When it comes to national language politics influence linguistics. In Mesopotamia, the earliest language written in the area was Sumerian. Once Akkadians came on the see the national language was Akkadian. We know that the original inhabitants of the land spoke Ubadian, yet we associate Sumerian and Akkadians as the language of the Mesopotamians.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:I don't follow you.
The origin of the language has nothing to do with where it is spoken and nativized. For example, the North American language is English. It originated elsewhere but it is recognized as the North American language since it is spoken by most people in the United States and Canada.
In linguistics - English isn't recognized as a North American language any more than it is recognized as a West African language.
You seem to be substituting politics when the issue is obviously linguistics.
quote:No they were white racist who murdered millions of other whites.
Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus:
I suppose Clyde Winters is going to claim next that the Nazis were black.
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
quote:This answer is a clear indicator that your idea of 'black African' languages is B.S., because you come up with no such thing as a "non-black" African language. Whom here do you suppose is that intellectually numb to buy into passing a list of largely non-African [not same as 'non-black' African] languages as African language families?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:The origin of the language has nothing to do
Mystery Solver:
quote:These are not African languages; they are and/or direct derivatives of languages with origins elsewhere, rendering your calling them African language families, a non-starter.
Clyde Winters:
There are three non-African family languages spoken in Africa:
1.Afrikans in South Africa
2. English and French which is spoken among millions of Africans.
3. Arabic
with where it is spoken and nativized.
quote:It is not 'who'; it is 'what' needs genetic or biological evidence? That would be your claim about contemporary so-called Nubians not being descendants of ancient Kushites, and suggesting population displacement. Your biological evidence for this claim is still pending.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Who needs any biological or genetic evidence.
quote:Come back to planet earth. We are talking about your biological evidence for a population being wiped out, because that is the only evidence that can support your shaky claims of Kushite descendants being traceless. If they aren't to be found in contemporary so-called Nubian groups, where then; in Nigeria perhaps, or India amongst Dravidians?
Clyde Winters:
Bones and mtDNA can not tell you what language a person speaks.
quote:False, but linguistic material can work as a supplimentary evidence.
Clyde Winters:
The textual evidence relating to the rise and expansion of the Nubian speakers is all the evidence you need to support this truth.
quote:Judging by your careless use of terms, it may well be said that "Nubians" were always in conflict with "Nubians". "Nubian" is a term imposed on these people as a group. Which Nile Valley groups calls themselves "Nubian"? It has become a Euro-contextualized term to place certain Nilo-Saharan dialects of the Nile Valley into a family.
Clyde Winters:
If the Nubians were always in conflict with the Meroites, we can not claim that these people were Kushites.
quote:This is one of those answers that makes it clear that you know next to nothing about genetics...like the time you couldn't even tell the difference between the male and female lineage.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
What genetic evidence exist of the actual mtDNA and Y chromosomes of the Meroites recovered from Meroitic graves? There is none.
quote:This would be population displacement, and requires genetic evidence, bio-anthropological and linguistic evidence.
Clyde Winters:
I never said the Meroites were wiped out. I believe they just migrated into West Africa. This would explain the genetic relationship between Egyptian and other languages spoken by Black Africans.
quote:How do you know Egyptian wasn't a lingua franca itself? After all, dynastic Egypt was a union of different polities and socio-complexes. Yet if this was to be the case, you're telling me that the language can be affiliated with contemporary groups, while Meroitic cannot?
Clyde Winters:
I also maintain that the composition of the Meroitic Empire was ethnically diverse. As a result, they used first Egyptian, and later Meroitic as a lingua franca. Since Meroitic was a lingua franca you can not use language(s) spoken by contemporary groups living in the fomer Meroitic Empire, to identify any remnants of the Kushites presently living in the former environs of the Meroitic Empire.
quote:This nonsense about "Nubians" and "Kushites" dichotomy has already been dealt with above.
Clyde Winters:
Finally, I dispute Rilly research because 1) he claims that the Meroites spoke a language similar to Nubian (which according to the textual evidence was not spoken by any Kushites) a people who practiced an Egypto-Roman culture; and 2) he is attempting to read Meroitic using Proto-Nilo-Saharan, when he does not have any evidence of the various languages spoken by the Meroites. lacking evidence on the languages spoken by the ancient Meroites makes it impossible to reconstruct Proto-Meroitic.
quote:BASSA
No can you tell us more about them
quote:
The Bassa (Dei, Bassa, Kru, Krahn, Grebo), also referred to as the Kwa-Speakers, can trace their historical origins to Mozambique in pre-dynastic times. Over time they migrated up through Ethiopia (Adbassa->Adbassania->Abyssinia) and established empires in conjunction with other ethnic groups in the area (Kush, Axum, Meroe). The 25th dynasty leaders of Khemit(Egypt) Ta Harko, Xa Bako and Xe Biko were Bassa. Their fall from power in Khemit would cause a retreat toward central Africa toward the Lake Chad region led by Mbem son of Soye, where the empires of Rifum, Kororafa and Adbassa were established in succession. Adbassa would last three centuries alongside the Bornu, Hausa, and Yoruba kingdoms. The Fall of Adbassa would split the massive Bassa group into many groups sending some to the Kasai Congo (Bassa-la-Mpasu), Togo (Bassa'r), Senegal, Sierra-Leone, Guinea (Bassa-ri), Nigeria (Bassa-Nge), Cameroon(Bassa) and Liberia (Dei, Bassa, Kru, Krahn, Grebo). The Liberian group was led by Hana-Mbak(Hanabo) son of Wenang. The Mano ethnic group of Liberia called the Bassa, Manidyu. Meaning the tribe that dries up rivers when they cross. This Bassa group would split into multiple separate ethnic groups in Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire (Bete, Kru) when they arrived.
based of www.republic.liberia
quote:I think the semantical game here is fun.
Also, if English is not the language of North America, what is the native language of the vast majority of North Americans?
quote:I wouldn't trust this. I'd like to see their evidence...and not oral tradition either!
Originally posted by abdulkarem3:
dr. clydequote:BASSA
No can you tell us more about them
quote : wiki
quote:
The Bassa (Dei, Bassa, Kru, Krahn, Grebo), also referred to as the Kwa-Speakers, can trace their historical origins to Mozambique in pre-dynastic times. Over time they migrated up through Ethiopia (Adbassa->Adbassania->Abyssinia) and established empires in conjunction with other ethnic groups in the area (Kush, Axum, Meroe). The 25th dynasty leaders of Khemit(Egypt) Ta Harko, Xa Bako and Xe Biko were Bassa. Their fall from power in Khemit would cause a retreat toward central Africa toward the Lake Chad region led by Mbem son of Soye, where the empires of Rifum, Kororafa and Adbassa were established in succession. Adbassa would last three centuries alongside the Bornu, Hausa, and Yoruba kingdoms. The Fall of Adbassa would split the massive Bassa group into many groups sending some to the Kasai Congo (Bassa-la-Mpasu), Togo (Bassa'r), Senegal, Sierra-Leone, Guinea (Bassa-ri), Nigeria (Bassa-Nge), Cameroon(Bassa) and Liberia (Dei, Bassa, Kru, Krahn, Grebo). The Liberian group was led by Hana-Mbak(Hanabo) son of Wenang. The Mano ethnic group of Liberia called the Bassa, Manidyu. Meaning the tribe that dries up rivers when they cross. This Bassa group would split into multiple separate ethnic groups in Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire (Bete, Kru) when they arrived.
based of www.republic.liberia
quote:None exist. If you have this information please produce it.
What evidence do you have about discrete "Meroitic" languages?
quote:Are you sure about this?
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Based on what? No serious linguist has proposed Kushite language to be Afrasan. We've been through this.
Originally posted by Yonis:
Most likely Afrasian, but their language hasn't been classified yet.
quote:And may I ask why *I* need to substantiate a claim which *you* made, and was asked to substantiate?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:None exist. If you have this information please produce it.
What evidence do you have about discrete "Meroitic" languages?
quote:Yes, I am sure about no serious linguist placing Meroitic in the Afrasan family, just as no serious linguist would place it in Indo-European [aka Tocharian]. So, what of it?
Originally posted by Yonis:
quote:Are you sure about this?
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Based on what? No serious linguist has proposed Kushite language to be Afrasan. We've been through this.
Originally posted by Yonis:
Most likely Afrasian, but their language hasn't been classified yet.
http://www.soas.ac.uk/lingfiles/workingpapers/rowan2.pdf
quote:What is substantial about it? Presumably the tenuous argument built solely around the idea of 'consonant compatability restrictions'? Elaborate on why this is substantial.
Originally posted by Yonis:
So the above paper is un-serious??
quote:Well for starter it offers the possibility that this language might have been afrasian rather than nilo-saharan. Secondly the language is still undiciphered therefore no one can say for sure that it wasn't afrasian or that it was nilo-saharan. it could also be niger-kordofian, it's all possible as for now.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:What is substantial about it? Presumably the tenuous argument built solely around the idea of 'consonant compatability restrictions'? Elaborate on why this is substantial.
Originally posted by Yonis:
So the above paper is un-serious??
quote:How so? Specifics.
Originally posted by Yonis:
Well for starter, it offers the possibility that this language might have been afrasian rather than nilo-saharan.
quote:Prepondence of linguistic evidence, bio-anthropological and genetic evidence suggests it belonged to the same language family spoken by majority of the contemporary groups living in and around the very region where the complex used to be situated, and these primarily belong to the North eastern Sudanic languages. We've been through this.
Yonis:
secondly the language is still undiciphered therefore no one can say for sure that it wasn't afrasian or that it was nilo-saharan.
quote:I'm all ears. Please layout the specifics of the case for this all-out possibility, with seemingly no end in sight.
Yonis:
it could also be niger-kordofian, it's all possible as for now.
quote:Read above ^^^.This thread is about the people identified as Kushites in Asia.
Originally posted by Nice Vidadavida *sigh*:
So Clyde are you saying there is a connection between Elamites and Kushites?
If so it is interesting that they are both the first sons of Shem and Ham in the bible.
But is this what this thread is about?
quote:This is not true Meroitic has been deciphered. I deciphered Meroitic over 20 years ago.
Well for starter it offers the possibility that this language might have been afrasian rather than nilo-saharan. Secondly the language is still undiciphered therefore no one can say for sure that it wasn't afrasian or that it was nilo-saharan. it could also be niger-kordofian, it's all possible as for now.
quote:
Originally posted by Red,White, and Blue + Christian:
The non African languages used widely in Africa are Enlish, French, and Portuese with little Afrikaans (Dutch) and Italian.
Arabic is African from the AfroAsiatic language family. Hagar was the mother of Ishmael. She was Egyptian and Arabic is close to Middle Egyptian.
The script is similar in appearance to hieratic.
The Elamites are related to the Dravidians. What language is Proto-Sahran? The Proto-Sarahans included more than one language family.
The Linguistics of the Elamites
http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/elam.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elamo-Dravidian_languages
McAlpin (1975) identified several similarities between Elamite and Dravidian. According to McAlpin, 20% of Dravidian and Elamite vocabulary are cognates; a further 12% are probable cognates. Elamite and Dravidian possess similar second-person pronouns and parallel case endings. They have identical derivatives, abstract nouns, and the same verb stem+tense marker+personal ending structure. Both have two positive tenses, a "past" and a "non-past".
The Elamo-Dravidian Hypothesis is based on several other pieces of evidence. It appears that agriculture developed in the Near East and later spread to the Indus Valley region, suggesting that Elamo-Dravidian agriculturalists may have brought farming from the Near East to the Indus Valley. Later evidence of extensive trade between Elam and the Indus Valley Civilization suggests ongoing links between the two regions. Proponents of the hypothesis noted similarities between the early Harappan script, which has not been definitively deciphered, and early Elamite script. The disjunct distribution of living Dravidian languages, concentrated mostly in southern India but with isolated pockets in Pakistan and northeast India, suggests a wider past distribution of the Dravidian languages, and that the Indo-European languages of modern India and Pakistan were later arrivals in the Indo-Gangetic plain, leaving isolated islands of the older Dravidian languages in the surrounding mountains. A variety of Dravidian loan words (i.e., phalam- ripe fruit, mulcham- mouth, khala- threshing floor) in Vedic Sanskrit suggests that the two languages existed for a time in proximity. Retroflex consonants, which exist in Vedic Sanskrit and Dravidian but do not exist in Iranian or European languages could suggest a Dravidian substratum or adstratum in Vedic Sanskrit.
Some who claim to have deciphered the Harappan script, including Asko Parpola and Walter A. Fairservis Jr., suggest that the Harappans spoke a Dravidian language, while others, for instance S. R. Rao, suggest that the Harappan script represents an Indo-European language, similar to Sanskrit.
[edit] Criticism
Georgiy Starostin has criticized the proposed grammatical correspondences between Elamite and Dravidian as unconvincing, and performs a mass lexical comparison of Elamite to the Nostratic macrofamily (which includes Dravidian) as well as Afroasiatic and Sino-Caucasian, concluding that Elamite is related to (but not a member of) Afroasiatic and Nostratic, with Sino-Caucasian being more distant from the other three. [1]
quote:You can find answers for your questions above by reading the paper.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:How so? Specifics.
Originally posted by Yonis:
Well for starter, it offers the possibility that this language might have been afrasian rather than nilo-saharan.
quote:Prepondence of linguistic evidence, bio-anthropological and genetic evidence suggests it belonged to the same language family spoken by majority of the contemporary groups living in and around the very region where the complex used to be situated, and these primarily belong to the North eastern Sudanic languages. We've been through this.
Yonis:
secondly the language is still undiciphered therefore no one can say for sure that it wasn't afrasian or that it was nilo-saharan.
quote:I'm all ears. Please layout the specifics of the case for this all-out possibility, with seemingly no end in sight.
Yonis:
it could also be niger-kordofian, it's all possible as for now.
quote:I have read the said paper, not finding anything either decisive or substantial. Perhaps, you can enlighten us on how it is otherwise.
Originally posted by Yonis:
You can find answers for your questions above by reading the paper.
quote:Sorry my bad, i meant to say proffesional decipherment.
Clyde winters:
This is not true Meroitic has been deciphered. I deciphered Meroitic over 20 years ago.
quote:Yes, and some truth there as there is some E3b1 in Senegal, although Diop may have envisioned a kind of mass exodus from Km.t to West Africa for which evidence is scanty at best.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The great savant Cheikh Anta Diop (1974,1981) was convinced that many West African groups had formerly lived in the Egypto-Nubian region before they migrated to West Africa(Diop,1974).
quote:The following words correspond to Tokharian words:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
^You may repeat questionable claims, but they don't get less tenuous. What are the cognate terms between Meroitic and Tocharian?
quote:The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
How can you use Tocharian to decipher Meroitic when the above isn't met, and they use completely different scripts, developed at completely different timeframes, with the Meroitic script apparently being much older?
Ps: Confronting two weak approaches:
One proclaiming to use common language trait of consonant restriction and nothing much else, while the other proclaims to use [a distinct and younger script] to reach a logical conclusion about the language foundation of Meroitic.
Me thinks folks here put too much effort in trying to argue in Clyde's thread (taking him too seriously), one in which the title is "Asian Kushites". ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
quote:--->
Originally posted by rasol:
[qb] ^ Dr Winters is certainly a
I find it fascinating, from a tactical point of view, how you have learned to get off your theory of demic diffusion of Merotic script from India, by masquerading it as Afrocentrism.
I am [mildly] dissappointed that not one of your 'afrocentric' fan base has managed to put two and two together, and realise what you are actually saying.
quote:^ Hence according to Winters Meoitic is Indian and not African.
1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic
3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
quote:--->
Originally posted by rasol:] ^ Dr Winters is certainly a
I find it fascinating, from a tactical point of view, how you have learned to get off your theory of demic diffusion of Merotic script from India, by masquerading it as Afrocentrism.
I am [mildly] dissappointed that not one of your 'afrocentric' fan base has managed to put two and two together, and realise what you are actually saying.
quote:^ Hence according to Winters Meroitic is Indian and not African.
1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic
3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
quote:The issue is less that they are not fully informed and more that they are wildly assumptive.
The sources I have used are impartial, to disconfirm my hypothesis someone needs to show that my propositions are not fully informed
quote:Wildly assumptive arguments are promoted based on burden of proof fallacy.
[i.e., there were no Indians North Africa
quote:
Originally posted by Djehuti:
quote:Are these part of the words that have already been established as 'translated' Meroitic words before your so-called deciphering?...because off that list, I only see one word that is standard here, which happens to be that of 'water'.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:The following words correspond to Tokharian words:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
^You may repeat questionable claims, but they don't get less tenuous. What are the cognate terms between Meroitic and Tocharian?It is obvious that apote and parite do not relate to Tokharian because these are Egyptian loan words adopted by the Meroites. But around 57% of these terms show agreement. This made it highly probable that Meroitic and Tokharian were cognate languages.
- Meroitic Tokharian
0 kadke / ktke # queen 0 katak # master of the house
There are several recognized Meroitic words (Hintze 1979).
0 ato # water 0 ap #
0 s # 'race' 0 sah # 'man'
0 wide # youth 0 wir #
0 qor # monarch 0 oroce # 'the grand king'
0 parite # agent 0 parwe # 'first'
0 apote # 'envoy' 0 ap # 'father'
quote:If you weren't busy regurgitating posts that have been dealt with time and again, akin to a pre-programmed robot repeating the same line on and on no matter what the occasion is, you'd be addressing the specifics of the questions you cited, rather than going off on a tangent.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
How can you use Tocharian to decipher Meroitic when the above isn't met, and they use completely different scripts, developed at completely different timeframes, with the Meroitic script apparently being much older?
Ps: Confronting two weak approaches:
One proclaiming to use common language trait of consonant restriction and nothing much else, while the other proclaims to use [a distinct and younger script] to reach a logical conclusion about the language foundation of Meroitic.
Before I began work on Meroitic, other researchers had already falsified the African theory for Meroitic's cognate language. The fact that not even Nubian, a language spoken by a people who lived in the Meroitic empire, failed to be the cognate language of Meroitic made it clear that we must look elsewhere for the cognate language spoken by the Meroites....
quote:This is your opinion. You have proven nothing.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Are these part of the words that have already been established as 'translated' Meroitic words before your so-called deciphering?...because off that list, I only see one word that is standard here, which happens to be that of 'water'.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:The following words correspond to Tokharian words:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
^You may repeat questionable claims, but they don't get less tenuous. What are the cognate terms between Meroitic and Tocharian?It is obvious that apote and parite do not relate to Tokharian because these are Egyptian loan words adopted by the Meroites. But around 57% of these terms show agreement. This made it highly probable that Meroitic and Tokharian were cognate languages.
- Meroitic Tokharian
0 kadke / ktke # queen 0 katak # master of the house
There are several recognized Meroitic words (Hintze 1979).
0 ato # water 0 ap #
0 s # 'race' 0 sah # 'man'
0 wide # youth 0 wir #
0 qor # monarch 0 oroce # 'the grand king'
0 parite # agent 0 parwe # 'first'
0 apote # 'envoy' 0 ap # 'father'
Secondly, 'too' specific terms like 'monarch' or 'queen' in themselves are next to useless for comparative analysis as Rilly correctly notes, barring specific etymology of their roots tracing back to a specified 'single' cultural origin and subsequent diffusion(s) thereafter, and are also prone to direct diffusion from one culture to another.
Thirdly, it is easily noticeable that the majority of the words you selected do not even have correspondence, two of which you at least had the decency to acknowledge [the said 'apote' [apota?] & 'parite' [parita?]].
quote:If you weren't busy regurgitating posts that have been dealt with time and again, akin to a pre-programmed robot repeating the same line on and on no matter what the occasion is, you'd be addressing the specifics of the questions you cited, rather than going off on a tangent.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
How can you use Tocharian to decipher Meroitic when the above isn't met, and they use completely different scripts, developed at completely different timeframes, with the Meroitic script apparently being much older?
Ps: Confronting two weak approaches:
One proclaiming to use common language trait of consonant restriction and nothing much else, while the other proclaims to use [a distinct and younger script] to reach a logical conclusion about the language foundation of Meroitic.
Before I began work on Meroitic, other researchers had already falsified the African theory for Meroitic's cognate language. The fact that not even Nubian, a language spoken by a people who lived in the Meroitic empire, failed to be the cognate language of Meroitic made it clear that we must look elsewhere for the cognate language spoken by the Meroites....
quote:Not sure what you mean by that, when specifics on a point-by-point basis addressing your post, with clear messages, have been relayed to you.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This is your opinion. You have proven nothing.
quote:That's where you couldn't be more wrong. I cannot read Meroitic using your method, because it has serious flaws, stemming from an attempt to use distinct scripts, developed and used in distinct cultural complexes at significant time differences, not to mention the said complexes being geographically separated considerably.
Clyde Winters:
I can read Meroitic and you can too, using my method.
quote:Tenuous at best.
Clyde Winters:
Evidence of my decipherment of Meroitic is my ability to read any inscription.
quote:He certainly has made some headway, although still not enough for all-out deciphering of the script, using reasonably methodological & standard linguistic approaches to reconstruction. However, to see just how much further he has gone since the last piece of his that I've read, I'd have to familiarize myself with his latest publication, as referenced by one poster here recently.
Clyde Winters:
Since you believe Rilley is correct and I am wrong, why don't you decipher some of the Meroitic inscriptions using his approach for the members of Egypt Search.
quote:Yeah, yeah, I know; this is the point now, where the discussion turns into your emotional outpouring. So predictable, yet so laughable considering that you've yet to know jack about whom you are communicating with.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You're just jealous of my accomplishments. Supercar/Mystery Solver you attempt to hold court on this forum, yet you are afraid to get a terminal degree and publish papers on your theories.
quote:I rest the case just made.
Clyde Winters:
Anythime anyone argues with you you attack them like a mindless pitbull.
quote:I commend anyone's effort who questions by way of reasoning, and hence not a sheep. If your method was sound, I'd acknowledge so. It's not personal, unless you make it so.
Clyde Winters:
You are jealous of me because I am not afraid to publish my work and compete with Europeans. You are jealous of me because I dare to make an imprint on the academic world confirming Afrocentric theories, while you mimic European scholars, safe in the knowledge you can't be wrong because what you write is sanctioned by the members of the status quo.
quote:Let's please try to avoid hypotheticals, and stick with the reality at hand, shall we?
Clyde Winters:
And yet every thread someone shows the lack of knowledge you have about many subjects, including this one.
quote:I suppose this is why I notably attack reactionary Eurocentric ideological issues here, since long before you've joined the board. Quite observant of you.
Clyde Winters:
Your imagined association with European scholars have given you delusional visions of greatness. You aren't great.
quote:I guess all my unique contributions and takes from cited works over the years have been lost on you. I hope a lot of us here don't share this misfortune of lack of perceptiveness. In any case, what can I say?...life goes on.
Clyde Winters:
You never provide any unique contributions to any discussion because you stay solidly behind your European masters.
quote:Yeah, you only wish my critiques were unsound, and would just go away. Sorry to disappoint to that extent though.
Clyde Winters:
This is not being a bold researcher. It is the sign of a coward a weak child--the classic novice--easy to anger when confronted by evidence that proves you're wrong, eventhough you have echoed whatever your masters write.
quote:And you know all this, because you met me personally from where?
Clyde Winters:
You claim to be an expert on genetics, and yet you publish nothing.
quote:Publishing what you know NOT, is not something I'd brag about. But hey, that's just me.
Clyde Winters:
I on the otherhand have published articles on genetics. Articles published in peer reviwed journals. Journals you dare not send your work too, because it will only repeat what you read and fail to show any originality.
quote:You bet, once you stop being a coward, and start noticing the glaring flaws in your methodology being pointed out to you by others, and actually use that as an opportunity to revise your approaches and turn them around for the better.
Clyde Winters:
You coward. Get up out your knees and publish if you're so smart.
quote:This is a silly comment. First culture terms rarely agree unless there was contact between two different cultures. Secondly, diffusion implies contact.
Secondly, 'too' specific terms like 'monarch' or 'queen' in themselves are next to useless for comparative analysis as Rilly correctly notes, barring specific etymology of their roots tracing back to a specified 'single' cultural origin and subsequent diffusion(s) thereafter, and are also prone to direct diffusion from one culture to another.
quote:-
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Not sure what you mean by that, when specifics on a point-by-point basis addressing your post, with clear messages, have been relayed to you.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This is your opinion. You have proven nothing.
quote:That's where you couldn't be more wrong. I cannot read Meroitic using your method, because it has serious flaws, stemming from an attempt to use distinct scripts, developed and used in distinct cultural complexes at significant time differences, not to mention the said complexes being geographically separated considerably.
Clyde Winters:
I can read Meroitic and you can too, using my method.
quote:Tenuous at best.
Clyde Winters:
Evidence of my decipherment of Meroitic is my ability to read any inscription.
quote:He certainly has made some headway, although still not enough for all-out deciphering of the script, using reasonably methodological & standard linguistic approaches to reconstruction. However, to see just how much further he has gone since the last piece of his that I've read, I'd have to familiarize myself with his latest publication, as referenced by one poster here recently.
Clyde Winters:
Since you believe Rilley is correct and I am wrong, why don't you decipher some of the Meroitic inscriptions using his approach for the members of Egypt Search.
quote:I know you have not published anything because if you had you would show some originality in your interpretations of the material you post. Your post are usually just echoing what you read.
quote:Clyde Winters:
You claim to be an expert on genetics, and yet you publish nothing.
And you know all this, because you met me personally from where?
quote:Better yet, how about getting the book yourself, rather than wait for others to spoon feed you.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I look forward to you getting his book and then proving that his methods are superior to mine.
quote:
Clyde Winters:
Once you do this we can proceed with the test of decipherments.
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
quote:We've been through this before, but if you are suffering from increasing memory loss, then in simple terms...
Clyde Winters:
Until this is done please explain, in your own words, how Riley's reconstructions are linguistically sound when we have no evidence of the languages spoke in ancient Kush, except Meroitic.
quote:Can be read here, which has been brought to your attention repetitively: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-library/meroitic/rilly.htm
Clyde Winters:
Also list the root words Riley has found from ancient Kush that are the source of his reconstructions.
quote:Again you've met me, where?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I know you have not published anything
quote:Actually more of a reflection of your lack of perceptiveness, rather than an answer to how you know me.
Clyde Winters:
because if you had you would show some originality in your interpretations of the material you post.
quote:Which explains why most of the time I actually understand what is being cited, when you don't?! That my friend, is actually a comfortable place to be.
Clyde Winters:
Your post are usually just echoing what you read.
quote:Ever thought about quitting your daytime job, to become a nutty psychic hotline character? Hint: don't quit it.
Clyde Winters:
I have read tons of genetics articles. None of them show your style of writing and use of evidence. This proves to me, that you have contributed nothing to the field.
quote:Back to question #1 that you were supposed to be answering in this unsubstantive long-winded post, but quite predictably went off on a tangent.
Clyde Winters:
Moreover, given your need to always be right, makes it obvious that if you ever published an article on genetics or African studies you would want your fans to know it.
quote:Owe you zip about my person, and if that makes you cry, then so be it.
Clyde Winters:
If I am wrong please cite some of your work. I am waiting.
quote:First of all you can not recover Proto-Meroitic terms from Egyptian text because a proto language is reconstructed by comparing terms from a target language or number of languages to determine the mother tongue. Anyone who makes a claim that they recovered proto-terms from any text is lieing.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Better yet, how about getting the book yourself, rather than wait for others to spoon feed you.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I look forward to you getting his book and then proving that his methods are superior to mine.
quote:
Clyde Winters:
Once you do this we can proceed with the test of decipherments.
quote:We've been through this before, but if you are suffering from increasing memory loss, then in simple terms...
Clyde Winters:
Until this is done please explain, in your own words, how Riley's reconstructions are linguistically sound when we have no evidence of the languages spoke in ancient Kush, except Meroitic.
* 'Proto-Meroitic' names are uncovered from Egyptic texts.
Archaeology of 'Kerma', as the founding complex for Meroe, relaying its socio-cultural progression is taken into consideration in the process.
*'Typological similarity between Egyptian texts and Meroitic' ones, is sought after.
*Various words are already known from earlier work, but it is the question of determining the meaning for the bulk of them. So, those whose meaning have been determined, provide something to start working with.
*Iconography on archaeological material is taken into consideration, because they are many a times accompanied by descriptive words. This along with aforementioned translated words, names of persons and gods are useful in extrapolating certain words of the cotexts, and confirming their meanings in other [textual] occasions.
* Comparative analysis is undertaken between Meriotic and various other language groups from different language families, and then zeroing in on the ones sporting closer relationships.
*Ones closely related languages have come to the fore, lexicostatistical method is applied for comparative purposes between the defunct language [Meroitic] and living ones [in this case, N. Eastern Sudanic family].
*Lexicostatic approach is to be supplimented by the classical comparative method:
It was necessary,
*first to find regular phonetic correspondences between North Eastern Sudanic languages,
*second to reconstruct the original phonology of Proto-North Eastern Sudanic,
*third to reconstruct, as much as possible, some Proto-North Eastern Sudanic words, and
*finally to compare these proto-forms with Meroitic words. [courtesy C. Rilly]
^The resultant phonemes are compared, utilizing not only similar phonological structure, but also possible genetic correspondence, usually communicated in the same meaning of the words in question.
*Finally, close connections were found between some Meroitic words and their ProtoNorth Eastern Sudanic counterparts (see table below). Some regular phonetic correspondences are obvious. - Rilly
In spite of the scanty available data, the result is obvious : Meroitic is more than probably a member of the North Eastern Sudanic family.
^Slow process, requiring much patience, but doable with proper approach to standard linguistic procedures to unlocking 'defunct' but well documented languages.
quote:Can be read here, which has been brought to your attention repetitively: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-library/meroitic/rilly.htm
Clyde Winters:
Also list the root words Rilly has found from ancient Kush that are the source of his reconstructions.
code:Several aspects of Demotic grammar agree with Meroitic structure. This is especially true in relation to the formation of the adjective case and the use of pronouns.Egyptian Meroitic
m 'do not' ma not, no
nd 'homage' net 'bow in reverence'
r 'to, into' r id.
se 'son' s id.
s y 'satisfaction' se-ne 'to be satisfied'
ss 'writing, scribe' ssor 'scribe'
s w 'to protect' s 'to protect'
di 'give' d id.
t ' thou' t id.
t 'earth' te 'land'
k i 'high' kha 'great'
hc'w 'body' khe 'spirit, body'
rc 'likewise' r 'like'
bi 'good deed' bli 'right, order'
b 'soul' b, be id.
ssmt 'stewart' ssimte id.
p-mr-msc 'general, stategus' pelmos id.
p-sy-n-nsw 'son of the king' pesto
st "Isis' Wos id.
