Hungarian and Sumerian?

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Postby Levo » 2007-08-03, 11:42

nJohn West-Hungary wrote:
NAJAHUHA nicknéven töltöm időm jórészét az ORIGO és az INDEX történelmi fórumain.

Helyes. 8)

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Postby Egein » 2007-08-03, 19:16

nJohn West-Hungary wrote:
Egein wrote:Most unlinguistic thread ever.


And They ?


NEW-AGE in the research:

( Laszló MARACZ,linguistic, Univ. Amsterdam
A. MARCANTONIO,linguistic, Univ.La Sapiensa, Rome,
Geza BALÁZS,linguistic, Univ. ELTE, Budapest ,
Janos PUSZTAY,linguistic, Univ West-Hungarian, Berzsenyi-Institute, Szombathely ,
M. ALINEI,linguistic, emerit. prof. Univ. Utrecht ,
K. CZEGLÉDY,linguistic, Univ. Nagy Lajos, Miskolc ,
E. ARADI, indologist, Univ. Janus Pannonius, Asia Institute, Pécs,
B. OBRUSÁNSZKY, historian-orientalist, Hungarian Science Academy
M. ERDY , orientalist, USA,
K. BAKAY , archeologist-historian, Univ. Nagy Lajos, Miskolc
Alfred Tóth, linguistic, mathematician, Switzerland


etc..etc..

from FINNISH:

Künnap, Wiik, Julku etc....


Most unlinguistic THREAD ever. And by thread I mean YOU. You're english has come in the way of what you are trying to say. That's a hint whispering that you should LEARN it better.
(is)(fi)
Nouse pois nokinen poika / nokiselta nuotiolta / havuisilta vuoteilta /pihkaisilta pään aloilta
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bluaMauritius

Postby bluaMauritius » 2007-08-05, 17:56

angry-NulNuk wrote:that thing is full of bull-shit!!!
firsth they say the Hungarians are desendents of
Kush ,
but acording to the Bible the Afrikans are the desendents of Kush
(Kush is the Biblical name of Afrika allso !
and in Hebrew Kushi=Afrikan ).

second ,the Magyars come from from the area of Skandinavia
and the Norther Ural montains ,same as the rest of the Finno-Ugaric
and the Huns are Tartars ,they came from Mongolia ,
non of those two come from Persia !.

thirth ,the Magyars came to Hungary after the Huns ,
htye were not there before ,before there used to live in
there German tribes ,not Finno-Ugaric !.

no one knows where the Sumerians came from ,there are many
teories ,but it is knowed into what they became ,
the desendents of the Sumerians are the Ixos and the
Akadians ,the Ixos moved to Egipt ,
the Akadians became Babylonians ,non of those went north!.
the Sumerian language is close related (antesesor)
or Sumerian Hebrew and Akadian ,and have no relationship
with Magyar wich is a Finno-Ugaric language ,or with
Tartar or Roma or any other language used by the
Huns and their alays (the Gypsis) .

the semitic ppl didnt arrived to messopotamia ,they
are originaly from Mesopotamia ,the Sumerians came
from some where else .

the Oldest cities are Yericho and Susita ,both Semitic
both in Israel ,not Sumerians.

I didnt keep readidnt till the end since there is no
point on that ,this article was writed by a stupid nationalistic person
that strongly belives the whole world civilisation was develop
from the magyars :0P

dont waste you`r time with this bullshit it will take you no where .


Respondo:
Povable oni meliore povas tra-regardi la affaeran, sze oni prenas dal ajuvo la comparadon de la thesauro basa.
Notis-mi praelongam jam exemple tiujn ce parencsagjoin:
En Línguai Hungara cai Sumera njaemas passivo. En ambau Línguai la passivo formidsas al mettado de accusativo (Hungaresae per: -t) antílocau la nominativo, plus mettado de activo antílocau passivo verbes.
Crom tio ambaulínguaie exsistas la ergativo.
Ambaulínguaie seshatas infix del pronóm persónea, intermettata en postposício.
Ambaulínguaie trovatas la regulerna postposício de tio, qvion en Línguai occidentai oni nomas 'praeposícioi'. Exemple rarofoaje en Linguna: maicanelca = iu sen maica (Fr.: {quelqu'un/e} sans mère.`
Ímeas basai rádicoi cai lexoi tre parencsai inter ambau Línguai.
La probablo - dum studoi trovita - cresqis qve Sumeresa est una Língua appartena al la circl las
Línguais Altajais, ecz cun pauletto da parencsagjo cun las Fínneo-Ugrais cai las Sqythais. Eventuale ecz la runoi Djermanai de Swédia trovitai enparte aro prasignoi iamai las Prafínneois, do sechantai ligezzan al la prasignoi Sumerai, qvancam la Sumeroi el tio suain signoin proprain cai la coinografían obriz. -

