REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

The role of language

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 29, 2023 14:14
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Saturday, March 3, 2018 11:31 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


The Irish Crimean – Padraig Joseph McGrath

In 2016, for the first time, the People’s Republic of China surpassed the United States in published scientific output. A total of 429,000 scientific papers were published in China. In the United States, the total figure for 2016 was 406,000 published scientific papers.This is an important index of social and economic development, and an index of the shifting balance in geo-political strength. Knowledge-production is not only a key index of geo-political influence – it is also a key contributory factor to it.

That is to say: knowledge-production is a key component of what is commonly referred to as “soft power.”

The present debate on the role of language within ideology-transmission as an element of soft-power, is better informed with a view on this process in another civilizational sphere. In this case, we will topically examine that of the Chinese as it emerges onto terrain which until recently was hegemonically dominated by the Anglosphere.

This essay will base itself in the understanding that language is in itself a vector for pre-discursive ideology-transmission.

The Chinese very clearly had an understanding of soft power over 2,000 years before Joseph Nye coined that phrase, or before it was popularized by Fukuyama. You see this understanding of soft power implied throughout the Analects, which were compiled during the warring-states period (475 BC-221 BC). An example of such are sayings like: “You don’t need an ox-knife to kill a chicken,”

One effect of the global spread of the English language as a lingua franca is that it created something approaching an Anglophone monopoly on knowledge-production, and therefore a disproportionate influence on ideology-production, and this in turn had a pernicious geo-political effect.

At the same time, ideology-production can simply bypass knowledge-production on certain levels. Outside of the Anglophone world, the most irreprarably indoctrinated students are usually those who went to secondary schools which specialized in languages. Thus the students coming out of these schools do not know much on the subjects of physics or chemistry, and they know very little history or geography. Their core-skills are languages – they just subliminally and pre-discursively internalized Atlanticist liberal ideology by learning the English language. This leads us to our central thesis:

Language in itself is a vector for pre-discursive ideology-transmission. In the English language, this happens on at least three distinct levels.

Firstly, the grammar of the English language sets reality up as a list of standalone objects.

Compare the English sentence “There is a desk in the office.” with the German equivalent “Es gibt einen Schreibtisch im Büro,” which literally translates “It gives a desk in the office.”

So in the German sentence, the desk’s existence is postulated in the following way – the desk is thought to “exist” insofar as it is conferred into existence through its participation in some larger context – something which overarches the desk’s existence “gives it” – that is to say, confers it into existence. Furthermore, there is a loose implication that the desk is a manifestation of this “Es” which “gives” it or confers it into existence…. This way of thinking is inescapable if one happens to think in the German language – nothing simply exists in isolation – everything is part of a larger context. The grammar of the German language is pantheistic.

On the other hand, in English, the desk is postulated simply as a standalone object – it exists quite independently of any surrounding objects, independently of any social or historical context, independently of any surrounding physical reality – it’s just “there.” English grammar sets up quite a different ontology to German grammar.

With this in mind, it’s hardly surprising that many of Germany’s most historically noteworthy philosophers and theologians have offered pantheistic interpretations of Christianiaty, and that the empiricist tradition of philosophy and scientific realism have always been more influential in the English-speaking world. Native English-speakers just naturally think that way because that’s just how the grammar of their language cognitively sets reality up for them – objects in the world are just “out there.”

And, indirectly, this has ideological implications – it impacts on how we discuss history, politics, science, social morality, public policy issues, questions of technocratic or decision-making competence, ways of verifying knowledge, models of social organization, and so forth.

Secondly, the technical lexicon of the English language, being largely comprised of transliterations from Greek and Latin, is already dehistoricized. That is to say, native English-speakers have great difficulty getting an intimate grasp on the histories of many words which they use, insofar as the Greek and Latin etymological roots of many English words are obscured. For example, most native English-speakers are oblivious to the point that the English word “object” is conventionally taken to mean almost the opposite of what was meant by the Latin “objectus.” This helps to explain why most native English-speakers have such an epistemologically naïve idea of “objectivity,” which also has pernicious ideological implications.

In most technical disciplines, the German lexicon is mostly morphologically pure German. Many Slavonic languages employ binomial systems of terminology in chemistry, physics, engineering, medicine, etc. In English, however, all we have to work with are words which have been dehistoricized by virtue of having been transliterated from Greek and Latin rather than having been actually translated, morpheme by morpheme, from Greek and Latin. On this basis, it is also arguable that dehistoricization as an ideology in itself, and in particular the dehistoricization of knowledge, are pre-discursively inscribed into the word-stock of the English language. Is it any wonder, then, that so many Anglophone thinkers have interpreted the history of science as a historically linear progression, as “an ever-increasing approximation of the truth?” Furthermore, is it any wonder that so many native English speakers fall into the trap of scientism? Unfortunately, most of scientism’s core articles of faith are pre-discursively inscribed into the English language itself.