Wsir 'Osiris Sore id.
nfr 'good' na, n
ti 'here' t
code:In Demotic we see use of suffixial pronouns. For example:-n s/he, it, her, his
i "go", i-n 'he goes'
de 'bequeathal', de-n 'his bequeathal'
qe 'make' , qe-n 'he makes'
code:In Meroitic the adjective is placed behind the noun. For example,
sdm 'hear'
sdmy 'I hear'
sdm .f 'he hear'
sdm hr-f 'he will hear'
code:Adjectives in Demotic are also placed behind the noun. For example:e 'complete'
ŝ on tene 'The king commence(s) the rebirth'.
ŝ on tene-e 'The king commence(s) the complete rebirth'.
code:The -m suffix was used in Meroitic to denote the negative effect. The negative particle -m, is often joined to verbs along with the pronoun. For example:rmt hm ' small man'
ŝy nfr ' good fate'
ssw sbk ' few days'
quote:What's silly is your inability to read what is being cited. What do you understand by 'too specific'? That makes it useless for comparative work, but in the event that you'd attempt to do so, at least, be prepared to demonstrate cognation, backed up with specific etymology of origin.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:This is a silly comment. First culture terms rarely agree unless there was contact between two different cultures.
Secondly, 'too' specific terms like 'monarch' or 'queen' in themselves are next to useless for comparative analysis as Rilly correctly notes, barring specific etymology of their roots tracing back to a specified 'single' cultural origin and subsequent diffusion(s) thereafter, and are also prone to direct diffusion from one culture to another.
quote:LOL. What else did you assume was being implied?
Clyde Winters:
Secondly, diffusion implies contact.
quote:I don't know how you square this with the well known understanding that the scripts in question are distinct, used by discrete people considerably distant from one another and used at considerable time differences, with Meroitic being the far older one in use.
Clyde Winters:
If there was contact between the Meroites and Indians which is suggested by the Classical authors, and the documented presence of Indians in Egypt, support my proposition that the Kushana were instrumental in creating the Meroitic script.
quote:Undestanding of what is being relayed, should remedy this false sense of security.
Clyde Winters:
These comments do nothing to falsify my work.
quote:You've produced no evidence that Meroitic script and Tocharian are one and same, much less that the older Meroitic script derives from the much younger Tocharian. Simply put, the concept doesn't even make sense.
Clyde Winters:
You talk about root words. The Kushana (Tocharian) and Meroitic words come from primary text in these languages. This implies that they are roots since we only have evidence of these languages from textual material. This makes Riley's contentions unfounded.
quote:Clearly, you've chosen not to read the link:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
First of all you can not recover Proto-Meroitic terms from Egyptian text because a proto language is reconstructed by comparing terms from a target language or number of languages to determine the mother tongue. Anyone who makes a claim that they recovered proto-terms from any text is lieing.
quote:I take it that you aren't aware that:
Clyde Winters:
None of Rilly's terms have been accepted by anyone studying Meroitic except for kdi. The rest he has made up himself.
quote:It must not be those derived from your comparative work with Tocharian. To that extent, then I take it that you too would have had to have initially worked with the words established by previous researchers, just as Rilly did?
Clyde Winters:
The terms I compared have been accepted as possible Meroitic cognates. His terms are pure conjecture.
quote:See posts above, and stop being lazy: read the link.
Clyde Winters:
If these terms actually ever existed you should be able to identify the Meroitic or Egyptian text where they are found.
quote:Making no sense. Several basic Meroitic words were 'taken off the shelf', and additional ones were generated from primary texts & by iconography association. Lexicostatistics was then applied between several so-called Nubian dialects, using certain basic words as a basis, while keeping in mind that this comparison was to be done with the available Meroitic lexicons. Thereafter, classical comparative method was utilized to generate proto-terms for the N. Eastern Sudanic branch, proto-Nubian and proto-Taman. Now of course, this has already been relayed to you, and you either chose to ignore it and/or don't get it. This won't be reiterated again.
Clyde Winters:
Please cite the ancient source Rilly's terms came from that he used to produce his Proto-North Eastern Sudani lexicon.
quote:He provides 'examples' in the table. Reference it in the link. Now, produce the answer to my simple question to you about the aforementioned dubious use of Tocharian to decipher Meroitic, and I'll address it accordingly when I return [later].
Clyde Winters:
In addition, please reproduce the Meroitic terms accepted by most researchers that Rilly used to compare with the Proto-North Eastern Sudani terms.
quote:Its actually sad, clyde winters seems to have some sort of tunnel vision going on, he knows he's wrong but he doesn't seem to care for whatever reason when strong evidence are laid infront of him by his opponents. He obviously has the intelligence to change and refine himself to better counter his opponents by sound evidence, but he doesn't seem to care.
Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ LOL @ Clyde's linguistic debaucle:
Indo-Iranian (Indo-European) speaking Kushana being confused with Kushites, and the Dravidian word 'amma' being confused with the African deity Amen! LOL And you wonder why this guy is considered a laughing stock by true linguists!
quote:These pictures are of Saka, not Kushana.
Originally posted by Yonis:
quote:Its actually sad, clyde winters seems to have some sort of tunnel vision going on, he knows he's wrong but he doesn't seem to care for whatever reason when strong evidence are laid infront of him by his opponents. He obviously has the intelligence to change and refine himself to better counter his opponents by sound evidence, but he doesn't seem to care.
Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ LOL @ Clyde's linguistic debaucle:
Indo-Iranian (Indo-European) speaking Kushana being confused with Kushites, and the Dravidian word 'amma' being confused with the African deity Amen! LOL And you wonder why this guy is considered a laughing stock by true linguists!
Konfucius once said " only a fool and the wisest of all men never change " I hope this great quote might give him some insight.
Kushans of Asia and kushites of africa in nile valley have no significant relationship, atleast not more than other people in between and sarrounding both of these people.
A chinese has more relationship to kushans than to the kushites and an Egyptian has more relationship to kushites than a kushan far away in asia.
Btw kushan is only the indianized name, the real name of the establishing nomadic chinese clan was Kuei-shang.
The remnats of the kushan empire.
They don't look that African kushitic know do they clyde winters?
The buddha statues that were recently destroyed by the Talibans were also created by the kushans during the hight of their kushan empire.
The closest descendants of the kushans.
They don't look quite kushitic now do they Clyde Winters?
You seriously need to stop with these borderline childish claims of yours based on superficial issues such as similar sounding names if you really want to be taken seriously, just a brotherly advice.
quote:Which picture above is of "saka" (what is saka) are you trying to deny that these buddha statuse in modern Afghanistan were a production of the kushans who btw look nothing like "kushites" in the African continent as you propose?
Clyde winters.
These pictures are of Saka, not Kushana
quote:See:
Originally posted by Yonis:
quote:Which picture above is of "saka" (what is saka) are you trying to deny that these buddha statuse in modern Afghanistan were a production of the kushans who btw look nothing like "kushites" in the African continent as you propose?
Clyde winters.
These pictures are of Saka, not Kushana
quote:You ought to be very careful not to leap to wild conclusions everytime you find a word vaguely similar to kush, or anu or amun.
You have to be very careful when you describe coins as Kushan.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
quote:It's important to remember that there is *no evidence* that any of these diverse people have anything to do with Nile Valley Civilisation. But you will probably forget, I know.
Also, it is important to remember that the Kushan empire included many diverse nationalities and coins were minted in the languages of these subject people.
Of course!quote:Lol, no they were definetly not Iranian.
Djehuti:
By the way, the Kuei-shang were not Chinese but Iranian or perhaps Tocharian (an independent branch of Indo-European gone extinct) speaking peoples who were known by the Chinese.
quote:Well he has a little fanbase [lion/lord], marc and a few others who apparently will believe anything.
Originally posted by Yonis:
actually sad, clyde winters seems to have some sort of tunnel vision going on, he knows he's wrong but he doesn't seem to care for whatever reason when strong evidence are laid infront of him by his opponents.
The closest descendants of the kushans.
They don't look quite kushitic now do they Clyde Winters?
You seriously need to stop with these borderline childish claims of yours
quote:Not news. Nobody questions the relationship between Demotic and Meroitic scripts, which is the argument I've always put forth in our exchanges. Apparently, Demotic script was a basis for developing Meroitic script, which did take its own character notwithstanding. You acknowledge this link and yet, talk of this questionable origin from the much younger Tocharian script.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
EGYPTIAN INFLUENCE ON MEROITIC
Whereas Rilly is working from conjecture, my decipherment allows me to accurately and effectively compare Meroitic and Egyptian terms. Below is a discussion of the Meroitic and Egyptian relationship.
The Kushites and Egyptians had a close relationship for millennia. As a result the Egyptians had a tremendous influence on the culture of the Kushites, especially in the area of religion .
As early as the 12th dynasty the Egyptians controlled Nubia. After 1674 BC, the Kerma rulers regained control of Nubia until the raise of the New Kingdom. Pharaohs of the New Kingdom ruled Egypt for 500 years.
Nubia gained independence after the decline of Egypt in 1085 B.C. During this period the Kushites developed a highly developed civilization at Napata and Meroe (880 B.C.-A. D. 350). Over time the Kushites became strong enough to conqueror Egypt and found the 25th Dynasty.
The long association of Egypt and Nubia suggest that the Egyptians may have influenced more than the culture of the Kushites. In this paper we will review the affinities between the Egyptian and Meroitic languages.
Ll. Griffith during his decipherment of Meroitic (M.) found many Egyptian (E.) terms . These terms were especially used in the political culture area e.g., E. p-sy-n-nsw 'son of king' >
M. pesto 'king's foothold/foundation of light' ....
In the short review above of Egyptian and Meroitic cognates we can see the obvious influence of Egyptian, especially Demotic on Meroitic. This influence was shown not only in vocabulary but also grammatical features.
This linguistic material discussed above clearly suggest some Egyptian substrata influence on Meroitic. It indicates Egyptian influence on both the structure and vocabulary of Meroitic.
It is very interesting to note that much of the affinity between Meroitic and Egyptian is based on Demotic examples. This may be explained by the fact that Demotic was used by the Kushites during the 25th Dynasty, and forms the foundation for the Meroitic writing.
quote:Like I said before, you repeat nullified claims, in a manner not different from a pre-programmed robot repeating the same line in any given occasion. Contrary to what spin-doctors think, repeating descredited lines doesn't lend it legitimacy. You can fool some people all of the time, but you can't fool everyone all the time.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I would classify Meroitic as Niger-Congo langauge.
The great savant Cheikh Anta Diop (1974,1981) was convinced that many West African groups had formerly lived in the Egypto-Nubian region before they migrated to West Africa(Diop,1974). He supported this hypothesis with a discussion of the cognation between the names for gods in Egypt-Nubia and West Africa (Diop,1974), Egypto-Nubian and West African ethnomyns and toponyms common to both regions (Diop,1981) and West African and Egyptian languages.
There are many relationships between Meroitic and other African languages. For example, In Oromo/Galla, the term for queen is 'gifti'; and both 'naaga-ta" in Somali and Wolof 'jigen' mean woman. These terms appear to be related to Kdi > gti/e.
Yet even though we find cognition between some Cushitic and Nubian we can not use these languages to completely decipher Meroitic as proven by many past researchers. The Tocharian language on the otherhand, does allow us to read Meroitic and show its relationship with other African languages...
quote:I have always claimed that Meroitic was a lingua franca. But I do not believe that it was related to Nubian because the Nuba were never part of the Meroitic Empire.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Not news. Nobody questions the relationship between Demotic and Meroitic scripts, which is the argument I've always put forth in our exchanges. Apparently, Demotic script was a basis for developing Meroitic script, which did take its own character notwithstanding. You acknowledge this link and yet, talk of this questionable origin from the much younger Tocharian script.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
EGYPTIAN INFLUENCE ON MEROITIC
Whereas Rilly is working from conjecture, my decipherment allows me to accurately and effectively compare Meroitic and Egyptian terms. Below is a discussion of the Meroitic and Egyptian relationship.
The Kushites and Egyptians had a close relationship for millennia. As a result the Egyptians had a tremendous influence on the culture of the Kushites, especially in the area of religion .
As early as the 12th dynasty the Egyptians controlled Nubia. After 1674 BC, the Kerma rulers regained control of Nubia until the raise of the New Kingdom. Pharaohs of the New Kingdom ruled Egypt for 500 years.
Nubia gained independence after the decline of Egypt in 1085 B.C. During this period the Kushites developed a highly developed civilization at Napata and Meroe (880 B.C.-A. D. 350). Over time the Kushites became strong enough to conqueror Egypt and found the 25th Dynasty.
The long association of Egypt and Nubia suggest that the Egyptians may have influenced more than the culture of the Kushites. In this paper we will review the affinities between the Egyptian and Meroitic languages.
Ll. Griffith during his decipherment of Meroitic (M.) found many Egyptian (E.) terms . These terms were especially used in the political culture area e.g., E. p-sy-n-nsw 'son of king' >
M. pesto 'king's foothold/foundation of light' ....
In the short review above of Egyptian and Meroitic cognates we can see the obvious influence of Egyptian, especially Demotic on Meroitic. This influence was shown not only in vocabulary but also grammatical features.
This linguistic material discussed above clearly suggest some Egyptian substrata influence on Meroitic. It indicates Egyptian influence on both the structure and vocabulary of Meroitic.
It is very interesting to note that much of the affinity between Meroitic and Egyptian is based on Demotic examples. This may be explained by the fact that Demotic was used by the Kushites during the 25th Dynasty, and forms the foundation for the Meroitic writing.
My take based on evidential preponderance:
If Meroitic was a intra-Kushitic lingua franca, which as I noted before, that I suspect it was, then it was likely done so to unite the related but discerned sub-ethnic units of the Kushite society. Just as Demotic script had influenced Meroitic script, I suspect that the Kushitic/Meroitic language, which likely used as a foundation, some Nilo-Saharan affiliated language, also saw some extra-Kushitic infusions, with the most likely source being from its Egyptic counterpart, thus giving it a certain Afrasan touch to it. The descendants of Meroites went nowhere, they are still in the region, not withstanding some cultural shifts [like Arabization, Islamification, Christianization and so forth] along with various population movements along the region. Meroe was a literate society, and as such, there is no reason to assume that they couldn't have taken their scripture [and other specific cultural traits] along with them in the event of any potential 'exodus'. Meroitic script has been found nowhere else but in the Nile Valley!
quote:Circular argument. Reference my response to this nonsense in the preceding page.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I have always claimed that Meroitic was a lingua franca. But I do not believe that it was related to Nubian because the Nuba were never part of the Meroitic Empire.
quote:I am not trying to fool anyone. There was no evidence that Meroitic was related to any African languages until my decipherment as outlined above.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Like I said before, you repeat nullified claims, in a manner not different from a pre-programmed robot repeating the same line in any given occasion. Contrary to what spin-doctors think, repeating descredited lines doesn't lend it legitimacy. You can fool some people all of the time, but you can't fool everyone all the time.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I would classify Meroitic as Niger-Congo langauge.
The great savant Cheikh Anta Diop (1974,1981) was convinced that many West African groups had formerly lived in the Egypto-Nubian region before they migrated to West Africa(Diop,1974). He supported this hypothesis with a discussion of the cognation between the names for gods in Egypt-Nubia and West Africa (Diop,1974), Egypto-Nubian and West African ethnomyns and toponyms common to both regions (Diop,1981) and West African and Egyptian languages.
There are many relationships between Meroitic and other African languages. For example, In Oromo/Galla, the term for queen is 'gifti'; and both 'naaga-ta" in Somali and Wolof 'jigen' mean woman. These terms appear to be related to Kdi > gti/e.
Yet even though we find cognition between some Cushitic and Nubian we can not use these languages to completely decipher Meroitic as proven by many past researchers. The Tocharian language on the otherhand, does allow us to read Meroitic and show its relationship with other African languages...
quote:Doesn't matter; you simply aren't fooling everyone.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I am not trying to fool anyone.
quote:Of course there is, and I've already demonstrated this.
Clyde Winters:
There was no evidence that Meroitic was related to any African languages until my decipherment as outlined above.
quote:That's how it is done; comparative method to find relationships between languages under study.
Clyde Winters:
The comparative method was used to find the cognate language of Meroitic. Using this method Meroitic scholars have compared the "known" Meroitic terms to vernacular African languages to establish morphological cognition between Meroitic and an African language.
quote:Apparently it is a defunct [lingua franca type] language as Egyptic is, but its relationship with contemporary language families [NE Sudanic Nilo-Saharan family] has been demonstrated.
Clyde Winters:
Up to now these linguistic comparisons failed to reveal the cognate language of Meroitic
quote:Rilly claims that it is related to Nilo-Saharan, particularly NE Sudanic branch. What Griffith or Haycock has failed to do, has no bearing on Rilly's work. He even outlined previous failed attempts to find relationship:
Clyde Winters:
Rilly recently claimed that Meroitic is related to Nubian , eventhough Griffith and Haycock failed to read Meroitic using Nubian.
quote:Wrong. Rilly's objective was to show family association of Meroitic, because he acknowledges that:
Clyde Winters:
Rilly's hypothesis is that Meroitic can be read by reconstructing the proto-language of the Sudani language.
quote:Yes.
Clyde Winters:
Rilly claims that Meroitic is Nilo-Saharan.
quote:False. He claims this by comparing Meroitic with contemporary Nilo-Saharan dialects of the NE Sudanic family.
Clyde Winters:
He claims that this is supported by comparing the Proto-Nilo-Saharan to Meroitic, because the people living in Kush today are remnants of the Meroites.
quote:You can't disconfirm something you haven't even gotten down right, wittingly or unwittingly.
Clyde Winters:
We can disconfirm this theory because it is not supported by the historical and linguistic evidence we have concerning the linguistic and political history of Kush.
quote:False premise: Proto-Nubian, Proto-Taman & Proto-nes were reconstructed.
Clyde Winters:
We must reject Rilly's theory because ,we have no evidence that 1) Proto-Nilo-Saharan, as constructed by Rilly was ever spoken by a living being;
quote:Circular argument of the nullified. Also notwithstanding the play with the word "Nubian", akin to the Eurocentric ruse [applying it according to convenience of the 'ideological' occasion at hand], you have no evidence of displacement or wipe out of Kushitic population.
Clyde Winters:
2) we have evidence that the Noba/Nubians entered Nubia long after the Kushites had founded Napatan and Meroitic civilizations, so eventhough they live in Nubia today, they are not representative of Kushite people who they were often in conflict with;
quote:Non-issue.
Clyde Winters
3) Egyptian documents make it clear that the Blymmes also entered the area after the founding of Napatan and Meroitic civilization, so even if some people claim that the Beja=Blymmes this is conjecture.
quote:Strawman. Cite Rilly on the 'Blymmes'.
Clyde Winters:
Consequently, even if Beja= Blymmes, they donot represent the Kushite people who founded the Napata and Meroe civilizations, because both the Noba and Blymmes entered Kush after its founding. This makes it clear that although Rilly's evidence looked promising, the data presented in support of the hypothesis fails to support his claim.
quote:Circular argument and false. See posts above.
Clyde Winters:
Rilly claims that Meroitic is Nilo-Saharan. He claims that this is supported by comparing the Proto-Nilo-Saharan to Meroitic, because the people living in Kush today are remnants of the Meroites.
quote:False. As a self-proclaimed linguist, you are still incapable of understanding what Rilly was communicating to the audience. Lexical cognition was demonstrated in the tables. One of those tables specifically represents relationship via lexicostatistic analysis, using contemporary Nilo-Saharan languages and available Meroitic lexicons.
Clyde Winters:
Because there are no cognate Meroitic terms and
lexical items in the Eastern Sudanic
Languages, Rilly has begun to reconstruct
Proto-Eastern Sudanic, and attempt to read Meroitic text using his Proto-Eastern Sudanic vocabulary.
quote:Where did he proclaim to have deciphered Meroitic, or that this was even his goal at hand?
Clyde Winters:
Even if I hadn’t deciphered the Meroitic writing this method would never lead to the decipherment of this or any other language.
quote:Strawman.
Clyde Winters:
First, it must be stated that no “dead “
language has been deciphered using a proto-language.
quote:Waste of typing for such a lengthy followup to a strawman setup, wouldn't you say?
Clyde Winters:
The basic problem with using a proto-language to read a dead language results from the fact that the proto-language has been reconstructed by linguist who have no knowledge or textual evidence of the alleged proto-language. Secondly, there are subgroups in any family of languages. This means that you must first establish the intermediate proto-language (IPL) of the subgroup languages in the target language family. Once the IPLs have been reconstructed, you can then reconstruct the superordinate proto-language (SPL).
quote:See above.
Clyde Winters:
You can only reconstruct the SPL on the basis of
attested languages. In addition, before you can
reconstruct the IPLs and SPL a genetic relationship must be established for the languages within the Superfamily of languages, e.g., Nilo Saharan.
quote:What is the Meroitic script then, if not textual evidence of people who live in Sudan, Meroe, during the Meroitic times? LOL. Yes, proto-terms for Eastern Sudanic languages can be setup via comparative analysis, using lexical correspondance across living E. Sudanic languages. A true linguist would know this.
Clyde Winters:
The problem with Rilly’s method, is there is no way he can really establish the IPLs in Eastern Sudanic because we have not textual evidence or lexical items spoken by people who lived in the Sudan in Meroitic times.
quote:Non-sequitur, by strawmen.
Clyde Winters:
As a result, the languages spoken by people in this area today may not reflect the linguistic geography of the Sudan in the Meroitic period.
quote:Firstly, Arabic isn't indigenous to Egypt, and is from a single source, 'Arabic'. The same can't be said of the Nilo-Saharan dialects spread along Sudan to southern Egypt. These are 'indigenous' languages. Are you suggesting that *all* these different dialects suddenly replaced *all* the former languages of the region, leaving no trace of the original languages of the region?
Clyde Winters:
This is most evident when we look at modern Egypt. Today the dominant language is Arabic, and yet Arabic has no relationship to Egyptian. If we accept
Rilly’s method for deciphering Egyptian we would
assume that once me reconstructed proto-Semitic , we could read Egyptian—but as you know Egyptian is not a Semitic language.
quote:False. Rilly has demonstrated matches between the Meroitic and those languages now in Sudan.
Clyde Winters:
These scholars failed to find a match between Meroitic and the vernacular languages of Nubia and the Sudan.
quote:Let me guess: the dubious Tocharian-Meroitic link that you recite like a broken record. Too bad; your narrative has been nullified, yet again.
Clyde Winters:
This made it necessary to turn to the historical literature concerning the Kushites to form a new hypothesis related to possible sources of the Meroitic language. The historical literature of the Kushites comes from Egyptian and classical sources. It was the Classical authors who noted the influence of the Indians on Meroitic civilization.
quote:
Dr. Winters writes: The problem with Rilly’s method, is there is no way he can really establish the IPLs in Eastern Sudanic because we have not textual evidence or lexical items spoken by people who lived in the Sudan in Meroitic times.
quote:Dr. Winters, MysterySolver is correct in noting your tendency to make circular arguments.
MysterySolver writes:
What is the Meroitic script then, if not textual evidence of people who live in Sudan, Meroe, during the Meroitic times?
quote:
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
quote:What's worst, as I have amply demonstrated, is that he doesn't seem to have grasped the concepts Rilly is applying and what is being relayed. For instance, he keeps talking of Rilly's supposed reconstruction of proto-Nilo-Sahara, as a means to translate Meroitic, when there is no such thing to be found in the Rilly piece at hand.
Originally posted by rasol:
Dr. Winters, MysterySolver is correct in noting your tendency to make circular arguments.
Do you see how you've done that - via your statment above?
quote:This is the same tired old robotic line, devoid of intelligence, that you throw at just about anyone who details serious flaws in your perceptiveness on the issues at hand.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Supercar it is a waste of time discussing Riley's alleged decipherment with you.
It is clear that you don't understand anything about a proto-language:
quote:1. A proto-language is reconstructed by comparing languages from a language family, absence of a full understanding of Meroitic before Rilly did his reconstructions makes his reconstructions invalid;
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
2. There is no way you can claim a proto-language existed because the entire language is made-up;
3. Because of 2 and 3, no language has been deciphered using a proto-language.
You don't know anything about linguistics so I will not discuss this matter with you further.
quote:He also says that proto-Nilo-Saharan is invalid, because Rilly's work precedes 'full' understanding of Merotic.
For instance, he keeps talking of Rilly's supposed reconstruction of proto-Nilo-Sahara, as a means to translate Meroitic, when there is no such thing to be found in the Rilly piece at hand.
quote:That makes sense.
He keeps talking about Rilly's focus on geography, in that he chooses to focus on groups in Sudan simply because this is where the Meroitic complex used to be situated. Fact is, before even considering Nilo-Saharan, Rilly first sought after possible cognative association with the Niger-congo and Afrasan families, only to find out that there was no strong correspondence, just as previous attempts by other researchers had demonstrated. On the other hand, stronger correspondence was observed in the Nilo-Saharan family, particularly the eastern Sudanic family, with the northern branches of this family being yet closer.
quote:Yeap, you got it right.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:He also says that proto-Nilo-Saharan is invalid, because Rilly's work precedes 'full' understanding of Merotic.
For instance, he keeps talking of Rilly's supposed reconstruction of proto-Nilo-Sahara, as a means to translate Meroitic, when there is no such thing to be found in the Rilly piece at hand.
This also makes no sense.
That is -
* It does not follow that proto-Nilo-saharan requires 'full understanding' of Merotic. [what Proto language is based on 'full' understanding of *all* its alleged member langauges?].
quote:Yes again. Rilly correctly notes that the script is yet to be 'fully' understood, but has done comparative work substantial enough to associate the language with a family, i.e. language family.
rasol:
** It has not been proven that Meroitic is 'fully' understood, now.
quote:^ LOL Yonis, you are right that the Yuehzi were not Iranian, but they were NOT Chinese. They were, as I said earlier, members of an Indo-European speaking people called the Tocharians.
Originally posted by Yonis:
Lol, no they were definetly not Iranian.
Kuei-shang are a sub-clan of the Yuezhi clan of ancient chinese
clans who migrated south after they lost a battle against another clan that almost obliterated them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuezhi
http://www.grifterrec.com/coins/kushan/kushan.html
The Yeuhzi people, who early resided near the border of the agricultural part of China and later migrated on the Eurasian steppe all the way to north India eventually becoming the rulers of the vast agricultural trading Kushan Empire.
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~dnschmid/Liu_Yuezhi_Kushan.pdf
quote:
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
quote:When confronted with difficult questions, it seems Dr. Winters attempts to talk around them, with long replies which attempt to change the subject while never answering the question.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
Meroitic script is much older than Tocharian script according most sources. How does that square with Meroitic developing from a script younger than itself, by a great time differential?
quote:Or simply:
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
quote:This statement, that no North East Sudanese speakers ever lived in the Sudanese empire of Meroe is hilarious coming from someone who proclaims - Mandingo in Japan, and Indians in Sudan.
I accept that Rilly has probably done a fine job reconstructing Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani, But we can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic Empire
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
quote:Please cite any documented ( i.e., Nubian lexical items) evidence of Nubian being spoken in the Meroitic Empire .
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:This statement, that no North East Sudanese speakers ever lived in the Sudanese empire of Meroe is hilarious coming from someone who proclaims - Mandingo in Japan, and Indians in Sudan.
I accept that Rilly has probably done a fine job reconstructing Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani, But we can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic Empire
quote:As usual you don't know what you're talking about. The Kushana used the Kharosthi/Karosti script. Inscriptions written in Kharosti date back to 251 BC.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:When confronted with difficult questions, it seems Dr. Winters attempts to talk around them, with long replies which attempt to change the subject while never answering the question.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
Meroitic script is much older than Tocharian script according most sources. How does that square with Meroitic developing from a script younger than itself, by a great time differential?
quote:Sure ancient scripts help when attempting reconstruct proto-languages, but not all that necessary. What is however necessary, is to determine family relationship of the language in question, through lexical, phonetic, and morphological correspondences and thereby determining cognation. In the process, looking at terms from specific historic cultural innovations and events that have been traced back to certain timelines, can help in guaging the time depths of the languages, particularly if these terms are common occurrences across the language family, but unique to language family. Once language family is established, ongoing comparative analysis can enable reconstruction of the 'intermediary' proto-languages for the sub-families of languages within the larger one, and then ultimately, the proto-language for the overall family.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
There are three ways to verify a protolanguage is congruent with reality 1) there is documentary evidence of the ancestor or near ancestor of the target language that allows comparison of adctual terms and grammars to the construct (i.e., reconstructed lexical items and grammars); 2) written evidence in the form of inscriptions exist from systematic excavation that compare favorably to the contruct; and 3)
quote:That's what comparative analysis allows linguists to do, from the pattern of lexical and morphological correspondences, to be able to predict proto-terms with confidence level near to exactness.
Clyde Winters:
the power of prediction that this or that construct will conforms to objective reality.
quote:Oversimplification. Names of persons were necessary in the process to uncover other terms from the cotexts. Moreover, these names aren't from a proto-Meroitic names from the Napatan state, the precursor of Meroe, isn't the same thing as proto-language, much less artificial. You aren't making sense.
Clyde Winters:
Rilly's ideas that he can read Meroitic based on Kushite names from Kerma, which he calls proto-Meroitic names (even though he knows full well that a protolanguage is artificial and comes from reconstruction)
quote:What standards. If you believe that a language family called Eastern Sudanic exists, which can be further broken down to the northern and southern branches, why can't its proto-language for either branch be determined with classical comparative analysis?
Clyde Winters:
and a list of Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani terms from the Nubian, Nara, Taman and Nyima languages meets none of these standards.
quote:There doesn't have to be documents for proto-north Eastern Sudanic language. This is why the 'reconstruction' for the proto-language of the clusters of pre-exiting north eastern Sudanic languages, from using comparative analysis, is necessary to begin with.
Clyde Winters:
This meets none of the standards because there is no documentary evidence for Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani dating to the Meroitic period.
quote:False. Nubian was only one of sub-language family of the eastern Sudanic family in the overall analysis, amongst the many others. You either cannot read, or you're intentionally misinterpreting what was said in the link. The need for doing so, in case you need to be informed, is to determine lexical and morphological correspondences between available Meriotic lexicons and the lexicons of eastern Sudanic languages, and then zero in on the relatively closer branch of the eastern Sudanic family.