Est concludeble la Sumeroin esti Pramadjaroi au alminu inter illi esti pra-parencsagjoi. La Língua Sumera una isolita ne est! -

---hdito ~*~

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Postby nJohn West-Hungary » 2007-08-15, 22:00

7. HUN TEXTS IN MATENADARAN OR IN THE SURB KHÁCS?


Of course, the Matenadaran has Hunnish texts. Some groups called Huns roamed in the plainer regions of the foots of the Caucasus between at least 505 and 682. Pawstos Buzand reports that Huns killed Grigoris, grandson of Gregory, the Illuminator, sometimes in the IVth century about 340 [12]. (Then, of course, Huns were just going to West: they crossed the Volga (Rha, Itil) in 370 under Chief Balambér (this is the Magyar form) and in 375 the Don [13]. Then, after the Nedao battle various groups went to East, and Saragurs reached Daghestan at least in 505. And in the VIIth century Mowses Kalankatuaci (?) still reports Huns in the neighbourhood [12], [14]. (I omit such diacritics which are not too hopeful on Internet.)


Are they really Huns, more than 2 centuries after the Nedao battle? Who knows. But Kalankatuaci tells that they burn horses for a giant monster named Tangari Xan. Now, Tängri Khagan, or in other style the Kök Tängri is the Eternal Blue Sky, the chief deity of all traditional Turks and Mongols, and of course religious horseriders, including old Magyars, offered horses to the chief god. Even Ob Ugors know that in great matters the gods would prefer horses. So Kalankatuaci's Huns are some horserider people indeed.


Now, cca. in 682 Israel, Bishop of Mec Kolmank, "converts the Huns". Maybe not all of them; but at least from this time some Armenian priests are among the "Huns", so Hun texts may be in the Matenadaran, only we cannot predict, what was the language of these Huns. We know hardly anything even about the language(s) of Attila's Huns.


And now it is proper to start to cite Ref. [3]. Immediately the subtitle on p. 2 states that "The Hun Little Dictionary and the Grammar Part was made according to the Grabar (Old Armenian) translated by Ödön Schütz & Csaba Detre (1978)." And near the end of the booklet one can find a reference "Edmund Sjuc: Hin hajeren - chuneren jerkulezú matjanner Iráni medzs - Matenadaran, Jereván, 1962". Fortunately a Magyar translation is also given (in this form even Armenians would be in trouble: an Armenian text with Magyar orthography cannot be understood for anybody except a Hungarian Armenian/Armenologist) "Ödön Schütz: Very old Armenian-Hunnish bilingual manuscripts in Iran, Matenadaran, Yerevan, 1962".


I did not see this publication and shall not be able to read it in the close future (anyways, it is in Armenian), so I remain at [3]. [3] tells that two manuscripts contain Hunnish texts, the Isphahan Codex and the Codex Cretensis, the first was written cca. 500, the second in cca. 700, and now both are in the Abbey of Szurb Khács (Sacred Crux), in Isphahan, Iran. I do not know how they were dated; but if the dating is correct, then the Codex Isphahanicus belongs to the arriving Saragurs (or to the Sabirs; cf. Chap. 15), and the Codex Cretensis to the Huns of Bishop Israel.





8. ON THE SCHÜTZ-DETRE TRANSLITERATION


Detre or Schütz (or both?) applied an unexpected method when interpreting the texts. The Magyar orthography is very phonetic (of course, for the Magyar phonemes), and Armenian is too, for the Armenian ones. The Armenian alphabet contains 38 simple letters (one, for the open "o" sound, was not yet in use in 700), + some ligatures. Magyar, including di- and trigraphs, has an alphabet of 44 signs (of which, to be sure, 4 do not represent Magyar phonemes). Although the two phoneme sets do not coincide (there are more consonants in Armenian and more vowels in Magyar), it was obviously better to transliterate the "Hunnish" words into Magyar than, say, into non-phonetic English or into Latin of 25 letters. (Henceforth I omit the quotation marks of "Hunnish". OK, they were maybe Saragurs or Belendjers; it seems that Hun was not a language but a tribal federation, but Saragurs had belonged to the Empire of Attila the Hun, and the educated guess of historians about the nomads of Northern Daghestan between 500 & 700 is generally "some Altaic".


Note that in XVth century the Armenian alphabet was regularly applied to an Altaic language: a Kipchak Turk tribe converted to Armenian Christianism in Poland and of course took Armenian letters [15]. But that transliteration must not be used in this case. First there is the 800 years, then the Armenian spoken in Poland is not Grabar but Western Armenian, and, finally, Kipchaks had a rich vowel structure and poor consonantal one in their own language, while in the present case the scribes were Armenians.