We might go even further.

Take, for example, the belief which is very widely held by people in the Occident, that all or almost all of history’s enduring scientific and technological ideas are of western origin. In historical terms, this belief is demonstrably nonsense. It is impossible to overstate the impact of what China bequeathed to the world in the fields of metallurgy, agriculture, medicine and astronomy. The first known microbiological theory of disease was first written down in 11th century Uzbekistan. Geology, plate-tectonics, clinical pharmacology and optics, to name but a few disciplines, all developed during the golden age of Islam.

The mathematization of physics can be traced back to Ibn Al Haytham (11th century). Lomonosov probably discovered oxygen before Lavoisier did, but never published his findings – many of his discoveries were published posthumously. The horse’s bit was probably invented in central Asia. The Romans knew about it, but this simple technological innovation was lost to early medieval Europe – the development of cavalry in early medieval Europe would not have been possible had it not been for its re-discovery through subsequent European contact with Asiatic peoples during the Carolingian period.

And yet, despite all of the historical evidence to the contrary, most Occidentals believe that all or almost all of history’s enduring scientific and technological ideas are of western origin.

Who taught them to hold this belief? In most cases, nobody actually taught them.

Most Occidentals who hold this belief (that all or most of our currently accepted received scientific wisdom is of western origin) were not explicitly told this by any science-teacher, nor did they ever read any article by any historian of science in which any such claim was ever explicitly made. No science-teacher or historian of science ever would tell them that they should believe such a claim, for the simple reason that it would be demonstrably nonsense. Most westerners who believe this simply believe it intuitively. This commonly held belief is partially an intuitive bi-product of the manner in which the English language, the dominant language for scientific publishing, dehistoricizes knowledge.

This serves as a particularly good example of what I mean by “pre-discursive ideology-transmission.”
In a nutshell, this concept means that it is not actually necessary to teach people any “doctrine” in order to “indoctrinate” them.

Actually, we might even say that the most effective way to indoctrinate somebody is by not teaching them any explicit doctrine. Doctrines can be falsified, argued against. If we indoctrinate people by teaching them explicit doctrines, explicit truth-claims about the world, then these doctrines can be itemized and intellectually attacked later. This explicitly doctrinal level of indoctrination is therefore reversible.

The most effective way to indoctrinate a person, the most irreversible modus of indoctrination, is to carefully avoid teaching them any “doctrine” or “dogma” whatsoever. The most irreversible level of indoctrination is to insidiously inculcate beliefs and other attitudes in people by gaming their processes of intuition – in this case, the indoctrinated person may not even be aware that they hold the belief or attitude in question; they may be unable to articulate it, a point which renders the belief impervious to intellectual attack.

As the philosopher Régis Debray has argued, ideologies, and for that matter religions, become all the more “charismatic,” and transmit themselves all the more easily, once their dogmatic baggage has been hollowed out. The logo is more charismatic than the logos.

At this stage in our post-industrial history, it seems quite banal to claim that most ideology is transmitted pre-discursively, but insofar as the English language’s technical lexicon dehistoricizes knowledge in the manner suggested above, it is argued that the English language’s technical lexicon is, in itself, a factor in how both native and non-native speakers of the English language are indoctrinated.

On this note, an interesting distinction between two different senses of “indoctrination” exists in the Czech language. If one wanted to talk about “indoctrinating” somebody, then one could use the Czech verb “indoktrinovat” or the verb “naockovat.” The verb “indoktrinovat” means to teach an explicit doctrine or doctrines. So, for example, schoolchildren in communist Czechoslovakia were “indoktrinovaný.” This level of indoctrination turned out to be totally reversible in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Czech millennials, on the other hand, are “naockovaný.” Without the prefix, the verb “ockovat” usually means “to immunize,” “to innoculate” or “to vaccinate.”

So using the verb “naockovat” implies that something is being injected into somebody, but not on the level of teaching explicit doctrines. The indoctrination is pre-discursive. It happens through films, popular music, advertising, and so on. And, just as the metaphor of “injection” suggests, this is far less escapable than “indokrinovannost,” because even if you later consciously reject what you have internalized, it remains in your bloodstream. At its most meaningful level, ideology is what you do when you’re not really thinking about it. Or to phrase it another way, you may not be interested in ideology, but ideology is still interested in you.

The third level on which language serves as a vector for pre-discursive ideology-transmission relates specifically to language-teaching. Insofar as learning foreign languages tends to work through a process of banalization, it reinforces the myth that “there is no alternative.”

No alternative to your socially meaningless job, the vocabulary pertaining to which is found in unit 11 of your language-textbook.

No alternative to the pseudo-science or pop-psychology with which your culture has become imbued, and which is normalized and implicitly reinforced in unit 8 of your language-textbook.

