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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| These languages are all spoken in countries within the natural range of yew. Surely the similarity is not all down to the pervasiveness of English. |
A world first, I think.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | These languages are all spoken in countries within the natural range of yew. Surely the similarity is not all down to the pervasiveness of English. |
A world first, I think. |
I should have phrased it, "these words are all spoken...".
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Don't understand. You have identified a word that appears to be common to more languages than any word anyone else has demonstrated. On the face of things this is significant both for the yew and ...er ... for you.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Don't understand. You have identified a word that appears to be common to more languages than any word anyone else has demonstrated. On the face of things this is significant both for the yew and ...er ... for you. |
I thought you were being rightly sarcastic about my mischoice of words...but before I start celebrating I need to check the same isn't true of other widespread trees.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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It is possible that your two yew groups are not all that far apart. For instance 'x' in Catalan is a 'j' or even 'sh' sound (how do you pronounce Xavi when he's at home?) which overlaps with the j's and ch's cropping up in the second group.
Yew in Hebrew is pronounced 'taksos'. Could be imported, 'from the Greek' as they tend to say.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I thought you were being rightly sarcastic about my mischoice of words...but before I start celebrating I need to check the same isn't true of other widespread trees. |
Well, that would spread your glory further (unless someone's got there before you) but also you will have to check all other words. As far as I know the furthest the linguists have got is a few Indo-European 'root' words.
PS I would have added, "Forget onomatopoeic words like mum and dad" but Michael Portillo assured us last night that in Georgian 'mum' stands for dad and 'dad' stands for mum. But they might have seen him coming.
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| Hatty wrote: | It is possible that your two yew groups are not all that far apart. For instance 'x' in Catalan is a 'j' or even 'sh' sound (how do you pronounce Xavi when he's at home?) which overlaps with the j's and ch's cropping up in the second group.
Yew in Hebrew is pronounced 'taksos'. Could be imported, 'from the Greek' as they tend to say. |
That's interesting & helpful.
So far I have found a fairly similar pattern with oak. But not exactly the same...
Japanese not considered Indo-European (Wiki, etc.) but has similar pronounciation of yew and oak to ours so pervasiveness of English (and American influence in the case of Japan) still to be disproven. Maybe ' Google Translate' isn't all it seems. Have no access to printed dictionaries this week - on leave!
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aurelius wrote:
a fairly similar pattern with oak. But not exactly the same... |
From Google Translate:
Catalan - roure, Galician - carballo, Portuguese - carvalho, Spanish - roble
Latin - quercus, Italian - quercia
French - chene, Breton - dervenn, Welsh - derw, Scots Gaelic -darach, Irish - darach
Greek - drys (sounds like "drees")
Frisian - oak, Danish - eg (sounds like "ech"), Icelandic - eik, German - eiche, Swedish - ek (sounds like "eyak")
Bulgarian, Slovakian, Czech, Russian - dub, Polish - dub (sounds like "dump"), Macedonian - dab (sounds like "daab")
Then some European oddities: Estonian - Tamm, Latvian - ozols (sounds like "oazwols"), Basque (also has its own unique word for yew) - haritz, Slovenian and Croatian - hrast, Romanian - stejar
Further afield:
Georgian - მუხრ- mukha, Armenian կաղնու մեջ (sounds like "kahgnu mej"), Hindi - बलूत ("baloota"), Tamil - ok, Filipino (Tagalog?) - oak, Japanese - オーク - oku (sounds like "orku", Korean - 참나무 - chamnamu, Thai - xok (sounds like "oar"), Khmer - ដើមឈើអុក - daemchheu ok, Sundanese - tangkal ek.