The exact details of the Schütz-Detre transcription seem to be unpublished, and of course, if I cannot see the originals, much can depend on the transcription. In Ref. [3] only a few sentences deal with the transcription. The most important statement is the list of the transliterated letters (the Armenian originals are not given). The "Magyar" alphabet of the Hun texts is then


a, á*, b, c, cz%, cs, csh%, d, dz, dzs, e, é*, f, g, gh%, gy%, h, ch%, i, j, k, kh%, l, ll$, m, n, o, ö@, p, ph%, r, rr$, s, sz, ssz$, t, tz%, th%, u@, ü@, v, w*, z, zs


Now I must take the responsibility to guess and explain something not published by the authors. If any in the following few paragraphs is contrary to the unpublished details, Dr. Detre can correct it, e.g. at [2].


* denotes single letters of the Magyar alphabet which, however, pose nontrivial problems in the transcription. The prime in á and é denotes length. However Armenian does not denote length, so it is nontrivial, what is behind the two primed letters. I have no real idea, what is the duality a/á in the original Grabar texts (maybe a geminated a for á, or a ligature), but at least Western Armenian speakers in Hungary must know it, because when transliterating to Magyar, they use both a and á. And indeed there are 2 Grabar e's, one low, one middle. Now, in the present Budapest pronunciation of Magyar é is always one degree higher than e, so this may be the clue. As for w, this letter does exist in the Magyar alphabet but did not denote an independent phoneme, but in Armenian there is a letter denoting a (bilabial half?) consonant whose scientific description is w. It is also used in the ligature (ow) for u.


$ denotes geminated consonants in the transliteration. Hungarian orthographical tradition do not regard geminated consonants long: an "ll" or "kk" denotes two consonants. (Slovakian has long versions of r and l, but this length is denoted by a prime just as for vowels, and primed "ŕ" is not equivalent with "rr". In Magyar, e.g., ssz stands for a geminated sz, and behaves differently in hyphenation, if the first sz is in the first syllable, the second in the second, or if both are in the same. Now, there may or may not be geminated Grabar letters behind ll, rr and ssz, but note that there are two different "r" sounds in Armenian, so that difference may be responsible for r/rr. As for the other two "geminates" we must wait until the publication of details.


% denotes di- and trigraphs not used in the canonical Magyar alphabet (although some were used earlier). The solutions seem to easy, let us go from group to group.


Surely there are the aspirated stops of Gabar behind kh, ph & th. Also, there is an aspirated version of cs (English ch) behind csh. However, beware; I think, ch is not the aspirated version of c (English ts), but that aspirated sound must be either cz or tz (see next paragraph). I am not sure about the difference between cz and tz, but I note that the Dictionary does not in fact employ dz. So maybe tz is the Grabar letter for dz. Indeed the Western Armenian pronunciation would be c in the present Hungarian orthography, but in some older texts rather tz (and in English ts).


The digraph ch must be the similarly written Scottish or German sound. In the scientific transcriptions of Grabar it is either x or χ; observe the place of ch in the Schütz-Detre transliteration alphabet just after h (exactly the same place as in Slovakian). The digraph gh is surely the γ of Grabar. As for gy it seems to be an alternative reading of the combinations di-, gi- or gj-; or maybe of dzs-.


@ denotes simple vowel letters in Magyar, two of which are ligatures in Armenian. The letter u is surely the Grabar combination OW; present Armenian writes "u" in this way. Note that in the international transcription of Armenian proper names "u" is often corresponds not to this combination but to no Armenian letter at all. Namely, in groups of consonants Armenian speakers often insert automatically a short, back, high unrounded sound, roughly similar to Turkish "ï". Western Europeans then seem to hear an "u", because for them a back, high, unrounded vowel is impossible, so their brain substitutes it with the rounded counterpart. As for ü, Ref. [3] explicitly notes the problem and tells that it can be written in Armenian by UJ or by Greek Y. Now, while the front high rounded vowel does not exist in Armenian, it does exist in Turkish place names with substantial Armenian communities up to World War I, as e.g. Kütahia. In such cases a trigraphic combination of o, w & i (j) is used, and it would be rather surprising to read the trigraph anything else. As for ö, that vowel does not exist in Armenian either, but I checked the recognition of my ö sound by some native East Armenian speakers. Now, some of them accepted my ö as their swa sound, which does have a letter.


I cannot tell more at the present state of publication of the Detre-Schütz studies. But the general principles seems clear enough.





9. WORDS IN THE HUNNISH-MAGYAR LITTLE DICTIONARY OF SCHÜTZ & DETRE


With the transcription fixed, it is straightforward to compose the dictionary. Albeit I did not see the raw material, the Codices must have been composed in Armenian, with some references to the (Daghestan) Huns, say: for X the Huns say Y. Ref. 3 gives some 300-400 words, and then tries to find out the elements of Hun grammar.