No alternative to the tedious obsession with lifestyle (shopping, holidays, keeping fit, travel, etc), which is covered extensively in several units of your language-textbook.

No alternative to the infantilization which is implicit in all of the above.

People are taught foreign languages through a process of banalization, and through having trash-culture foisted upon them. Language-textbooks typically present every cultural aspect of later capitalism as a fait accompli. If language-textbooks were people, then all of their “beliefs” would be tediously prosaic and conventional. In this sense, language-students are taught ideology pre-discursively, but still in a way which could hardly be any more blatant.

Furthermore, this ideology-transmission is both enabled and simultaneously obscured by the obsessional elevation of form over content which typifies language-teaching as a professional activity. You learn the form through which ideas are expressed – grammar, vocabulary, etc – but their content is never questioned. The content is presented as a given, as a cultural fait accompli.

When asked what the most significant political fact of his own time was, Bismarck answered that it was “the inherited and permanent fact that North America speaks English.”

This fact is more a historical accident than we imagine.

In 1795, 9% of the United States’ population spoke German as a first language, predictably concentrated in particular areas, and it was entirely possible that German might have been adopted as one of the new republic’s official languages, especially as the United States was still attempting to assert its cultural and political independence from Britain.

This might very well have resulted in German-speaking states, within the United States, on the North American continent.

In any case, this is what one can see that Bismarck meant, and the point still holds today – language in itself is a vector for pre-discursive ideology-transmission.

If the United States had learned to speak German, then maybe it would subsequently have produced fewer bad philosophers, less naive empiricism and epistemology, etc. Only in 20th century America could an academic philosopher be taken seriously if he tried to express the truth-claim that God exists (or doesn’t exist) through the notation of symbolic mathematical logic and probability-calculus. Only in America would anybody imagine that either claim could be reduced purely and simply to their propositional content.

The American analytical tradition, owing to it obsession with the propositional content of statements, generally renders people incapable of deciphering allegories or exploring subtext. Only in a dehistoricized philosophical tradition such as America’s would Jerry Fodor’s theory of “mentalese” ever have been taken seriously.

In any case, back to the connection between knowledge-production and ideology-production, and the 2016 figures for scientific output. It’s good to see the Chinese turn that corner. China also now has the 4 largest banks on the planet, the largest balance of trade, and the largest armed forces. It seems highly probable that the Chinese will choose to maintain the English language as a global lingua-franca, for the foreseeable future at least. However, this stop-gap solution may gradually begin to create more problems than it solves. It is an ideological imperative that science and technology remain prestige areas of activity – the Pandora’s box of geo-strategic competition conducted through breakneck technological development can’t be closed. Globally, those activities are still conducted predominantly through English.

But if the English language gradually loses prestige in every other context (by virtue of the ongoing debasement of moral, political and cultural discourse in the globalized, banalized form of the English language), then the new Mandarins may eventually begin to re-think the wisdom of maintaining English as the global scientific-language. They may eventually decide that it’s time a certain sub-set of the new global elite learned to think in Chinese. That would result in quite a radical shift in our consensual global cosmology, but for the moment, Beijing devising a cultural policy like that looks a long way off.

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Saturday, March 3, 2018 3:57 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


There are 1.15 Billion who understand Chinese language.
There are 1.06 Billion who understand English language.
Next is 661 Million who understand Spanish langugage.

Your data only includes a subset of English, known as American English. With 406,000 papers. Compared to 429,000 papers from China.
It appears you have excluded British English, Aussie English, Colonial English, Canadian English, and others.
What are the scientific papers total from those?

I suspect not a lot of Nations outside China have a primary language of Chinese.

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Sunday, March 4, 2018 2:40 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


The beginning part of the opinion piece .... about the number of scientific papers ... isn't anywhere near as interesting as the major part of the article. At least as far as I'm concerned.

I'm always interested in the memes and assumptions behind common, banal exposures, like advertising, language, TV shows ... even our physical world, like our devotion to clocks and the automobile, and the fact that our schools look like people-factories. They communicate profound, unconscious messages. Take cars: Not only do they communicate that physical effort is to be avoided, so is community (taking the bus is so declasse). They also tell us that a world in which people are herded together into work-hives, far away from where they live, is somehow a normal and even preferable way to live.

But I digress from the article.

This man is pointing out that language defines what a culture considers as "things" (ontology) and their relationships ("logic").

Take, for example, the English language's use of the word "the". We use it all the time ... I went to *the* beach. THE beach? Constantly using the word "the" gives things a specificity and uniqueness that they don't have in. How would that sound if we said instead I went to beach? It sounds more like I went to *a* beach which is more like what really happened.

Why do we capitalize the word *I*? When we speak of our individual selves ... *I* ... is that so much more important than other pronouns that it must be capitalized?

