LL-L: "East meets West?" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 09.AUG.1999 (01)

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 09.AUG.1999 (01) * ISSN 1089-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Muhammed Suleiman [suleiman at lineone.net]
Subject: LL-L: "East meets West?" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 08.AUG.1999 (01)

The 'family' relationship between Uralic and Altaic has, of course, a very
distinguished and protracted history of acceptance, but this is not to say
that it, too, is not fraught with inconsistencies. It may well be that once
research advances further with regard to the internal histories of all the
languages concerned, Japano-Koreo-Ainuan ( or even Eskimo-Aleut) might prove
to be the 'missing links' between these giant language families. We cannot
stress too much, however, the great depths of time involved (and most of
this time is unrecorded prehistory). Another problem is just how many
languages, belonging to these groups and maybe to others which no longer
exist, have passed unrecorded from the face of the earth. Even these days,
many languages are in existence which are only spoken by a single speaker,
and even then there is no guarantee that someone is going to succeed in
reaching the last speakers before those tongues pass away without trace.

Just in the Japanese archipelago the old Japanese chronicles contain
occasional tantalizing references to peoples who already lived there prior
to the Japanese entering the islands. We must consider ourselves fortunate
to have the names of these peoples, we have nothing more but vague
conjectures that they must be related to the Ainu. But then, who knows?

Regards to all,

Muhammad Suleiman

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: East meets West?

Thank you, Muhammed, for the added explanations above.

It may well be true that all languages share a common ancestor, but to prove
this is impossible at this point in time, because our science is not advanced
enough and, as you mentioned, there are far too many missing links.  Also, there
are still too many closed minds in this regard.  The Altaic language family
hypothesis itself still has more than its fair share of opponents, though the
number has been dwindling lately.  Therefore, even though it may be tempting and
even if it will eventually prove to be warranted, going beyond that to propose
even larger families without very strong evidence seems premature at this
juncture.

Personally, I have never doubted the existence of Eurasian east-west contacts
since antiquity and pre-history.  We know that Indo-European varieties have been
used since ancient times not only in the West but also as far east as in Eastern
Central Asia (Tajik, Wakhi, Sarikoli, etc.) and earlier even farther east in
what is now China (Soghdian).  In the West, Central-Asia-derived Turkic
languages have long been used, as far west as in the Balkans (Turkish), Romania
and Lithuania (Karaim), lately having spread with very large numbers of speakers
to the extreme reaches of Western Europe (Turkish).  "East is East, and West is
West" or the like seems to have sprung from Western separatist thought modes
based on the invention of Europe as a continent (without an eastern shoreline!)
with a tradition of fear, ignorance and chauvinism toward the East.  Yet, look
at the east-west continuum of material culture even long, long before Marco
Polo's travels!  The trade routes are ancient and they took back and forth not
only goods (such as silk to Rome) but also people with their languages and
cultures.

Of course, it is always intriguing to speculate about unknown ancestors, but
unfortunately it tends to lead nowhere.  This is so not only in the case of
Japan, as you mentioned, but also -- and we *must* return to the Lowlands at
this point -- in the Germanic-speaking areas.  For instance, the _Frisii_ of the
North Sea coast are already mentioned by early Greek writers, and it appears
safe to say that they were not speakers of Germanic and possibly not of Celtic,
most likely being descendants of people who did not speak Indo-European.  Who
were they?  What did they speak?  We must assume that substrates of these
various unknown languages greatly influenced the development of diversity also
among the Lowlands languages we deal with here on Lowlands-L.

Welcome back to the Lowlands!

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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