Clyde Winters:
Moreover, the principle language he hopes to use to read Meroitic text: Nubian, was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire.
quote:And a fact that you continue to ignore, when you falsely and incessantly accuse him of not taking such events into consideration in his analysis, just like now.
Clyde Winters:
A fact Rilly admits in his own paper where he notes that Nubians invaded the Meroitic Empire during the declining days of the empire.
quote:Okay? Yes, having documents of ancient examples of language families can add relative precision to the predictions made in the reconstructed proto-language, but it isn't necessary to have one, to be able to reconstruct a proto-language, which as your citation correctly notes, is a theorectical construc, done so methodologically by comparative analysis of living languages of the family. What's all that necessary hence, is to be able to have a living language to work with.
Clyde Winters:
Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics, wrote that ,"a protolanguage is no more than a theorectical construct designed to link by means of rules the systems of historically related languages in the most economical way. It thus summarizes the present state of our knowledge regarding the systematic relationships of grammars of the related languages....When dealing with past language states it is possible to assess the distance between construct and reality only in cases where we possess documentated evidence regarding an ancestor or a near ancestor, such as is provided by Latin, in the case of the Romance languages"(p.71).
quote:Until now, I could have sworn that you were criticizing his ability to even do that.
Clyde Winters:
I accept that Rilly has probably done a fine job reconstructing Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani
quote:We can regect your false claims that he relied on proto-north eastern Sudanic to read Meroitic terms. This is why it was crucial for you to have engaged by rebuttals of your narrative, which you understandly didn't have the gumption to do.
Clyde Winters:
But we can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic Empire, until after the Meroitic Empire was in decline.
quote:Proto-Nilo Saharan is supposed to precede the Meroitic complex, by quite a huge time differential. You aren't making sense. But available understood Meroitic lexicons have enabled to pinpoint which language family it associates with, and within which branch. This is what Rilly has figured out, and you've failed to demonstrate how his method is flawed. That's all.
Clyde Winters:
The absence of documentary evidence of any Nilo-Saharan language spoken in the Meroitic Empire during the Meroitic period precludes any possibility that Rilly's alleged Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani has any relationship to Meroitic or reality for that matter.
quote:False. Lexicostatistics allows him to determine the extent or degree of lexical correspondences between available Meroitic lexicons and languages across the eastern Sudanic family, and thereby gauge which branch of this family is relatively closer, upon being able to place each language into northern and southern clusters.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Rilly claims that lexicostatistics or glottochronology allows him to read Meroitic.
quote:It is a quantitative application used to gauge the extent of lexical correspondence across languages, using certain pre-selected basic terms as a basis.
Clyde Winters:
Lexicostatistics is used to fit datable events among languages that theoretically are descendant from a commong ancestor.
quote:This is the feature that classical comparative analysis seeks to assess and hence predict terms for proto-language reconstruction.
Clyde Winters
The basic vocabulary is that part of the lexicon that shows slow change. These terms relate to basic cultural practices and universal human experiences.
quote:Including the previously attested Meroitic terms, Rilly through his 'multicontextual approach' was able to come up with 39 'assured' Meroitic terms using primary Kemetic and Meroitic texts. Time consuming, but achievable.
Clyde Winters:
Rilly can not use this method to read Meroitic because there are only 26 attested Meroitic terms accepted by the establishment.
quote:That's where you are wrong. See his examples in the lexical correspondence table, as part of the comparison with the '39 assured' Meroitic terms.
Clyde Winters:
None of these terms are cognate to Nubian or Taman terms except the name for a Meroitic god.
quote:Who said anything about dating a common ancestral language between Meroitic and other eastern Sudanic languages (?), although it's certainly possible via classical comparative analysis and multidisciplinary work. Just another non-sequitur for you to knock down.
Clyde Winters:
With only 1 cognate Meroitic and Northern Eastern Sudani languages, there is no way you can date the time Meroitic speakers and Nilo-Saharan speakers spoke a common ancestral language.
quote:False. Meroitic and Kemetic primary texts were primarily used to translate Meroitic terms. That alone renders the rest your claim ridiculous. Your recitation about finding no cognates in Nilo-Saharan has been addressed two posts above.
Clyde Winters:
Rilly claims to be able to decipher Meroitic using a method that compares basic culural words to date the time languages separated, can not be used to read Meroitic, because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nilo-Saharan cognates.
quote:What we have here, is the absence of your perceptiveness to grasp what is being relayed in the link. Lexical correspondences to basic available Meroitic lexicons have been found across the eastern Sudanic family, including the Nubian sub-branch.
Clyde Winters:
The absence of Meroitic and Nubian cognates prevents any fruitful comparisons between these languages.
quote:You need to be able to distinguish Tocharian script from Kharosthi script. Most sources place the Tocharian script in the common era, no earlier than the 1st century. Which is it; Tocharian or Kharosthi?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Kushana used the Kharosthi/Karosti script. Inscriptions written in Kharosti date back to 251 BC.
quote:Dating attributed to earliest attestation of Meroitic is ~ 2nd century BC; a far cry from the 6th-8th ce of Tocharian script.
Clyde Winters:
The first Meroitic inscription dates back to the reign of Shanakdakheto (c.177-155 BC). The date of the first Meroitic inscriptions is 100 years after people the Kushana were writing their works in Kharosti.
quote:Even your own diagrammatical representation refutes you. It shows that Meroitic has a different set of alphabets from Kharosthi, and bears more resemblance with 'Demotic' and 'Egyptian' than Kharosthi.
Clyde Winters:
Some of the Meroitic signs correspond to Meroitic signs.
quote:In my last response to your narrative, which you never addressed, Rilly was cited pointing out the flaws in previous attempts, which of course, which have no bearing on his more refined 'multicontextual' approach.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Before my decipherment of Meroitic the attested vocabulary of Meroitic was only 26 terms. Researchers proved decades ago that none of these terms have Nubian and Nilo-Saharan cognates. This makes Rilly's ideas about deciphering Meroitic using Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani a farce.
quote:This claim is what I call a farce, because Meroitic has been demonstrated to be part of the Nilo-Saharan, closely related to the eastern Sudanic branch of this language family. Any wonder why you call yourself a linguist, and still not get this.
Clyde Winters:
This is a farce because we do have documented evidence of Meroitic, but none for the Nilo-Saharan languages.
quote:Nonsense. See post above.
Clyde Winters:
As a result, any proto-term from Northern Eastern Sudani Rilly compares with Meroitic will be conjecture since there is no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan languages being spoken in the Meroitic Empire.
quote:Classical comparative analysis uses contemporary languages belonging to a family or 'clusters' of a superfamily. If lexical items and morphological items across these languages in a family have strong correspondences and hence, cognation, which should be expected in the 'clusters' of a language family, then it is a safe bet that they inherited these terms from a common ancestor, which would have apparently not changed to a great extent. These regularities allow for prediction of the proto-terms which, if they were to be tested with those of an actual ancestor, would come close to being exact.
Clyde Winters:
H.H. Hock, in Principles of Historical Linguistics (1986), observed that there are two major arguments against the idea that comparative reconstructions recover the "prehistoric reality" of a language.
The first principle, is that languages change over time. This makes it almost impossible to "fully" reconstruct the lexcical items and grammar of the ancestral language.
quote:Proto-language is a 'theoretical common ancestor', man, methodologically derived from known language clusters or family. A common ancestor is therefore expected to be 'dialect free', because it was this proto-language that was supposed to have given rise to the existing dialects. Saying that it is 'dialect free', is almost akin to saying in genetics, that ancestral E3b isn't as microscopically diverse as its sub-clades which comprise of their on clusters from microsatellite diversity.
Clyde Winters:
Secondly, there are few, if any dialect free languages. Constructs resulting from comparing lexical items and grammars from an available set of languages,produce a dialect free protolanguage, that is unnatural and "factually incorrect as shown by the insights of the wave theory" (p.568).
quote:Use your head; how can Meroitic language precede something that it is a member of? It is like saying "Clyde" precedes a lineage that he is supposed to be part of. Makes no sense.
Clyde Winters:
We must not forget that there is no way to prove Nilo-Saharan preceed Meroitic because we have no textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan during the Meroitic period demonstrating that Nilo-Saharan languages were spoken in the Meroitic Empire,
quote:Nubian is part of the north eastern Sudanic family; proto-North eastern Sudanic language reconstruction requires language comparisons transcending the Nubian sub-branch of the north eastern Sudanic sub-family of the eastern Sudanic family, in turn belonging to the Nilo-Saharan superfamily.
Clyde Winters:
especially Nubian, precludes using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic.
quote:You keep robotically reciting this, and I keep demonstrating how false it is, and out of sync with what was written in the link.
Clyde Winters:
Using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic will fail to provide a linguistically realistic situation in Nubia 2000 years ago.
quote:A fact which you continue to use nonetheless, to make false charges against him.
Clyde Winters:
This is especially true for Nubian, which was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. The Nubian speakers lived far to the north of the Meroitic Empire, a fact Rilly acknowledges in his paper.
quote:Sure ancient scripts can be helpful when attempting to reconstruct proto-languages, but not all that necessary. What is however necessary, is to determine family relationship of the language clusters under study, through lexical, phonetic and morphological correspondences, thereby determining cognation. In the process, looking at terms from specific historic cultural innovations and events or processes that have been traced back to certain timelines, can help in gauging the time depths of the language clusters, particularly if these terms are common occurrences across the clusters, but unique to said clusters or even the language family at large. Once language family is established, ongoing comparative analysis can enable reconstruction of the 'intermediary' proto-languages of the clusters within the larger family, and then ultimately, the overall proto-language for the superfamily.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
There are three ways to verify a protolanguage is congruent with reality 1) there is documentary evidence of the ancestor or near ancestor of the target language that allows comparison of adctual terms and grammars to the construct (i.e., reconstructed lexical items and grammars); 2) written evidence in the form of inscriptions exist from systematic excavation that compare favorably to the contruct; and 3)
quote:That's what comparative analysis allows linguists to do, via the pattern of lexical and morphological correspondences, to be able to predict proto-terms with confidence level near to exactness.
Clyde Winters:
the power of prediction that this or that construct will conforms to objective reality.
quote:Oversimplification. Names of persons were necessary in the process to uncover other terms from the cotexts. Moreover, the 'proto-Meroitic' names aren't from a proto-language; they are names of figures of the Napatan state, the precursor of Meroe, which isn't the same thing as a 'proto-language', much less artificial. You aren't making sense.
Clyde Winters:
Rilly's ideas that he can read Meroitic based on Kushite names from Kerma, which he calls proto-Meroitic names (even though he knows full well that a protolanguage is artificial and comes from reconstruction)
quote:What standards? If you believe that a language family called Eastern Sudanic exists, which can be further broken down into the northern and southern branches, then why can't its proto-language for either branch be determined by classical comparative analysis?
Clyde Winters:
and a list of Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani terms from the Nubian, Nara, Taman and Nyima languages meets none of these standards.
quote:There doesn't have to be ancient documents, in order to reconstruct proto-north Eastern Sudanic language. This is why the 'reconstruction' of the proto-language of clusters of exiting north eastern Sudanic languages, using comparative analysis, is necessary to begin with. It is a 'thoeretical' common ancestor.
Clyde Winters:
This meets none of the standards because there is no documentary evidence for Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani dating to the Meroitic period.
quote:False. Nubian was only one of the sub-language families of the eastern Sudanic family in the overall analysis, amongst the many others. You either cannot read, or you're intentionally misinterpreting what was said in the link. The need for doing so, in case you need to be informed, was to determine lexical and morphological correspondences between available Meriotic lexicons and those of eastern Sudanic languages, and then zero in on the relatively closer branch of the eastern Sudanic family.
Clyde Winters:
Moreover, the principle language he hopes to use to read Meroitic text: Nubian, was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire.
quote:And a fact that you continue to ignore, when you falsely and incessantly accuse him of not taking such events into consideration in his analysis, just like now.
Clyde Winters:
A fact Rilly admits in his own paper where he notes that Nubians invaded the Meroitic Empire during the declining days of the empire.
quote:Okay? Yes, having documents of ancient examples of language families can add relative precision to the predictions made in the reconstructed proto-language, but it isn't necessary to have one, to be able to reconstruct a proto-language, which as your citation correctly notes, is a theorectical construct, done so methodologically by comparative analysis of active languages of the family under study. What's all that necessary hence, is to be able to have living language clusters to work with.
Clyde Winters:
Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics, wrote that ,"a protolanguage is no more than a theorectical construct designed to link by means of rules the systems of historically related languages in the most economical way. It thus summarizes the present state of our knowledge regarding the systematic relationships of grammars of the related languages....When dealing with past language states it is possible to assess the distance between construct and reality only in cases where we possess documentated evidence regarding an ancestor or a near ancestor, such as is provided by Latin, in the case of the Romance languages"(p.71).
quote:Until now, I could have sworn that you were criticizing his ability to even do that.
Clyde Winters:
I accept that Rilly has probably done a fine job reconstructing Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani
quote:We can reject your false claims that he relied on proto-north eastern Sudanic to read Meroitic terms. This is why it was crucial for you to have engaged my rebuttals to your narrative, which you understandably didn't have the gumption to do.
Clyde Winters:
But we can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic Empire, until after the Meroitic Empire was in decline.
quote:Proto-Nilo Saharan is supposed to precede the Meroitic complex, by quite a huge time differential. You aren't making sense. But available understood Meroitic lexicons have enabled the pinpointing of which language family it most closely associates with, and within which branch. This is what Rilly has figured out, and you've failed to demonstrate how his method is flawed.
Clyde Winters:
The absence of documentary evidence of any Nilo-Saharan language spoken in the Meroitic Empire during the Meroitic period precludes any possibility that Rilly's alleged Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani has any relationship to Meroitic or reality for that matter.
quote:
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
quote:Unless you are arguing that Eastern Sudanic, Berta and other Nilo Saharan langauge groups -did not exist- a few thousand years ago, and then tautologically assume that Meroitic is not Nilo Saharan as well, this comment makes no sense.
Winters posts:
We have no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan being spoken in the Meroitic period
quote:^ This is also complete nonsense given that you claim Meroitic belongs to "Niger-Congo", which isn't spoken anywhere near this region and never has been, and you believe Meroitic script to have been introduced by "Indians", whose languages are not found within a thousand miles of Sudan.
there is no way anyone can claim this family of languages was spoken in the Meroitic Empire in Meroitic times.
quote:Certainly arguing that Rilly can't place Meroitic into Nilo Saharan because Nilo Saharan doesn't exist 2 thousand years ago makes no sense.
MysterySolver writes: Available understood Meroitic lexicons have enabled the pinpointing of which language family it most closely associates with, and within which branch. This is what Rilly has figured out, and you've failed to demonstrate how his method is flawed.
quote:Tosharians:
The empire was created by the Kushan tribe of the Yuezhi confederation, an Indo-European people from the eastern Tarim Basin and Gansu, China, possibly related to the Tocharians.
quote:
The Tocharians or Tusharas as known in Indian literature were the easternmost speakers of an Indo-European language in antiquity, inhabiting the Tarim basin in what is now Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, northwestern People's Republic of China
quote:
Rasol posted:
I find it fascinating, from a tactical point of view, how you have learned to get off your theory of demic diffusion of Merotic script from India, by masquerading it as Afrocentrism.
I am [mildly] dissappointed that not one of your 'afrocentric' fan base has managed to put two and two together, and realise what you are actually saying.
quote:
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
quote:Werner Vycihle , in "Le pays de Kousch dans une inscription Ethiopienne", Annales d'Ethiopie ,2, (1957) pp.177-179, has provided us with many lexical items relating to the Sudanese. The people of Upper Nubia and the Sudan were known in Egyptian as k-'-s and k-'-s-i . The Hebrew people called the Kushites kus. In the cuneiform inscriptions the Sudanese were called Kusiya. In the Ethiopic inscriptions Ezana the Kushites were called Kashi or Kasu. In Sumerian the Kushites were called Melukha = Kasi and Kasi = Kush.
Originally posted by rasol:
Asian "Kushites"
Kushan empire of India:
quote:
The empire was created by the Kushan tribe of the Yuezhi confederation, an Indo-European people from the eastern Tarim Basin and Gansu, China, possibly related to the Tocharians.
quote:Agreed. And the truth is there is no evidence that Indo-Europeans created the Merotic script, as you are implying.
Truth will always overcome a lie, no matter what the lie is.
quote:Yeap, and his lies will never overcome the truth, no matter how many times he does so.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:Agreed. And the truth is there is no evidence that Indo-Europeans created the Merotic script, as you are implying.
Truth will always overcome a lie, no matter what the lie is.
quote:I did find that Meroitic was related to the Tokhrian/Kushana language, which is classed in the Indo-European family.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Kushana/Tocharian language was a lingua franca. The base of this language is Dravidian not Indo-European.
quote:The Dravidian speakers were formerly the dominant group in Central Asia. As a result, Tamil is often a substratum language in many Asian languages like Kushana.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:I did find that Meroitic was related to the Tokhrian/Kushana language, which is classed in the Indo-European family.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Kushana/Tocharian language was a lingua franca. The base of this language is Dravidian not Indo-European.
http://www.geocities.com/olmec982000/kush1.htm
Care to explain how you get from admission that what you call Tokhrian/Kushana is and IndoEuropean language, to reclassifying it as Dravidian, and then reclassifying it again to Niger Congo?
And you wonder why your linguistic work is rejected or ignored?
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Truth will always overcome a lie, no matter what the lie is.
[QB]quote:
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
Rilly’s use of Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani can not be used to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence this group of languages was ever spoken in the Meroitic Empire. Since we have no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan being spoken in the Meroitic period there is no way anyone can claim this family of languages was spoken in the Meroitic Empire in Meroitic times.
Rilly claims that lexicostatistics or glottochronology allows him to read Meroitic. Lexicostatistics is used to fit datable events among languages that theoretically are descendant from a common ancestor.
The basic vocabulary is that part of the lexicon that shows slow change. These terms relate to basic cultural practices and universal human experiences.
Rilly can not use this method to read Meroitic because there are only 26 attested Meroitic terms accepted by the establishment. None of these terms are cognate to Nubian or Taman terms except the name for a Meroitic god. With only 1 cognate Meroitic and Northern Eastern Sudani languages, there is no way you can date the time Meroitic speakers and Nilo-Saharan speakers spoke a common ancestral language. Rilly claims to be able to decipher Meroitic using a method that compares basic culural words to date the time languages separated, can not be used to read Meroitic, because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nilo-Saharan cognates. The absence of Meroitic and Nubian cognates prevents any fruitful comparisons between these languages.
Rilly Paper
There are three ways to verify a protolanguage is congruent with reality 1) there is documentary evidence of the ancestor or near ancestor of the target language that allows comparison of adctual terms and grammars to the construct (i.e., reconstructed lexical items and grammars); 2) written evidence in the form of inscriptions exist from systematic excavation that compare favorably to the contruct; and 3) the power of prediction that this or that construct will conforms to objective reality.
Rilly's ideas that he can read Meroitic based on Kushite names from Kerma, which he calls proto-Meroitic names (even though he knows full well that a protolanguage is artificial and comes from reconstruction); and a list of Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani terms from the Nubian, Nara, Taman and Nyima languages meets none of these standards. This meets none of the standards because there is no documentary evidence for Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani dating to the Meroitic period. Moreover, the principle language he hopes to use to read Meroitic text: Nubian, was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. A fact Rilly admits in his own paper where he notes that Nubians invaded the Meroitic Empire during the declining days of the empire.
Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics, wrote that ,"a protolanguage is no more than a theorectical construct designed to link by means of rules the systems of historically related languages in the most economical way. It thus summarizes the present state of our knowledge regarding the systematic relationships of grammars of the related languages....When dealing with past language states it is possible to assess the distance between construct and reality only in cases where we possess documentated evidence regarding an ancestor or a near ancestor, such as is provided by Latin, in the case of the Romance languages"(p.71).
We can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic Empire, until after the Meroitic Empire was in decline. The absence of documentary evidence of any Nilo-Saharan language spoken in the Meroitic Empire during the Meroitic period precludes any possibility that Rilly's alleged Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani has any relationship to Meroitic or reality for that matter.
Before my decipherment of Meroitic the attested vocabulary of Meroitic was only 26 terms. Researchers proved decades ago that none of these terms have Nubian and Nilo-Saharan cognates. This makes Rilly's ideas about deciphering Meroitic using Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani a farce.
This is a farce because we do have document evidence of Meroitic, but none for the Nilo-Saharan languages. As a result, any proto-term hfrom Northern Eastern Sudani Rilly compares with Meroitic will be conjecture since there is no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan languages being spoken in the Meroitic Empire.
H.H. Hock, in Principles of Historical Linguistics (1986), observed that there are two major arguments against the idea that comparative reconstructions recover the "prehistoric reality" of a language.
The first principle, is that languages change over time. This makes it almost impossible to "fully" reconstruct the lexcical items and grammar of the ancestral language. Secondly, there are few, if any dialect free languages. Constructs resulting from comparing lexical items and grammars from an available set of languages,produce a dialect free protolanguage, that is unnatural and "factually incorrect as shown by the insights of the wave theory" (p.568).
Granted, by comparing languages and associating them with a particular time period you can make comparative reconstructions that may eliminate dialectal diversity. But Rilly can not do this because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nubian cognates. This along with the fact that we have no textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan during the Meroitic period demonstrating that Nilo-Saharan languages were spoken in the Meroitic Empire, especially Nubian,precludes using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic. Using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic will fail to provide a linguistically realistic situation in Nubia 2000 years ago. This is especially true for Nubian, which was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. The Nubian speakers lived far to the north of the Meroitic Empire, a fact Rilly acknowledges in his paper.
As usual you don't know what you're talking about. The Kushana used the Kharosthi/Karosti script. Inscriptions written in Kharosti date back to 251 BC.
The first Meroitic inscription dates back to the reign of Shanakdakheto (c.177-155 BC). The date of the first Meroitic inscriptions is 100 years after people the Kushana were writing their works in Kharosti.
The Meroitic signs correspond to Meroitic signs.
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/lit7.gif
quote:.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Kushana
First, I would like to make it clear that the probable language of the Kushana was Tamil. According to Dravidian literature, the Kushana were called Kosars=Yakshas=Yueh chih/ Kushana. This literature maintains that when they entered India they either already spoke Tamil, or adopted the language upon settlement in India.
The Kushana and the Yueh chih were one and the same. In addition to
North Indian documents the Kushana-Yueh chih association are also
discussed in Dravidian literature. V Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen
hundred years ago, note that in the Sanskrit literature the Yueh chih were called Yakshas, Pali chroniclers called them Yakkos and Kosars< Kushana.
They allegedely arrived in India during the 2nd century BC. He makes it clear that the Yueh chih/ Kushana as noted on their coins worshipped Siva as seen on the coins of Kanishka. This is why we have a coin of a Kushana king from Taxila, dated to AD 76 that declares that the king was maharaja rajatiraja devaputra Kushana "Great King, King of kings, Son of God, the Kushana".
Kushana
King Kaniska of the Kushan
The term Tochara has nothing to do with the Yueh
chih, this was a term used to describe the people who took over the Greek Bactrian state, before the Kushana reached the Oxus Valley around 150 BC . There is no reason the Kushana may not have been intimately
familiar with the Kharosthi writing at this time because from 202BC onward Prakrit and Chinese documents were written in Kharosthi.
The Kushana and the Yueh chih were one and the same. In addition to
North Indian documents the Kushana-Yueh chih association are also
discussed in Dravidian literature.V Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen
hundred years ago note that in the Sanskrit literature the Yueh chih were
called Yakshas, Pali chroniclers called them Yakkos and Kosars< Kushana. They allegedely arrived in India during the 2nd century BC. He makes it clear that the Yueh chih/ Kushana as noted on their coins worshipped Siva as seen on the coins of Kanishka.This is why we have a coin of a Kushana king from Taxila, dated to AD 76 that declares that the king was maharaja rajatiraja devaputra Kushana "Great King, King of kings, Son of God, the Kushana".
Some researchers believe that the Ars'i spoke Tocharian A, while
Tocharian B was the "Kucha language" may have been spoken by the Kushana people. I don't know where you read that the speakers of Tocharian A were called Ars'i. This names have nothing to do with ethnic groups, they refer to the cities where Tocharian text were found:
Tocharian A documents were found around Qarashar and Turfan, thusly these text are also referred to as Turfanian or East Tocharian; Tocharian B documents were found near the town of Kucha, thusly they are sometimes called Kuchean or West Tocharian.
Kanishka Casket
Linguist use the term Tochari to refer to these people, because they were given this title in Turkic manuscripts . They called themselves Kushana.
The observable evidence make it clear that the terms used to label the Tocharian dialects are not ethnonyms, they are terms used to denote where the Tocharian records were found. The use of the term Ars'i does not relate to the Kushana people. The terms: Asii, Pasiani, Tochari and Sacarauli, refer to the nomads that took away Bactria from the Greeks.
These nomads came from the Iaxartes River that adjoins that of Sacae and the Sogdiani .The Kushana people took over Bactria much later. It is a mistake to believe that Ars'i and Kucha were ethnonyms is under-standable given your lack of knowledge about Tocharian. And I will agree that there were a number of different languages spoken by people who
wrote material in Tocharian. It is for this reason that I have maintained
throughout my published works on Tocharian, that this was a trade language. This language was used by the Central Asians as a
lingua franca and trade language due to the numerous ethnic groups which formerly lived in central Asia". Kharosthi was long used to write in Central Asia. It was even used by the Greeks. The use of the Kharosthi writing system in Central Asia and India, would place this writing contemporaneous with the tradition, recorded by the Classical writers of Indians settling among the Kushites of Meroitic Empire..
quote:.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Tocharian was probably a Lingua Franca
There were many people who probably used Tocharian for purposes of communication including the Kushana and the "Ars'i/Asii". They probably used Tocharian as a lingua franca. You make it clear in your last post that numerous languages were spoken in Central Asia when the Tocharian was written in Kharosthi.
Most researchers believe that a majority of the people who lived in this area were bilingual and spoke Bactrian ,Indian languages among other languages. I agree with this theory, and believe that the Kushana Kings may have spoken a Dravidian language. Due to the possibility that the Kushana spoke a Dravidian language which is the substratum language of Tocharian; and
the presence of a number of different terms in Tocharian from many
languages spoken in the area-led me to the conclusion that Tocharian was a trade language. The Kushana always referred to themselves as the Kushana/Gushana. The name Kushana for this group is recorded in the Manikiala Stone inscription (56BC?), the Panjtar Stone inscription of 122 AD and the Taxila Silver Scroll. The Greeks called them Kushana in the Karosthi inscriptions, and Kocano. In the Chinese sources they were called Koei-shuang or Kwei-shwang= Kushana, and Yueh chih .
As you can see the term Kushana had been used to refer to these people
long before Kujula Kadphises used the term as a personal name. This was
over a hundred years after the Kushana had become rulers of Bactria. It
would appear from the evidence that the nation of the Kushana was called Kusha.
Kujula Kadphises
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:I did find that Meroitic was related to the Tokhrian/Kushana language, which is classed in the Indo-European family.
Originally posted by rasol:
[qb] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Kushana/Tocharian language was a lingua franca. The base of this language is Dravidian not Indo-European.
http://www.geocities.com/olmec982000/kush1.htm
Care to explain how you get from admission that what you call Tokhrian/Kushana is and IndoEuropean language, to reclassifying it as Dravidian, and then reclassifying it again to Niger Congo?
And you wonder why your linguistic work is rejected or ignored?
quote:How does this alter the fact that Kushana is and Indo European language and you claim Kushana [not Tamil] is the basis of the Meroitic text?
The Dravidian speakers were formerly the dominant group in Central Asia. As a result, Tamil is often a substratum language in many Asian languages like Kushana.
quote:In this case, your Kushana hypothesis ascribes and Indo-European origin to Meroetic, since Kushana is, as you admit, and Indo European language.
I have not reclassified Kushana/Tocharian.
quote:Which is complete nonsense - if as you say - Merotic is unrelated to any African language, but rather...related to Indo European [Kushana].
I classified Meroitic as a Niger-Congo language.
quote:There is no evidence that these people migrated back and forth from India to Africa across a lost-sunken continent as you claim.
There is historical evidence which can help us to illustrate that until after 1000 B.C., and especially 500 B.C., much of Central Asia was settled by agro-pastoral Dravidian groups.
quote:Why do make up lies. I never said the Kushana arrived in the Meroitic Sudan across some lost continent. They probably came to Egypt and made their way to Meroe from there.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:There is no evidence that these people migrated back and forth from India to Africa across a lost-sunken continent as you claim.
There is historical evidence which can help us to illustrate that until after 1000 B.C., and especially 500 B.C., much of Central Asia was settled by agro-pastoral Dravidian groups.
You're not making any sense.
quote:You don't read too well. Let me try to explain the situation to you as simply as possible:
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:I did find that Meroitic was related to the Tokhrian/Kushana language, which is classed in the Indo-European family.
Originally posted by rasol:
[qb] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Kushana/Tocharian language was a lingua franca. The base of this language is Dravidian not Indo-European.
http://www.geocities.com/olmec982000/kush1.htm
Care to explain how you get from admission that what you call Tokhrian/Kushana is and IndoEuropean language, to reclassifying it as Dravidian, and then reclassifying it again to Niger Congo?
And you wonder why your linguistic work is rejected or ignored?quote:How does this alter the fact that Kushana is and Indo European language and you claim Kushana [not Tamil] is the basis of the Meroitic text?
The Dravidian speakers were formerly the dominant group in Central Asia. As a result, Tamil is often a substratum language in many Asian languages like Kushana.
quote:In this case, your Kushana hypothesis ascribes and Indo-European origin to Meroetic, since Kushana is, as you admit, and Indo European language.
I have not reclassified Kushana/Tocharian.
quote:Which is complete nonsense - if as you say - Merotic is unrelated to any African language, but rather...related to Indo European [Kushana].
I classified Meroitic as a Niger-Congo language.
You're not making any sense.
quote:I'm only quoting you. However it is difficult to keep track of your lies, I do agree.