The result is rather unexpected. Some half of the words is rather closely related to Magyar. (I will make more definite statements later.) Ref. [3] claims to have recognised a layer from an utterly different language; but that is a hypothesis, and there are hypotheses enough here. In addition the extra language is represented mainly by astronomical terms.


Let us see a demonstration of "closeness" to Magyar. I take very elementary words for comparison.
http://torch.fx3.hu/Magyar/Cikkek/hun-magyar.html

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Postby nJohn West-Hungary » 2007-08-22, 17:29

Michelangelo NADDEO:

http://www.osservatorioletterario.net/honfoglalas-hu.pdf

01 - Germanico runes... a finnish alphabet

At the beginning of the second millennium B.C. a runic alphabet consisting of 16 letters was already in existence in Flavia, a region in the north of Europe. It was used by Flavio populations and born out of the need to write down a Finnic language from which modern Finnish is derived.
When the Indo-Europeans arrived in Europe from the steppe, they did not have an alphabet and were not able to write!


In the second half of the second millennium B.C. the Germanici, a population of mixed Flavio-Steppico origin, began to use the Flavio runic script and to modify the pronunciation of some letters. Then they started to add letters to the end of the alphabet and then, finally, to insert others at other points in the alphabet. In total they added an “ætt”. The Runes became an alphabet of 24 letters. But as soon as the Germanici left, the Vikings went back to writing with a 16-letter alphabet which was congruent with their ancient phonology. Such a strange and drastic reduction of phonemes has so far been unexplained and inexplicable!


The Indo-Europeanists maintain that Indo-European was an [o] language, that became [a] language for a certain, proto-Germanico period, and then returned to being an [o] language in modern Germanic languages. The [a] period was a mutation brought about by the underlying Finnic substratum, which did not have the [o]. For the same reason, in Flavia, the movable Indo-European accent became fixed on the first syllable.
When the Indo-Europeans arrived, the Finnics already knew not only how to write, but even how to.... speak!!!


The phonology of ancient Europe was very limited, while that of the Indo-European newcomers was rich in aspirated and sonorous consonants. Modern European phonology developed from the mixing of the languages of these two peoples: Flavii and Steppici. This process was, however, incompatible with some of the “laws” of Indoeuropeanism.
One of Grimm’s “laws” for example was …. just another of his fairy tales!


Before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, Europe almost certainly had its own phonological homogeneity, if not a complete linguistic one, with the sole exception perhaps, of the Basque lands.

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Postby Almar » 2007-08-22, 18:16

:shock:
asdf

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Wow

Postby 0stsee » 2007-09-12, 22:31

One could publish a book from this thread alone.

I'll inform myself a bit more about Sumerian.
Ini tandatanganku.

Zsazsa

Postby Zsazsa » 2007-09-15, 12:58

Michelangelo Naddeo :

http://michelangelo.cn/index.php?argume ... redLang=uk

Quotation from the book:

"The thesis that European alphabets derived from the Phoenician one has never been questioned since Herodotus inrtoduced the notion into the history of Western civilisation....

Most scholars tend to emphasise the theory of the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet...

In all civilisations, writing originally had a strong religious and almost magical significans. Its technology was a mystery to most, reserved to few, and need thousands of years to develop...

Some letters of the Ugaritic script seem to be alien to the language spoken throughout the Middle East: 8 of these letters have never been used by any Semitic script so that their phonetic value is still in doubt!... "

Read it !

Śrāmaṇera

Postby Śrāmaṇera » 2007-09-15, 13:00

Egein wrote:
nJohn West-Hungary wrote:
Egein wrote:Most unlinguistic thread ever.


And They ?


NEW-AGE in the research:

( Laszló MARACZ,linguistic, Univ. Amsterdam
A. MARCANTONIO,linguistic, Univ.La Sapiensa, Rome,
Geza BALÁZS,linguistic, Univ. ELTE, Budapest ,
Janos PUSZTAY,linguistic, Univ West-Hungarian, Berzsenyi-Institute, Szombathely ,
M. ALINEI,linguistic, emerit. prof. Univ. Utrecht ,
K. CZEGLÉDY,linguistic, Univ. Nagy Lajos, Miskolc ,
E. ARADI, indologist, Univ. Janus Pannonius, Asia Institute, Pécs,
B. OBRUSÁNSZKY, historian-orientalist, Hungarian Science Academy
M. ERDY , orientalist, USA,
K. BAKAY , archeologist-historian, Univ. Nagy Lajos, Miskolc
Alfred Tóth, linguistic, mathematician, Switzerland


etc..etc..

from FINNISH:

Künnap, Wiik, Julku etc....