And these are just simple things. What about the European languages that insist that everything is either masculine or feminine ... even chairs and tables? OR, confoundingly, German, which actually has a neuter gender but refuses to use it for many inanimate objects?

And then there is Chinese. The language doesn't have pronouns; or past, present, or future tense. It doesn't have possessives. I think that comes from the fact that the WRITTEN language is still pictographic ... each word is designated by a symbol; as opposed to the English language which can be entirely written by 26 symbols. The number of individual pictographs required to express a reasonable diversity of ideas and objects is in the tens of thousands. That represents a worse barrier to learning than the non-phonetic nature of English, and made pre-printer typesetting impossible, which meant that printed books .... that store of knowledge which could be widely shared ... didn't happen in China.

I have been told that Mao created a sort of pidgin Mandarin ... 8000 symbols ... which could be taught to the illiterate peasants. But just imagine going thru life with only 8000 words!

How do you "modify" a picture of "running" or "shopping" to indicate that this happened in the past, or will happen in the future? How do you indicate that this is somebody's house, not just "a" house?

The Chinese language has some interesting workarounds ... you don't say "My sister" but "little sister". You don't say "I went to the store" but " go to store yesterday".

I think that lack of flexibility in the Chinese language really inhibits certain thought processes, but enhances others.

Anyway, it's family-time. TTUL



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, March 4, 2018 6:10 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


I was wondering about any effect on certain fields.
The International Language of Mathematics, for symposium etc, is English.
For International Science, English.
For International Aviation, English.


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Sunday, March 4, 2018 11:21 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Which is why the author was pointing out the linguistic hegemony of the English language.

One of the things I'm really bad at is learning languages, because so much of it is just sheer rote memorization. Did I forget to tell you I have a really bad memory for disconnected items, altho I remember things pretty well once they're in a logical structure? So arbitrary things just really, really grate on my nerves.

In my Catholic "grammar school" the nuns did a pretty thorough job of banging the various kinds of words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions) and sentence diagrams into us. I'm probably one of the few people on the board who even knows what a sentence diagram is.

Then, I had to learn another language in public junior high/ high school (French) and I had to learn either Russian or German as part of my Chemistry degree (German), and I hated every effing moment. So one of the things that drives me bug-nuts about most European languages is the practice of

a) assigning inanimate objects a gender, at random. The (female) jacket, the (male) beer.
b) And them making sure that every word related to that object matches it in terms of gender and number. *La* table, versus *les* tables.

Seriously? What idiot thought THAT up??? Oh yeah ... the Romans and the Germans.

And then there's that cute German practice of putting the verb at the END of the sentence. We to the library go. Some of those sentences are LONG, and you have to wait all the way to the end before you find out what happened.

Anyway, things that are arbitrary drive me nuts if I have to learn them. I've always thought that - GRAMMATICALLY - the English language is far superior to the other European languages because it is vastly simpler. And - like JO - I think that if we could straighten out the problem of English SPELLING, it would make English a vastly superior language overall. (The spelling problem comes about because English picks up foreign words like gum picks up lint. The whole "ie" versus "ei" spelling problems is because French and German treat them exactly the opposite, and we use words of both origins, thanks to William the Conqueror.)

*****

That word-atomicity in English is what the author calls "pre-discursive ideology transmission". When you learn a language, you HAVE to learn its underlying rules, and those rules posit a certain mindset. By making English the lingua franca (bridge language, common language, trade language, vehicular language, or link language) of business, we also transmit the underlying logic of the language. It is "pre-discursive" because it can be taught without actually TALKING ABOUT it, like advertising and TV shows have their own "pre-discursive" ontology logic.

Just to loop back to other cultures, I've also wondered about the near-universal adoption of the 7-day week (originating in Sumer) and the solar calendar. Although it seems to be almost a universal "fact", it has its own illogic. For example, the months would be a lot more logically-arranged if each month was four weeks long. That would mean the months would be lunar months, instead of this Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November crap (Which is just as bad as "i before e, except after C) but that would mean that there would be 13 months, and SOMEbody obviously thought 13 was an unlucky number!

It is such an integral part of so many cultures, when I run into people who have a different calendar ... especially a non-solar one ... like Ethiopians ... I wonder how their agriculture ever survived, because its usually non-agrarian cultures with the lunar calendar and agrarian ones with the solar calendar (It's important to know when to plant!)

Anyway, enough random maundering.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, March 4, 2018 3:17 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


And yet, Yoda is understandable. Some people can even speak Yoda.

OTOH you make me chagrined that I seldom use sentence structure anymore.

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Sunday, March 4, 2018 9:18 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And then there is Chinese. The language doesn't have pronouns; or past, present, or future tense. It doesn't have possessives. I think that comes from the fact that the WRITTEN language is still pictographic ... each word is designated by a symbol; as opposed to the English language which can be entirely written by 26 symbols. The number of individual pictographs required to express a reasonable diversity of ideas and objects is in the tens of thousands. That represents a worse barrier to learning than the non-phonetic nature of English, and made pre-printer typesetting impossible, which meant that printed books .... that store of knowledge which could be widely shared ... didn't happen in China.


