by badboy 19 Replies latest jw friends
PEOPLE WHO SPEAK NON-TONAL LANGUAGES ARE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE A MORE RECENTLY EVOLVE FORM OF THE GENES ASPM AND MICROCEPHALIN.
THIS RAISES AN INTERESTING IDEA.
POSSIBLY NO NON-TONAL LANGUAGES WERE SPOKEN AT THE TIME OF THE TOWERS OF BABEL.
HOW WOULD A JW EXPLAIN?
The account of the Tower of Babel is a fairy tale designed to explain why different groups have different languages. However, most myths have some basis in history. In this case the most likely scenario is an "over zealous" overseer generated a riot due to harsh measures used to increase production. They already had different languages before they were rounded up to work on a public works project called the Tower of Babel. I was on a construction project in Europe once manned by Turks, Portugese, Spaniards, and Yugoslave laborers. The forman was German. Communication was difficult at best.
The account of the Tower of Babel is a fairy tale
It amazes me , how many people believe , that the bible is a historical account , not a fairy tale.
Philip
I know that that clicky one in Africa is one of the oldest, if not the oldest known language. It's interesting to see how language changes! Like english of old would be to the modern speaker like German is today.
Fun Fact! The African language Fula has FOURTEEN different tones. Comparitively I believe Vietnamese has nine.
By tones only does the Vietnamese da mean three different things
da "big toe"
da (frontwards accent) "nostalgic"
da (backwards accent) "shitty little monkey"
You could try to say my big toe is broken, but end up saying "my shitty little monkey is broken."
Absolutely. You can take it to the bank.
..Before the Tower of Babel,everyone spoke Ukrainian..They all sounded just like my Grandma..It drove God crazy..Thats when God invented new langauges,stuttering and the lisp.....It`s in the Bible!..LOL!!...OUTLAW
PEOPLE WHO SPEAK NON-TONAL LANGUAGES ARE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE A MORE RECENTLY EVOLVE FORM OF THE GENES ASPM AND MICROCEPHALIN.
WTF? Tonal languages are found in many different language families and have no "genetic" relationship (in the literal and linguistic sense) per se. Where did this notion come from?
The tower of Babel story is a conflation of a legend from the Enuma Elish (about the building of E-sagila) and a legend about a confusion of languages cognate to the Tale of Enmerkar. Even the biblical story itself is a composite: a story about the building of a city (in order to keep everyone together) and a story about the building of a tower (in order to reach the heavens).
Tonogenesis, btw, usually occurs when segmental contrasts are lost through syllabic changes (e.g. the loss of coda consonants) or phonemic mergers; tones can bifurcate as well, or become adopted via bilingualism.
We can always count on Leolaia to give us the "straight skinny" on where these stories come from.
Question for Leolaia:
Which culture did the Hebrews borrow those stories from? Persian? Babylonian? Sumerian?
I think Badboy is talking about the work of Bruce Lahn, and for some reason or another (he lacks ASPM?) trying to tie that science to a speculative history.
John Hawks had a nice rundown at the time. As the articles point out, one of the interesting aspects of the story is that it demonstrates that human evolution is still occurring.
On the potential racial overtones of the findings, follow the links here.
Those are Sumerian and Akkadian (Babylonian) stories. On the construction of the tower:
Nabopolassar Inscription, KIB iii. 2.5: "Marduk commanded me to lay its foundations firm in the breast of the underworld, and make its top equal to heaven".
Enuma Elish VI 60-62: "Let its [E-sagila's] brickwork be fashioned...The Annunaki applied the implement; for one whole year they moulded bricks. When the second year arrived, they raised high the head of Esagila toward the heavens [Apsu]."
Genesis 11:3-4: "Let us make bricks and bake them in a fire....Let us build ourselves ... a tower with its top reaching heaven".
And on the confusion of languages in a story that has nothing at all to do with a tower:
Tale of Enmerkar: "When there was no snake and when there was no scorpion, there was no fear, no terror....In those days the land of Martu, resting in security, the whole universe, the people in unison spoke in unison to Enlil in one tongue. Enki, the Lord of wisdom, ... changed the speech in their mouths, [brought] contention into it. Into the speech of man that [until then] had been one."
Genesis 11:1, 9: "Now the whole world had one language and one speech .... Yahweh confused the language of the whole world."