Why do make up lies.
quote:Since Egypt was often at war with Kerma, the connection across Lemuria [mythical lost continent] seems more plausible. [Winters:Agri]
I never said the Kushana arrived in the Meroitic Sudan across some lost continent. They probably came to Egypt and made their way to Meroe from there.
quote:I don't understand what you're talking about we are discussing the Meroitic Sudan, not Kerma.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:I'm only quoting you. However it is difficult to keep track of your lies, I do agree.
Why do make up lies.
quote:Since Egypt was often at war with Kerma, the connection across Lemuria [mythical lost continent] seems more plausible. [Winters:Agri]
I never said the Kushana arrived in the Meroitic Sudan across some lost continent. They probably came to Egypt and made their way to Meroe from there.
^ Are you claiming you no longer believe the above?
quote:Apparently, the case with you.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't read too well.
quote:Just another false statement to add to the index of your fallacious propagations. Rilly has demonstrated relationship, which you haven't been able to refute. All you do, to recap, is...
Clyde Winters:
Let me try to explain the situation to you as simply as possible:
1) I pointed out that Meroitic experts claimed they could not find a connection between Meroitic and African languages.
quote:How do you decipher a script with script from another language, which uses a different set of letters both quantitatively and morphologically? How do you decipher a script using script which has been found to have no connections to Meroe; to demonstrate this, where is the script uncovered in Meroe of a Kushana language, alongside that in Meroitic language? If Kushana were in Meroe at some point, as you say, and if they had come with their scripts to the region, then surely scripts in their language should also be tracked in Meroe. For Kushana to have such impact on Meroe, that is the least that should be found.
Clyde Winters:
3) After deciphering the Meroitic writing I was able to discover new Meroitic lexical items and grammatical features which allowed me to compare Meroitic to African languages.
quote:Apparently, the case with you.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
[QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't read too well.
quote:
Clyde Winters:
Let me try to explain the situation to you as simply as possible:
1) I pointed out that Meroitic experts claimed they could not find a connection between Meroitic and African languages.
quote:Correct. The idea that Meroitic is unrelated to any African language is Winters opening proposition.
Mystery Solver writes: Just another false statement to add to the index of your fallacious propagations.
quote:You can not make a lie the truth. You tell the truth and the lie will pass.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:Apparently, the case with you.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
[QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't read too well.
quote:
Clyde Winters:
Let me try to explain the situation to you as simply as possible:
1) I pointed out that Meroitic experts claimed they could not find a connection between Meroitic and African languages.quote:Correct. The idea that Meroitic is unrelated to any African language is Winters opening proposition.
Mystery Solver writes: Just another false statement to add to the index of your fallacious propagations.
It was this faulty assumption that was the basis of his attempt to link Meroitic to Indo European languages in the 1st place, and if this assumption is incorrect, the whole enterprise falls a part, and that's why he restates it.
quote:
I repeat.
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
quote:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
[QB]quote:Apparently, the case with you.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't read too well.
quote:Just another false statement to add to the index of your fallacious propagations. Rilly has demonstrated relationship, which you haven't been able to refute. All you do, to recap, is...
Clyde Winters:
Let me try to explain the situation to you as simply as possible:
1) I pointed out that Meroitic experts claimed they could not find a connection between Meroitic and African languages.
Notwithstanding the robotic recitations, by pooling together previous postings, you were wrong:
*when you falsely charged Rilly with proclaiming to have 'fully' deciphered Meroitic script, at least according to the link presented.
*when you falsely charged him with attempting to read Meroitic by creating proto-Nilo-Saharan.
*when you falsely charged him with attempting to read Meroitic by creating proto-NES [proto-North Eastern Sudanic], naturally contradicting the above.
*when you falsely charged him with attempting to read Meroitic by simply using Nubian. Again contradicting the two above.
*when you falsely charged him with dating some proto-language.
*when you falsely charged him with just focusing on Sudan, simply because this was the geography where the Meroitic complex used to lie.
*when you falsely charged him, in relation to the above, about focusing on just Nilo-Saharan, Nubian, or proto-NES, when in reality, he first compared Meroitic lexicons with other superfamilies like Niger-Congo and Afrasan, which failed to show strong correspondence, prompting him to turn to Nilo-Saharan, starting with eastern Sudanic languages.
*when you falsely charged him with using 'proto-Meroitic' names to read Meroitic, when in reality, these were just part of the 'multicontextual approach' to extracting more words from associated cotexts in primary texts.
*when you falsely charged him with not being able to generate additional words to those which were established by previous researchers. In fact, presumably including those previously established words, he was able to come up with 39 Meroitic words 'whose meanings' were 'assured' for his lexical comparisons.
*when you falsely charged him with not being able to find potential cognates within the eastern Sudanic family. His tables prove this wrong.
*when you falsely charged him with using lexicostatistics or glottochronology to read Meroitic.
*when you baselessly charged his work to be a farce, simply because attempts by previous researchers failed, even though they didn't use Rilly's more refined 'multicontextual approach'.
*when you said lexicostatistics could be used to date languages descended from a proto-language.
*when you confused lexicostatistics with glottochronology. Glottochronology is the tool used to date languages using quantitative [mathematical] models, as well as making use of multidisciplines as additional tool for precision of dating language divergences.
*when you said that documentary evidence of other Nilo-Saharan languages during the Meroitic times was necessary, in order to establish its family association.
*when you spoke of the need for evidence to show that Nilo-Saharan precedes Meroitic, when Meriotic is supposed to be part of the Nilo-Saharan family, as demonstrated by Rilly.
*when you spoke of the need to "fully" reconstruct the lexical items and grammar of the ancestral language.
*when you spoke of using Tocharian, and then spoke of using Kharosthi, suggesting that you don't distinguish between the two.
*when you posted the diagram of Meroitic, Demotic, Kharosthi, Egyptian and Gebel, in order to support your dubious theorey of Meroitic derivation from Kharosthi; as it turns out, even from your own diagram, Meroitic not only has a distinct set of letters from that of Kharosthi, but also more closely resembles Demotic and Egyptian counterparts than Khorasthi.
^Basically, these are but just some of the seriously flawed claims that you've made throughout your hypothesis about Meroitic derivation from Tacharian(?), and/or what you now call Khorasthi(?). All your charges about Rilly can essentially be summed up as strawmen setups and phantom events, not professed in the link.
quote:How do you decipher a script with script from another language, which uses a different set of letters both quantitatively and morphologically? How do you decipher a script using script which has been found to have no connections to Meroe; to demonstrate this, where is the script uncovered in Meroe of a Kushana language, alongside that in Meroitic language? If Kushana were in Meroe at some point, as you say, and if they had come with their scripts to the region, then surely scripts in their language should also be tracked in Meroe. For Kushana to have such impact on Meroe, that is the least that should be found.
Clyde Winters:
3) After deciphering the Meroitic writing I was able to discover new Meroitic lexical items and grammatical features which allowed me to compare Meroitic to African languages.
quote:...which explains why you have consistently failed to address my point-by-point refutations of both your methods, and assessments of Rilly's work. Sure.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't know anything about linguistics.
quote:...none of which I need to do, because there is no such thing as addressing either strawman, proclamations already destroyed to pieces by myself, or something that just makes no sense. That's what this weak plea, passed off as serious followup requests, really amounts to.
Clyde Winters:
1.You have not presented any evidence that Prototerms can be used to decipher and read a dead language.
2.You have not cited any research claiming that we have textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan in the Meroitic Sudan.
3.You have not cited any research that the Nubian speakers were ever part of the Meroitic empire.
4. You have not disputed the fact that Classical writers said Indians were living in Meroe and contributed to their civilization.
5. You have not disputed the fact that there was a large Indian community already living in Egypt during the Meroitic Empire.
6. You have not illustrated that the Kharosthi script does not agree with Meroitic writing.
7. You can not dispute the fact that Kharosthic
was in use long before Meroitic came on the scene.
quote:Let's just say if there were medals for such a thing, you'd be the gold medalist.
Clyde Winters:
You are full of yourself.
quote:I support his methods, because they are linguistically sound. Yours isn't. I mean, you can't be jealous of something that doesn't make sense. Btw, isn't that what you've charged everyone who's questioned your fantastic propositions? What about Obenga; jealous too? You bet.
Rilly:
you support Rilly because you want to deny my decipherment due to jealousy and ignorance.
quote:
I repeat.
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
quote:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
[QB]quote:...which explains why you have consistently failed to address my point-by-point refutations of both your methods, and assessments of Rilly's work. Sure.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't know anything about linguistics.
quote:...none of which I need to do, because there is no such thing as addressing either strawman, proclamations already destroyed to pieces by myself, or something that just makes no sense. That's what this weak plea, passed off as serious followup requests, really amounts to.
Clyde Winters:
1.You have not presented any evidence that Prototerms can be used to decipher and read a dead language.
2.You have not cited any research claiming that we have textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan in the Meroitic Sudan.
3.You have not cited any research that the Nubian speakers were ever part of the Meroitic empire.
4. You have not disputed the fact that Classical writers said Indians were living in Meroe and contributed to their civilization.
5. You have not disputed the fact that there was a large Indian community already living in Egypt during the Meroitic Empire.
6. You have not illustrated that the Kharosthi script does not agree with Meroitic writing.
7. You can not dispute the fact that Kharosthic
was in use long before Meroitic came on the scene.
quote:Let's just say if there were medals for such a thing, you'd be the gold medalist.
Clyde Winters:
You are full of yourself.
quote:I support his methods, because they are linguistically sound. Yours isn't. I mean, you can't be jealous of something that doesn't make sense. Btw, isn't that what you've charged everyone who's questioned your fantastic propositions? What about Obenga; jealous too? You bet.
Rilly:
you support Rilly because you want to deny my decipherment due to jealousy and ignorance.
Case in point, how come you haven't had the courage to address this point-by-point annihilation of your uninformed and false claims, point by point?...
Just another false statement to add to the index of your fallacious propagations. Rilly has demonstrated relationship, which you haven't been able to refute. All you do, to recap, is...
Notwithstanding the robotic recitations, by pooling together previous postings, you were wrong:
*when you falsely charged Rilly with proclaiming to have 'fully' deciphered Meroitic script, at least according to the link presented.
*when you falsely charged him with attempting to read Meroitic by creating proto-Nilo-Saharan.
*when you falsely charged him with attempting to read Meroitic by creating proto-NES [proto-North Eastern Sudanic], naturally contradicting the above.
*when you falsely charged him with attempting to read Meroitic by simply using Nubian. Again contradicting the two above.
*when you falsely charged him with dating some proto-language.
*when you falsely charged him with just focusing on Sudan, simply because this was the geography where the Meroitic complex used to lie.
*when you falsely charged him, in relation to the above, about focusing on just Nilo-Saharan, Nubian, or proto-NES, when in reality, he first compared Meroitic lexicons with other superfamilies like Niger-Congo and Afrasan, which failed to show strong correspondence, prompting him to turn to Nilo-Saharan, starting with eastern Sudanic languages.
*when you falsely charged him with using 'proto-Meroitic' names to read Meroitic, when in reality, these were just part of the 'multicontextual approach' to extracting more words from associated cotexts in primary texts.
*when you falsely charged him with not being able to generate additional words to those which were established by previous researchers. In fact, presumably including those previously established words, he was able to come up with 39 Meroitic words 'whose meanings' were 'assured' for his lexical comparisons.
*when you falsely charged him with not being able to find potential cognates within the eastern Sudanic family. His tables prove this wrong.
*when you falsely charged him with using lexicostatistics or glottochronology to read Meroitic.
*when you baselessly charged his work to be a farce, simply because attempts by previous researchers failed, even though they didn't use Rilly's more refined 'multicontextual approach'.
*when you said lexicostatistics could be used to date languages descended from a proto-language.
*when you confused lexicostatistics with glottochronology. Glottochronology is the tool used to date languages using quantitative [mathematical] models, as well as making use of multidisciplines as additional tool for precision of dating language divergences.
*when you said that documentary evidence of other Nilo-Saharan languages during the Meroitic times was necessary, in order to establish its (Meroitic's) family association.
*when you spoke of the need for evidence to show that Nilo-Saharan precedes Meroitic, when Meriotic is supposed to be part of the Nilo-Saharan family, as demonstrated by Rilly.
*when you spoke of the need to "fully" reconstruct the lexical items and grammar of the ancestral language.
*when you spoke of using Tocharian, and then spoke of using Kharosthi, suggesting that you don't distinguish between the two.
*when you posted the diagram of Meroitic, Demotic, Kharosthi, Egyptian and Gebel, in order to support your dubious theorey of Meroitic derivation from Kharosthi; as it turns out, even from your own diagram, Meroitic not only has a distinct set of letters from that of Kharosthi, but also more closely resembles Demotic and Egyptian counterparts than Khorasthi.
^Basically, these are but just some of the seriously flawed claims that you've made throughout your hypothesis about Meroitic derivation from Tacharian(?), and/or what you now call Khorasthi(?). All your charges about Rilly can essentially be summed up as strawmen setups and phantom events, not professed in the link.
quote:
Rilly’s use of Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani can not be used to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence this group of languages was ever spoken in the Meroitic Empire. Since we have no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan being spoken in the Meroitic period there is no way anyone can claim this family of languages was spoken in the Meroitic Empire in Meroitic times.
Rilly claims that lexicostatistics or glottochronology allows him to read Meroitic. Lexicostatistics is used to fit datable events among languages that theoretically are descendant from a common ancestor.
The basic vocabulary is that part of the lexicon that shows slow change. These terms relate to basic cultural practices and universal human experiences.
Rilly can not use this method to read Meroitic because there are only 26 attested Meroitic terms accepted by the establishment. None of these terms are cognate to Nubian or Taman terms except the name for a Meroitic god. With only 1 cognate Meroitic and Northern Eastern Sudani languages, there is no way you can date the time Meroitic speakers and Nilo-Saharan speakers spoke a common ancestral language. Rilly claims to be able to decipher Meroitic using a method that compares basic culural words to date the time languages separated, can not be used to read Meroitic, because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nilo-Saharan cognates. The absence of Meroitic and Nubian cognates prevents any fruitful comparisons between these languages.
Rilly Paper
There are three ways to verify a protolanguage is congruent with reality 1) there is documentary evidence of the ancestor or near ancestor of the target language that allows comparison of adctual terms and grammars to the construct (i.e., reconstructed lexical items and grammars); 2) written evidence in the form of inscriptions exist from systematic excavation that compare favorably to the contruct; and 3) the power of prediction that this or that construct will conforms to objective reality.
Rilly's ideas that he can read Meroitic based on Kushite names from Kerma, which he calls proto-Meroitic names (even though he knows full well that a protolanguage is artificial and comes from reconstruction); and a list of Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani terms from the Nubian, Nara, Taman and Nyima languages meets none of these standards. This meets none of the standards because there is no documentary evidence for Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani dating to the Meroitic period. Moreover, the principle language he hopes to use to read Meroitic text: Nubian, was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. A fact Rilly admits in his own paper where he notes that Nubians invaded the Meroitic Empire during the declining days of the empire.
Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics, wrote that ,"a protolanguage is no more than a theorectical construct designed to link by means of rules the systems of historically related languages in the most economical way. It thus summarizes the present state of our knowledge regarding the systematic relationships of grammars of the related languages....When dealing with past language states it is possible to assess the distance between construct and reality only in cases where we possess documentated evidence regarding an ancestor or a near ancestor, such as is provided by Latin, in the case of the Romance languages"(p.71).
We can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic Empire, until after the Meroitic Empire was in decline. The absence of documentary evidence of any Nilo-Saharan language spoken in the Meroitic Empire during the Meroitic period precludes any possibility that Rilly's alleged Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani has any relationship to Meroitic or reality for that matter.
Before my decipherment of Meroitic the attested vocabulary of Meroitic was only 26 terms. Researchers proved decades ago that none of these terms have Nubian and Nilo-Saharan cognates. This makes Rilly's ideas about deciphering Meroitic using Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani a farce.
This is a farce because we do have document evidence of Meroitic, but none for the Nilo-Saharan languages. As a result, any proto-term hfrom Northern Eastern Sudani Rilly compares with Meroitic will be conjecture since there is no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan languages being spoken in the Meroitic Empire.
H.H. Hock, in Principles of Historical Linguistics (1986), observed that there are two major arguments against the idea that comparative reconstructions recover the "prehistoric reality" of a language.
The first principle, is that languages change over time. This makes it almost impossible to "fully" reconstruct the lexcical items and grammar of the ancestral language. Secondly, there are few, if any dialect free languages. Constructs resulting from comparing lexical items and grammars from an available set of languages,produce a dialect free protolanguage, that is unnatural and "factually incorrect as shown by the insights of the wave theory" (p.568).
Granted, by comparing languages and associating them with a particular time period you can make comparative reconstructions that may eliminate dialectal diversity. But Rilly can not do this because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nubian cognates. This along with the fact that we have no textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan during the Meroitic period demonstrating that Nilo-Saharan languages were spoken in the Meroitic Empire, especially Nubian,precludes using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic. Using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic will fail to provide a linguistically realistic situation in Nubia 2000 years ago. This is especially true for Nubian, which was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. The Nubian speakers lived far to the north of the Meroitic Empire, a fact Rilly acknowledges in his paper.
As usual you don't know what you're talking about. The Kushana used the Kharosthi/Karosti script. Inscriptions written in Kharosti date back to 251 BC.
The first Meroitic inscription dates back to the reign of Shanakdakheto (c.177-155 BC). The date of the first Meroitic inscriptions is 100 years after people the Kushana were writing their works in Kharosti.
The Meroitic signs correspond to Meroitic signs.
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/lit7.gif
Yes, 4 pages of this thread and how many pages of other threads of ridiculous nonsensical claims.
quote:You are a racist troll. Don't you dare call me a Black supremist. I never defamed whites in anyway on this forum or anywhere else.
Originally posted by Djehuti:
^
Unfortunately T-rex, what you see from Clyde is purely an irrational reaction to the years of Eurocentrism and white supremacy. Clyde fails to see it, but what he does is no more than a reflection of the white racism and bias that he has faced only inverted to a black form. Thus Clyde is essentially one of those new age biased Afrocentrics and I dare say black supremacists. Of course he will deny the above accusation, but all his talk of black Africans creating culture everywhere outside of Africa including Europe and that whites did not appear until the Middle Ages suggests otherwise.
quote:Misinformed #1. Of course there is, and he provides a pictorial example of this. You can use names of personalities in literature and pictures of personalities and deity, animals and objects accomodated by descriptive short texts/inscripitions of the iconography to extrapolate words from the cotexts, and then re-verify its meaning by way of its application in other texts time and again. This application however slow, has even been used to assist in deciphering Mdu Ntr/Egyptic, aside from using tools like the Rosetta stone-type of situation whereby single literature is communicated in two or more distinct scripts, with at least one of these languages being adequately understood, NOT just being familiar with the letters.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The methods to increase the number of translated words cannot be fully explained in details here. To make a long story short, I would say that it is a « multicontextual approach ». The archaeological and the iconographical context can be very helpful, since very often, the short texts are the description with words of a painted or engraved image.
Clyde:
There is no way you can read an inscriptionusing iconography because often you do notknow the name for the items depicted in the engraving.
quote:Misinformed #2. Actually, what is clear, is your inability to understand what Rilly is doing here. For hint, see post above.
Clyde Winters:
....Typological similarity between Egyptian texts and their Meroitic counterparts can also be useful. Of course, the elements of the texts that are known, for example names of persons and gods, can help towards clarifying the grammatical nature and the semantic field of the unknown words. Most of the time, all these elements are insufficient. But in a few cases, a meaning can be suggested for new words and be confirmed in various inscriptions. Although very slow, this approach recently provided new translations.
Clyde: This comment makes it clear that Rilly made up words and associated them with inscriptions.
quote:Misinformed #3. How can he make the words up, if they are directly from actual primary Meroitic texts in iconography and by examining typological similarity between Egyptian texts and their Meroitic counterparts? Goes back to the two feedbacks above. Use your head.
Clyde Winters:
A set of thirtynine purely Meroitic basic words was finally produced, not including of course too specific words such as « prince » or « great priest », which are useless for comparative purpose.
Clyde: Here Rilly admits that he "produced thirtynine purely Meroitic basic words'. If the 39 words did not exist before hand, he made them up. Again evidence Rilly is using nonexistent words to read Meroitic.
quote:Lie #1. Goes back to:
Clyde Winters:
SOME RECENTLY TRANSLATED MEROITIC WORDS
arohe- «protect» hr- «eat», pwrite «life», yer «milk» ar «boy», are- or dm- «take, receive», dime «cow», hlbi «bull», ns(e) «sacrifice>>, sdk «journey», tke- «love, revere», We «dog»
Clyde : Supercar claims that Rilly does not admit he has translated Meroitic. Here is the evidence that Rilly does believe he has translated Meroitic words based on Northern Eastern Sudani. All of these words he has made up .
quote:Lie #2, misinformed #4. Goes back to:
Clyde Winters:
The second stage of the work was to reconsider the relation of Meroitic with NiloSaharan and possibly to spot inside this phylum a specific family where Meroitic could belong. Previous works, including mine, had shown that a link with other phylums like Niger-Congo or Afro-Asiatic was unlikely.
Clyde: Here Rilly admits you can not connect Meroitic to any African languages based on the available agreed upon Meroitic corpus. As a result, Rilly made up Meroitic terms so he could "translate" Meroitic witg his made-up terms.
quote:Lie #3. Goes back to:
Clyde Winters:
For this purpose, lexicostatistical methods were used (see below). The most convincing similarities are with Eastern Sudanic, and more specifically with the northern branch including Nubian, Nara, Taman and Nyima. The best result is obtained with Midob (a member of the Nubian group), thanks to Roland Werner's excellent description of this language.
Clyde: Supercar/Mystery Solver claims I made up the fact that Rilly isusing Nubian to read Meroitic. Here Rilly supports my earlier statements.
quote:You aren't bright, are you? Goes back to lie #2, misinformed #4 above. This comment makes it look like that you aren't even aware of African language families.
Clyde Winters:
The scores of Taman, Nara and Nyima could be higher if there were extensive lexical data available, but infortunately, only short wordlists have so far been published.
But at this stage of the work, two main obstacles were encountered. First, the distinction between the Northern and the Southern branches of Eastern Sudanic had to be firmly established. Obviously, the scores of some Southern languages like Surmic or Nilotic in the lexicostatistical comparison with Meroitic are high.
Clyde: How can the correspondence be high between Meroitic and Nilo-Saharan when the Rilly admits earlier was able to find ocrrespondence between African languages and Meroitic?
quote:This just reminds me of:
Clyde Winters:
This distinction between both branches was first suggested by Bender in 1991, but on morphological, not lexical, bases. This obstacle is rather easy to overcome: a series of basic words such as « drink », « mouth », « burn », « tooth », « hand », « louse » etc., shows close connections inside the northern branch, but nothing else than scattered similarities with the Southern one. One can even wonder if it would not be relevant to consider North Eastern Sudanic as a single family within Eastern Sudanic, at the same level as Surmic, Nilotic, Daju or Temein.
The second problem was more difficult to solve. Lexicostatistics are a good method to identify a linguistic family for a language whose genetic nature is unknown.
Clyde: Please cite at least one linguistic article or text that says you can identify a linguistic famuly using Lexicostatistics.
quote:Goes back to lie #2 and misinformed #3.
Clyde Winters:
But this approach does not provide definite evidence. The one and only way to get it for sure is the classical comparative method as illustrated by Meillet for the Indo-European family, by Guthrie for Proto-Bantu, etc. So it was necessary, first to find regular phonetic correspondences between North Eastern Sudanic languages, second to reconstruct the original phonology of Proto-North Eastern Sudanic, third to reconstruct, as much as possible, some Proto-North Eastern Sudanic words, and finally to compare these proto-forms with Meroitic words. The task is not easy because extensive data are missing for a majority of the dialects and even for some languages like Afitti or Tama.
How could he compare Meroitic terms to Nilo-Saharan, when he already proved that the agreed upon Meroitic terms do not agree with African languages. If he is talking about the 39 Meroitic terms he created, this is not proof because these terms were made up, without using any Meroitic evidence as a source.
quote:Goes back to misinformed #1, #2 & #3.
Clyde Winters:
Finally, close connections were found between some Meroitic words and their ProtoNorth Eastern Sudanic counterparts (see table below). Some regular phonetic correspondences are obvious. For instance, where Proto-North Eastern Sudanic had /g/ in initial position, it became in Meroitic the velar fricative /h/ or /h/: the example displayed in the table below is « meal » or « food », but there are other instances. Most of the time, the correspondences are simple : initial /k/ in Proto-North Eastern Sudanic is preserved everywhere except in Nyima, where it often turns into dental /t /. There are sometimes very impressive sets like the words for « take, receive », « woman », « slaughter » and particularly the name of the supreme god (Meroitic Apede-mk : « the God Apede »), a detail which indicates that the speakers of Proto-North Eastern Sudanic formed not only a linguistic, but also a cultural community.
Clyde: Apedemk, is the only attested Meroitic word in the list above. This statement is not supported by the evidence.
quote:Lie #4; which corresponds to misinformed #1, #2 & #3.
Clyde Winters:
Other correspondences are less obvious. For example, original /g/ in internal position, if in contact with a labiovelar vowel [o] or [u], becomes /b/ in Meroitic. This phenomenon is known in other linguistic families, for instance Celtic among the Indo-European phylum (cf. Greek gune « woman )) vs Gaulish bena). Moreover, initial dental consonant /d/ becomes often the liquid /V in Meroitic. This change is also common in other languages, opposing for example the English word tongue (where /t / < /d n and its Latin counterpart lingua. According to both these phonetic rules, the Meroitic article -l pronounced /la/, plural -leb, pronounced /laba/, and Nara demonstrative te, plural tegu, are related, both issuing from Proto-North Eastern Sudanic *de, plural *degu. So the correspondences between Meroitic and living North Eastern Sudanic languages can be found not only in lexical items, but also in morphological elements.
In spite of the scanty available data, the result is obvious : Meroitic is more than probably a member of the North Eastern Sudanic family.
This claim is not supported by the evidence. He admits that he made-up 39 terms, that were not associated with the agreed upon Meroitic terms. This makes his constructions pure conjecture since they can not be verified by actual Meroitic text..
quote:Lie #5; which corresponds to lie #1, misinformed #1, #2 & #3, and lie #2, misinformed #4.
Clyde Winters:
The decipherment of Meroitic by Rilly is nothing more than smoke and mirrors and can not be supported by linguistic methods and the textual evidence.[/b]
quote:Nothing much to say about the last piece, eh? Telling, but goes back to:
Clyde Winters:
Moreover, the map of these languages [see above] shows an interesting feature. Nowadays, these languages are scattered from Chad to Eritrea, but in the past, there was a link between their present situations : the Wadi Howar, an ancient river, now dried up, once an important tributary of the Nile. In the fourth millenary BC, all the region around this river was still a green country convenient for cattle-breeding. But around this time, this part of the Sahara became arid. Very probably, the pastoral populations living in the region were progressively obliged to gather together along the banks of the Wadi Howar. There they lived together for centuries and acquired a common language : Proto-North Eastern Sudanic. But in the beginning of third millenary BC, the river itself progressively dried up. So a first population migrated to the Nile, where they founded the Kingdom of Kerma, not far from the confluence of the Wadi Howar and the Nile. The geographical, historical and climatic data offer a common support to this theory.
The Taman group went East, towards the springs of the river, to the place where they still live today. Another refugee group, the ancestors of Nubian and Nyima speakers, went South to Kordofan, where they still live today. Later on, in the first centuries AD, Nubian groups invaded the dying Kingdom of Meroe and founded their own kingdoms along the Nile. As for Nara people, I think they first went to the Nile, like the future Meroites, and later went up the Nile and the Atbara toward Eritrea, where they live nowadays.
quote:
Clyde:
Rilly’s use of Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani can not be used to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence this group of languages was ever spoken in the Meroitic Empire. Since we have no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan being spoken in the Meroitic period there is no way anyone can claim this family of languages was spoken in the Meroitic Empire in Meroitic times....
quote:Although this is his interpretation of the inscription he is wrong and failed to decipher the signs properly.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Misinformed #1. Of course there is, and he provides a pictorial example of this. You can use names of personalities in literature and pictures of personalities and deity, animals and objects accomodated by descriptive short texts/inscripitions of the iconography to extrapolate words from the cotexts, and then re-verify its meaning by way of its application in other texts time and again. This application however slow, has even been used to assist in deciphering Mdu Ntr/Egyptic, aside from using tools like the Rosetta stone-type of situation whereby single literature is communicated in two or more distinct scripts, with at least one of these languages being adequately understood, NOT just being familiar with the letters.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The methods to increase the number of translated words cannot be fully explained in details here. To make a long story short, I would say that it is a « multicontextual approach ». The archaeological and the iconographical context can be very helpful, since very often, the short texts are the description with words of a painted or engraved image.
Clyde:
There is no way you can read an inscriptionusing iconography because often you do notknow the name for the items depicted in the engraving.
Using iconography is just part of Rilly's 'multicontextual approach'. Example provided:
Graffito from Musawwarat (REM 1165) Wle qo phn 3 tlt Netror-se-l-o« this dog was bought (???) three talents, it is Netarura's ».
^Just because you are personally incapable of doing this, doesn't make it undoable.
quote:This is pure conjecture. He has no documentary evidence of these population movements, especially the Nubians.
^Although current work have linked Kerma settlements with earlier settlements in pre-Kerma phases, suggesting settlements stretching further back in time than what's been detailed here, clearly, Rilly notes certain population movements that Clyde accuses him to be ignorant of, and hence, not considering them in his analysis. Winters is just totally disengaged with the real specifics at hand. - Mystery Solver.
quote:How?...but let me guess, it is supposed to be explained in the following..
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Rilly provides a good example of why you can't interpret iconography simply by using your own inferences.
quote:Although this is his interpretation of the inscription he is wrong and failed to decipher the signs properly.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Misinformed #1. Of course there is, and he provides a pictorial example of this. You can use names of personalities in literature and pictures of personalities and deity, animals and objects accomodated by descriptive short texts/inscripitions of the iconography to extrapolate words from the cotexts, and then re-verify its meaning by way of its application in other texts time and again. This application however slow, has even been used to assist in deciphering Mdu Ntr/Egyptic, aside from using tools like the Rosetta stone-type of situation whereby single literature is communicated in two or more distinct scripts, with at least one of these languages being adequately understood, NOT just being familiar with the letters.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The methods to increase the number of translated words cannot be fully explained in details here. To make a long story short, I would say that it is a « multicontextual approach ». The archaeological and the iconographical context can be very helpful, since very often, the short texts are the description with words of a painted or engraved image.
