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The Etymology Of Problematic Words

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    #51
    Originally posted by Levin View Post
    I'd love to be able to suggest using Albion, as wikipedia tells us;

    "The Common Brittonic name for the island, Hellenised as Albíōn (Ἀλβίων) and Latinised as Albiōn (genitive Albionis), derives from the Proto-Celtic nasal stem *Albi̯iū (oblique *Albiion-) and survived in Old Irish as Albu (genitive Albann). The name originally referred to Britain as a whole, but was later restricted to Caledonia (giving the modern Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland, Alba). The root *albiio- is also found in Gaulish and Galatian albio- ("world") and Welsh elfydd (elbid, "earth, world, land, country, district"). It may be related to other European and Mediterranean toponyms such as Alpes, Albania and Liban. It has two possible etymologies: either *albho-, a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "white" (perhaps in reference to the white southern shores of the island, though Celtic linguist Xavier Delamarre argued that it originally meant "the world above, the visible world", in opposition to "the world below", i.e., the underworld), or *alb-, Proto-Indo-European for "hill"."

    But it's somehow become just middle england hasn't it?
    As a word to describe an island of the north west coast of Europe which in reality means 'the world', I can think of no better name for these Brexit times.

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      #52
      Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
      I’m sure there’s a few frothy letters to the Scotsman editor Proud Unionist of Morningside types who still give their address on the post as North Britain like they are fucking David Hume or something.
      I was visiting a fancy hotel in the Highlands, and they had guestbooks going all the way back to the 1920s. What was fascinating was that nearly everyone coming from Scotland put their nationality down as British and most people from England said they were English. That starts to change in the post-war era, as more and more people in Scotland start to use the descriptor of 'Scottish'. At the same time, people from England start to use British much more, though by the 1980s, it's still 50-50, but Scotland is utterly dominant.

      And then, sometime in the early 90s, everyone stopped writing their nationality in that box, instead giving their impression of the place or some comment about the facilities.

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        #53
        Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
        I thought they were originally from Central Europe, specifically Pannonia
        I just watched the documentary. It’s complicated. The oldest Celtic finds are in Central Europe, but then they’ve also found evidence that the Celts of Ireland and Britain had trading contacts with Celts in Portugal, so they were sailing/rowing up and down the coast. And there’s also evidence that swords found in Gaul were from a technology invented in Britain.

        Or something like that.

        The point is the migrations of culture and people went in multiple directions, and they were a lot more sophisticated than the Roman writers would have us believe.

        Unfortunately, they didn’t bother to write anything down, or if they did, it mostly disappeared.

        I need to read up on the history of writing and books/scrolls. It seems that so much of our history is skewed by whatever written records happen to still exist, but the records of lots of cultures have been lost or never existed. It’s possible that, for example, Native Americans had all kinds of brilliant ideas much better than Plato or Aristotle but didn’t see the point of writing it down, since they were doing just fine with their oral tradition. After all, parchment and paper were hard to come by and writing on stone is a pain in the ass.
        Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 19-01-2018, 23:32.

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          #54
          Originally posted by NHH View Post
          I was visiting a fancy hotel in the Highlands, and they had guestbooks going all the way back to the 1920s. What was fascinating was that nearly everyone coming from Scotland put their nationality down as British and most people from England said they were English. That starts to change in the post-war era, as more and more people in Scotland start to use the descriptor of 'Scottish'. At the same time, people from England start to use British much more, though by the 1980s, it's still 50-50, but Scotland is utterly dominant.

          And then, sometime in the early 90s, everyone stopped writing their nationality in that box, instead giving their impression of the place or some comment about the facilities.
          Interesting.
          I’m surprised people don’t put down more specific locations like cities or counties.

          While abroad, I tell people I’m from Pennsylvania. They already know I’m from the US. If they want more detail I tell them I live 200 miles straight west from New York.

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            #55
            I need to read up on the history of writing and books/scrolls. It seems that so much of our history is skewed by whatever written records happen to still exist, but the records of lots of cultures have been lost or never existed. It’s possible that, for example, Native Americans had all kinds of brilliant ideas much better than Plato or Aristotle but didn’t see the point of writing it down, since they were doing just fine with their oral tradition. After all, parchment and paper were hard to come by and writing on stone is a pain in the ass.