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Mick Harper wrote:
| Ask the archaeologists how they can tell the difference between hunted reindeer (hunter/gatherer style) and ‘followed’ reindeer (proto-Lappish style). |
Maybe they have found datable remains with marks of butchery or spear heads embedded.
| it is unlikely that this animal was in anyway domesticated until about 3,000 years ago, although some estimates indicate domestication took place in Eurasia 7,000 years ago. |
A real AE giveaway. “It is unlikely†cannot be true if other experts have come up with a figure more than twice that. |
agree this expert is talking bollocks.
| Caribou are presumably gone-feral reindeer. |
Caribou is simply the name they have given to reindeer in North America. Biologically they are the same: Rangifer tarandus
| 2) Similarly the southern extent of Reindeer herding barely reaches the wild yew's northern range: |
The case is proved since ‘barely reaches’ is another way of saying ‘precisely aligned’. |
I disagree. they are not precisely aligned, but the difficulty in my reading the very small scale distribution maps on the Web rendered it very difficult for me to compare the borders. A few areas of reindeer population are definitely within the range of yew (which cannot grow below a certain temperature like most of the 'plant kingdom') . The best map I could find is this -
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Maybe they have found datable remains with marks of butchery or spear heads embedded. |
Remind me why 'followers' wouldn't use spears and butchery.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Maybe they have found datable remains with marks of butchery or spear heads embedded. |
Remind me why 'followers' wouldn't use spears and butchery. |
My bad!
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This article is clearly a smoking gun. I'll comment on the abstract, rhe rest of you idle curs can read the nitty-gritty.
Red deer (Cervus elaphus) have played a key role in human societies throughout history, with important cultural significance and as a source of food and materials.
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I don't know where they get this statement from. I've been wandering around 'human societies throughout history' without ever coming across such a bald idea. (I think they probably mean to include 'pre-history' but this is a sign of one set of academics trespassing in the domain of another and not getting the nomenclature quite right.)
| This relationship can be traced back to the earliest human cultures and continues to the present day. |
So, yes, it's pre-history but I don't think these gents really appreciate what 'earliest human cultures' means (or, as may be, doesn't mean). By the by, nobody could possibly say that deer are 'playing a key role in present day human cultures' (unless the Lapps are being slipped in sideways) -- evidence of sloppiness being allied to 'the message'.
| Humans are thought to be responsible for the movement of a considerable number of deer throughout history |
No they're not. Except by us of course.
| although the majority of these movements are poorly described or understood. |
This is academese for 'nobody's really thought about it and we propose to do so but without seeming to be seen as too radically rocking the boat'.
| Studying such translocations allows us to better understand ancient human–wildlife interactions |
Not necessarily. Not necessarily at all. As you have just said, how the ancients did it is poorly understood. Still, every little bit helps.
| and in the case of island colonizations, informs us about ancient human maritime practices. |
Well now, nobody's ever mentioned deer on ancient boats before so that's out. Nobody's ever mentioned conducting deer across short bodies of water before (unlike cattle) so that's out.
| This study uses DNA sequences to characterise red deer genetic diversity across the Scottish islands (Inner and Outer Hebrides and Orkney) and mainland using ancient deer samples, and attempts to infer historical colonization events. |
Good egg! Some science at last.
| We show that deer from the Outer Hebrides and Orkney are unlikely to have originated from mainland Scotland, implying that humans introduced red deer from a greater distance. |
Good egg! Science just overthrew whole batches of history and pre-history.
| Our results are also inconsistent with an origin from Ireland or Norway, suggesting long-distance maritime travel by Neolithic people to the outer Scottish Isles from an unknown source. |
Blimey O'Reilly, this will be overthrowing even our history and pre-history.
| Common haplotypes and low genetic differentiation between the Outer Hebrides and Orkney imply common ancestry and/or gene flow across these islands. Close genetic proximity between the Inner Hebrides and Ireland, however, corroborates previous studies identifying mainland Britain as a source for red deer introductions into Ireland. This study provides important information on the processes that led to the current distribution of the largest surviving indigenous land mammal in the British Isles. |
So, deer in Britain came from.... where now? Not told -- which is careful ignoral since we have already been assured that Norway is out suggesting they know the haplotypes of European deer generally. But wherever it was, the deer from the outer islands and Orkney came from somewhere else! When they find out, if they find out, that will give us some of our answers. If it is all down to domestication, we'll find out even more.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Could there be a connection between
Yew ... Jew (English)
if ... juif (French)
Yews are associated with a) ancientness, b) toxicity and Jews have various attributes, notably ancientness and usury. If a connection does exist, it probably has a folk rather than factual basis but it would be an explanation of sorts for why churchyards have yews.
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