Clyde:
There is no way you can read an inscriptionusing iconography because often you do notknow the name for the items depicted in the engraving.
Using iconography is just part of Rilly's 'multicontextual approach'. Example provided:
Graffito from Musawwarat (REM 1165) Wle qo phn 3 tlt Netror-se-l-o« this dog was bought (???) three talents, it is Netarura's ».
^Just because you are personally incapable of doing this, doesn't make it undoable.
quote:He doesn't, because the specific text cited, doesn't. Now of course, you'll have us believe that the specific piece of text cited, should read "dog chasing rabbit". It only shows me that the man is actually methodologically using the multicontextual method to determine the meanings of new words, and not just blindly making them up, simply because of what is in the picture, which is what you're clearly doing.
Clyde Winters:
Firstly, the grafitto has a dog chasing a rabbit. Although the rabbit being chased by the dog is obvious to anyone looking at the grafitto this pictorial fact is not mentioned by Rilly.
quote:And you know this, because he specifically says this where...i.e. by saying so and so Meroitic letter corresponds to this or that?
Clyde Winters:
Now let's look at his alleged decipherment and reading of the Meroitic signs.
For example, he interprets the three lines: ||| as the numeral three, this was wrong in Meroitic ||| is the ‘y’(check out the Meroitic writing chart above).
quote:Do you need reading glasses? He writes "wle", not "wl". And again, how the heck do you know what he is reading, if he hasn't specifically spelt out the terms in their 'Meroitic letters'? All I see, is the iconography with scripture in Meroitic letters, and the portion of the text to be interpreted, written in English letters but in Meroitic language, and associated translations in English.
Clyde Winters:
In addition after correctly deciphering the Meroitic w and l signs, he failed to record the ‘e’, that follows the wl (please refer to the Meroitic chart above). Thus this should have read w-l-e, not wl.
quote:Rilly is well aware of previously established letters and words, he makes that clear in the link. All I see, and have demonstrated, is your carelessness in reading his work.
Clyde Winters:
If Rilly can be this careless in his interpretation of the Meroitic signs, when the meaning of each Meroitic symbol is well known, says much about his method of decipherment.
quote:"Black" is specifically an English word, not Kemetic, yet we know what represents 'black' in Kemetic. Use your head.
Clyde Winters:
In addition, Rilly refers to the term Talents, this is a Roman word--not Meroitic.
quote:Translations are done so, precisely because for each word in a primary foreign text in question, we are reminded of words that are supposed to or can best communicate the same thing more or less. This is no rocket science, just common sense. Rilly did no different here.
Clyde Winters:
Use of this term indicates that Rilly placed his own ideas about Meroitic society in his interpretation of the inscription.
quote:Unless you can cite him specifically saying so, this is something you made up yourself.
Clyde Winters:
This interpretation indicates that Rilly believed the Meroites were heavily influenced by the Romans when in reality they were not.
quote:Like I said:
Clyde Winters:
Now when we use my decipherment to read the text and the accompanying drawing
we have the following : [Dog] exist indeed to grant a noble boon [of rabbits with] the intention to bring elevation to you, meritorious Netror”. The vocabulary items are as follows:
W, to be, exist, to drive, to conduct
L, indeed, or termination element
E, grant a boon, vouchsafe, favor
Qo, to live, to renew, to restore; noble, royal, honorable; to make , to form
Ph, intention
N, good, only
Y, bring
-t, you (personal pronoun)
tl, to elevate
Netror, name of person
Slo, meritorious
You can find a short Meroitic vocabulary at the following site:
http://geocities.com/olmec982000/meroitic.pdf
quote:And as I said before, there is no such thing as being jealous of something that simply isn't intellectually and evidentially sound. However, as I've amply demonstrated, there is such thing as a frustrated & broken down individual, like yourself, who falls to lying about peoples' work in order to knock them down.
Clyde Winters:
As I said before Supercar/Mystery Solver you support Rilly due to jealousy of my accomplishments.
quote:Already given you the answer to that.
Clyde Winters:
How can you support the decipherment of this researcher when he fails to fully decipher an inscription
quote:None of which is 'evident', as I've just demonstrated.
Clyde Winters:
as evident in his failure to 1) refer to the dog chasing the rabbit, and 2) failure to read all of the Meroitic symbols on the griffito?
quote:Actually Rilly makes perfect sense in relating Meroitic to other languages of the Sudan/Africa.
The decipherment of Meroitic by Rilly is nothing more than smoke and mirrors
quote:Then it must be 'conjecture' that you, yourself, kept harping on about, saying that Rilly hasn't taken into consideration, 'Nubian' migrations into the region, during the dying days of the Meroitic complex. You are full of contradictions.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:This is pure conjecture. He has no documentary evidence of these population movements, especially the Nubians.
^Although current work have linked Kerma settlements with earlier settlements in pre-Kerma phases, suggesting settlements stretching further back in time than what's been detailed here, clearly, Rilly notes certain population movements that Clyde accuses him to be ignorant of, and hence, not considering them in his analysis. Winters is just totally disengaged with the real specifics at hand. - Mystery Solver.
quote:Actually, you should be asking yourself this question, because it is you who kept saying that the 'Nubians' have replaced the Meroitic population, who dubiously fled to west Africa. So how did the 'Nubians' come to replace them?
Clyde Winters:
We know that during the Roman period the major conflict in the North of the Meroitic Empire was between the Blymmes and Nubians. If the Nubians were too weak to overcome the Blymmes before the end of the Meroitic Empire, do you really expect us to assume the Nubians were able to take possession of Meroite lands from a superior Meroitic military which is a major assumtion in the above statement by Mystery Solver/Supercar.
quote:What idea; population movements(?) - citation?
Clyde Winters:
This idea of your's Supercar is ludicris.
quote:'Contradictions' is the keyword here.
Originally posted by rasol:
I've actually had fun with this thread because i'm amused by the audacity that it takes for Dr. Winters to espouse and endless series of mutually contradictory/self reversing arguments without so much as blinking, or winking at his audience.
quote:This comes from someone who willfully makes up population *movements* from Nigeria to Japan and China to Sudan, and invents lost continents to facilitate far fetched fake migrations.... but he can't fathom Nile Valley Africans moving around...the Nile Valley.
Winters writes:
He has no documentary evidence of these population movements
quote:Yes, and disingenuousness, I quite agree.
MysterySolver writes: 'Contradictions' is the keyword here.
quote:I have lost any respect I ever had of you. Here you admit that Rilly has not faithfully described an object he is deciphering ( e.g., absence of 'y' and the rabbit), and you claim this is okay.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:How?...but let me guess, it is supposed to be explained in the following..
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Rilly provides a good example of why you can't interpret iconography simply by using your own inferences.
quote:Although this is his interpretation of the inscription he is wrong and failed to decipher the signs properly.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Misinformed #1. Of course there is, and he provides a pictorial example of this. You can use names of personalities in literature and pictures of personalities and deity, animals and objects accomodated by descriptive short texts/inscripitions of the iconography to extrapolate words from the cotexts, and then re-verify its meaning by way of its application in other texts time and again. This application however slow, has even been used to assist in deciphering Mdu Ntr/Egyptic, aside from using tools like the Rosetta stone-type of situation whereby single literature is communicated in two or more distinct scripts, with at least one of these languages being adequately understood, NOT just being familiar with the letters.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The methods to increase the number of translated words cannot be fully explained in details here. To make a long story short, I would say that it is a « multicontextual approach ». The archaeological and the iconographical context can be very helpful, since very often, the short texts are the description with words of a painted or engraved image.
Clyde:
There is no way you can read an inscriptionusing iconography because often you do notknow the name for the items depicted in the engraving.
Using iconography is just part of Rilly's 'multicontextual approach'. Example provided:
Graffito from Musawwarat (REM 1165) Wle qo phn 3 tlt Netror-se-l-o« this dog was bought (???) three talents, it is Netarura's ».
^Just because you are personally incapable of doing this, doesn't make it undoable.
quote:He doesn't, because the specific text cited, doesn't. Now of course, you'll have us believe that the specific piece of text cited, should read "dog chasing rabbit". It only shows me that the man is actually methodologically using the multicontextual method to determine the meanings of new words, and not just blindly making them up, simply because of what is in the picture, which is what you're clearly doing.
Clyde Winters:
Firstly, the grafitto has a dog chasing a rabbit. Although the rabbit being chased by the dog is obvious to anyone looking at the grafitto this pictorial fact is not mentioned by Rilly.
quote:And you know this, because he specifically says this where...i.e. by saying so and so Meroitic letter corresponds to this or that?
Clyde Winters:
Now let's look at his alleged decipherment and reading of the Meroitic signs.
For example, he interprets the three lines: ||| as the numeral three, this was wrong in Meroitic ||| is the ‘y’(check out the Meroitic writing chart above).
quote:Do you need reading glasses? He writes "wle", not "wl". And again, how the heck do you know what he is reading, if he hasn't specifically spelt out the terms in their 'Meroitic letters'? All I see, is the iconography with scripture in Meroitic letters, and the portion of the text to be interpreted, written in English letters but in Meroitic language, and associated translations in English.
Clyde Winters:
In addition after correctly deciphering the Meroitic w and l signs, he failed to record the ‘e’, that follows the wl (please refer to the Meroitic chart above). Thus this should have read w-l-e, not wl.
quote:Rilly is well aware of previously established letters and words, he makes that clear in the link. All I see, and have demonstrated, is your carelessness in reading his work.
Clyde Winters:
If Rilly can be this careless in his interpretation of the Meroitic signs, when the meaning of each Meroitic symbol is well known, says much about his method of decipherment.
quote:"Black" is specifically an English word, not Kemetic, yet we know what represents 'black' in Kemetic. Use your head.
Clyde Winters:
In addition, Rilly refers to the term Talents, this is a Roman word--not Meroitic.
quote:Translations are done so, precisely because for each word in a primary foreign text in question, we are reminded of words that are supposed to or can best communicate the same thing more or less. This is no rocket science, just common sense. Rilly did no different here.
Clyde Winters:
Use of this term indicates that Rilly placed his own ideas about Meroitic society in his interpretation of the inscription.
quote:Unless you can cite him specifically saying so, this is something you made up yourself.
Clyde Winters:
This interpretation indicates that Rilly believed the Meroites were heavily influenced by the Romans when in reality they were not.
quote:Your reading of the signs clearly show that Rilly failed to properly interpret the grifitto. But to support Rilly you also failed to include the rabit in your interpretation. A rabbit being chased by a dog implies hunting not purchasing a dog.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
I thought it might be worth giving it a shot, to read what's on the aforementioned iconography myself, using the following table:
Wle qo phn 3 tlt Netror-se-l-o« this dog was bought (???) three talents, it is Netarura's ».
In the order that I can read the terms….
On the left hand corner, below the dog and rabbit image, I see :
#1. o l(a) se/s(a) r(a) o r(a) t(a) ny(a)/ne
Above the letters just mentioned, right next to the dog’s tail and hind limbs, I see three parallel lines, which according to the table is:
#2. y(a)
Then to the lower right hand corner, I come across:
#3. t(a) l(a) t(a)
Right above ‘t l t’, as far as I can tell, are the signs for what appears to closely resemble the sign for p(a), then some *unfamiliar* sign, and then what most closely resembles the n(a) sign, so that I have,...
#4. p(a) *^[see below for details] n(a)
Right above the dog’s tail, the signs appear to read:
#5. o o q(a)
And at either the tip or the end of the dog’s tail on the right hand side, above the cluster on the lower right hand side, the signs appear to read:
#6. e l(a) w(a)
Note: "*" means the sign is unfamiliar to me.
Re-arranging the above, as far as I can tell, going back to
#1. "o l(a) se/s(a) r(a) o r(a) t(a) ny(a)/ne" is likely what Rilly wrote out as 'Netror-se-l-o'.
#2. "y"; don't know what Rilly has interpreted that, it is either what he was intepreting as "brought" with question marks next to it, or the number "3"
#3. "t(a) l(a) t(a)" is what I suspect Rilly wrote down as "tlt".
#4. "p(a) * n(a)" is what I presume Rilly to have written down as "phn".
#5. "o o q(a)" is probably what Rilly simply noted as "qo".
#6. "e l(a) w(a)" is most likely what was written down as "wle".
^The letters seem to read from right to left, in this instance.
Reading from top to bottom, and from right to left, the assembled letters read:
Topmost line, from right to left: Wle qo; 2nd line top, from right to left: phn y ["y", that Rilly either reads as "brought (???)" or "3"?]; lower lines, from right to left: tlt Netror-se-l-o
Now of course, Rilly makes it clear in the iconography exemplified, what his actual emphasis is here, and highlights them accordingly, as provided in the link:
Wle qo phn 3 tlt Netror-se-l-o« this dog was bought (???) three talents, it is Netarura's ».
^These highlighted words are the point of focus of the recently interpreted words.
quote:
Clyde Winters:
Now when we use my decipherment to read the text and the accompanying drawing
we have the following : [Dog] exist indeed to grant a noble boon [of rabbits with] the intention to bring elevation to you, meritorious Netror”. The vocabulary items are as follows:
W, to be, exist, to drive, to conduct
L, indeed, or termination element
E, grant a boon, vouchsafe, favor
Qo, to live, to renew, to restore; noble, royal, honorable; to make , to form
Ph, intention
N, good, only
Y, bring
-t, you (personal pronoun)
tl, to elevate
Netror, name of person
Slo, meritorious
You can find a short Meroitic vocabulary at the following site:
http://geocities.com/olmec982000/meroitic.pdf
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't know anything about linguistics.
1.You have not cited evidence that Prototerms can be used to decipher and read a dead language.
2.You have not cited any research claiming that we have textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan in the Meroitic Sudan.
3.You have not cited any research that the Nubian speakers were ever part of the Meroitic empire.
4. You have not disputed the fact that Classical writers said Indians were living in Meroe and after they left their original home because of the death of their king and contributed to their civilization.
You have not disputed the fact that Indian records record the migration of Indian due to the death of their king.
6. You have not disputed the fact that there was a large Indian community already living in Egypt during the Meroitic Empire.
7. You have not illustrated that the Kharosthi script does not agree with Meroitic writing.
8. You can not dispute the fact that Kharosthic
was in use long before Meroitic came on the scene.
Failure to dispute any of these facts make you claims groundless.
You are full of yourself. You support Rilly because you want to deny my decipherment due to jealousy and ignorance. You are just blowing hot air.
quote:
I repeat.
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
Rilly’s use of Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani can not be used to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence this group of languages was ever spoken in the Meroitic Empire. Since we have no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan being spoken in the Meroitic period there is no way anyone can claim this family of languages was spoken in the Meroitic Empire in Meroitic times.
Rilly claims that lexicostatistics or glottochronology allows him to read Meroitic. Lexicostatistics is used to fit datable events among languages that theoretically are descendant from a common ancestor.
The basic vocabulary is that part of the lexicon that shows slow change. These terms relate to basic cultural practices and universal human experiences.
Rilly can not use this method to read Meroitic because there are only 26 attested Meroitic terms accepted by the establishment. None of these terms are cognate to Nubian or Taman terms except the name for a Meroitic god. With only 1 cognate Meroitic and Northern Eastern Sudani languages, there is no way you can date the time Meroitic speakers and Nilo-Saharan speakers spoke a common ancestral language. Rilly claims to be able to decipher Meroitic using a method that compares basic culural words to date the time languages separated, can not be used to read Meroitic, because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nilo-Saharan cognates. The absence of Meroitic and Nubian cognates prevents any fruitful comparisons between these languages.
Rilly Paper
There are three ways to verify a protolanguage is congruent with reality 1) there is documentary evidence of the ancestor or near ancestor of the target language that allows comparison of adctual terms and grammars to the construct (i.e., reconstructed lexical items and grammars); 2) written evidence in the form of inscriptions exist from systematic excavation that compare favorably to the contruct; and 3) the power of prediction that this or that construct will conforms to objective reality.
Rilly's ideas that he can read Meroitic based on Kushite names from Kerma, which he calls proto-Meroitic names (even though he knows full well that a protolanguage is artificial and comes from reconstruction); and a list of Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani terms from the Nubian, Nara, Taman and Nyima languages meets none of these standards. This meets none of the standards because there is no documentary evidence for Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani dating to the Meroitic period. Moreover, the principle language he hopes to use to read Meroitic text: Nubian, was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. A fact Rilly admits in his own paper where he notes that Nubians invaded the Meroitic Empire during the declining days of the empire.
Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics, wrote that ,"a protolanguage is no more than a theorectical construct designed to link by means of rules the systems of historically related languages in the most economical way. It thus summarizes the present state of our knowledge regarding the systematic relationships of grammars of the related languages....When dealing with past language states it is possible to assess the distance between construct and reality only in cases where we possess documentated evidence regarding an ancestor or a near ancestor, such as is provided by Latin, in the case of the Romance languages"(p.71).
We can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic Empire, until after the Meroitic Empire was in decline. The absence of documentary evidence of any Nilo-Saharan language spoken in the Meroitic Empire during the Meroitic period precludes any possibility that Rilly's alleged Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani has any relationship to Meroitic or reality for that matter.
Before my decipherment of Meroitic the attested vocabulary of Meroitic was only 26 terms. Researchers proved decades ago that none of these terms have Nubian and Nilo-Saharan cognates. This makes Rilly's ideas about deciphering Meroitic using Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani a farce.
This is a farce because we do have document evidence of Meroitic, but none for the Nilo-Saharan languages. As a result, any proto-term hfrom Northern Eastern Sudani Rilly compares with Meroitic will be conjecture since there is no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan languages being spoken in the Meroitic Empire.
H.H. Hock, in Principles of Historical Linguistics (1986), observed that there are two major arguments against the idea that comparative reconstructions recover the "prehistoric reality" of a language.
The first principle, is that languages change over time. This makes it almost impossible to "fully" reconstruct the lexcical items and grammar of the ancestral language. Secondly, there are few, if any dialect free languages. Constructs resulting from comparing lexical items and grammars from an available set of languages,produce a dialect free protolanguage, that is unnatural and "factually incorrect as shown by the insights of the wave theory" (p.568).
Granted, by comparing languages and associating them with a particular time period you can make comparative reconstructions that may eliminate dialectal diversity. But Rilly can not do this because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nubian cognates. This along with the fact that we have no textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan during the Meroitic period demonstrating that Nilo-Saharan languages were spoken in the Meroitic Empire, especially Nubian,precludes using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic. Using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic will fail to provide a linguistically realistic situation in Nubia 2000 years ago. This is especially true for Nubian, which was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. The Nubian speakers lived far to the north of the Meroitic Empire, a fact Rilly acknowledges in his paper.
As usual you don't know what you're talking about. The Kushana used the Kharosthi/Karosti script. Inscriptions written in Kharosti date back to 251 BC.
The first Meroitic inscription dates back to the reign of Shanakdakheto (c.177-155 BC). The date of the first Meroitic inscriptions is 100 years after people the Kushana were writing their works in Kharosti.
The Meroitic signs correspond to Meroitic signs.
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/lit7.gif
quote:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
[QB]quote:...which explains why you have consistently failed to address my point-by-point refutations of both your methods, and assessments of Rilly's work. Sure.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't know anything about linguistics.
quote:...none of which I need to do, because there is no such thing as addressing either strawman, proclamations already destroyed to pieces by myself, or something that just makes no sense. That's what this weak plea, passed off as serious followup requests, really amounts to.
Clyde Winters:
1.You have not presented any evidence that Prototerms can be used to decipher and read a dead language.
2.You have not cited any research claiming that we have textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan in the Meroitic Sudan.
3.You have not cited any research that the Nubian speakers were ever part of the Meroitic empire.
4. You have not disputed the fact that Classical writers said Indians were living in Meroe and contributed to their civilization.
5. You have not disputed the fact that there was a large Indian community already living in Egypt during the Meroitic Empire.
6. You have not illustrated that the Kharosthi script does not agree with Meroitic writing.
7. You can not dispute the fact that Kharosthic
was in use long before Meroitic came on the scene.
quote:Let's just say if there were medals for such a thing, you'd be the gold medalist.
Clyde Winters:
You are full of yourself.
quote:I support his methods, because they are linguistically sound. Yours isn't. I mean, you can't be jealous of something that doesn't make sense. Btw, isn't that what you've charged everyone who's questioned your fantastic propositions? What about Obenga; jealous too? You bet.
Rilly:
you support Rilly because you want to deny my decipherment due to jealousy and ignorance.
Case in point, how come you haven't had the courage to address this point-by-point annihilation of your uninformed and false claims, point by point?...
Just another false statement to add to the index of your fallacious propagations. Rilly has demonstrated relationship, which you haven't been able to refute. All you do, to recap, is...
Notwithstanding the robotic recitations, by pooling together previous postings, you were wrong:
*when you falsely charged Rilly with proclaiming to have 'fully' deciphered Meroitic script, at least according to the link presented.
*when you falsely charged him with attempting to read Meroitic by creating proto-Nilo-Saharan.
*when you falsely charged him with attempting to read Meroitic by creating proto-NES [proto-North Eastern Sudanic], naturally contradicting the above.
*when you falsely charged him with attempting to read Meroitic by simply using Nubian. Again contradicting the two above.
*when you falsely charged him with dating some proto-language.
*when you falsely charged him with just focusing on Sudan, simply because this was the geography where the Meroitic complex used to lie.
*when you falsely charged him, in relation to the above, about focusing on just Nilo-Saharan, Nubian, or proto-NES, when in reality, he first compared Meroitic lexicons with other superfamilies like Niger-Congo and Afrasan, which failed to show strong correspondence, prompting him to turn to Nilo-Saharan, starting with eastern Sudanic languages.
*when you falsely charged him with using 'proto-Meroitic' names to read Meroitic, when in reality, these were just part of the 'multicontextual approach' to extracting more words from associated cotexts in primary texts.
*when you falsely charged him with not being able to generate additional words to those which were established by previous researchers. In fact, presumably including those previously established words, he was able to come up with 39 Meroitic words 'whose meanings' were 'assured' for his lexical comparisons.
*when you falsely charged him with not being able to find potential cognates within the eastern Sudanic family. His tables prove this wrong.
*when you falsely charged him with using lexicostatistics or glottochronology to read Meroitic.
*when you baselessly charged his work to be a farce, simply because attempts by previous researchers failed, even though they didn't use Rilly's more refined 'multicontextual approach'.
*when you said lexicostatistics could be used to date languages descended from a proto-language.
*when you confused lexicostatistics with glottochronology. Glottochronology is the tool used to date languages using quantitative [mathematical] models, as well as making use of multidisciplines as additional tool for precision of dating language divergences.
*when you said that documentary evidence of other Nilo-Saharan languages during the Meroitic times was necessary, in order to establish its (Meroitic's) family association.
*when you spoke of the need for evidence to show that Nilo-Saharan precedes Meroitic, when Meriotic is supposed to be part of the Nilo-Saharan family, as demonstrated by Rilly.
*when you spoke of the need to "fully" reconstruct the lexical items and grammar of the ancestral language.
*when you spoke of using Tocharian, and then spoke of using Kharosthi, suggesting that you don't distinguish between the two.
*when you posted the diagram of Meroitic, Demotic, Kharosthi, Egyptian and Gebel, in order to support your dubious theorey of Meroitic derivation from Kharosthi; as it turns out, even from your own diagram, Meroitic not only has a distinct set of letters from that of Kharosthi, but also more closely resembles Demotic and Egyptian counterparts than Khorasthi.
^Basically, these are but just some of the seriously flawed claims that you've made throughout your hypothesis about Meroitic derivation from Tacharian(?), and/or what you now call Khorasthi(?). All your charges about Rilly can essentially be summed up as strawmen setups and phantom events, not professed in the link.
quote:Your problem, not mine.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I have lost any respect I ever had of you.
quote:Citation of this phantom admission?
Clyde Winters:
Here you admit that Rilly has not faithfully described an object he is deciphering ( e.g., absence of 'y' and the rabbit)
quote:Gone through this with you. Refer to last post.
Clyde Winters:
When interpreting primary data you have to explain everything that is related to the primary data. Here the picture was published and can show the difference between Rilly's interpretation and the actual object.
quote:Makes no sense.
Clyde Winters:
You may believe this is okay but it is not. It shows how Rilly, and now you will do anything to make yourself right.
quote:How so? It reconfirms his reading.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Your reading of the signs clearly show that Rilly failed to properly interpret the grifitto.
quote:I didn't translate the literature, so I have no clue what you're talking about. I only read the letters on the table and reassembled them. Rilly used a multicontextual approach to extract meanings of certain words from the cotext. Difference!
Clyde Winters:
But to support Rilly you also failed to include the rabit in your interpretation.
quote:Who said anything about 'buying'. You sure you don't need reading glasses? Your out-of-sync interpretations with just about what anyone actually says, is really scary.
Clyde Winters:
A rabbit being chased by a dog implies hunting not purchasing a dog.
quote:Common sense should remedy this. He first wrote it out how it appears in Meroitic letters, and then in translation, he just placed vowels in certain areas where the vowel wasn't directly jotted down. The table I posted demonstrates this phenomenon. Meroitic deosn't always place vowels in words, but nonetheless they're implied. This isn't new, it's a fairly well known feature about Meroitic. Some researchers have deemed the "o" to sound like a "u". Should familiarize yourself with these things.
Clyde Winters:
Rilly claims the name on the grifitto is "Netarura", yet the inscription has Netror.
quote:Here we see you again, speaking out of misinformation.
Clyde Winters:
Here we see again Rilly making claims without relying on the actual text.
quote:See post above.
Clyde Winters:
This shows how Rilly uses conjecture throughout this decipherment to read into the inscription whatever he wants, instead of copying the 'o', as it is represented in the text he changes the letter to 'u'. Making up your own letters to read an inscription is not professional at all.
quote:Shame on you for proclaiming to be a linguist, and yet still not understand what even non-linguists can understand.
Clyde Winters:
All this is unprofessional you accept this behavior because you want make him right. Shame on you.
quote:It isn't my place to explain. I simply reassembled terms from the table provided, and came up with the same terms as Rilly did. I also showed what Rilly's actual emphasis was in the texts translated. If you don't understand the ramifications of that point, then too bad.
Clyde Winters:
Also you still haven't explained why Rilly claims the currency was talents, when this term was probably not a part of Meroitic.
quote:And you have this desire to sound not bright, whether fake and/or real; regardless, it doesn't help you. Where is the letters for 'dog' and 'rabbit'in your farfetched 'Tocharian interpretation? I see these terms placed brackets, and wild guesswork at trying to tell a story based on pictures, and not the actual texts. I've already made a point on this.
Clyde Winters:
Supporting Rilly's interpretation of the inscription when the iconogrphy shows a dog chasing a rabbit is further proof, if any was needed of your desire to be right by any means necessary.
quote:Not by a long shot, pending answers to:
Clyde Winters:
Now when we use my decipherment to read the text and the accompanying drawing
quote:You lost me Dr. Winters,
Here you admit that Rilly has not faithfully described an object he is deciphering ( e.g., absence of 'y' and the rabbit), and you claim this is okay.
quote:-Exists as a noble boon- implies a benefit bestowed as a blessing [from God], or a gift [from man], [intention would imply the later]??
Winters: A rabbit being chased by a dog implies hunting not purchasing a dog.
quote:Simple; because:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Mystery Solver you have still not answered any of the questions below. I am waiting for your answer.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:...none of which I need to do, because there is no such thing as addressing either strawman, proclamations already destroyed to pieces by myself, or something that just makes no sense. That's what this weak plea, passed off as serious followup requests, really amounts to.
Clyde Winters:
1.You have not presented any evidence that Prototerms can be used to decipher and read a dead language.
2.You have not cited any research claiming that we have textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan in the Meroitic Sudan.
3.You have not cited any research that the Nubian speakers were ever part of the Meroitic empire.
4. You have not disputed the fact that Classical writers said Indians were living in Meroe and contributed to their civilization.
5. You have not disputed the fact that there was a large Indian community already living in Egypt during the Meroitic Empire.
6. You have not illustrated that the Kharosthi script does not agree with Meroitic writing.
7. You can not dispute the fact that Kharosthic
was in use long before Meroitic came on the scene.
quote:The central issue is whether Meroitic is or is not related to Nilo Saharan.
Rilly has demonstrated relationship, which you haven't been able to refute. All you do, to recap, is...
quote:Based on his previous practices, Clyde will likely say that the pictures themselves are the words, as if Meroitic has no terms for these items.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:You lost me Dr. Winters,
Here you admit that Rilly has not faithfully described an object he is deciphering ( e.g., absence of 'y' and the rabbit), and you claim this is okay.
There is no rabbit in your transliteration either -
W, to be, exist, to drive, to conduct
L, indeed, or termination element
E, grant a boon, vouchsafe, favor
Qo, to live, to renew, to restore; noble, royal, honorable; to make , to form
Ph, intention
N, good, only
Y, bring
-t, you (personal pronoun)
tl, to elevate
Netror, name of person
Slo, meritorious
You put rabbit and dog in brackets to literally represent what is being referred to -
: [Dog] exist indeed to grant a noble boon [of rabbits with] the intention to bring elevation to you, meritorious Netror”.
What in your opinion is the actual word for Dog and Rabbit in meroitic?
Is it written in the text, yes or no?
quote:-Exists as a noble boon- implies a benefit bestowed as a blessing [from God], or a gift [from man], [intention would imply the later]??
Winters: A rabbit being chased by a dog implies hunting not purchasing a dog.
But your translation does not make this clear.
Likewise '3 talents' which Riley literally translates could relate to the skillset of the dog, including [implicitely] hunting.
But what we are discribing now is interpretation - not transliteration, correct?
quote:Clyde is not in a position to engage this point, because he is using Kharosthi script, which is distinct from Meroitic, to translate Meroitic, without a Rosetta stone-type of scenario going on here, where one script in one language translates the very same text written in Meroitic script, just as hieroglyphics and Demotic was done with Coptic.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:The central issue is whether Meroitic is or is not related to Nilo Saharan.
Rilly has demonstrated relationship, which you haven't been able to refute. All you do, to recap, is...
quote:
quote:Clyde Winters:
A rabbit being chased by a dog implies hunting not purchasing a dog.