Most unlinguistic THREAD ever. And by thread I mean YOU. [s]You're[/s] Your english has come in the way of what you are trying to say. That's a hint whispering that you should LEARN it better.


:roll:

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Postby Sectori » 2007-09-15, 16:06

Just let it die.
agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

Zsazsa

Postby Zsazsa » 2007-09-16, 6:04

Zsazsa wrote:Michelangelo Naddeo :

http://michelangelo.cn/index.php?argume ... redLang=uk

Quotation from the book:

"The thesis that European alphabets derived from the Phoenician one has never been questioned since Herodotus inrtoduced the notion into the history of Western civilisation....

Most scholars tend to emphasise the theory of the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet...

In all civilisations, writing originally had a strong religious and almost magical significans. Its technology was a mystery to most, reserved to few, and need thousands of years to develop...

Some letters of the Ugaritic script seem to be alien to the language spoken throughout the Middle East: 8 of these letters have never been used by any Semitic script so that their phonetic value is still in doubt!... "

Read it !

_________________________


Ignorance is the parent of unjust and crime

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Postby nJohn West-Hungary » 2007-09-16, 16:07

Treasures of the NAGYSZENTMIKLÓS

(From A.D. 670-830)

Image

Image

Example from HOREZM:

Image

Reading of the The RUNICS:

„Adj Jézusom, vízből, majd megmosdatván életet János-Ajtonynak.”

"My Jesus, give me from water, and had a wash, give me life: to JOHN- AJTONY"

Name JOHN is the christian ,
name AJTONY is the pagan (origin).

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Postby nJohn West-Hungary » 2007-09-17, 4:47

Belus wrote:Treasures of the NAGYSZENTMIKLÓS

(From A.D. 670-830)



Image



Reading of the The RUNICS:

„Adj Jézusom, vízből, majd megmosdatván életet János-Ajtonynak.”

"My Jesus, give me from water, and had a wash, give me life: to JOHN- AJTONY"

Name JOHN is the christian ,
name AJTONY is the pagan (origin).



Ah, so it is:

Image


Image

http://gportal.hu/gindex.php?pg=19936701&gid=1852983&PHPSESSID=fa29e673877702973ec143a031c6a74b

Sorry, but this treasures are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, WIEN. ( In the store-room)



.

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Postby nJohn West-Hungary » 2007-09-19, 20:43

53e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Moscow, July 23, 2007

Sumerian: A Uralic Language

Simo Parpola (Helsinki)

In the early days of Assyriology, Sumerian was commonly believed to belong to the Ural-Altaic language phylum. This view originated with three leading Assyriologists, Edward Hincks, Henry Rawlinson and Jules Oppert, and other big names in early Assyriology such as Friedrich Delitzsch supported it (Fig. 1). The Frenchman François Lenormant, who wrote on the subject in 1873-78, found Sumerian most closely related to Finno-Ugric, while also containing features otherwise attested only in Turkish and other Altaic languages.

The wind turned in the early 1880s, however, as two prominent Finno-Ugrists, August Ahlqvist and Otto Donner, reviewed Lenormant's work and concluded that Sumerian was definitely not a Ural-Altaic language (Fig. 2). This was widely considered a death-blow to the Sumerian-Ural-Altaic hypothesis, and since then Assyriologists have generally rejected it. Typically, when a Hungarian scholar in 1971 tried to reopen the discussion in the journal Current Anthropology, a few linguists welcomed the idea but the reaction of the two Assyriologists consulted was scornfully negative.

Attempts to connect Sumerian with other languages have not been successful, however, and after 157 years, Sumerian still remains linguistically isolated. This being so, there is every reason to take another look at the old Ural-Altaic -hypothesis, for it has never been properly investigated. In the 19th century, Sumerian grammar and lexicon were as yet too imperfectly known to be successfully compared with any languages, while all more recent comparisons suffer from the lack of Assyriological or linguistic expertise and are hence for the most part worthless. This does not mean, however, that they are all garbage: at least 194 of them seem perfectly acceptable both phonologically and semantically (Fig.3). That is a number large enough to deserve serious attention. Of course, it does not prove that Sumerian was related to Ural-Altaic languages, but it does indicate that the possibility exists and should be carefully re-examined in order to be either substantiated or definitively rejected.

To this end, I started in November 2004 a project called "The Linguistic Relationship between Sumerian and Ural-Altaic," on which I have been working full time since May 2006, with funding from the Academy of Finland. The aim of the project is to systematically scrutinize the entire vocabulary of Sumerian with the help of modern etymological dictionaries and studies, identify all the words and morphemes that can be reasonably associated with Uralic or Altaic etyma, ascertain the validity of the comparisons, convert the material into a database, and make it generally available on the Internet.

