Indo-European languages of Europe

I was watching the TV this morning and heard some oriental-looking people in a (apparently) Tibetan film saying a sentence I had heard already in other films about India and the Tibet: oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ (Devanagari ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ), probably the most famous mantra in Buddhism, the six syllabled mantra of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara (Tibetan Chenrezig). Then I remember that my sister-in-law has Oṃ (Skr. Aum) tattooed on his hand, withoug knowing what that means, and after finding a website that asserts “mani” is from Tamil origin (’exported’ to Latin), I decided to write this (incomplete) post about its known etymology.

After the Wikipedia article:

Mantras may be interpreted by practitioners in many ways, or even as mere sequences of sound whose effects lie beyond strict meaning.

Oṃ: Aum (also Om, Devanagari ॐ, see picture) is a mystical or sacred syllable in the Dharmic religions, consisting of the three sounds (a), (u), and (m), representing various fundamental triads and believed to be the spoken essence of the universe. It is placed at the beginning of most Hindu texts as a sacred exclamation to be uttered at the beginning and end of a reading of the Vedas or previously to any prayer or mantra. The Mandukya Upanishad is entirely devoted to the explanation of the syllable.With preceding a or ā, the o of om in Sanskrit grammar in sandhi (Sanskrit: संधि, “joining”) does not form vriddhi (au) but guna (o) per Pāṇini 6.1.95.
The Sanskrit name for the syllable is praṇava, from a root nu “to shout, sound, praise”, verbal pra-nu- being attested as “to make a humming or droning sound” in the Brahmanas, and taking the specific meaning of “to utter the syllable om” in the Chandogya Upanishad and the Shrauta Sutras.
In Puranic Hinduism, Aum is the mystic name for the Hindu Trimurti, and represents the union of the three gods, viz. a for Brahma, u for Vishnu and m for Mahadev which is another name of Shiva. The three sounds also symbolise the three Vedas (Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda).

Maṇi-:“Jewel, gem, cintamani”. Compare Avestan maini, Latin monile (hence PIE *moni-?), borrowed into Tamil mani.

Padma: “Lotus”. I couldn’t find any known relatives. Someone out there?

The middle part of the mantra, maṇi padme, is often interpreted as “jewel in the lotus” Sanskrit maṇí “jewel, gem, cintamani” and the locative of padma “lotus”, but some interpret Maṇipadme as a vocative, not a locative, addressing a bodhisattva called Maṇipadma, “Jewel-Lotus”.

Hūṃ: is an exclamation or interjection, the like of which are also frequently found in mantras and in old Hittite texts.

The title is somehow formal, but I couldn’t find a better one.
I tried to talk with my uncle again about Indo-European: I don’t care about a thousand ignorants saying “PIE is an invention”, but it’s obvious I don’t like a learned Latin professor like him promoting this idea among his students…

So, after introducing the question (”how are things in the Uni?..Oh…hmm, and, about Indo-European…”), and beginning the debate, we ended up by saying:

(Me) - How can you say you are objective? The whole family believes you (and not me) only because you are a Latin professor, but you haven’t ever read anything about the Proto-Indo-European language: you just decided it didn’t exist and that’s all.

(Uncle) - And? You just decided that it existed and that’s all.

Puff, he won again in front of the family: “PIE invention 2 - PIE real 0″. Now, did he really win the debate? Was there any debate at all? Are we (the family) a good example of argument, debate, logic?

After the Wikipedia, the Argumentation theory consists of:

- Understanding and identifying the presentation of an argument, either explicit or implied, and the goals of the participants in the different types of dialogue.
- Identifying the conclusion and the premises from which the conclusion is derived
- Establishing the “burden of proof” — determining who made the initial claim and is thus responsible for providing evidence why his/her position merits acceptance.
- For the one carrying the “burden of proof”, the advocate, to marshal evidence for his/her position in order to convince or force the opponent’s acceptance. The method by which this is accomplished is producing valid, sound, and cogent arguments, devoid of weaknesses, and not easily attacked.
- In a debate, fulfillment of the burden of proof creates a burden of rejoinder. One must try to identify faulty reasoning in the opponent’s argument, to attack the reasons/premises of the argument, to provide counterexamples if possible, to identify any logical fallacies, and to show why a valid conclusion cannot be derived from the reasons provided for his/her argument.

