Indo-European is the source language from which dozens of modern languages--from Hindi to Croatian to French--have descended. Scholars have been working to break down common words and syntax to reconstruct it for decades.
There has even been an attempt to create a story in what some researchers believe is our best reconstruction of Indo-European.
This is the translation:
This is the original (note that [w] stands for a super-scribed "w" that I cannot do on blogspot) as written by Winfred Lehrmann and Ladislav Zgusta in 1979:
J. P. Mallory, in his In Search of the Indo-Europeans, points out the philosophical dilemma in creating such stories:
The point? Today there are two of them.
1) The minor point: some days I get tired of the propensity of the blogosphere merely to move around or comment on information without injecting something completely new.
2) The major point: go back to my post about Osama bin Laden earlier this week. Is the Osama we see and think about a reconstruction or a reality? Pretty obviously, he's a reconstruction, filtered through a variety of cultural and information lenses. If you actually got to squat in the cave and speak with him, odds are he would be significantly different than your expectations.
But policy and opinions are almost always based on reconstructions, which are then treated as realities.
The problem is, everybody reconstructs differently--especially people from different cultural and political backgrounds.
Do you believe that if I could travel back in time some 5,000 years that I could use The Sheep and the Horses to communicate with the inhabitants? If so, then you can be satisfied with what we say we think we know about bin Laden as an effective substitute for reality.
If not, you're going to have to dig a little deeper.
There has even been an attempt to create a story in what some researchers believe is our best reconstruction of Indo-European.
This is the translation:
The Sheep and the Horses
[On a hill] a sheep that ha no wool saw horses--one pulling a heavy wagon, another one a great load, and another swiftly carrying a man. The sheep said to the horses, "It hurts me seeing a man driving horses."
The horses said to the sheep: "Listen, sheep! It hurts us seeing man, the master, making a warm garment for himself from the wool of a sheep when the sheep has no wool for itself."
On hearing this, the sheep fled into the plain.
This is the original (note that [w] stands for a super-scribed "w" that I cannot do on blogspot) as written by Winfred Lehrmann and Ladislav Zgusta in 1979:
Owis ekwosk[w]e
(G[w][e]rei) owis, k[w]esyo wihna ne est, ekwons espeket, oinom ghe g[w]rum woghom weghontm, oinomk[w]e megam bhorom, oinomk[w]e ghmenm oku bherontm.
Owis nu ekwobh(y)os ewewk[w]ont: Ker aghnutoi moie ekwons agontm nerm widntei.
Ekwos tu ewewk[w]ont: Kludhi, owei, ker aghnutoi nsmei widntbh(y)os: ner, potis, owiom r wihnam sebhi g[w]hermom westrom k[w]rneuti. Neghi owiom wihna esti.
Tod kekluwos owis agrom ebhuget.
J. P. Mallory, in his In Search of the Indo-Europeans, points out the philosophical dilemma in creating such stories:
The question as to what extent the reconstructions, or as some might prefer, linguistic triangulations, represent the "original" language has always been a source of debate. There have been those who would argue that the reconstructed forms are founded on reasonably substantiated linguistic observations and that a linguist, projected back into the past, could make him or herself understood among the earlier speakers of a language. Others prefer to view the reconstructions as merely convenient formulas that express the linguistic histories of the various languages in the briefest possible manner. Their realit is not a subject of concern or interest. [p. 16]
The point? Today there are two of them.
1) The minor point: some days I get tired of the propensity of the blogosphere merely to move around or comment on information without injecting something completely new.
2) The major point: go back to my post about Osama bin Laden earlier this week. Is the Osama we see and think about a reconstruction or a reality? Pretty obviously, he's a reconstruction, filtered through a variety of cultural and information lenses. If you actually got to squat in the cave and speak with him, odds are he would be significantly different than your expectations.
But policy and opinions are almost always based on reconstructions, which are then treated as realities.
The problem is, everybody reconstructs differently--especially people from different cultural and political backgrounds.
Do you believe that if I could travel back in time some 5,000 years that I could use The Sheep and the Horses to communicate with the inhabitants? If so, then you can be satisfied with what we say we think we know about bin Laden as an effective substitute for reality.
If not, you're going to have to dig a little deeper.
Comments
As an aside Mallory is an excellent scholar and I have followed his work for many years.