The database under construction will contain all the attested phonetic spellings and meanings of the compared Sumerian and Ural-Altaic lexical items, as well as, for control purposes, all Indo-European etymologies proposed for these items. The relevance of each comparison is assessed separately for form and meaning on a scale from 4 to 1 (Fig. 4). The highest score, 4+4, indicates perfect agreement in form and meaning; a low score correspondingly poor agreement and doubtful relevance. In deciding whether a comparison is relevant or not, the governing principle has been that all compared items must match reasonably well in both form and meaning, and any differences in form or meaning must conform with the phonological and semantic variation attested in the languages compared.

To date, I have systematically gone through about 75 per cent of the Sumerian vocabulary and identified over 1700 words and morphemes that can be reasonably associated with Uralic and/or Altaic etyma, allowing for regular sound changes and semantic shifts. Somewhat surprisingly, words with possible Altaic etymologies constitute only a small minority (about seven per cent) of the total, and it is unlikely that the picture will essentially change by the time the project has been finished. Although a close relationship of Sumerian with the Altaic family as a whole thus seems excluded, a genetic relationship with Turkish seems possible, as most of the matches are with Turkic languages, and they are basic words and grammatical morphemes also found in Uralic languages.

Practically all the compared items are thus Uralic, mostly Finno-Ugric. The majority of them are attested in at least one major branch of Uralic beside Finnic and thus certainly are very old, dating to at least 3000 BC. A large number of the words are known only from Finnic, but this does not prevent them from being ancient as well, since they have no etymology and are for the most part common words attested in all eight Finnic languages.

This collection of words runs the gamut of the Sumerian vocabulary (Fig. 5) and includes 478 common verbs of all possible types, such as verbs of being, bodily processes, sensory perception, emotion, making, communication, movement etc., adjectives, numerals, pronouns, adverbs, interjections, conjunctions, and 589 nouns including words for body parts, kinship terms, natural phenomena, animals, plants, weapons, tools and implements, and various technical terms reflecting the cultural level of the neo- and chalcolithic periods (in the fields of agriculture, food production, animal husbandry, weaving, metallurgy, building technology, etc.). I would like to emphasize that the majority of the words in question are basic words, and 75 per cent of them show a very good match in form and meaning. This does not mean that they are necessarily all correct, but they stand a very good chance of being so. About 20 per cent of the comparisons are more problematic and about 5 per cent of them are conjectural only. All clearly impossible comparisons will of course be excluded once the material has been thoroughly analysed.

Over 1700 lexical matches with Uralic surely sounds like an awful lot, "too good be true," if compared with all the previous fruitless attempts to find a cognate for Sumerian. But it is not at all much for genetically related languages; on the contrary, it is what must be legitimately expected of languages that are related. Who marvels at the fact that members of the Indo-European language family, even ones widely separated in time and place, have a large number of words in common? The large number of common words is precisely the reason why these languages can so easily and securely be identified as members of the same family.

It may be asked why all these numerous lexical matches with Uralic have not been found earlier. The explanation is simple. It takes a good knowledge of the Uralic languages plus familiarity with the intricacies of Sumerian phonology and cuneiform writing system to recognize the connections between Sumerian and Uralic, and such a combination of special expertise is rare. Very few Assyriologists know any Uralic languages, and experts in Uralic studies do not know any Sumerian. Of course, beside the required special expertise one would also need the will to study the matter seriously, and such will has been entirely lacking in Assyriology for the past 120 years.

In order to get a better idea of the relationship between Sumerian and Uralic, let us now have a look at some of the comparisons to see what they are like and how they work in practice.

34 years ago, Miguel Civil in his article "From Enki's headache to phonology" showed that late Sumerian ugu, "top of the head," is the same word as earlier a-gù; and from the alternation of a-gù with the divine name dab-ú, he concluded that it probably originally contained a labiovelar stop in the middle (Fig. 6). Recently, Joan Westenholz and Marcel Sigrist have shown that beside "top of the head," ugu also means "brain." Both formally and semantically, the Sumerian word thus matches the Uralic word *ajkwo "brain, top of the head," which can be reconstructed as containing a labiovelar stop in the middle based on its reflexes in individual Uralic languages. Remarkably, Sumerian ugu4 "to give birth," a homophone of ugu, likewise has a close counterpart in Finnic aiko-, aivo-, "to intend; to give birth." The semantics of the Finnic word show that it derives from the word for "brain," and the alternation of /k/ and /v/ in the stem confirms the reconstruction of the labiovelar in the middle of the word.