Tens of thousands of pictures to explain things, and not a single one for "I". Also, no possessive nouns...

That's an insight into Communism that I didn't think about before.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, March 5, 2018 1:35 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Which is why the author was pointing out the linguistic hegemony of the English language.

One of the things I'm really bad at is learning languages, because so much of it is just sheer rote memorization. Did I forget to tell you I have a really bad memory for disconnected items, altho I remember things pretty well once they're in a logical structure? So arbitrary things just really, really grate on my nerves.

In my Catholic "grammar school" the nuns did a pretty thorough job of banging the various kinds of words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions) and sentence diagrams into us. I'm probably one of the few people on the board who even knows what a sentence diagram is.

Then, I had to learn another language in public junior high/ high school (French) and I had to learn either Russian or German as part of my Chemistry degree (German), and I hated every effing moment. So one of the things that drives me bug-nuts about most European languages is the practice of

a) assigning inanimate objects a gender, at random. The (female) jacket, the (male) beer.
b) And them making sure that every word related to that object matches it in terms of gender and number. *La* table, versus *les* tables.

Seriously? What idiot thought THAT up??? Oh yeah ... the Romans and the Germans.

And then there's that cute German practice of putting the verb at the END of the sentence. We to the library go. Some of those sentences are LONG, and you have to wait all the way to the end before you find out what happened.

Anyway, things that are arbitrary drive me nuts if I have to learn them. I've always thought that - GRAMMATICALLY - the English language is far superior to the other European languages because it is vastly simpler. And - like JO - I think that if we could straighten out the problem of English SPELLING, it would make English a vastly superior language overall. (The spelling problem comes about because English picks up foreign words like gum picks up lint. The whole "ie" versus "ei" spelling problems is because French and German treat them exactly the opposite, and we use words of both origins, thanks to William the Conqueror.)

*****

That word-atomicity in English is what the author calls "pre-discursive ideology transmission". When you learn a language, you HAVE to learn its underlying rules, and those rules posit a certain mindset. By making English the lingua franca (bridge language, common language, trade language, vehicular language, or link language) of business, we also transmit the underlying logic of the language. It is "pre-discursive" because it can be taught without actually TALKING ABOUT it, like advertising and TV shows have their own "pre-discursive" ontology logic.

Just to loop back to other cultures, I've also wondered about the near-universal adoption of the 7-day week (originating in Sumer) and the solar calendar. Although it seems to be almost a universal "fact", it has its own illogic. For example, the months would be a lot more logically-arranged if each month was four weeks long. That would mean the months would be lunar months, instead of this Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November crap (Which is just as bad as "i before e, except after C) but that would mean that there would be 13 months, and SOMEbody obviously thought 13 was an unlucky number!

It is such an integral part of so many cultures, when I run into people who have a different calendar ... especially a non-solar one ... like Ethiopians ... I wonder how their agriculture ever survived, because its usually non-agrarian cultures with the lunar calendar and agrarian ones with the solar calendar (It's important to know when to plant!)

Anyway, enough random maundering.
Well, obviously Dec is the 10th month, Nov is the 9th month, Octo is the 8th month, and Sept is the 7th month.

The 7 day week maybe adopted due to the Bible's designation of The Sabbeth, and spread via Crusades, Pilgrims, Missionaries. Other Religions may as lso have a basis for 7 day week.

I'm wondering if there is a language basis for some places and regions having Time Zones which are a Half Hour or Quarter Hour out of synch with their neighbors. Or is it purely a geographic nature?

The 365 day cycle was established beyond the purview of Caesar, Kaiser, Emperor, King, Czar, Tsar - so would you prefer it divided into 73 weeks of 5 days? Lunar cycles would be close to every 6 weeks.

I'm not familiar with a trend of Lunar Calendars, but I would imagine them less prevalent in Latitudes farther from the Equator, when the Solar cycle is more critical. But on the Equator, what difference does it make what time of the year it is - other than the stars changing position in cycles near 13 moons, but still drifting for multiples of 13 moons (regaining synch every 396 Lunar cycles, or about 11,682 days - or 32 Solar Years)?

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Monday, March 5, 2018 6:49 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Well, obviously Dec is the 10th month, Nov is the 9th month, Octo is the 8th month, and Sept is the 7th month.
Oh, very interesting. I never noticed!