Who said anything about 'buying'. You sure you don't need reading glasses? Your out-of-sync interpretations with just about what anyone actually says, is really scary.
quote:
Wle qo phn 3 tlt Netror-se-l-o« this dog was bought (???) three talents, it is Netarura's ».
quote:You are late. I refuted the contentions of Rilly three pages ago. I repeat:
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:The central issue is whether Meroitic is or is not related to Nilo Saharan.
Rilly has demonstrated relationship, which you haven't been able to refute. All you do, to recap, is...
It is revealing that Winters relates it instead as and imagined ego contest between him and Riley, which is quite boring and off point.
Winters focus should logically be on showing us how there is no relationship between Meroitic and the other Native languages of the Sudan.
He has not done so.
quote:This not a good question. Researchers have already discovered that the languages are not related. As pointed out above Rilly made up some terms he claims are Meroitic. These make believe terms can not be used to prove this point.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Clyde is not in a position to engage this point, because he is using Kharosthi script, which is distinct from Meroitic, to translate Meroitic, without a Rosetta stone-type of scenario going on here, where one script in one language translates the very same text written in Meroitic script, just as hieroglyphics and Demotic was done with Coptic.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:The central issue is whether Meroitic is or is not related to Nilo Saharan.
Rilly has demonstrated relationship, which you haven't been able to refute. All you do, to recap, is...
quote:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Based on his previous practices, Clyde will likely say that the pictures themselves are the words, as if Meroitic has no terms for these items.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:You lost me Dr. Winters,
Here you admit that Rilly has not faithfully described an object he is deciphering ( e.g., absence of 'y' and the rabbit), and you claim this is okay.
There is no rabbit in your transliteration either -
W, to be, exist, to drive, to conduct
L, indeed, or termination element
E, grant a boon, vouchsafe, favor
Qo, to live, to renew, to restore; noble, royal, honorable; to make , to form
Ph, intention
N, good, only
Y, bring
-t, you (personal pronoun)
tl, to elevate
Netror, name of person
Slo, meritorious
You put rabbit and dog in brackets to literally represent what is being referred to -
: [Dog] exist indeed to grant a noble boon [of rabbits with] the intention to bring elevation to you, meritorious Netror”.
What in your opinion is the actual word for Dog and Rabbit in meroitic?
Is it written in the text, yes or no?
quote:-Exists as a noble boon- implies a benefit bestowed as a blessing [from God], or a gift [from man], [intention would imply the later]??
Winters: A rabbit being chased by a dog implies hunting not purchasing a dog.
But your translation does not make this clear.
Likewise '3 talents' which Riley literally translates could relate to the skillset of the dog, including [implicitely] hunting.
But what we are discribing now is interpretation - not transliteration, correct?
As I have demonstrated however, Rilly's emphasis was to derive the words he emphasized [in red block letters in the link]. He did translate the rest of the piece, but not really much of a concern here. Hence, the assured translated words here, were "this dog". From what I can tell, he might be openning the interpretation of the signs for "phn" and "y" [according to the table] here in two ways: one where he deems that the term 'phn" could mean "brought" and hence question marks following it, meaning open to further investigation, and the other, for "y" whereby it could present a Meroitic synonym for the numeral three.
Hence, *exactly* as noted in the link:
Wle qo phn 3 tlt Netror-se-l-o « this dog was bought (???) three talents, it is Netarura's ».
Notice the emphasized 'block' terms, which are the words whose meanings were supposed to be assured, in the cotext, with the rest of the 'interpretation' completed out nonetheless.
Ps - How are these emphasized words assured in their meaning according to Rilly?
But in a few cases, a meaning can be suggested for new words and be confirmed in various inscriptions. Although very slow, this approach recently provided new translations.
quote:I think what Mystery Solver is asking is if bought necessarily implies purchased as opposed to bought as in currying favor with a gift, as opposed purchasing.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't even read what your hero has written. Rilly is the one who says a dog was bought not me. If a dog was bought, that means the dog was purchased.
quote:Yes, but we all know a picture of a dog or rabbit implies dog or rabbit -- in any langauge.
Based on his previous practices, Clyde will likely say that the pictures themselves are the words, as if Meroitic has no terms for these items.
quote:Rily could be correct or he could be wrong, but Winters attempted refutations of him to date are simply strawfire distractions, which neither show that the translations are incorrect, nor that Meroitic is unrelated to other African languages - as *Winters*, and not Riley, claims.
As I have demonstrated however, Rilly's emphasis was to derive the words he emphasized [in red block letters in the link]. He did translate the rest of the piece, but not really much of a concern here.
Hence, the assured translated words here, were "this dog". From what I can tell, he might be openning the interpretation of the signs for "phn" and "y" [according to the table] here in two ways: one where he deems that the term 'phn" could mean "brought" and hence question marks following it, meaning open to further investigation, and the other, for "y" whereby it could present a Meroitic synonym for the numeral three.
Hence, *exactly* as noted in the link:
Wle qo phn 3 tlt Netror-se-l-o « this dog was bought (???) three talents, it is Netarura's ».
Notice the emphasized 'block' terms, which are the words whose meanings were supposed to be assured, in the cotext, with the rest of the 'interpretation' completed out nonetheless.
Ps - How are these emphasized words assured in their meaning according to Rilly?
But in a few cases, a meaning can be suggested for new words and be confirmed in various inscriptions. Although very slow, this approach recently provided new translations.
quote:False statement obviously since researchers claim that Meroitic is a Nilo Saharan language.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This not a good question. Researchers have already discovered that the languages [merotic and nilo saharan] are not related.
, which is simply your excuse for not being able to answer it.
quote:Answer:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
2.Where are your citations of any research claiming that we have textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan in the Meroitic Sudan.
quote:LMAO
Originally posted by rasol:
And you wonder why your linguistic work is rejected or ignored?
Indeed. Why does Clyde spend most of his time arguing his ridiculous linguistic theories here in this board?? Why does he not do so in a forum for linguists? I visited one years ago, and after hearing what all those [valid] linguists said about him I felt really bad for the guy. quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You are a racist troll. Don't you dare call me a Black supremist. I never defamed whites in anyway on this forum or anywhere else.
You do all the time when you say whites weren't responsible for any culture in Europe until the Middle Ages (?). According to you, this was when whites appear out of nowhere and replaced the black indigenous people of Europe. And I imagine this is the same with Asia with the "negroid Shang" etc.quote:I did not lie, nor do I have to apologize for stating truth.
I demand that you produce right now any statement I have made herein to defame whites. I want an apology now for your lie.
quote:Okay, I misread that bit of the piece, but judging from the following unaddressed list, apparently you've misread [and lied about] the *entirety* of his piece:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
You don't even read what your hero has written. Rilly is the one who says a dog was bought not me. If a dog was bought, that means the dog was purchased.
Rilly
quote:
Wle qo phn 3 tlt Netror-se-l-o« this dog was bought (???) three talents, it is Netarura's ».
quote:Sorry to burst your bubble, but this ain't the world of "this isn't so, simply because I say so." You've failed to answer the question pertaining to the statement you just cited, earlier. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:This not a good question. Researchers have already discovered that the languages are not related.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Clyde is not in a position to engage this point, because he is using Kharosthi script, which is distinct from Meroitic, to translate Meroitic, without a Rosetta stone-type of scenario going on here, where one script in one language translates the very same text written in Meroitic script, just as hieroglyphics and Demotic was done with Coptic.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:The central issue is whether Meroitic is or is not related to Nilo Saharan.
Rilly has demonstrated relationship, which you haven't been able to refute. All you do, to recap, is...
quote:You haven't pointed out such thing. You simply 'disputed' his interpretation of three parallel signs, saying that the table interprets that as "Y". Your interpretation of that term is even more dubious than Rilly's considering that he is basing it on examining other Meroitic texts, while you are proclaiming to translate from a totally different language through the Kharosthi script.
Clyde Winters:
As pointed out above Rilly made up some terms he claims are Meroitic. These make believe terms can not be used to prove this point.
quote:Hence vindicating my point, when I replied Rasol, in the following:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I placed the dog and rabbit in brackets because these are pictures.
quote:You're so predictable, it ain't funny.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Based on his previous practices, Clyde will likely say that the pictures themselves are the words, as if Meroitic has no terms for these items.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:You lost me Dr. Winters,
Here you admit that Rilly has not faithfully described an object he is deciphering ( e.g., absence of 'y' and the rabbit), and you claim this is okay.
There is no rabbit in your transliteration either -
W, to be, exist, to drive, to conduct
L, indeed, or termination element
E, grant a boon, vouchsafe, favor
Qo, to live, to renew, to restore; noble, royal, honorable; to make , to form
Ph, intention
N, good, only
Y, bring
-t, you (personal pronoun)
tl, to elevate
Netror, name of person
Slo, meritorious
You put rabbit and dog in brackets to literally represent what is being referred to -
: [Dog] exist indeed to grant a noble boon [of rabbits with] the intention to bring elevation to you, meritorious Netror”.
What in your opinion is the actual word for Dog and Rabbit in meroitic?
Is it written in the text, yes or no?
quote:-Exists as a noble boon- implies a benefit bestowed as a blessing [from God], or a gift [from man], [intention would imply the later]??
Winters: A rabbit being chased by a dog implies hunting not purchasing a dog.
But your translation does not make this clear.
Likewise '3 talents' which Riley literally translates could relate to the skillset of the dog, including [implicitely] hunting.
But what we are discribing now is interpretation - not transliteration, correct?
quote:And yet, you were prepared to question Rilly's interpretation, who did find out the meaning of the term, from examining one primary Meroitic text to another via the method I've already pointed out countless times now.
Clyde Winters:
The written message is simply: " Exist indeed to grant a noble boon (with)the intention to bring elevation to you, meritorious Netror".
I do not know the Meroitic word for dog.
quote:Wrong question. You should have asked where I answered those incoherent questions. The answer is: you had already cited it when you repeated those questions. Where is your point-by-point answer to my point-by-point revelations of your lies and misinformation?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
1.Where is the evidence that Prototerms can be used to decipher and read a dead language.
2.Where are your citations of any research claiming that we have textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan in the Meroitic Sudan.
3.Cite any research that the Nubian speakers were ever part of the Meroitic empire.
4. Cite any sources that dispute the fact that Classical writers said Indians were living in Meroe and contributed to their civilization.
5. Cite any sources disputing the fact that there was a large Indian community already living in Egypt during the Meroitic Empire.
6. You have not illustrated that the Kharosthi script does not agree with Meroitic writing.
7. You can not dispute the fact that Kharosthic
was in use long before Meroitic came on the scene.
Mystery Solver/ Rasol when are you going to answer these questions.
quote:I approach Rilly's interpretations as I do for any other science. By this, I mean that it should be falsifiable. Until this is done, I'd have to assume his methodological approach bore fruit here [and definitely has preponderance over Winters' approach], and he was able to determine the meanings of the 'emphasized' terms through the 'multicontextual' appraoch he proclaimed to have used.
Originally posted by rasol:
Rily could be correct or he could be wrong, but Winters attempted refutations of him to date are simply strawfire distractions, which neither show that the translations are incorrect, nor that Meroitic is unrelated to other African languages - as *Winters*, and not Riley, claims.
quote:Some folks have the tendency to assume that if they spew dubious claims, that the lack of negative feedback to this from others therefore means that the audience is buying it. For that reason, I speak out, to let it be known that I'm not a member of the presumed receptive sheep flock to disinformation propagation.
Originally posted by Djehuti:
Seriously, Clyde has become a big joke in the academic world. This latest thread is just one of the biggest loads in the manure heap. Why do you guys even bother?
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Tocharian was probably a Lingua Franca.
There were many people who probably used Tocharian for purposes of communication including the Kushana and the "Ars'i/Asii". They probably used Tocharian as a lingua franca. You make it clear in your last post that numerous languages were spoken in Central Asia when the Tocharian was written in Kharosthi.
Most researchers believe that a majority of the people who lived in this area were bilingual and spoke Bactrian ,Indian languages among other languages. I agree with this theory, and believe that the Kushana Kings may have spoken a Dravidian language. Due to the possibility that the Kushana spoke a Dravidian language which is the substratum language of Tocharian; and
the presence of a number of different terms in Tocharian from many
languages spoken in the area-led me to the conclusion that Tocharian was a trade language. The Kushana always referred to themselves as the Kushana/Gushana. The name Kushana for this group is recorded in the Manikiala Stone inscription (56BC?), the Panjtar Stone inscription of 122 AD and the Taxila Silver Scroll. The Greeks called them Kushana in the Karosthi inscriptions, and Kocano. In the Chinese sources they were called Koei-shuang or Kwei-shwang= Kushana, and Yueh chih .
As you can see the term Kushana had been used to refer to these people
long before Kujula Kadphises used the term as a personal name. This was
over a hundred years after the Kushana had become rulers of Bactria. It
would appear from the evidence that the nation of the Kushana was called Kusha.
Kujula Kadphises
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Kushana.
First, I would like to make it clear that the probable language of the Kushana was Tamil. According to Dravidian literature, the Kushana were called Kosars=Yakshas=Yueh chih/ Kushana. This literature maintains that when they entered India they either already spoke Tamil, or adopted the language upon settlement in India.
The Kushana and the Yueh chih were one and the same. In addition to
North Indian documents the Kushana-Yueh chih association are also
discussed in Dravidian literature. V Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen
hundred years ago, note that in the Sanskrit literature the Yueh chih were called Yakshas, Pali chroniclers called them Yakkos and Kosars< Kushana.
They allegedely arrived in India during the 2nd century BC. He makes it clear that the Yueh chih/ Kushana as noted on their coins worshipped Siva as seen on the coins of Kanishka. This is why we have a coin of a Kushana king from Taxila, dated to AD 76 that declares that the king was maharaja rajatiraja devaputra Kushana "Great King, King of kings, Son of God, the Kushana".
Kushana
King Kaniska of the Kushan
The term Tochara has nothing to do with the Yueh
chih, this was a term used to describe the people who took over the Greek Bactrian state, before the Kushana reached the Oxus Valley around 150 BC . There is no reason the Kushana may not have been intimately
familiar with the Kharosthi writing at this time because from 202BC onward Prakrit and Chinese documents were written in Kharosthi.
The Kushana and the Yueh chih were one and the same. In addition to
North Indian documents the Kushana-Yueh chih association are also
discussed in Dravidian literature.V Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen
hundred years ago note that in the Sanskrit literature the Yueh chih were
called Yakshas, Pali chroniclers called them Yakkos and Kosars< Kushana. They allegedely arrived in India during the 2nd century BC. He makes it clear that the Yueh chih/ Kushana as noted on their coins worshipped Siva as seen on the coins of Kanishka.This is why we have a coin of a Kushana king from Taxila, dated to AD 76 that declares that the king was maharaja rajatiraja devaputra Kushana "Great King, King of kings, Son of God, the Kushana".
Some researchers believe that the Ars'i spoke Tocharian A, while
Tocharian B was the "Kucha language" may have been spoken by the Kushana people. I don't know where you read that the speakers of Tocharian A were called Ars'i. This names have nothing to do with ethnic groups, they refer to the cities where Tocharian text were found:
Tocharian A documents were found around Qarashar and Turfan, thusly these text are also referred to as Turfanian or East Tocharian; Tocharian B documents were found near the town of Kucha, thusly they are sometimes called Kuchean or West Tocharian.
Kanishka Casket
Linguist use the term Tochari to refer to these people, because they were given this title in Turkic manuscripts . They called themselves Kushana.
The observable evidence make it clear that the terms used to label the Tocharian dialects are not ethnonyms, they are terms used to denote where the Tocharian records were found. The use of the term Ars'i does not relate to the Kushana people. The terms: Asii, Pasiani, Tochari and Sacarauli, refer to the nomads that took away Bactria from the Greeks.
These nomads came from the Iaxartes River that adjoins that of Sacae and the Sogdiani .The Kushana people took over Bactria much later. It is a mistake to believe that Ars'i and Kucha were ethnonyms is under-standable given your lack of knowledge about Tocharian. And I will agree that there were a number of different languages spoken by people who
wrote material in Tocharian. It is for this reason that I have maintained
throughout my published works on Tocharian, that this was a trade language. This language was used by the Central Asians as a
lingua franca and trade language due to the numerous ethnic groups which formerly lived in central Asia". Kharosthi was long used to write in Central Asia. It was even used by the Greeks. The use of the Kharosthi writing system in Central Asia and India, would place this writing contemporaneous with the tradition, recorded by the Classical writers of Indians settling among the Kushites of Meroitic Empire..
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Truth will always overcome a lie, no matter what the lie is.
quote:
proto-: When prefixed to the name of language, this term serves to designate the earliest known, at times the earliest artificially reconstructed, form of that language.
Rilly’s use of Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani can not be used to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence this group of languages was ever spoken in the Meroitic Empire. Since we have no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan being spoken in the Meroitic period there is no way anyone can claim this family of languages was spoken in the Meroitic Empire in Meroitic times.
Rilly claims that lexicostatistics or glottochronology allows him to read Meroitic. Lexicostatistics is used to fit datable events among languages that theoretically are descendant from a common ancestor.
The basic vocabulary is that part of the lexicon that shows slow change. These terms relate to basic cultural practices and universal human experiences.
Rilly can not use this method to read Meroitic because there are only 26 attested Meroitic terms accepted by the establishment. None of these terms are cognate to Nubian or Taman terms except the name for a Meroitic god. With only 1 cognate Meroitic and Northern Eastern Sudani languages, there is no way you can date the time Meroitic speakers and Nilo-Saharan speakers spoke a common ancestral language. Rilly claims to be able to decipher Meroitic using a method that compares basic culural words to date the time languages separated, can not be used to read Meroitic, because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nilo-Saharan cognates. The absence of Meroitic and Nubian cognates prevents any fruitful comparisons between these languages.
Rilly Paper
There are three ways to verify a protolanguage is congruent with reality 1) there is documentary evidence of the ancestor or near ancestor of the target language that allows comparison of adctual terms and grammars to the construct (i.e., reconstructed lexical items and grammars); 2) written evidence in the form of inscriptions exist from systematic excavation that compare favorably to the contruct; and 3) the power of prediction that this or that construct will conforms to objective reality.
Rilly's ideas that he can read Meroitic based on Kushite names from Kerma, which he calls proto-Meroitic names (even though he knows full well that a protolanguage is artificial and comes from reconstruction); and a list of Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani terms from the Nubian, Nara, Taman and Nyima languages meets none of these standards. This meets none of the standards because there is no documentary evidence for Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani dating to the Meroitic period. Moreover, the principle language he hopes to use to read Meroitic text: Nubian, was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. A fact Rilly admits in his own paper where he notes that Nubians invaded the Meroitic Empire during the declining days of the empire.
Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics, wrote that ,"a protolanguage is no more than a theorectical construct designed to link by means of rules the systems of historically related languages in the most economical way. It thus summarizes the present state of our knowledge regarding the systematic relationships of grammars of the related languages....When dealing with past language states it is possible to assess the distance between construct and reality only in cases where we possess documentated evidence regarding an ancestor or a near ancestor, such as is provided by Latin, in the case of the Romance languages"(p.71).
We can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic Empire, until after the Meroitic Empire was in decline. The absence of documentary evidence of any Nilo-Saharan language spoken in the Meroitic Empire during the Meroitic period precludes any possibility that Rilly's alleged Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani has any relationship to Meroitic or reality for that matter.
Before my decipherment of Meroitic the attested vocabulary of Meroitic was only 26 terms. Researchers proved decades ago that none of these terms have Nubian and Nilo-Saharan cognates. This makes Rilly's ideas about deciphering Meroitic using Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani a farce.
This is a farce because we do have document evidence of Meroitic, but none for the Nilo-Saharan languages. As a result, any proto-term hfrom Northern Eastern Sudani Rilly compares with Meroitic will be conjecture since there is no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan languages being spoken in the Meroitic Empire.
H.H. Hock, in Principles of Historical Linguistics (1986), observed that there are two major arguments against the idea that comparative reconstructions recover the "prehistoric reality" of a language.
The first principle, is that languages change over time. This makes it almost impossible to "fully" reconstruct the lexcical items and grammar of the ancestral language. Secondly, there are few, if any dialect free languages. Constructs resulting from comparing lexical items and grammars from an available set of languages,produce a dialect free protolanguage, that is unnatural and "factually incorrect as shown by the insights of the wave theory" (p.568).
Granted, by comparing languages and associating them with a particular time period you can make comparative reconstructions that may eliminate dialectal diversity. But Rilly can not do this because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nubian cognates. This along with the fact that we have no textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan during the Meroitic period demonstrating that Nilo-Saharan languages were spoken in the Meroitic Empire, especially Nubian,precludes using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic. Using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic will fail to provide a linguistically realistic situation in Nubia 2000 years ago. This is especially true for Nubian, which was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. The Nubian speakers lived far to the north of the Meroitic Empire, a fact Rilly acknowledges in his paper.
As usual you don't know what you're talking about. The Kushana used the Kharosthi/Karosti script. Inscriptions written in Kharosti date back to 251 BC.
The first Meroitic inscription dates back to the reign of Shanakdakheto (c.177-155 BC). The date of the first Meroitic inscriptions is 100 years after people the Kushana were writing their works in Kharosti.
The Meroitic signs correspond to Meroitic signs.
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/lit7.gif
quote:I am not the first one to claim that Meroitic was not related to an African language.It has been numerous researchers who have claimed Meroitic was not related to any African languages.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:False statement obviously since researchers claim that Meroitic is a Nilo Saharan language.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This not a good question. Researchers have already discovered that the languages [merotic and nilo saharan] are not related.
It is you who claims that Merotic is unrelated to any other African language.
It is you who claims that the langauge is effectively Indo-European [notwithstanding your ludicrous dissembling in and effort to -HIDE- what you are actually implying.
It is you who failed to refute the affinities denoted between Merotic and other Nilo Saharan languages.
Therefore the problem is your failure to answer the question - not that the question is not *good*,
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver/ Rasol answer these questions.
1.Where is the evidence that Prototerms can be used to decipher and read a dead language.
2.Where are your citations of any research claiming that we have textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan in the Meroitic Sudan.
3.Cite any research that the Nubian speakers were ever part of the Meroitic empire.
4. Cite any sources that dispute the fact that Classical writers said Indians were living in Meroe and contributed to their civilization.
5. Cite any sources disputing the fact that there was a large Indian community already living in Egypt during the Meroitic Empire.
6. You have not illustrated that the Kharosthi script does not agree with Meroitic writing.
7. You can not dispute the fact that Kharosthic
was in use long before Meroitic came on the scene.
.
quote:
Rilly’s use of Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani can not be used to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence this group of languages was ever spoken in the Meroitic Empire. Since we have no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan being spoken in the Meroitic period there is no way anyone can claim this family of languages was spoken in the Meroitic Empire in Meroitic times.
Rilly claims that lexicostatistics or glottochronology allows him to read Meroitic. Lexicostatistics is used to fit datable events among languages that theoretically are descendant from a common ancestor.
The basic vocabulary is that part of the lexicon that shows slow change. These terms relate to basic cultural practices and universal human experiences.
Rilly can not use this method to read Meroitic because there are only 26 attested Meroitic terms accepted by the establishment. None of these terms are cognate to Nubian or Taman terms except the name for a Meroitic god. With only 1 cognate Meroitic and Northern Eastern Sudani languages, there is no way you can date the time Meroitic speakers and Nilo-Saharan speakers spoke a common ancestral language. Rilly claims to be able to decipher Meroitic using a method that compares basic culural words to date the time languages separated, can not be used to read Meroitic, because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nilo-Saharan cognates. The absence of Meroitic and Nubian cognates prevents any fruitful comparisons between these languages.
Rilly Paper
There are three ways to verify a protolanguage is congruent with reality 1) there is documentary evidence of the ancestor or near ancestor of the target language that allows comparison of adctual terms and grammars to the construct (i.e., reconstructed lexical items and grammars); 2) written evidence in the form of inscriptions exist from systematic excavation that compare favorably to the contruct; and 3) the power of prediction that this or that construct will conforms to objective reality.
Rilly's ideas that he can read Meroitic based on Kushite names from Kerma, which he calls proto-Meroitic names (even though he knows full well that a protolanguage is artificial and comes from reconstruction); and a list of Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani terms from the Nubian, Nara, Taman and Nyima languages meets none of these standards. This meets none of the standards because there is no documentary evidence for Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani dating to the Meroitic period. Moreover, the principle language he hopes to use to read Meroitic text: Nubian, was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. A fact Rilly admits in his own paper where he notes that Nubians invaded the Meroitic Empire during the declining days of the empire.
Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics, wrote that ,"a protolanguage is no more than a theorectical construct designed to link by means of rules the systems of historically related languages in the most economical way. It thus summarizes the present state of our knowledge regarding the systematic relationships of grammars of the related languages....When dealing with past language states it is possible to assess the distance between construct and reality only in cases where we possess documentated evidence regarding an ancestor or a near ancestor, such as is provided by Latin, in the case of the Romance languages"(p.71).
We can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic Empire, until after the Meroitic Empire was in decline. The absence of documentary evidence of any Nilo-Saharan language spoken in the Meroitic Empire during the Meroitic period precludes any possibility that Rilly's alleged Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani has any relationship to Meroitic or reality for that matter.
Before my decipherment of Meroitic the attested vocabulary of Meroitic was only 26 terms. Researchers proved decades ago that none of these terms have Nubian and Nilo-Saharan cognates. This makes Rilly's ideas about deciphering Meroitic using Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani a farce.
This is a farce because we do have document evidence of Meroitic, but none for the Nilo-Saharan languages. As a result, any proto-term hfrom Northern Eastern Sudani Rilly compares with Meroitic will be conjecture since there is no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan languages being spoken in the Meroitic Empire.
H.H. Hock, in Principles of Historical Linguistics (1986), observed that there are two major arguments against the idea that comparative reconstructions recover the "prehistoric reality" of a language.
The first principle, is that languages change over time. This makes it almost impossible to "fully" reconstruct the lexcical items and grammar of the ancestral language. Secondly, there are few, if any dialect free languages. Constructs resulting from comparing lexical items and grammars from an available set of languages,produce a dialect free protolanguage, that is unnatural and "factually incorrect as shown by the insights of the wave theory" (p.568).
Granted, by comparing languages and associating them with a particular time period you can make comparative reconstructions that may eliminate dialectal diversity. But Rilly can not do this because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nubian cognates. This along with the fact that we have no textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan during the Meroitic period demonstrating that Nilo-Saharan languages were spoken in the Meroitic Empire, especially Nubian,precludes using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic. Using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic will fail to provide a linguistically realistic situation in Nubia 2000 years ago. This is especially true for Nubian, which was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. The Nubian speakers lived far to the north of the Meroitic Empire, a fact Rilly acknowledges in his paper.
As usual you don't know what you're talking about. The Kushana used the Kharosthi/Karosti script. Inscriptions written in Kharosti date back to 251 BC.
The first Meroitic inscription dates back to the reign of Shanakdakheto (c.177-155 BC). The date of the first Meroitic inscriptions is 100 years after people the Kushana were writing their works in Kharosti.
The Meroitic signs correspond to Meroitic signs.
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/lit7.gif
.
quote:
Originally posted by rasol:
^ I can post facts as fast as you can post fantasies.
Early Kushans
Some traces remain of the presence of the Kushan in the area of Bactria and Sogdiana. Archaeological structures are known in Takht-I-Sangin, Surkh Kotal (a monumental temple), and in the palace of Khalchayan. Various sculptures and friezes are known, representing horse-riding archers, and significantly men with artificially deformed skulls, such as the Kushan prince of Khalchayan (a practice well attested in nomadic Central Asia). On the ruins of ancient Hellenistic cities such as Ai-Khanoum, the Kushans are known to have built fortresses. The earliest documented ruler, and the first one to proclaim himself as a Kushan ruler was Heraios. He calls himself a "Tyrant" on his coins, and also exhibits skull deformation. He may have been an ally of the Greeks, and he shared the same style of coinage. Heraios may have been the father of the first Kushan emperor Kujula Kadphises.
The Kushans are believed to have been predominantly Zoroastrian and later Buddhist as well. However, from the time of Wima Takto, many Kushans started adopting aspects of Indian culture like the other nomadic groups who had invaded India, principally the Royal clans of Gujjars. Like the Macedonians and Egyptians they absorbed the strong remnants of the Greek Culture of the Hellenistic Kingdoms, becoming at least partly Hellenised. The first great Kushan emperor Wima Kadphises may have embraced Saivism, as surmised by coins minted during the period. The following Kushan emperors represented a wide variety of faiths including Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and possibly Saivism.
The rule of the Kushans linked the seagoing trade of the Indian Ocean with the commerce of the Silk Road through the long-civilized Indus Valley. At the height of the dynasty, the Kushans loosely oversaw a territory that extended to the Aral Sea through present-day Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan into northern India.
The loose unity and comparative peace of such a vast expanse encouraged long-distance trade, brought Chinese silks to Rome, and created strings of flourishing urban centers.
Main Kushan rulers
Heraios (c. 1 – 30), first Kushan ruler, generally Kushan ruling period is disputed
Kujula Kadphises (c. 30 – c. 80)
Vima Takto, (c. 80 – c. 105) alias Soter Megas or "Great Saviour."
Vima Kadphises (c. 105 – c. 127) the first great Kushan emperor
Kanishka I (127 – c. 147)
Vāsishka (c. 151 – c. 155)
Huvishka (c. 155 – c. 187)
Vasudeva I (c. 191 – to at least 230), the last of the great Kushan emperors
Kanishka II (c. 226 – 240)
Vashishka (c. 240 – 250)
Kanishka III (c. 255 – 275)
Vasudeva II (c. 290 – 310)
Vasudeva III reported son of Vasudeva III,a King,uncertain.
Vasudeva IV reported possible child of Vasudeva III,ruling in Kandahar,uncertain
quote:This why you continue to post misinformation because you don't understand linguistics. If you did you would answer these questions.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
Some folks have the tendency to assume that if they spew dubious claims, that the lack of negative feedback to this from others therefore means that the audience is buying it. For that reason, I speak out, to let it be known that I'm not a member of the presumed receptive sheep flock to disinformation propagation.
quote:The factual information about the Kushana is extremely important because it refutes virtually everything you say about them. Unwary persons, who are not as cynical as I - need to understand the shameless lengths you will go to to bolster your dishonest thesis.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Instead of posting this information
quote:Your questions about Rilly were properly addressed to Mystery Solver, and in my opinion he has already answered them.