Several other words discussed by Civil also display an alternation of /g/ and /b/, including gurux or buru4 "crow," and gur(u)21 "shield," also attested as kuru14, e-bu-ùr and íb-ba-ru (Fig. 7). These two words certainly were almost homophonous, since they could be written with the same logogram. The common Uralic word for "crow," *kwarüks, indeed contains the posited labiovelar stop and provides a perfect etymology for the Sumerian word. The original labiovelar is preserved in Selkup, but has been replaced by /v/ in other Uralic languages except Sayan Samoyed, where it is appears as /b/. Sumerian gur(u)21 "shield" can be compared with Finnic varus "protection," whose original form can be reconstructed as *kwaruks and thus provides a perfect etymology for the Sumerian word.

The regular replacement of the labiovelar by /g/, /k/ or /b/ in Sumerian and by /v/ in Uralic amounts to a phonological rule and helps establish further connections between Sumerian and Uralic words displaying a similar correlation, for example Sumerian gíd "to pull" and Uralic *vetä- "to pull," and Sumerian kur "mountain" and Uralic *vor "mountain." The reconstruction of an original labiovelar in the latter case is strongly supported by Volgaic kurok, "mountain." The phonological correspondences between Sumerian and Uralic remain to be fully charted, but a great many of them certainly are perfectly regular. For example, in word initial position Sumerian /š/ regularly corresponds to Finnic /h/, while Sumerian /s/ regularly corresponds to Finnic /s/ (Fig. 8).

The word a-gù just discussed was written syllabically with two cuneiform signs, A and KA, both of which have several phonetic values and meanings based on homophony and idea association (Fig. 9). All these phonetic values and meanings have close counterparts in Uralic, and the homophonic and semantic associations between the individual meanings work in Uralic, too; compare the homophony between a, aj "water" and aj, aja "father" in Sumerian, and jää, jäj and äj, äijä in Uralic. And this applies not only to the signs A and KA but, unbelievable as it may sound, practically the whole Sumerian syllabary. Consider, for example, the sign AN (Fig. 10), whose basic meaning, "heaven, highest god," was in Old Sumerian homophonous with the third person singular of the verb "to be," am6. The Uralic word for "heaven" and "highest god" was *joma, which likewise was virtually homophonous with the third person singular of the verb "to be," *oma. These two words would have become totally homophonous in Sumerian after the loss of the initial /j/. The loss of the initial /j/ also provided the homophony between Sumerian a "water" and aj "father" just mentioned.

Such a close and systematic parallelism in form and meaning is possible only in languages related to each other. Accordingly, the logical conclusion is that Sumerian is a Uralic language. This conclusion is backed up by the great number of common words and the regularity of the phonological correspondences between Sumerian and Uralic already discussed, as well as by many other considerations. Sumerian displays the basic typological features of Uralic; it has vowel harmony, no grammatical gender but an opposition between animate and inanimate, and its grammatical system is clearly Uralic, with similar pronouns, case markers, and personal endings of the verb. In addition, many Uralic derivational morphemes can be identified in Sumerian nouns and verbs. The non-Uralic features of Sumerian, such as the ergative construction and the prefix chains of the verb, can be explained as special developments of Sumerian in an entirely new linguistic environment after its separation from the other Uralic languages.

The Sumerians thus came to Mesopotamia from the north, where the Uralic language family is located (Fig. 11), and by studying the lexical evidence and the grammatical features which Sumerian shares with individual Uralic languages, it is possible to make additional inferences about their origins. The closest affinities of Sumerian within the Uralic family are with the Volgaic and Finnic languages, particularly the latter, with which it shares a number of significant phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses. The latter include, among other things, a common word for "sea, ocean" (Sumerian ab or a-ab-ba, Finnic aava, aappa), and common words for cereals, sowing and harvesting, domestic animals, wheeled vehicles, and the harness of draught animals (Fig. 12). A number of these words also have counterparts in Indo-European, particularly Germanic languages. These data taken together suggest that the Sumerians originated in the Pontic-Caspian region between the mouth of the Volga and the Black Sea, north of the Caucasus Mountains, where they had been living a sedentary life in contact with Indo-European tribes. I would not exclude the possibility that their homeland is to be identified with the Majkop culture of the North Caucasus, which flourished between 3700 and 2900 BC and had trade contacts with the late Uruk culture (Fig. 13). Placing the Sumerian homeland in this area would help explain the non-Uralic features of Sumerian, for the Kartvelian languages spoken just south of it are ergative and have a system of verbal prefixes resembling the Sumerian one. The Sumerian words for wheel and the harness of draft animals that it shares with Uralic show that its separation from Uralic took place after the invention of wheeled vehicles, which were known in the Majkop culture since about 3500 BC.

About 3500 BC, the Indo-European Yamnaya culture that had emerged between the Danube and the Don began to expand dynamically to the east, reaching the Caucasian foreland by about 3300 BC. This expansion is likely to have triggered the Sumerian migration to Mesopotamia. It would have proceeded through the Caucasus and the Diyala Valley, and since wheeled transport was available, could easily have been completed before the end of the Late Uruk period (c. 3100 BC). The arrival of the Sumerians would thus coincide with the destruction of the Eanna temple precinct at the end of the Uruk IVa period.