Quote:
The 7 day week maybe adopted due to the Bible's designation of The Sabbeth, and spread via Crusades, Pilgrims, Missionaries. Other Religions may as lso have a basis for 7 day week.
But the earliest 7-day week was found in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE

Quote:
Mesopotamia invented new technology. They were the first to use the wheel. The wagon was a transportation revolution for farming and trade. They developed a number system based on 60--this explains why we have 60 seconds in minute and 60 minutes in an hour.
I never knew that! Oh, the random stuff you learn when you look things up!
Quote:
They used a 12 month calendar with a 7 day week.

https://sites.google.com/site/1ancientcivilizationsforkids/ancient-ira
q-mesopotamia
Possibly the early tribe of Israel came up with a 7-day week independently, but many historians give the nod to Sumer.

Quote:
I'm wondering if there is a language basis for some places and regions having Time Zones which are a Half Hour out of synch with their neighbors. Or is it purely a geographic nature?
There are time zones a half hour out of sync???

Quote:
The 365 day cycle was established beyond the purview of Caesar, Kaiser, Emperor, King, Czar, Tsar - so would you prefer it divided into 73 weeks of 5 days? Lunar cycles would be close to every 6 weeks.
So, another thing I learned ... lunar cycles are 29.5 days, not 28. The rotation of the earth (day), the revolution of the moon ("month") around the earth, and the revolution of the earth around the sun (year) don't conveniently coincide, and they definitely don't coincide with our calendaring system. Leap year is a pretty good approximation of "days" to "years", but the lunar cycle and the 7-day week are off by slightly more than a day, drat it! And the cumulative lunar cycles definitely don't coincide with a solar (or stellar) year ... a lunar year is about 11 days short of a solar year; the two only line up every 33 years. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, Jews use a combination lunar/solar calendar. That explains why Easter is tied to the phase of the moon.

Quote:
I'm not familiar with a trend of Lunar Calendars, but I would imagine them less prevalent in Latitudes farther from the Equator, when the Solar cycle is more critical. But on the Equator, what difference does it make what time of the year it is - other than the stars changing position in cycles near 13 moons, but still drifting for multiples of 13 moons (regaining synch every 396 Lunar cycles, or about 11,682 days - or 32 Solar Years)?
I agree. Also, sailing cultures would probably be more attuned to high and low tides.

Thanks for thinking these random thoughts with me!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Monday, March 5, 2018 1:51 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Well, obviously Dec is the 10th month, Nov is the 9th month, Octo is the 8th month, and Sept is the 7th month.
Oh, very interesting. I never noticed!

Quote:
The 7 day week maybe adopted due to the Bible's designation of The Sabbeth, and spread via Crusades, Pilgrims, Missionaries. Other Religions may as lso have a basis for 7 day week.
But the earliest 7-day week was found in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE

Quote:
Mesopotamia invented new technology. They were the first to use the wheel. The wagon was a transportation revolution for farming and trade. They developed a number system based on 60--this explains why we have 60 seconds in minute and 60 minutes in an hour.
I never knew that! Oh, the random stuff you learn when you look things up!
Quote:
They used a 12 month calendar with a 7 day week.

https://sites.google.com/site/1ancientcivilizationsforkids/ancient-ira
q-mesopotamia
Possibly the early tribe of Israel came up with a 7-day week independently, but many historians give the nod to Sumer.

Quote:
I'm wondering if there is a language basis for some places and regions having Time Zones which are a Half Hour out of synch with their neighbors. Or is it purely a geographic nature?
There are time zones a half hour out of sync???

Quote:
The 365 day cycle was established beyond the purview of Caesar, Kaiser, Emperor, King, Czar, Tsar - so would you prefer it divided into 73 weeks of 5 days? Lunar cycles would be close to every 6 weeks.
So, another thing I learned ... lunar cycles are 29.5 days, not 28. The rotation of the earth (day), the revolution of the moon ("month") around the earth, and the revolution of the earth around the sun (year) don't conveniently coincide, and they definitely don't coincide with our calendaring system. Leap year is a pretty good approximation of "days" to "years", but the lunar cycle and the 7-day week are off by slightly more than a day, drat it! And the cumulative lunar cycles definitely don't coincide with a solar (or stellar) year ... a lunar year is about 11 days short of a solar year; the two only line up every 33 years. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, Jews use a combination lunar/solar calendar. That explains why Easter is tied to the phase of the moon.

Quote:
I'm not familiar with a trend of Lunar Calendars, but I would imagine them less prevalent in Latitudes farther from the Equator, when the Solar cycle is more critical. But on the Equator, what difference does it make what time of the year it is - other than the stars changing position in cycles near 13 moons, but still drifting for multiples of 13 moons (regaining synch every 396 Lunar cycles, or about 11,682 days - or 32 Solar Years)?
I agree. Also, sailing cultures would probably be more attuned to high and low tides.

Thanks for thinking these random thoughts with me!
6
Assuming you meant 33 Lunar Years, approximately equal to 32 Solar Years.