Why is it so easy to avoid such formal process when it comes to debating about PIE?
Can you imagine somebody saying “What about Rome? That is an invention of Latin lovers. What, not? Then prove it to me; no, really, I mean, show me actual proofs”. Or “What, the Krebs Cycle? All that Acetyl-CoA, Acetate and that stuff? That’s an invention of doctors. Oh really? Prove that I’m wrong - show me the molecules”.

I thought before that the family was the worst place to discuss anything - from politics to science -, as my grandmother previously selects who is right because of his age (the older you are the better), and then the rest of us are quiet unless we support the ‘chosen winner’… But now, seeing what some are saying out there about Proto-Indo-European (and how they are saying it), I think I should have learned to debate in such a difficult environment (instead of laughing always at our stupid conversations) to be able to debate other similar stupidities.

I guess linguistics has left science and has come so near to politics in some fields (viz. Basque is the oldest language, Tamil is the oldest language, PIE didn’t exist, and so on), that unless you are prepared to maintain your position against thousands of immovable opinions, ideas, and beliefs, and to get enrolled in different (’for’ and ‘against’) bands, you’d rather study maths.

The time when most linguistic discussions were about achieving scientific consensus is finished - long live individual ideas!

Addition: I thought it was worth it to add a link to an interesting post I found, related to a personal discussion on evolution vs. revisionism, and I would select this short paragraph to summarize it:

All that remains is me thinking that my belief is based on more evidence than his belief, and that’s where the evidence comes in. Hence a never ending cycle simply because I don’t understand the science well enough myself to articulate and defend it.

From dmiessler blog.

About the Proto-Indo-European language, one could say that a “proven hypothesis” is a fact. It’s not a certainty and it never will be until we invent time machines, but it’s a well-supported and widely accepted theory. With this kind of theory, it’s not a question of proven or unproven, because you can’t ever prove it. As far as the PIE reconstruction goes, there are a lot of competing reconstructions, and we’ll never know which one is right, although certain features can be established with a high level of confidence.

After reading what some pretentious guys from textkit.com had to say in their forum about our revival project, I decided to talk with my uncle about Indo-European; he was the Dean of a Spanish University, and is an expert philologist in Classical languages (i.e. Latin and Greek) - he has translated Latin authors and all that stuff, and was recently in the US to translate an author (Catulo?) from some original texts that an important eastern University had bought from a European library.

Who could be more open to the idea of a reconstructed Indo-European language than him? I just mentioned the word “Indo-European” and he said: “what, that! an invention, nothing more. So, hm…, you have English ‘father’, Latin ‘pater’, and… ehh…then you have Indo-European ‘pater’ or what? pfff what a language” and so on. He said more or less what other Spanish famous linguists are saying about our project: Francisco Villar (Latin professor at Salamanca, author of “Lenguas y pueblos indoeuropeos”) and José Antonio Pascual (member of the Royal Spanish Academy, RAE).

Let’s examine other similar sentences:

- “I think we have sufficiently talked about this matter and these Holocaust events need to be further investigated by independent and impartial parties”. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran. Holocaust denial.

- “Certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection (’Darwinism’)”. Discovery Institute Think Tank. Creationism (Evolution denial)

- “The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. … We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.” Oregon Institute, in opposition to the Kyoto protocol. Climate change denial.

Such ‘denials’ usually refer to disinformation campaigns promoted and funded by groups with an interest in misrepresenting the scientific consensus on different issues, particularly groups with ties to a group with opposing ideas. Denialism is thus the rejection of views that are strongly supported by scientific or historical evidence by governments, business groups, interest groups or individuals who seek to influence policy processes and outcomes.

I guess the interest of some Americans (and Europeans too) in denying the existence of PIE, and thus the possibility of reconstructing and using it as a modern language, is about simple fear (or rough hate) of the idea of Europe becoming united as a single country, what is called Euroscepticism in Great Britain. Latin and Greek linguistic experts fans, probably don’t want to see their beloved classical languages somehow ‘reduced’ to simple dialects of an older (thus, more important for them?) language, after having dedicated all their lifes to the study of what seemed the only ancient European languages.

Anyway, trying to be as neutral as possible, I think the only solution here - when we want to remain within scientific limits - is to answer a simple question: who has the Onus Probandi (Burden of proof)? After more than 200 years of Indo-European studies, I think that to be a University Dean, a member of the Royal Spanish Academy or a professor at Salamanca doesn’t allow anyone to simply say “Indo-European is an invention” and “let’s use Latin as Europe’s lingua franca“.