Winters: why don't you answer the following questions...
quote:....you fail to answer it.
You claim that Meroitic is based on Indo-European Kushana writing - Where is your textual evidence of Kushana writing in the Sudan?
quote:Then answer the point-by-point obliteration of your lies, as you were requested to do so, if you have the guts.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This why you continue to post misinformation because you don't understand linguistics.
quote:You'll have to keep waiting, fake linguist.
Clyde Winters:
I'm waiting....... fake scientist.
quote:ROTFL! Do you realise how many times - in this conversation alone - you've reversed yourself on this question?
I am not the first one to claim that Meroitic was not related to an African language.
quote:^ Of course....but...what fun!
A flip flopper is a symptom of one being forced to confront an idea purely setup on lies and dishonesty.
quote:I answered this question days ago. You just can't read.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:The factual information about the Kushana is extremely important because it refutes virtually everything you say about them. Unwary persons, who are not as cynical as I - need to understand the shameless lengths you will go to to bolster your dishonest thesis.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Instead of posting this information
quote:Your questions about Rilly were properly addressed to Mystery Solver, and in my opinion he has already answered them.
Winters: why don't you answer the following questions...
On the other hand, i've asked you the same fundamental question several times now....
quote:....you fail to answer it.
You claim that Meroitic is based on Indo-European Kushana writing - Where is your textual evidence of Kushana writing in the Sudan?
Why is that?
quote:I imagine I will--given your ignorance of basic comparative linguistic knowledge. You have yet to provide any documented evidence supporting the claims of Rilly that you can read a dead language using a protolanguage;that lexicostatistics can be used to decipher a dead language;that Nubians lived in the Meroitic Empire before it declined; and finally, that it is proper to make up 39 words and claim that they are Meroitic, when none of the terms agree with the attested Meroitic words deciphered and agreed upon by researchers in the field.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Then answer the point-by-point obliteration of your lies, as you were requested to do so, if you have the guts.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This why you continue to post misinformation because you don't understand linguistics.
quote:You'll have to keep waiting, fake linguist.
Clyde Winters:
I'm waiting....... fake scientist.
[/IMG]
quote:Then so be it.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:I imagine I will--
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Then answer the point-by-point obliteration of your lies, as you were requested to do so, if you have the guts.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This why you continue to post misinformation because you don't understand linguistics.
quote:You'll have to keep waiting, fake linguist.
Clyde Winters:
I'm waiting....... fake scientist.
quote:Apparently not as acute as your's; you can't even tell the difference between 'lexicostatistics' and 'glottochronology' for crying out loud. In fact, you've re-demonstrated both your ignorance of what lexicostatistics means, and the incapacity to read in the following:
Clyde Winters:
given your ignorance of basic comparative linguistic knowledge.
quote:You have yet to provide any documented evidence supporting the claims of Rilly that you can read a dead language using a protolanguage;that lexicostatistics can be used to decipher a dead language;that Nubians lived in the Meroitic Empire before it declined; and finally, that it is proper to make up 39 words and claim that they are Meroitic, when none of the terms agree with the attested Meroitic words deciphered and agreed upon by researchers in the field. Please cite any articles that support Rilly's propositions.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Then so be it.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:I imagine I will--
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Then answer the point-by-point obliteration of your lies, as you were requested to do so, if you have the guts.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This why you continue to post misinformation because you don't understand linguistics.
quote:You'll have to keep waiting, fake linguist.
Clyde Winters:
I'm waiting....... fake scientist.
quote:Apparently not as acute as your's; you can't even tell the difference between 'lexicostatistics' and 'glottochronology' for crying out loud. In fact, you've re-demonstrated both your ignorance of what lexicostatistics means, and the incapacity to read in the following:
Clyde Winters:
given your ignorance of basic comparative linguistic knowledge.
You have yet to provide any documented evidence supporting the claims of Rilly that you can read a dead language using a protolanguage;that lexicostatistics can be used to decipher a dead language;that Nubians lived in the Meroitic Empire before it declined; and finally, that it is proper to make up 39 words and claim that they are Meroitic, when none of the terms agree with the attested Meroitic words deciphered and agreed upon by researchers in the field. - Clyde Winters
^Incoherent robotic babblings reveal your fullest potential of answering my [reiterated] simple requests and point-by-point obliterations of your lies and linguistic illiteracy.
quote:[
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
^you can't even tell the difference between 'lexicostatistics' and 'glottochronology' for crying out loud. In fact, you've re-demonstrated both your ignorance of what lexicostatistics means, and the incapacity to read in the following:
You have yet to provide any documented evidence supporting the claims of Rilly that you can read a dead language using a protolanguage;that lexicostatistics can be used to decipher a dead language;that Nubians lived in the Meroitic Empire before it declined; and finally, that it is proper to make up 39 words and claim that they are Meroitic, when none of the terms agree with the attested Meroitic words deciphered and agreed upon by researchers in the field. - Clyde Winters
^Incoherent robotic babblings reveal your fullest potential of answering my [reiterated] simple requests and point-by-point obliterations of your lies and linguistic illiteracy.
quote:False. Lexicostatistics cannot be used in of itself to reconstruct any language. This is because lexicostatistics, I reiterate, is essentially a quantitative model for determining the frequency of lexical correspondence across the languages under study, using certain selected basic lexicons. It thereby allows linguists to discern relative distance between languages under study and a target language. Now, this doesn't mean it cannot be part of a comparative analysis, which is what is used by mainstream linguists to reconstruct proto-languages. Glottochronology is a totally different cat. It is a model used to determine when languages diverged, by noting the amount of basic terms retained and the rate with which terms change.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:As you can see the lexicostatistic is used to reconstruct genetically related languages or used to compare constructs and find prototerms.
Hymes, D. H. Lexicostatistics So Far Current Anthropology, Jan 1960. Vol. 1(1):3-44
This article provides an extensive and comprehensive survey of the field of lexicostatistics as of 1960. Hymes goes into a lot of detail explaining the methods involved, analyzing issues and problems, foreshadowing developments, and suggesting ideas and solutions. As a result, this article is very technical in nature and requires a background in lexicostatistics or glottochronology in order to grasp a firm understanding of what the author is trying to communicate. He begins by introducing the field of glottochronology, which he claims is one of several lexicostatistical methods. Glottochronology uses mathematical methods to analyze the differentiation between lists of basic words from different languages but of similar meanings. The aim is to track the rates of change in languages and aid in deducing the actual dating of common ancestral languages. Hymes discusses the use of the terms “glottochronology” and “lexicostatistics”. He states that glottochronology examines the rate of change in languages which may be used to infer historical timeframes and provide an analysis of relationships in a language family. Lexicostatistics involves the statistical study of vocabulary for historical implications. Obviously, these two fields are distinctive but closely related. Hymes continues by explaining the foundations of glottochronology: the use of basic vocabulary for the test list; the ongoing development of test lists; the examination of control cases which involve languages at different stages in a single line of development; and the retention rates of words in languages as they change. In the next section, Hymes goes into extensive detail explaining the application of the glottochronological methods. Using numerous examples and references from other published works, the author demonstrates the uses of glottochronology in examining test lists, evaluating cognates, deducing time depths, inferring relationships between languages, and comparing deductions with other historical evidence. The article’s final section describes some uses of lexicostatistics. Apart from glottochronology, lexicostatistics may be further developed to examine sub-groupings in language families, determine genetic relationships among languages, and analyze rates of lexical change. In conclusion, Hymes defends the developing character of lexicostatistics with its short history, but recognizes its potential in anthropology. He calls for further research and development in lexicostatistics.
quote:
rasol: You claim that Meroitic is based on Indo-European Kushana writing - Where is your textual evidence of Kushana writing in the Sudan?
....you fail to answer it.
Why is that?
quote:No you haven't. You never answer any trenchant questions...you just bluff, bluster and spam around them, if you can.
Winters:
I answered this question days ago.
quote:That's a dodge, and not and answer because the question is not about wild minded allegations of 'correspondance' between langauges.
Winters:The correspondence between the Kharosthi and Merotic signs
quote:^ Lol. MysterySolver is correct. The longer this goes on the more sussed your rantings become. Do you even understand your own profession, linguist?
As you can see the lexicostatistic is used to reconstruct genetically related languages or used to compare constructs and find prototerms.
quote:I did not shoot myself in the foot I proved that lexicostatistics and glottochronogy are the same thing.Moreover it highlights the error in Rilly's methods.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:False. Lexicostatistics cannot be used in of itself to reconstruct any language. This is because lexicostatistics, I reiterate, is essentially a quantitative model for determining the frequency of lexical correspondence across the languages under study, using certain selected basic lexicons. It thereby allows linguists to discern relative distance between languages under study and a target language. Now, this doesn't mean it cannot be part of a comparative analysis, which is what is used by mainstream linguists to reconstruct proto-languages. Glottochronology is a totally different cat. It is a model used to determine when languages diverged, by noting the amount of basic terms retained and the rate with which terms change.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:As you can see the lexicostatistic is used to reconstruct genetically related languages or used to compare constructs and find prototerms.
Hymes, D. H. Lexicostatistics So Far Current Anthropology, Jan 1960. Vol. 1(1):3-44
This article provides an extensive and comprehensive survey of the field of lexicostatistics as of 1960. Hymes goes into a lot of detail explaining the methods involved, analyzing issues and problems, foreshadowing developments, and suggesting ideas and solutions. As a result, this article is very technical in nature and requires a background in lexicostatistics or glottochronology in order to grasp a firm understanding of what the author is trying to communicate. He begins by introducing the field of glottochronology, which he claims is one of several lexicostatistical methods. Glottochronology uses mathematical methods to analyze the differentiation between lists of basic words from different languages but of similar meanings. The aim is to track the rates of change in languages and aid in deducing the actual dating of common ancestral languages. Hymes discusses the use of the terms “glottochronology” and “lexicostatistics”. He states that glottochronology examines the rate of change in languages which may be used to infer historical timeframes and provide an analysis of relationships in a language family. Lexicostatistics involves the statistical study of vocabulary for historical implications. Obviously, these two fields are distinctive but closely related. Hymes continues by explaining the foundations of glottochronology: the use of basic vocabulary for the test list; the ongoing development of test lists; the examination of control cases which involve languages at different stages in a single line of development; and the retention rates of words in languages as they change. In the next section, Hymes goes into extensive detail explaining the application of the glottochronological methods. Using numerous examples and references from other published works, the author demonstrates the uses of glottochronology in examining test lists, evaluating cognates, deducing time depths, inferring relationships between languages, and comparing deductions with other historical evidence. The article’s final section describes some uses of lexicostatistics. Apart from glottochronology, lexicostatistics may be further developed to examine sub-groupings in language families, determine genetic relationships among languages, and analyze rates of lexical change. In conclusion, Hymes defends the developing character of lexicostatistics with its short history, but recognizes its potential in anthropology. He calls for further research and development in lexicostatistics.
Even your own citation makes the above differences clear:
He states that glottochronology examines the rate of change in languages which may be used to infer historical timeframes and provide an analysis of relationships in a language family.
Whereas, as per your own citation,
Lexicostatistics involves the statistical study of vocabulary for historical implications. Obviously, these two fields are distinctive but closely related.
Cheers, for shooting yourself in the foot...yet again.
quote:This is pure conjecture. The words associated with an inscription do not have to represent the picture the word is associated with. The words may refer to the image, but not mention the specific pictorial image in the text because the presence of the image itself would provide the context for reading the inscription.
It is impossible to prove a genetic relation between given languages if only a few basic words are available, as was the case until recently. Moreover, in the list of the allegedly translated Meroitic words, some were actually wrong. In 1964, Bruce Trigger tried to prove that Meroitic was a Nilo-Saharan - and more specifically an Eastern Sudanic - language. He used a list of Meroitic words compared with Nubian and Nara, a language from Eritrea. But the list was still very scanty, and half the words he used, taken from Zyhlarz's articles, were erroneously translated - or simply did not exist at all. Although he was right in his conclusion, he was wrong in the way he reached them. So the question of the linguistic position of Meroitic remained open after his paper.
The only basic Meroitic words for which a solid translation had been given by Griffith and his successors are the following :
man / woman / meat / bread / water / give / big / abundant / good / sister / brother / wife / mother / child / begotten / born / feet.
The methods to increase the number of translated words cannot be fully explained in details here. To make a long story short, I would say that it is a « multicontextual approach ». The archaeological and the iconographical context can be very helpful, since very often, the short texts are the description with words of a painted or engraved image.
quote:He did not find any cognates to these terms. If he could not find cognates to these terms using his method, how can anyone believe that the terms he made up are Meroitic. If his methods were correct these terms should have been found in the Northern Eastern Sudani, if Meroitic was related to this group--but they were not found.
man / woman / meat / bread / water / give / big / abundant / good / sister / brother / wife / mother / child / begotten / born / feet.
quote:Of course you have. Your own citation tells you that they are two distinct things, falsifying your claim. One would think that you'd at least understand what your own citation says before posting it.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I did not shoot myself in the foot I proved that lexicostatistics and glottochronogy are the same thing.
quote:How?
Clyde Winters:
Moreover it highlights the error in Rilly's methods.
quote:And if he made that clear to you, what of it?
Clyde Winters:
Rilly made it clear that he could not compare the Meroitic words to the Nilo-Saharan lexical items until he made up 39 words he claims are Meroitic.
quote:English is your first language right? The man said "very often" [~ not necessarily "always"] short texts accompanying images, are descreptive words for the image, which is true. Besides, isn't that what you advocated earlier, saying that the texts should match the image, thereby complaining that Rilly's text had no 'rabbit' in it? Your fiasco of a debate is leading to incoherency.
Clyde Winters:
Rilly
quote:This is pure conjecture. The words associated with an inscription do not have to represent the picture the word is associated with.
It is impossible to prove a genetic relation between given languages if only a few basic words are available, as was the case until recently. Moreover, in the list of the allegedly translated Meroitic words, some were actually wrong. In 1964, Bruce Trigger tried to prove that Meroitic was a Nilo-Saharan - and more specifically an Eastern Sudanic - language. He used a list of Meroitic words compared with Nubian and Nara, a language from Eritrea. But the list was still very scanty, and half the words he used, taken from Zyhlarz's articles, were erroneously translated - or simply did not exist at all. Although he was right in his conclusion, he was wrong in the way he reached them. So the question of the linguistic position of Meroitic remained open after his paper.
The only basic Meroitic words for which a solid translation had been given by Griffith and his successors are the following :
man / woman / meat / bread / water / give / big / abundant / good / sister / brother / wife / mother / child / begotten / born / feet.
The methods to increase the number of translated words cannot be fully explained in details here. To make a long story short, I would say that it is a « multicontextual approach ». The archaeological and the iconographical context can be very helpful, since very often, the short texts are the description with words of a painted or engraved image.
quote:See post above. You were the one who complained about Rilly's interpretation of the image, upon which I informed you that, it was because from the letters he could gather from the text, it wouldn't have been mentioned. You were also informed as to which words was being assured in the translations, and which weren't.
Clyde Winters:
The words may refer to the image, but not mention the specific pictorial image in the text because the presence of the image itself would provide the context for reading the inscription.
quote:I thought you proclaimed to have read his piece, where he just told you how. From names of figures, typological comparisons between Egyptic texts and their Meroitic counterparts, archaeology and iconography, the meanings of certain words of the cotexts could be extrapolated in one text, and then reconfirmed again in other primary texts. You've been told this countless times now, and it still doesn't penetrate your head...and to think that you're supposed to be a professor. Neither Kharosthi, Nubian, or Proto-NES are used to derive these words.
Clyde Winters:
Moreover, if you just look at an inscription how can you determine what word represents the picture and what word is simply part of the narrative.
quote:That's an oversimplification and misinformation of the process used, as described above. You *guess* words using a totally different language and script, while Rilly used a 'multicontextual', hence *methodological approach*, to add to the vocabulary of understood Meroitic terms. There's a big difference between the two approaches. He's approach definitely has preponderance of credibility over yours, whatever may be the precision of his word translations vs. the acurate meanings.
Clyde Winters:
Rilly's use of this method makes it clear that he was just guessing if this or that word means this or that. This is not science. This is guessing.
quote:You are clueless, aren't you? What do you think those lexicostatistics and lexical correspondence tables represent? Family relationship, of course.
Clyde Winters:
If Rilly was correct in his assessment of Meroitic, as an Eastern Sudani language he would have found cognates to the attested Meroitic terms:
quote:False. Reference above.
Clyde Winters:
He did not find any cognates to these terms. If he could not find cognates to these terms using his method, how can anyone believe that the terms he made up are Meroitic.
quote:See above.
Clyde Winters:
If his methods were correct these terms should have been found in the Northern Eastern Sudani, if Meroitic was related to this group--but they were not found.
quote:Yes, we all are.....
Winters: I'm waiting.
quote:...but what's taking you so long ?
rasol: You claim that Meroitic is based on Indo-European Kushana writing - Where is your textual evidence of Kushana writing in the Sudan?
quote:^ Well...there goes the 'other' foot.....
Winters: I did not shoot myself in the foot I proved that lexicostatistics and glottochronogy are the same thing.
quote:Yes, we all are.....
Originally posted by rasol:
[QUOTE]Winters: I'm waiting.
quote:...but what's taking you so long ? [/QUOTE
rasol: You claim that Meroitic is based on Indo-European Kushana writing - Where is your textual evidence of Kushana writing in the Sudan?
[/IMG] quote:It's clear that you can't read, from this comment.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
It is clear that you accept Rilly's use of made-up words to read Meroitic.
quote:I've stopped waiting for the answer to this question, because I've already arrived at the conclusion; he has NONE.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:Yes, we all are.....
Winters: I'm waiting.
quote:...but what's taking you so long ?
rasol: You claim that Meroitic is based on Indo-European Kushana writing - Where is your textual evidence of Kushana writing in the Sudan?
[/IMG] quote:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:I've stopped waiting for the answer to this question, because I've already arrived at the conclusion; he has NONE.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:Yes, we all are.....
Winters: I'm waiting.
quote:...but what's taking you so long ?
rasol: You claim that Meroitic is based on Indo-European Kushana writing - Where is your textual evidence of Kushana writing in the Sudan?
He is just looking for sheep to buy into his 'miraculous' decipherment of Meroitic using a totally foreign language, with no such foreign scripts ever found side-by-side Meroitic in Sudan, in order to fully translate Meroitic. Apparently, he came to the wrong place for that.
quote:This is false statement. You are offering and opinion on 'similarity', not proof of correspondence.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
We have two forms of evidence for Meroites using Kharosthi script in the Meroitic Empire. Firstly, the evidence of the correspondence between Meroitic and Kharosthi signs.
quote:The above faulty statement is almost identical to your claims about "agreement" between Nigerian, and Japanese place names.
The chart above makes it clear that the following Meroitic and Kharosthi signs agree in shape and sound
quote:This is based on your assumption that your -translations are correct-, which is far from certain.
The second source of evidence is the ability to read every Meroitic inscription using Kushana words.
quote:Next, he'll claim that Demotic and Hieratic scripts also come from Kharosthi, because Meroitic most visually resembles those scripts than Kharosthi will ever come close to.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:The above faulty statement is almost identical to your claims about "agreement" between Nigerian, and Japanese place names.
The chart above makes it clear that the following Meroitic and Kharosthi signs agree in shape and sound
For the last time - these selective, subjective, arbitrary 'similarities' do not prove anything.
When you imply these are proofs, using words like 'clearly' and 'correspond' then you are making false statements.
quote:That would be an understatement of the status quo. I say he is very conscious about his so-called translations being fake, but wants to latch onto it, in the hopes of getting credit for an astonishing 'breakthrough' disovery.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:This is based on your assumption that your -translations are correct-, which is far from certain.
The second source of evidence is the ability to read every Meroitic inscription using Kushana words.
quote:Agreed and will add, some many not have caught on to the fact that Winters discourse is - ego driven - not finally, so much Afrocentric as Ego-centric.
I say he is very conscious about his so-called translations being fake, but wants to latch onto it, in the hopes of getting credit for an astonishing 'breakthrough' disovery
quote:
Originally posted by rasol:
Given no actual "Khorosthi" writing in Sudan, Winters offers the following apologia-hypothesis.....
quote:This is false statement. You are offering and opinion on 'similarity', not proof of correspondence.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
We have two forms of evidence for Meroites using Kharosthi script in the Meroitic Empire. Firstly, the evidence of the correspondence between Meroitic and Kharosthi signs.
Similarities, whether between Kharosthi and Meroitic or Olmec and Mande is not proof of homogeneous [single] origin.
quote:The above faulty statement is almost identical to your claims about "agreement" between Nigerian, and Japanese place names.
The chart above makes it clear that the following Meroitic and Kharosthi signs agree in shape and sound
For the last time - these selective, subjective, arbitrary 'similarities' do not prove anything.
When you imply these are proofs, using words like 'clearly' and 'correspond' then you are making false statements.
quote:This is based on your assumption that your -translations are correct-, which is far from certain.
The second source of evidence is the ability to read every Meroitic inscription using Kushana words.
What I found most interesting is that after you made a big fuss about Rilly failing to translate the word 'dog' in Meroitic, you were forced to admit that you do not know what the word for dog is, in Meroitic.
Therefore at best your translation of Meroitic is incomplete, at worst...it's false.
^ I think most linguists would agree with the above assessment.
quote:This is a faulty statement firstly because I have already shown that the two writing systems share signs. A reality that was predicted by the Classical traditions of Indians settling in the Meroitic Sudan after the death of their king.
Recap: It would like me saying that since I'm well acquainted with the English alphabet, therefore I can automatically understand French without French-to-English translations of a French text...a proposition which would nonetheless be less fantastic than Clyde's. Whereas at least French and English share the same alphabets, the opposite is true regarding Meroitic and Karosthi, which couldn't more distinct from one another, for the most part.
quote:Not really. My decipherment not only includes the recovery of lexical items, it also outlines the grammar of Meroitic.
Originally posted by rasol:
Given no actual "Khorosthi" writing in Sudan, Winters offers the following apologia-hypothesis.....
quote:This is false statement. You are offering and opinion on 'similarity', not proof of correspondence.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
We have two forms of evidence for Meroites using Kharosthi script in the Meroitic Empire. Firstly, the evidence of the correspondence between Meroitic and Kharosthi signs.
Similarities, whether between Kharosthi and Meroitic or Olmec and Mande is not proof of homogeneous [single] origin.
quote:The above faulty statement is almost identical to your claims about "agreement" between Nigerian, and Japanese place names.
The chart above makes it clear that the following Meroitic and Kharosthi signs agree in shape and sound
For the last time - these selective, subjective, arbitrary 'similarities' do not prove anything.
When you imply these are proofs, using words like 'clearly' and 'correspond' then you are making false statements.
quote:This is based on your assumption that your -translations are correct-, which is far from certain.
The second source of evidence is the ability to read every Meroitic inscription using Kushana words.
What I found most interesting is that after you made a big fuss about Rilly failing to translate the word 'dog' in Meroitic, you were forced to admit that you do not know what the word for dog is, in Meroitic.
Therefore at best your translation of Meroitic is incomplete, at worst...it's false.
^ I think most linguists would agree with the above assessment.
quote:This is your opinion founded on the jealousy of a person who wants to contribute to the debate on Africana history, but affaird to do so in professional circles because of an inferiority complex.
Originally posted by rasol:
quote:Agreed and will add, some many not have caught on to the fact that Winters discourse is - ego driven - not finally, so much Afrocentric as Ego-centric.
I say he is very conscious about his so-called translations being fake, but wants to latch onto it, in the hopes of getting credit for an astonishing 'breakthrough' disovery
If Winters students will listen with alert minds they will see that what Winters is *asserting* is not the glory of Africa, but mere self-glorification.
quote:
.Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
Before I began work on Meroitic, other researchers had already falsified the African theory for Meroitic's cognate language.
The comparative method was used to find the cognate language of Meroitic. Using this method Meroitic scholars have compared the "known" Meroitic terms to vernacular African languages to establish morphological cognition between Meroitic and an African language. Up to now these linguistic comparisons failed to reveal the cognate language of Meroitic.
Researchers working on the Meroitic language do not believe that it was a member of the Afro-Asian group. Griffith and Haycock tried to read Meroitic using Nubian.
K.H. Priese, tried to read the Meroitic text using Eastern Sudani; and F. Hintze, attempted to compare Meroitic with the Ural-Altaic group. Siegbert Hummel, compared the "known" Meroitic words to words in the Altaic family which he believed was a substrate language of Meroitic.
The fact that not even Nubian, a language spoken by a people who live today in the former Meroitic empire, failed to be the cognate language of Meroitic made it clear that we must look elsewhere for the cognate language spoken by the Meroites.
Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the Vita Apollonii, Vol. 1,cliamed that the Gymnosophists of Meroe originally came from India (see F.C. Conybeare, Philostratus:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (p.45),1950). Given the fact that the Kushana had formerly ruled India around the time that the Meroitic writing was introduced to the Kushite civilization, lead to the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Gymnosophist may have been Kushana philosophers.
The historical evidence of the Kushana having ruled India made the Classical references to Indians in Meroe, an important source for the construction of alternative theories about the possible location of the cognate language of Meroitic.
There is external evidence, which supports my theory. A theory explains observed phenomena and has predictive power. I have theorized that due to the claims of the Classical writers that some of the Meroites came from India (F.C Conybeare (Trans.), Philostratus: The life of Apollonius of Tyana Vol.2, (1950) pg.271). According to the Life of Apollonius, the Indian Meroites were formerly led by a King Ganges, who had "repulsed the Scythians who invaded this land [India from] across the Caucasus" (Conybeare, Vol.1, Pg.273). Pilostratus also made it clear that the Indians of Meroe came to this country after their king was killed.
The presence of this tradition of an Indian King of the Indian-Meroites conquering the Scythians predicts that the Indian literature should record this historical episode. This prediction is supported by a Jaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka, which reports that when the Scythians invaded Malwa, the King of Malwa, called Vikramaditya defeated the Scythians (H. Kulke & D. Rothermund, History of India (London, Routledge: 1990, pg.73). This king Vikramaditya may be the Ganges mentioned in the Life of Apollonius.Confirmation of the Ganges story, supports the Classical literary evidence that their were Indianized-Meroites that could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites.
Moreover, there were other Indians in North Africa in addition to Kush/Meroe. For example, at Quseir al-Qadim there was a large Indian speaking community (see: R. Salomon, "Epigraphic remains of Indian traders in Egypt", Journal of the American oriental Society, (1991) pp.731-736; and R. Salomon, Addenda, Journal of the American Oriental Society, (1993) pg.593). These Indians were in Egypt writing messages in their own language, around the time we see a switch from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the Meroitic writing system.
The evidence that the Classical references to an Indian-Meroite King who conquered the Scythians is supported by the Indian literature, provides external corroboration of the tradition that some of the Meroites were of Indian origin. The presence of Indians traders and settlers in Meroe (and Egypt), makes it almost impossible to deny the possibility that Indians, familiar with the Tokharian trade language did not introduce this writing to the Meroites who needed a neutral language to unify the diverse ethnic groups who made up the Meroite state. In relation to the history of linguistic change and bilingualism, it is a mistake to believe that linguistic transfer had to take place for the Meroites to have used Tokharian, when it did not take place when they wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
In summary the classical literature makes it clear that there was a connection between the Gymnosophists (of Meroe) and the Indians. The fact that historical events mentioned in the classical sources are found in the Indian literature confirm the view that there were Indian-Meroites who could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites.
The fact that the Nubians who were part of the "Meroitic state", used hieroglyphics and Coptic to write their language without abandoning their native language support the view that they could have also used Tokharian to write Meroitic. And that eventhough they wrote Meroitic inscriptions in Tokharian, they would not have had to abandon Nubian.
The evidence presented above provides internal and external validity for my theory based upon the sources I have cited previously. The sources I have used are impartial, to disconfirm my hypothesis someone needs to show that my propositions are not fully informed [i.e., there were no Indians North Africa and Kush when the Classical writers maintained they were] and present rival explanations based on the evidence.
The fact that the claims made by the Classical writers is supported by the Indians themselves if further strong confirmation of the Kushana hypothesis.
The hypothesis based on the classical literature, was enough to support the original Kushana Hypothesis. The predicting power of the original theory, matches the observed natural phenomena which was confirmed elsewhere by cognate place names, ethononyms, lexical items and grammatical features, indicate that my theory has not be falsified.
The ability to reliably predict a linguistic relationship between Kushana and Meroitic, was further confirmation of the Kushana Hypothesis, because the linguistic connections were deducible from prediction.
I controlled the Kushana Hypothesis by comparing the statements of the classical writers, with historical, linguistic anthropological and toponymic evidence found not only in Africa, but also India and Central Asia [where the people also used Tokharian as a trade language to unify the various people in Central Asia]. I constructed five testable hypotheses in support of the Kushana theory, and it seems only fair that these five variables must be disconfirmed, to falsify the Kushana Hypothesis. Failure to disconfirm this theorem, implies validity of my prediction.
My confirmation of the above five variables: the presence of Kushites in Africa and Asia; the presence of Kushana sages in India who may have migrated to Meroe; cognate lexical items; cognate verbs and cognate grammatical features indicates systematic controlled, critical and empirical investigation of the question of Kushana representing the Meroitic cognate language.
Kushana
King Kaniska of the Kushan
Kanishka Casket
Kushana
.
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Kushana
First, I would like to make it clear that the probable language of the Kushana was Tamil.. According to Dravidian literature, the Kushana were called Kosars=Yakshas=Yueh chih/ Kushana. This literature maintains that when they entered India they either already spoke Tamil, or adopted the language upon settlement in India.
The Kushana and the Yueh chih were one and the same. In addition to
North Indian documents the Kushana-Yueh chih association are also
discussed in Dravidian literature. V Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen
hundred years ago, note that in the Sanskrit literature the Yueh chih were called Yakshas, Pali chroniclers called them Yakkos and Kosars< Kushana.
They allegedely arrived in India during the 2nd century BC. He makes it clear that the Yueh chih/ Kushana as noted on their coins worshipped Siva as seen on the coins of Kanishka. This is why we have a coin of a Kushana king from Taxila, dated to AD 76 that declares that the king was maharaja rajatiraja devaputra Kushana "Great King, King of kings, Son of God, the Kushana".
Kushana
King Kaniska of the Kushan
The term Tochara has nothing to do with the Yueh
chih, this was a term used to describe the people who took over the Greek Bactrian state, before the Kushana reached the Oxus Valley around 150 BC . There is no reason the Kushana may not have been intimately
familiar with the Kharosthi writing at this time because from 202BC onward Prakrit and Chinese documents were written in Kharosthi.