            There has to be a reason for people to write things down. Maintaining power generally means not sharing ideas, writing by default endangers that. So, like Egyptian priests, you create a system that's incredibly hard to decipher, or takes years of study to comprehend, or you sustain an orality only policy for as long as possible.

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              #56
              Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
              I thought they were originally from Central Europe, specifically Pannonia
              I saw yet another documentary just today and apparently genetics research shows that the Celts of Ireland, Wales, the highlands, and Cornwall aren’t very related to the Celts of Central Europe. They’re probably more related to the really ancient people who put up the stones here and there like Stonehenge. Archeologists can’t really find any evidence of them arriving at any particular time. It’s as if they just sprung from the earth.

              So it seems the Celtic language and culture, which not much is known about, spread by trade more than by migration.

              Also, the Bering “land bridge” idea about how the first Americans arrived is starting to be modified. It appears there may have been a lot more sea travel from Asia down the whole coast of North and South America. It’s not clear if it was one language group that came and split up or multiple groups that came and split up more. Probably the latter.

              All of this shows that our spiecies has known how to make boats for a *very* long time. And yet, I sails weren’t m developed until relatively late. Well, maybe they knew that sails would work, but they’re really hard to make without advanced textile technology.

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                #57
                Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                I need to read up on the history of writing and books/scrolls. It seems that so much of our history is skewed by whatever written records happen to still exist, but the records of lots of cultures have been lost or never existed. It’s possible that, for example, Native Americans had all kinds of brilliant ideas much better than Plato or Aristotle but didn’t see the point of writing it down, since they were doing just fine with their oral tradition. After all, parchment and paper were hard to come by and writing on stone is a pain in the ass.

                There has to be a reason for people to write things down. Maintaining power generally means not sharing ideas, writing by default endangers that. So, like Egyptian priests, you create a system that's incredibly hard to decipher, or takes years of study to comprehend, or you sustain an orality only policy for as long as possible.
                That makes sense.

                The Sumerians - like five thousand years ago - wrote cuniform on clay tablets and, apparently, a lot of it was just to keep accounts. The original Excel.

                So i’d guess bronze and Iron Age traders would need to keep track of their inventory and what not. Of course, that could be done with relatively simple tools - on wood or chalk or knots on a rope or something like that - and they wouldn’t save it for long nor would it survive if they did.

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                  #58
                  A digression, but I went to see the Scythian exhibition at the British Museum last year and, stunning though the metalwork was, what really made it was the more transient stuff that the permafrost conditions in Siberia had preserved; textiles, rugs, even a false beard. With written texts, one always wonders whether the accident of their survival can actually serve to skew our understanding of the culture that produced them.

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                    #59
                    Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                    That makes sense.

                    The Sumerians - like five thousand years ago - wrote cuniform on clay tablets and, apparently, a lot of it was just to keep accounts. The original Excel.

                    So i’d guess bronze and Iron Age traders would need to keep track of their inventory and what not. Of course, that could be done with relatively simple tools - on wood or chalk or knots on a rope or something like that - and they wouldn’t save it for long nor would it survive if they did.
                    Yeah the Sumerians had around four thousand pictograms. But it would've been like book-keeping with emojis. The Phoenicians were the dudes that nailed it. Twenty-one characters, a breeze to learn whether you were in Syria or Sicily.

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                      #60
                      Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                      Yeah the Sumerians had around four thousand pictograms. But it would've been like book-keeping with emojis.
                      That’s the new thing with the young people, I’m told.

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                        #61
                        Originally posted by Benjm View Post
                        A digression, but I went to see the Scythian exhibition at the British Museum last year and, stunning though the metalwork was, what really made it was the more transient stuff that the permafrost conditions in Siberia had preserved; textiles, rugs, even a false beard. With written texts, one always wonders whether the accident of their survival can actually serve to skew our understanding of the culture that produced them.
                        Yes, but our understanding of culture is also skewed by artifacts. It’s rare to have those kinds of non-metal things preserved.

                        It was really handy that a number of old cultures buried people - at least rich people - with loads of their stuff. That shows us that they had class stratification and maybe some things about who was valued - it wasn’t always men or warriors - but we know little about the working classes. Typical really. Fucking toffs.

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                          #62
                          went to the Petrie Museum in london where they have a lot of souvenirs. like mummified mice which you could buy on site to leave as offerings and then left in the storeroom.

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