If Modern Indo-European is or is not a good approach to the reconstruction(s) of the Proto-Indo-European language, and if Europe needs it, or if Europeans wish or will be able to adopt it as Europe’s national language, that’s another question. But that the Indo-European language existed and that it has been reconstructed with a high level of confidence, that’s undeniable, unless we enter in the non-scientific field of personal opinions.

A well-known Spanish saying is “opinions are like asses: everyone has one”; I just don’t have the time nor the patience necessary to look at every ass out there.

I have discovered (among tons of anti-spam spam) a mail from a Wikipedian asking for collaboration on the discussion about some controversy regarding an article on Dnghu’s project, about Indo-European language revival - as far as I’ve read, it seems to deal with the question “is Modern Indo-European as Modern Hebrew?” - Even if I wanted to participate, I don’t know what else could I say, that is not already written down in our grammar.

Some months ago I saw that some links were coming from the Wikipedia article “Europaio” - of course, I felt excited about it, but then I read the talk page, the first entry log was a certain user CrCulver (now disappeared, I’ve found the same user in Citizendium) trying to delete immediatly the entry saying “Non-notable conlang project, and it appears that the initiator of it himself has put up this article (and put links to it in inappropriate places), so it’s also vanity“. That had already happened weeks before, and the question appeared to be solved, but it still bothered me a lot when I first read what was written about me and the project, and in the most visited online Encyclopedia.

I looked for the creator of the article, and it was a Mr. Extremaduran - hence probably from Extremadura, and apparently a new user created just to add the project. So, OK, there were signs that it could be me or one of us, and a bad day is a bad day, and all of us have accused or suspected from others, but that guy left his comment publicly “non-notable” “conlang” and “vanity” - two strikes against the project (without even reading it, as it was minutes after the addition), and one against me personally, without even giving me the possibility to answer - a personal mail could have made the difference (even a post in our forum like “hey dude, you fucking spammer, I’m insulting you and your stupid project publicly, just in case you wanna answer me”, that could have saved me the annoyance).

Then some others have tried to discuss in the talk page about our project, trying to ascertain what is exactly all about, and some absurd comments about what we really mean and do and want (which is what we clearly state in our website) and the rest can be seen in the discussion page.

Then I received incoming links from a discussion page in the German wikipedia to this personal blog, and again some were talking about our “conlang” - I showed up and (using one of our IPs, so there could be no confussion) I said I didn’t want the project to appear as a conlang. They eventually deleted it - “not even the creator thinks it is notable” - yes, that was the point, not even reading my comment…

Adapted from a R. Galli’s post I read some time ago (in http://mnm.uib.es/gallir/):

I think wikipedians can do whatever they think appropriate with their project, I understand it and think we should support this free project. But when they begin to 1) accuse others of spamming (without us being even aware of what is going on), 2) take arbitrary decisions like deleting articles because of “spam” (even after they have been vandalized), without following its own rules and “consensus”, 3) that even the same persons (a certain Mr. Christian Culver and others) dare to criticize the projects and works of others from the most profound ignorance, and 4) that they use their own opinions as arguments to justify their public editions in a work read by many - Now, even after some wikipedians tried to solve it (moving it to “Modern Indo-European”), other wikipedians are trying to delete it for “not notable enough” - so, now eventually using their self-defined rules -; That whole mess could discourage everyone.

And all this is brought to you without having even asked or tried to be there.

I don’t know if I wanted the project to be there one year ago, but I certainly thought before that it was a honour to be written about. Now I don’t - just see the discussion page on the German Wikipedia article, where dozens of personal “conlangs” were talked about as ‘personal shit’ along with our serious revival project of a language reconstructed by Indo-European scholars. Today it can happen that someone brands you as spammer, and that people think you are a spammer, or that wikipedians (just by creating an account) become judges of thousands of hours of work even without reading or knowing first what is all about.

Unless you are a very famous person, a friend of the administrators, or some project related to them, preferably North-American (or British), and that you or your project falls near the environment of some administrators, you might have it very hard to defend an article, it seems — some seem to know about everything, to the point they can decide about what is relevant and what not: I would really like to be an administrator, with all that knowledge about everything.