The Kushana and the Yueh chih were one and the same. In addition to
North Indian documents the Kushana-Yueh chih association are also
discussed in Dravidian literature.V Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen
hundred years ago note that in the Sanskrit literature the Yueh chih were
called Yakshas, Pali chroniclers called them Yakkos and Kosars< Kushana. They allegedely arrived in India during the 2nd century BC. He makes it clear that the Yueh chih/ Kushana as noted on their coins worshipped Siva as seen on the coins of Kanishka.This is why we have a coin of a Kushana king from Taxila, dated to AD 76 that declares that the king was maharaja rajatiraja devaputra Kushana "Great King, King of kings, Son of God, the Kushana".
Some researchers believe that the Ars'i spoke Tocharian A, while
Tocharian B was the "Kucha language" may have been spoken by the Kushana people. I don't know where you read that the speakers of Tocharian A were called Ars'i. This names have nothing to do with ethnic groups, they refer to the cities where Tocharian text were found:
Tocharian A documents were found around Qarashar and Turfan, thusly these text are also referred to as Turfanian or East Tocharian; Tocharian B documents were found near the town of Kucha, thusly they are sometimes called Kuchean or West Tocharian.
Kanishka Casket
Linguist use the term Tochari to refer to these people, because they were given this title in Turkic manuscripts . They called themselves Kushana.
The observable evidence make it clear that the terms used to label the Tocharian dialects are not ethnonyms, they are terms used to denote where the Tocharian records were found. The use of the term Ars'i does not relate to the Kushana people. The terms: Asii, Pasiani, Tochari and Sacarauli, refer to the nomads that took away Bactria from the Greeks.
These nomads came from the Iaxartes River that adjoins that of Sacae and the Sogdiani .The Kushana people took over Bactria much later. It is a mistake to believe that Ars'i and Kucha were ethnonyms is under-standable given your lack of knowledge about Tocharian. And I will agree that there were a number of different languages spoken by people who
wrote material in Tocharian. It is for this reason that I have maintained
throughout my published works on Tocharian, that this was a trade language. This language was used by the Central Asians as a
lingua franca and trade language due to the numerous ethnic groups which formerly lived in central Asia". Kharosthi was long used to write in Central Asia. It was even used by the Greeks. The use of the Kharosthi writing system in Central Asia and India, would place this writing contemporaneous with the tradition, recorded by the Classical writers of Indians settling among the Kushites of Meroitic Empire..
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
We have two forms of evidence for Meroites using Kharosthi script in the Meroitic Empire. Firstly, the evidence of the correspondence between Meroitic and Kharosthi signs.
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/lit7.gif
The chart above makes it clear that the following Meroitic and Kharosthi signs agree in shape and sound:
B
M
T
E
To
Te
H
The second source of evidence is the ability to read every Meroitic inscription using Kushana words. For example:
Below I will first give the transliteration of the Karanog stelae and then a translation of Meroitic into English. At the end of the translation we will provide a vocabulary of the text.
Line 1. Woshi ne Shore yi-ne t-po m-i d.
Line 2. Tqowine s li-ne t si d e-ne te o d he.
Line 3. Lo wi-ne sl h m-ne...s-ne qo. Qo li-ne
Line 4. Terike lo wi-ne...i l pe rine si b lo.
Line 5. Tel-o wi-ne pq r ne ye mtetl...e ne ye.
Line 6. Lq-ne lo win-ne yet sn net e i ol ye e-ne.
Line 7. M ne lo wi-ne... ot p kr-ne yet ne-ne e-o wi-ne.
Line 8. Pe sto lt-ne yet m n e e-o wi-ne qo re.
Line 9. St s t lete-ne s-ne tq lo wi-ne hle mr.
Line 10. S-ne q lo-t to lo wi-ne mte h ne s-n pe.
Line 11. Sto li h wi-ne t e lo lo-a en-ne ye.
Line 12. Tb h re lo wi-ne ato mh enep si se-a.
Line 13. Te-ne ato mh enep wi h r ke te-ne h ml-o l-ne.
Line 14. P-Sin ote m-i ke te-ne Wosi ne. Shore o-i ine.
TRANSLATION
"(l). Isis the Good, and Osiris the Eternal (are) commanding the measure (of) the bequeathal. (2) Tqowine, the patron to transmit her satisfying bequeathal. She commands the beginning of the bequeathal of the He. (3) The solitary honorable patron (is) to behold the He-ne's (the abstract personality of man)...to prop up the renewal. Act to (make) the conveyance. (4) (Its) the Fashion
to dispatch Awe...[h]i to remain to reproduce within satisfaction from a distance. (5) The solitary object of respect to make indeed a good voyage to Mtetl...[here] to be give(n) a good
existence.(6) She is to witness solitary reverence capable of cleverly bowing in reverence (to the gods)--give leave to the /a grand journey (Oh) Commander. (7) Measure the good (of the ) lonely object of Honor [lying in the grave]...esteem and dignity. Adorn (her with) goodness, give opening to honor.(8) Your nonexistent patron goes to measure goodness. Give (its) beginning Now! The Object of Respect (Tqowine, to be) renewed indeed. (9) Endorse the embarkation of the (good) Supporter. Set in Motion the dispatch of this object of respect (Tqowine) to reverberate
luck. (10) The patron, she is present (in) the grave. Send the Object of Respect to unlock H-ne [the place where the H, is kept]--the Patron begs you. (11) Protect her conveyance of the H. This
honorable woman give (her) isolated departure. The Teacher (to take) a journey. (12) Announce in a lofty voice indeed, the dispatch of this Object of Respect (on the) path (of) the grand bestowal (of) atonement (and ) favor. (13) Rebirth is the path to grand bestowal of honor to the H , indeed give permission for the rebirth of the H, and the soul to exit. (14) Much satisfaction (and) wonder (to come) measure it. The permission (for its
bestowal ) is arranged by Isis,( and) Osiris (is) the Opener of the Way."
.
quote:False.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This is a faulty statement firstly because I have already shown that the two writing systems share signs.
quote:The French-English analogy was just that, to drive home a point [that was lost you], whereby English was fully understood, where as French wasn't. It doesn't pertain to specific individual.
Clyde Winters:
The French and English analogy does not apply to this situation.
quote:According to you, Meroitic is unrelated to any African languages, and yet related to Niger-congo, and so...
Clyde Winters:
I have studied African languages and Kushana and can tell the difference between the two.
quote:See second post to the top.
Clyde Winters:
It does not apply because I can read French and English and would immediately tell the difference between the two language.
quote:Precisely the point made in the 'French-English' analogy. However, you are trying to 'convince' us that you can pull off the *opposite* in two different languages, which are by far more scripturally distinct from one other than French is to English. So then, you're playing 'slow' when you pretended not to get the point, huh?
Clyde Winters:
For example,if you tried to translate a French document using English you would not be able to comprehend the text so you would know right away the French text was not written in the English language.
quote:Exactly.
Clyde Winters:
The same thing would occur if I tried to read a Meroitic document in Kushana.
quote:ROTFL. You just admitted to Meroitic [African] and "Kushana" [Indo-European] being two different languages, only to reverse it to the two being cognates.
Clyde Winters:
If the words were not cognate to Kushana words I would not be able to read Meroitic documents. But this is not the case you can read these documents using Kushana.
quote:Recap: Even your own pictorial example show Meroitic to have distinct alphabets from Kharosthi. Arbitrary similarity of one or two signs, presumably the lowercase 'z'-like sign at bottom of the table [10th line from top] and perhas the reversed 'n'-looking figure near the top [fifth line from top]. By comparison, it is very much closer to Demotic, and then "Egyptian". If your translation isn't the 'faulty' element here, then why did you not use these much closer examples, in lieu of Kharosthi?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This is a faulty statement firstly because I have already shown that the two writing systems share signs.
quote:Just because one language is cognate to another language does not make the languages the same language. For example, Coptic is the cognate language of Egyptian, but Egyptian is not the Coptic language.
ROTFL. You just admitted to Meroitic [African] and "Kushana" [Indo-European] being two different languages, only to reverse it to the two being cognates.
^In the manner with which you proclaim to translate Meroitic, you might as well just say that Meroitic was actually "Kushana"; period! But you and I both know that this is just hot air, don't we?...otherwise the very *least* you would have answered, is the request on the whereabouts of Meroitic text translations into Kharosthi script, side-by-side Meroitic in Sudan.
Ps - In fact, if the two were basically the same languages, as your so-called 'full' Meroitic translations suggest, Meroitic should have simply been written in Kharosthi, rather than Meroitic script.
quote:Even this table from Clyde is misleading:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Recap: Even your own pictorial example show Meroitic to have distinct alphabets from Kharosthi. Arbitrary similarity of one or two signs, presumably the lowercase 'z'-like sign at bottom of the table [10th line from top] and perhas the reversed 'n'-looking figure near the top [fifth line from top]. By comparison, it is very much closer to Demotic, and then "Egyptian". If your translation isn't the 'faulty' element here, then why did you not use these much closer examples, in lieu of Kharosthi?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This is a faulty statement firstly because I have already shown that the two writing systems share signs.
quote:You haven't demonstrated the cognative relationship between Kharosthi and Meroitic, as vindicated by your incapacity to answer Kharosth's whereabouts in Sudan.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:Just because one language is cognate to another language does not make the languages the same language. For example, Coptic is the cognate language of Egyptian, but Egyptian is not the Coptic language.
ROTFL. You just admitted to Meroitic [African] and "Kushana" [Indo-European] being two different languages, only to reverse it to the two being cognates.
^In the manner with which you proclaim to translate Meroitic, you might as well just say that Meroitic was actually "Kushana"; period! But you and I both know that this is just hot air, don't we?...otherwise the very *least* you would have answered, is the request on the whereabouts of Meroitic text translations into Kharosthi script, side-by-side Meroitic in Sudan.
Ps - In fact, if the two were basically the same languages, as your so-called 'full' Meroitic translations suggest, Meroitic should have simply been written in Kharosthi, rather than Meroitic script.
quote:The signs you have have published are not the full corpus of Kharosthi and Meroitic signs. This is only one varient of the signs, there are many more.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Even this table from Clyde is misleading:
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Recap: Even your own pictorial example show Meroitic to have distinct alphabets from Kharosthi. Arbitrary similarity of one or two signs, presumably the lowercase 'z'-like sign at bottom of the table [10th line from top] and perhas the reversed 'n'-looking figure near the top [fifth line from top]. By comparison, it is very much closer to Demotic, and then "Egyptian". If your translation isn't the 'faulty' element here, then why did you not use these much closer examples, in lieu of Kharosthi?
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This is a faulty statement firstly because I have already shown that the two writing systems share signs.
Because a broader look at the alphabets show them to be quite distinct...
Comparing alphabets side by side:
Meroitic Script [top] and Kharosthi [bottom]
Meroitic:
Kharosthi:
Meroitic:
Kharosthi:
quote:I have already explained above why Kushana is the cognate language to Meroitic. Kharosthi is not a language it is a system of writing like our alphabet. I maintain that the Khraosthi and Meroitic writing systems share signs with similar shape and meaning.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:You haven't demonstrated the cognative relationship between Kharosthi and Meroitic, as vindicated by your incapacity to answer Kharosth's whereabouts in Sudan.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Mystery Solver
quote:Just because one language is cognate to another language does not make the languages the same language. For example, Coptic is the cognate language of Egyptian, but Egyptian is not the Coptic language.
ROTFL. You just admitted to Meroitic [African] and "Kushana" [Indo-European] being two different languages, only to reverse it to the two being cognates.
^In the manner with which you proclaim to translate Meroitic, you might as well just say that Meroitic was actually "Kushana"; period! But you and I both know that this is just hot air, don't we?...otherwise the very *least* you would have answered, is the request on the whereabouts of Meroitic text translations into Kharosthi script, side-by-side Meroitic in Sudan.
Ps - In fact, if the two were basically the same languages, as your so-called 'full' Meroitic translations suggest, Meroitic should have simply been written in Kharosthi, rather than Meroitic script.
*Coptic and Egyptic are both Egyptian, with the former representing by and large, a shift in scripture more so than the language itself.
*Meroitic was a Nile Valley language, hence African. Kharosthi was an Indus Valley language, hence non-African.
*Meroitic is deemed by most linguists to be Nilo-Saharan affiliated, while Kharosthi is affiliated with Indo-European.
Given all this, how can you say that Meroitic is cognate to Kharosthi?
quote:
The chart above makes it clear that the following Meroitic and Kharosthi signs agree in shape and sound:
B
M
T
E
To
Te
H
quote:My posts show a broad look at basic respective alphabets of Meroitic and Kharosthi consistently posted virtually everywhere, and they 'encompass' the very English-letter equivalents that you proclaim to be showing in your table. These compilations are certainly much broader than your 'table'. Yet, the broad look at these alphabets demonstrate just how strikingly distinct the two scripts are; certainly, sharply distinctive enough to demonstrate how ludicrous it would be to write Meroitic in Kharosthi script, and thereby proclaim to be translating Meroitic using the script.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The signs you have have published are not the full corpus of Kharosthi and Meroitic signs. This is only one varient of the signs, there are many more.
The chart below shows the cognate Meroitic and Kharosthi signs.
quote:This particular flip-flop answers and important question about Winters phony methods.
MysterySolver wrote: ROTFL. You just admitted to Meroitic [African] and "Kushana" [Indo-European] being two different languages, only to reverse it to the two being cognates.
quote:"the presence of Mandingo sages in Mali, who may have migrated to Mexico"
Winters writes: the presence of Kushana sages in India who may have migrated to Meroe
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
quote:
Rasol:
Agreed and will add, some many not have caught on to the fact that Winters discourse is - ego driven - not finally, so much Afrocentric as Ego-centric.
If Winters students will listen with alert minds they will see that what Winters is *asserting* is not the glory of Africa, but mere self-glorification.
quote:^ Actually, your comment itself meets the following definition.
Winters: This is your opinion founded on jealousy.
quote:Nope, as demonstrated by both lack of lexical correspondence & failure to answer about Kharosthi whereabouts in Sudan.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I have already explained above why Kushana is the cognate language to Meroitic.
quote:Yeah right, writings don't communicate language. And yet, remarkably, you're supposedly translating a language through a system of writing devoid of language, i.e without meanings.
Clyde Winters:
Kharosthi is not a language it is a system of writing like our alphabet.
quote:...thereby maintaining its fallacy. I concur.
Clyde Winters:
I maintain that the Khraosthi and Meroitic writing systems share signs with similar shape and meaning.
quote:pseudo-science rely on ancient myths and legends rather than on objective-physical evidence.
1. Classical evidence that Indians influenced the Meroitic civilization after the death of their king.
quote:Non-sequitur - you need Kushana texts in Sudan, which you don't have, and or Indian DNA in Sudan...which you also don't have.
2. Jaina textual evidence that an Indian group left their homeland after their king was killed supporting the statements of Classical writers.
quote:Non-sequitur # 2 - there are no Kushana archeology sites in Meroe - which is what you need, but don't have.
3. Archaeological evidence of Indian communities in Egypt and Ethiopia (supported by textual evidence) that they were in close proximity to the Meroitic Empire and could have easily made their way to the the Empire.
quote:Tautology. There is no proof that Meroitic and Kharosthi symbols are of a common lineage [ie- cognate]. The non evidence you spam purports to show similarities in symbol designs, as might be found between unrelated languages.
4.Cognate signs from Kharosthi that relate to Meroitic symbols.
quote:Wishful thinking. For the most part your findings are in disagreement with the majority of other scholars.
5. Cognate Meroitic and Kushana, lexical items, grammar and verbs that agree with findings of other researchers.
quote:Tautology - see above. claiming is not proving.
6. Cognate Sudan and Central Asian toponyms.
quote:Tautology - see above. claiming is not proving.
7. Finally, my decipherment allows any researcher to read all the Meroitic inscriptions .
quote:It would appear that the further this conversation goes, the more Clyde is forced to say things that progressively get dumber. No doubt, the result of merciless but sound total obliteration of his propositions.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Yeah right, writings don't communicate language. And yet, remarkably, you're supposedly translating a language through a system of writing devoid of language, i.e without meanings.
Clyde Winters:
Kharosthi is not a language it is a system of writing like our alphabet.
quote:They are found in any reference book at your local library on Kharosthi.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:My posts show a broad look at basic respective alphabets of Meroitic and Kharosthi consistently posted virtually everywhere, and they 'encompass' the very English-letter equivalents that you proclaim to be showing in your table. These compilations are certainly much broader than your 'table'. Yet, the broad look at these alphabets demonstrate just how strikingly distinct the two scripts are; certainly, sharply distinctive enough to demonstrate how ludicrous it would be to write Meroitic in Kharosthi script, and thereby proclaim to be translating Meroitic using the script.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The signs you have have published are not the full corpus of Kharosthi and Meroitic signs. This is only one varient of the signs, there are many more.
The chart below shows the cognate Meroitic and Kharosthi signs.
BTW, where is your 'non-Clyde' affiliated direct citations [~ two or more] showing the additional letters, quite different from the above presentations of mine...along with the said ones I presented? In other words, the "corpus of Kharosthi and Meroitic signs."
quote:You are right a writing system does communicate language. But language is not a writing system.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Nope, as demonstrated by both lack of lexical correspondence & failure to answer about Kharosthi whereabouts in Sudan.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I have already explained above why Kushana is the cognate language to Meroitic.
quote:Yeah right, writings don't communicate language. And yet, remarkably, you're supposedly translating a language through a system of writing devoid of language, i.e without meanings.
Clyde Winters:
Kharosthi is not a language it is a system of writing like our alphabet.
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:
.Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
[qb] The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
Before I began work on Meroitic, other researchers had already falsified the African theory for Meroitic's cognate language.
The comparative method was used to find the cognate language of Meroitic. Using this method Meroitic scholars have compared the "known" Meroitic terms to vernacular African languages to establish morphological cognition between Meroitic and an African language. Up to now these linguistic comparisons failed to reveal the cognate language of Meroitic.
Researchers working on the Meroitic language do not believe that it was a member of the Afro-Asian group. Griffith and Haycock tried to read Meroitic using Nubian.
K.H. Priese, tried to read the Meroitic text using Eastern Sudani; and F. Hintze, attempted to compare Meroitic with the Ural-Altaic group. Siegbert Hummel, compared the "known" Meroitic words to words in the Altaic family which he believed was a substrate language of Meroitic.
The fact that not even Nubian, a language spoken by a people who live today in the former Meroitic empire, failed to be the cognate language of Meroitic made it clear that we must look elsewhere for the cognate language spoken by the Meroites.
Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the Vita Apollonii, Vol. 1,cliamed that the Gymnosophists of Meroe originally came from India (see F.C. Conybeare, Philostratus:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (p.45),1950). Given the fact that the Kushana had formerly ruled India around the time that the Meroitic writing was introduced to the Kushite civilization, lead to the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Gymnosophist may have been Kushana philosophers.
The historical evidence of the Kushana having ruled India made the Classical references to Indians in Meroe, an important source for the construction of alternative theories about the possible location of the cognate language of Meroitic.
There is external evidence, which supports my theory. A theory explains observed phenomena and has predictive power. I have theorized that due to the claims of the Classical writers that some of the Meroites came from India (F.C Conybeare (Trans.), Philostratus: The life of Apollonius of Tyana Vol.2, (1950) pg.271). According to the Life of Apollonius, the Indian Meroites were formerly led by a King Ganges, who had "repulsed the Scythians who invaded this land [India from] across the Caucasus" (Conybeare, Vol.1, Pg.273). Pilostratus also made it clear that the Indians of Meroe came to this country after their king was killed.
The presence of this tradition of an Indian King of the Indian-Meroites conquering the Scythians predicts that the Indian literature should record this historical episode. This prediction is supported by a Jaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka, which reports that when the Scythians invaded Malwa, the King of Malwa, called Vikramaditya defeated the Scythians (H. Kulke & D. Rothermund, History of India (London, Routledge: 1990, pg.73). This king Vikramaditya may be the Ganges mentioned in the Life of Apollonius.Confirmation of the Ganges story, supports the Classical literary evidence that their were Indianized-Meroites that could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites.
Moreover, there were other Indians in North Africa in addition to Kush/Meroe. For example, at Quseir al-Qadim there was a large Indian speaking community (see: R. Salomon, "Epigraphic remains of Indian traders in Egypt", Journal of the American oriental Society, (1991) pp.731-736; and R. Salomon, Addenda, Journal of the American Oriental Society, (1993) pg.593). These Indians were in Egypt writing messages in their own language, around the time we see a switch from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the Meroitic writing system.
The evidence that the Classical references to an Indian-Meroite King who conquered the Scythians is supported by the Indian literature, provides external corroboration of the tradition that some of the Meroites were of Indian origin. The presence of Indians traders and settlers in Meroe (and Egypt), makes it almost impossible to deny the possibility that Indians, familiar with the Tokharian trade language did not introduce this writing to the Meroites who needed a neutral language to unify the diverse ethnic groups who made up the Meroite state. In relation to the history of linguistic change and bilingualism, it is a mistake to believe that linguistic transfer had to take place for the Meroites to have used Tokharian, when it did not take place when they wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
In summary the classical literature makes it clear that there was a connection between the Gymnosophists (of Meroe) and the Indians. The fact that historical events mentioned in the classical sources are found in the Indian literature confirm the view that there were Indian-Meroites who could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites.
The fact that the Nubians who were part of the "Meroitic state", used hieroglyphics and Coptic to write their language without abandoning their native language support the view that they could have also used Tokharian to write Meroitic. And that eventhough they wrote Meroitic inscriptions in Tokharian, they would not have had to abandon Nubian.
The evidence presented above provides internal and external validity for my theory based upon the sources I have cited previously. The sources I have used are impartial, to disconfirm my hypothesis someone needs to show that my propositions are not fully informed [i.e., there were no Indians North Africa and Kush when the Classical writers maintained they were] and present rival explanations based on the evidence.
The fact that the claims made by the Classical writers is supported by the Indians themselves if further strong confirmation of the Kushana hypothesis.
The hypothesis based on the classical literature, was enough to support the original Kushana Hypothesis. The predicting power of the original theory, matches the observed natural phenomena which was confirmed elsewhere by cognate place names, ethononyms, lexical items and grammatical features, indicate that my theory has not be falsified.
The ability to reliably predict a linguistic relationship between Kushana and Meroitic, was further confirmation of the Kushana Hypothesis, because the linguistic connections were deducible from prediction.
I controlled the Kushana Hypothesis by comparing the statements of the classical writers, with historical, linguistic anthropological and toponymic evidence found not only in Africa, but also India and Central Asia [where the people also used Tokharian as a trade language to unify the various people in Central Asia]. I constructed five testable hypotheses in support of the Kushana theory, and it seems only fair that these five variables must be disconfirmed, to falsify the Kushana Hypothesis. Failure to disconfirm this theorem, implies validity of my prediction.
My confirmation of the above five variables: the presence of Kushites in Africa and Asia; the presence of Kushana sages in India who may have migrated to Meroe; cognate lexical items; cognate verbs and cognate grammatical features indicates systematic controlled, critical and empirical investigation of the question of Kushana representing the Meroitic cognate language.
quote:pseudo-science rely on ancient myths and legends rather than on objective-physical evidence.
Originally posted by rasol:
[QUOTE]1. Classical evidence that Indians influenced the Meroitic civilization after the death of their king.
quote:Non-sequitur - you need Kushana texts in Sudan, which you don't have, and or Indian DNA in Sudan...which you also don't have.
2. Jaina textual evidence that an Indian group left their homeland after their king was killed supporting the statements of Classical writers.
quote:Non-sequitur # 2 - there are no Kushana archeology sites in Meroe - which is what you need, but don't have.
3. Archaeological evidence of Indian communities in Egypt and Ethiopia (supported by textual evidence) that they were in close proximity to the Meroitic Empire and could have easily made their way to the the Empire.
quote:Tautology. There is no proof that Meroitic and Kharosthi symbols are of a common lineage [ie- cognate]. The non evidence you spam purports to show similarities in symbol designs, as might be found between unrelated languages.
4.Cognate signs from Kharosthi that relate to Meroitic symbols.
quote:Wishful thinking. For the most part your findings are in disagreement with the majority of other scholars.
5. Cognate Meroitic and Kushana, lexical items, grammar and verbs that agree with findings of other researchers.
quote:Tautology - see above. claiming is not proving.
6. Cognate Sudan and Central Asian toponyms.
quote:Tautology - see above. claiming is not proving.
7. Finally, my decipherment allows any researcher to read all the Meroitic inscriptions .
Your 7 'points' earn you zero credit.
Anything else?
quote:Then, stop playing 'mentally slow'. You know what we mean, when we refer to your so-called translations using Kharosthi.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:You are right a writing system does communicate language. But language is not a writing system.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Nope, as demonstrated by both lack of lexical correspondence & failure to answer about Kharosthi whereabouts in Sudan.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I have already explained above why Kushana is the cognate language to Meroitic.
quote:Yeah right, writings don't communicate language. And yet, remarkably, you're supposedly translating a language through a system of writing devoid of language, i.e without meanings.
Clyde Winters:
Kharosthi is not a language it is a system of writing like our alphabet.
quote:Copout. The burden is on you to directly cite non-Clyde affiliated "full" corpus of the said alphabets, broader than what I presented, but also including the ones presented therein. Otherwise, your post is just another smokescreen to hide the apparent: that the two scripts are strikingly distinct.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:They are found in any reference book at your local library on Kharosthi.
My posts show a broad look at basic respective alphabets of Meroitic and Kharosthi consistently posted virtually everywhere, and they 'encompass' the very English-letter equivalents that you proclaim to be showing in your table. These compilations are certainly much broader than your 'table'. Yet, the broad look at these alphabets demonstrate just how strikingly distinct the two scripts are; certainly, sharply distinctive enough to demonstrate how ludicrous it would be to write Meroitic in Kharosthi script, and thereby proclaim to be translating Meroitic using the script.
BTW, where is your 'non-Clyde' affiliated direct citations [~ two or more] showing the additional letters, quite different from the above presentations of mine...along with the said ones I presented? In other words, the "corpus of Kharosthi and Meroitic signs."
quote:It is you that lacks understanding and illustrate "slowness" .I will try to break it down to you again.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Then, stop playing 'mentally slow'. You know what we mean, when we refer to your so-called translations using Kharosthi.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:You are right a writing system does communicate language. But language is not a writing system.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Nope, as demonstrated by both lack of lexical correspondence & failure to answer about Kharosthi whereabouts in Sudan.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I have already explained above why Kushana is the cognate language to Meroitic.
quote:Yeah right, writings don't communicate language. And yet, remarkably, you're supposedly translating a language through a system of writing devoid of language, i.e without meanings.
Clyde Winters:
Kharosthi is not a language it is a system of writing like our alphabet.
If there were no meanings attached to your Kharosthi "translations", then why not simply use the pre-existing Meroitic 'system of writing'? Lol.
What you're trying to 'convince' us of, is that you don't understand Meroitic language using Meroe's own 'system of writing', but rather a far-off place's 'system of writing' without any language attached to it.
quote:I will not cite any sources on Kharosthi writing until you provide sources from linguistic journals where researchers have used prototerms to decipher a dead language; and the presence of Nubian speakers in the Meroitic Empire.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Copout. The burden is on you to directly cite non-Clyde affiliated "full" corpus of the said alphabets, broader than what I presented, but also including the ones presented therein. Otherwise, your post is just another smokescreen to hide the apparent: that the two scripts are strikingly distinct.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:They are found in any reference book at your local library on Kharosthi.
My posts show a broad look at basic respective alphabets of Meroitic and Kharosthi consistently posted virtually everywhere, and they 'encompass' the very English-letter equivalents that you proclaim to be showing in your table. These compilations are certainly much broader than your 'table'. Yet, the broad look at these alphabets demonstrate just how strikingly distinct the two scripts are; certainly, sharply distinctive enough to demonstrate how ludicrous it would be to write Meroitic in Kharosthi script, and thereby proclaim to be translating Meroitic using the script.
BTW, where is your 'non-Clyde' affiliated direct citations [~ two or more] showing the additional letters, quite different from the above presentations of mine...along with the said ones I presented? In other words, the "corpus of Kharosthi and Meroitic signs."
quote:...with you being the frontrunner in that respect.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
It is you that lacks understanding and illustrate "slowness".
quote:Are you sure you want do that? I mean, you're slow enough as it is. You can't possibly get slower, or can you.
Clyde Winters:
I will try to break it down to you again.
quote:Then why not stick to Meroitic 'writing system', with a full set of its own alphabets. Why do you need to far-off locations to get 'systems of writing' devoid of meaning?
Clyde Winters:
I use the sounds of Meroitic writing system to find Meroitic words.
quote:Hasn't been explained how Meroitic adopted Kharosthi signs, which first of all lack correspondence, as I've demonstrated, and which too, interestingly appear in Demotic.
Clyde Winters:
The Meroitic writing system as explained above, is a combination of Demotic and Kharosthi signs.
quote:How can you use Meroitic, Nilo-Saharan (African), and Kushana, Indo-European, to produce cognates of basic lexicons? Meroitic isn't Kushana.
Clyde Winters:
To read the Meroitic text I use cognates from the Kushana language to read the Meroitic words.
quote:Then the matter is settled; your claim is baseless.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I will not cite any sources on Kharosthi writing until you provide sources from linguistic journals.
quote:Again you betry your slowness. A writing system only conveys the sounds of the language. The meaning results from reading the words. Using the Kushana language you can read any Meroitic text.
Then why not stick to Meroitic 'writing system', with a full set of its own alphabets. Why do you need to far-off locations to get 'systems of writing' devoid of meaning?
[/IMG] quote:No, your laziness is made evident. You don't have any linguistic references to support your defense of Rilly so you have decided to close the matter since your support is groundless.
Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
quote:Then the matter is settled; your claim is baseless.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
I will not cite any sources on Kharosthi writing until you provide sources from linguistic journals.
quote:Ok.
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
This shows that I am talking to a fool.
quote:I answered all your questions that were -relevant- to my comments.
I will not comment any more of your post until you answer some questions
quote:I disagree. You have no evidence for anything.
My comments are based on evidence I expect the same from you.
quote:...and so we properly credit you, with nothing.
Dr. Winters writes, I will not cite any sources on Kharosthi writing.....