I don't recall the answer to this: are Tides more severe at the equator, or closer to Poles? Tides are more severe when other planets align, right? Tides farther from the Equator change severity more based upon which month/season it is, right? (How inclined the Sun and Moon appear in our sky, meaning "winter" tides are more moderate, right?)

The month of Sextilius (6th) was changed to August when Caesar Augustus modified the Julian Calendar.
The month of Quintilius (5th) was changed to July when Julius Caesar reset the existing calendar into the Julian Calendar.
The original 4th month was named for Juno.
The original 3rd month was named for Maia, Goddess of Spring.
The original 2nd month was named for Aphrodite, Goddess of Love.
The original 1st month, the month to resume war, was named after Mars, God of War.
The Intercalendar month at the end of the year was abolished, I think by either Numa Caesar around 700BC or Julius. Some years have 12 moons, some have 13 moons.
The month of purification or Februa was inserted before March.
When March was moved to the 3rd month, I think by Numa, then the God of Doors and Gateways, Janus, was symbol for the changing of years, the first month.

The years during Roman times were identified by the names of 2 rulers of that time - Calendars were not readily accessible to commoners. So Julius and Augustus were able to imprint what would become the template, although the prior practice remained in primary use for long after they passed. And I think Numerals were a new concept for Romans, since Numa was only the 2nd Caesar, hence they were not applied to other concepts such as Calendars.

I think that Numa, Julius, Augustus, and Gregory were the Romans primarily tinkering with the Roman Calendar.


Why did Mesopotamia choose 7 day weeks? The other "weeks" withered with the expansion of Religion, surely. With 5 fingers, maybe they were unionized enough to get a 2 day weekend? But I think ancient workweeks were at least 6 days of work.

Newfoundland Standard Time and Indian Standard Time are 30 minutes off-sync, and Nepal is 15 minutes off-sync. Plus some places in the Middle East are Half Hour also, I don't have a clear picture and am not certain why. To pray 5 times per day you might think they should have the right time.


I'm thinking this discussion must be really confusing to the Flat Earth Liberals.

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Friday, March 9, 2018 11:19 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Well, obviously Dec is the 10th month, Nov is the 9th month, Octo is the 8th month, and Sept is the 7th month.
Oh, very interesting. I never noticed!

Quote:
The 7 day week maybe adopted due to the Bible's designation of The Sabbeth, and spread via Crusades, Pilgrims, Missionaries. Other Religions may as lso have a basis for 7 day week.
But the earliest 7-day week was found in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE

Quote:
Mesopotamia invented new technology. They were the first to use the wheel. The wagon was a transportation revolution for farming and trade. They developed a number system based on 60--this explains why we have 60 seconds in minute and 60 minutes in an hour.
I never knew that! Oh, the random stuff you learn when you look things up!
Quote:
They used a 12 month calendar with a 7 day week.

https://sites.google.com/site/1ancientcivilizationsforkids/ancient-ira
q-mesopotamia
Possibly the early tribe of Israel came up with a 7-day week independently, but many historians give the nod to Sumer.

Quote:
I'm wondering if there is a language basis for some places and regions having Time Zones which are a Half Hour out of synch with their neighbors. Or is it purely a geographic nature?
There are time zones a half hour out of sync???

Quote:
The 365 day cycle was established beyond the purview of Caesar, Kaiser, Emperor, King, Czar, Tsar - so would you prefer it divided into 73 weeks of 5 days? Lunar cycles would be close to every 6 weeks.
So, another thing I learned ... lunar cycles are 29.5 days, not 28. The rotation of the earth (day), the revolution of the moon ("month") around the earth, and the revolution of the earth around the sun (year) don't conveniently coincide, and they definitely don't coincide with our calendaring system. Leap year is a pretty good approximation of "days" to "years", but the lunar cycle and the 7-day week are off by slightly more than a day, drat it! And the cumulative lunar cycles definitely don't coincide with a solar (or stellar) year ... a lunar year is about 11 days short of a solar year; the two only line up every 33 years. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, Jews use a combination lunar/solar calendar. That explains why Easter is tied to the phase of the moon.

Quote:
I'm not familiar with a trend of Lunar Calendars, but I would imagine them less prevalent in Latitudes farther from the Equator, when the Solar cycle is more critical. But on the Equator, what difference does it make what time of the year it is - other than the stars changing position in cycles near 13 moons, but still drifting for multiples of 13 moons (regaining synch every 396 Lunar cycles, or about 11,682 days - or 32 Solar Years)?
I agree. Also, sailing cultures would probably be more attuned to high and low tides.

Thanks for thinking these random thoughts with me!
6
Assuming you meant 33 Lunar Years, approximately equal to 32 Solar Years.

I don't recall the answer to this: are Tides more severe at the equator, or closer to Poles? Tides are more severe when other planets align, right? Tides farther from the Equator change severity more based upon which month/season it is, right? (How inclined the Sun and Moon appear in our sky, meaning "winter" tides are more moderate, right?)