They can do with wikipedia.org whatever they like, they have the right to do it, and the Internet doesn’t end with the Wikimedia Foundation.
But things should be clear. One day you may wake up and see that because some well-minded person (or not so well-minded) wanted you or your project to be there, you are a “spammer” and a “vain” “conlanger” - and you still drinking your first coffee…

No, I don’t want to be there editing articles and participating in discussions with their administrators. If they want to talk about the project, they will have to read first about it (in our websites or in the press) - if they have questions, there is an open forum. It’s better not to be there and being able to work hard on the own projects, instead of trying to convince others that this or that account is not you, that this or that information is notable enough, or even care about your article just to apologize because some have considered your project “notable”, and have used their time to work a neutral and brief description of it. No, thanks.

Edit: By the way, what some Spanish media have done, vandalizing the Spanish Wikipedia to show how easy is to change it, showing it on TV, is a shame, and indeed I support wikipedia.org against such stupid examples of how to bother an online project.

I have read and heard many stupidities regarding linguistic status and language differences:

- Brazilian is a different language (i.e. not Portuguese), because Galician is a language also (yes, Galician is interestingly enough a ‘language’ which stops in the administrative division between Spain and Portugal - more or less like Valencian and Catalan).
- French is a beautiful language, and because of that many African countries learn it (yes, South-American Indians also wanted to learn Spanish because it was so cool).
- English comes from Latin, as French, Spanish or Portuguese (no comments)…
- Language x (say, Esperanto, Spanish or Polish) is great because it is read exactly as it is written! (yeah, let’s give a value to each letter or pair of letters, or invent new characters, and then invent something great to praise the own language!)
- Proto-Indo-European cannot be reconstructed, because it wasn’t written down, therefore it is, unlike Latin or English, not real (yes; we’ll wait till somebody invents a MET powerful enough to watch chemical bonds, instead of studying all those stupid unproven hypothesis…)
- Basques, Finns and Hungarians will hate speaking Indo-European in the EU (yes, they love to speak English; but a common Indo-European language? that’s colonization and racism!)
- and so on.

Now, only from time to time, there is a question so obviously misinterpreted that nobody seems ‘neutral enough’ to comment on it. Today is the time of the “Tamil question” - I like Indo-European languages, and I’m thus not ‘neutral enough’ for Tamil lovers, but I think it is not important, since everyone has an opinion and mine won’t change anything.

The whole question is summed up here (Wikipedia discussion), where some Tamil speakers are short from calling Tamil the Indus Valley Civilization language. It is not surprising, since N. Kazanas and others pretend that Sanskrit fits that role, being itself almost Proto-Indo-European, and this in turn spoken of course in the Indus Valley some thousands of years before any study can possibly lead us to (Out of India Theory).

Now, Indo-European studies are full of hypothesis, as comparative grammar. In the 20th century, physics and chemistry were disciplines where different hypothesis (their supporters) fought against each other, and nationals got involved defending their scientists. This had a good consequence, namely that normal people were involved in scientific evolution, and that scientists were like today’s football (or soccer) players - well, maybe not so important, but almost so renowned.

Nowadays, due to the neo-romanticism brought back by neo-nationalisms (in which race and genetics is not spoken about so loud, and thus only language remains as a differentiation factor), linguistics is a discipline spoken about by anyone, and linguists are cheered up by politicians and stupid followers alike. If I talk in the BBC about a research paper (whatever its value) on Tamil dating back to 9.000 BCE, I will be the hero of lots of Tamil speakers, whereas if I talk about Sanskrit being the oldest language on earth, Indo-Aryan speakers will lift me up to the category of ‘experts in linguistics worth mentioning in popular sites like Wikipedia or Yahoo! Answers’…

The question here is easy, and is not worth more than a paragraph to solve: roughly, Tamil corresponds to Hindi, Old Tamil to Old Hindi, Proto-Tamil (or Proto-Southern Dravidian) to Late Sanskrit, Proto-Dravidian to Sanskrit, pre-Proto-Dravidian to Vedic Sanskrit, pre-pre-Proto-Dravidian to Proto-Indo-Iranian, pre-pre-pre-Proto-Dravidian to Proto-Indo-European, and so on. The conclusion is simple: language history, reconstructed language, literature’s history, etc. all speak in favour of Sanskrit as the oldest attested language in India, and therefore India’s only classical language - just like Latin and Greek in Europe. The fact that the European Union recognizes in the near future, say, Balto-Slavic or Germanic as “classical languages of Europe” won’t change that fact either.

I could get deeper, but I wrote already about a similar question, “Basque:the oldest language“.

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