The month of Sextilius (6th) was changed to August when Caesar Augustus modified the Julian Calendar.
The month of Quintilius (5th) was changed to July when Julius Caesar reset the existing calendar into the Julian Calendar.
The original 4th month was named for Juno.
The original 3rd month was named for Maia, Goddess of Spring.
The original 2nd month was named for Aphrodite, Goddess of Love.
The original 1st month, the month to resume war, was named after Mars, God of War.
The Intercalendar month at the end of the year was abolished, I think by either Numa Caesar around 700BC or Julius. Some years have 12 moons, some have 13 moons.
The month of purification or Februa was inserted before March.
When March was moved to the 3rd month, I think by Numa, then the God of Doors and Gateways, Janus, was symbol for the changing of years, the first month.

The years during Roman times were identified by the names of 2 rulers of that time - Calendars were not readily accessible to commoners. So Julius and Augustus were able to imprint what would become the template, although the prior practice remained in primary use for long after they passed. And I think Numerals were a new concept for Romans, since Numa was only the 2nd Caesar, hence they were not applied to other concepts such as Calendars.

I think that Numa, Julius, Augustus, and Gregory were the Romans primarily tinkering with the Roman Calendar.


Why did Mesopotamia choose 7 day weeks? The other "weeks" withered with the expansion of Religion, surely. With 5 fingers, maybe they were unionized enough to get a 2 day weekend? But I think ancient workweeks were at least 6 days of work.

Newfoundland Standard Time and Indian Standard Time are 30 minutes off-sync, and Nepal is 15 minutes off-sync. Plus some places in the Middle East are Half Hour also, I don't have a clear picture and am not certain why. To pray 5 times per day you might think they should have the right time.


I'm thinking this discussion must be really confusing to the Flat Earth Liberals.
Did you think language had/has any bearing on the fractional hour time zones?

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Wednesday, November 23, 2022 6:58 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

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Thursday, November 24, 2022 8:53 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Why is Spain not in the G20 (but is always invited)?
https://www.thelocal.es/20221117/why-is-spain-not-in-the-g20-but-alway
s-invited/

Relics show ancient Chinese knew eclipses cycle of sun and moon 3,300 years ago
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202211/1280056.shtml

the language of a dead pedophile terrorist known as moohammad proliferates through that disgusting book known as the Quran or Koran?





Ten things you should know about the amendments to Quebec’s Charter of the French language

https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/general/ten-things-you-should-k
now-about-the-amendments-to-quebecs-charter-of-the-french-language/371721


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Thursday, December 1, 2022 6:30 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

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Thursday, December 15, 2022 11:32 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Why The Redefinition Of The Word ‘Woman’ Matters: Ideas corrupt language and language corrupts thought.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/15/why-the-redefinition-of-the-word-
woman-matters/

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Thursday, December 15, 2022 12:54 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Why The Redefinition Of The Word ‘Woman’ Matters: Ideas corrupt language and language corrupts thought.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/15/why-the-redefinition-of-the-word-
woman-matters/


Democrats hate women.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Wednesday, November 29, 2023 1:47 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


Afro Basketball Rapper American 'Vernacular' English




AAVE is not creole and not Low IQ it is something...else


It is not a race thing even White idiots who 'Rap' like Eminem or Marshall Bruce Mathers can say 'Ay Yo ma niggaz dis mudda-fukkas gibs mez dat sheeeeiit'


The Israel-Palestine conflict, explained
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-palestine-
conflict-history-map-b2443579.html

Instagram sorry for adding 'terrorist' to some Palestinian user bios
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67169228

Ancient Scythian Gold, Crimean Treasures Returned to Ukraine After Dispute With Russia
https://www.rferl.org/a/scythian-gold-and-crimean-treasures-returned-t
o-ukraine/32706389.html

There are no Russian-speaking Ukrainians Kiev
https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/274042291/there-are-no-russian-spe
aking-ukrainians-kiev

subtitles need or bad dubbing preferred?

Berlin but it takes place in Paris.


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Wednesday, November 29, 2023 2:14 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Hey, thanks (not) for injecting Islamophobia into a purely theoretical discussion about language.

*****

I was re-reading the original thesis and it occurred to me that "atomicity" of the English language probably affected our numbering system. I imagine it would make us prone to seeing units of measurement in whole numbers.

Now, I know the Greeks were big on ratios and harmonics. They had an early if imprecise knowledge of frequencies, and believed that the universe was harmonic, which is why the early determinatuon of "pi" (irrational number) drove them bug nuts, bc "pi" wasn't harmonic with anything.

Also, an " atomic" language seeks to break things down to their independent units: atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons... but then we get down to subatomic " things" like quarks which seem to be mainly made- up concepts.



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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