The lexical parallels between Sumerian and Uralic thus open up not only completely new possibilities for the study of Sumerian, but also a chance to identify the original homeland of the Sumerians and date their arrival in Mesopotamia. In addition, they provide a medium through which it becomes possible to penetrate into the prehistory of the Finno-Ugric peoples with the help of very ancient linguistic data. Of course, it is clear that the relevant evidence must first pass the test of verification or falsification before any part of it can be generally accepted and exploited.

I am currently preparing an Internet version of the database in collaboration with the Department of General Linguistics of the University of Helsinki. This web version is planned to be interactive and will contain a search engine and a program to check the regularity of the sound changes involved in the comparisons. I heartily invite all sceptics to visit the site once it is ready and falsify as many of the comparisons as they can, and everybody else to look at the evidence, check it out, and contribute to it by constructive criticism and new data.

SIMO PARPOLA:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_Parpola

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Alejo
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Postby Alejo » 2007-09-19, 21:06

no one knows where the Sumerians came from ,there are many
teories ,but it is knowed into what they became ,
the desendents of the Sumerians are the Ixos and the
Akadians ,the Ixos moved to Egipt ,
the Akadians became Babylonians ,non of those went north!.
the Sumerian language is close related (antesesor)
or Sumerian Hebrew and Akadian ,and have no relationship
with Magyar wich is a Finno-Ugaric language ,or with
Tartar or Roma or any other language used by the
Huns and their alays (the Gypsis) .


WHAT THE ^#&*?!?!?!?!?

Roma people being allies of the Huns?

What the @#$??? Romani people didn't enter Europe until 900C.E.! Plus we certainly don't ally ourselves with gaže, including the Huns.

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sa wulfs
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Postby sa wulfs » 2007-09-19, 21:30

Don't try to understand this thread. Just feel it.
http://ungelicisus.blogspot.com
Hrōþabaírhts sa Wulfs | Hrōðbeorht se Wulf | Hróðbjartr Úlfrinn | Hruodperaht der Wolf | Hrôthberht thê Wulf

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Postby Vortarulo » 2007-09-19, 23:09

Man, than was long... I read about 75% of it. I must say, this is finally a quite convincingly sounding article...
However, I remain sceptically on this matter, as we could not even establish a relationship between Uralic and Altaic. I'm sure that if someone has the time and willpower and the talent and knowledge, one could find as many "cognates" in any given twosome of languages. Of course, nobody would spend half of his live to prove the bogus relationship between, say... Nahuatl and Nama or Burushaski and Pirahã.

I'm looking forward to see that website mentioned in the last paragraph. This will certainly be interesting and sceptical experts of each site (Sumerologists, Finno-Ugrists as well as unrelated linguists) should give their comments about it.

That guy is a linguist and seems quite knowledgable to me. The John guy from this forum here, is clearly not, that's why I criticize you two. He proved his lack of knowledge of comparative and historical linguistics often enough.

Greetings,
- André
[flag]de[/flag] ← native
[flag]eo[/flag] [flag]us[/flag] [flag]zh[/flag] ← fluent
[flag]nl[/flag] [flag]th[/flag] [flag]tlh[/flag] ← intermediate
[flag]fr[/flag] [flag]ddo[/flag] [flag]es[/flag] [flag]lo[/flag] ← conversational
...and also a little bit of [flag]la[/flag] [flag]zhc[/flag] [flag]pt[/flag] [flag]ru[/flag] [flag]tr[/flag] [flag]tpi[/flag] [flag]ja[/flag] [flag]bo[/flag] [flag]pl[/flag] [flag]id[/flag] and [flag]art-tkp[/flag]

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Postby Sectori » 2007-09-19, 23:41

I say again: just let this thread die.
agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

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Sumerian Uralic

Postby 0stsee » 2007-09-19, 23:47

I actually read through Bela's post.
If it's not a hoax, then it is pretty interesting indeed to know that Sumerian was probably a Uralic language.
Ini tandatanganku.

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Vortarulo
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Re: Sumerian Uralic

Postby Vortarulo » 2007-09-20, 10:31

0stsee wrote:I actually read through Bela's post.
If it's not a hoax, then it is pretty interesting indeed to know that Sumerian was probably a Uralic language.


<i>If</i> it's indeed true... I still find it highly speculative. Some pages ago I "proved" the relationship between Hungarian and Klingon, which was very easy and a lot of fun. With more time and resources on my hands I could prove even more.

Well, we'll see...
[flag]de[/flag] ← native
[flag]eo[/flag] [flag]us[/flag] [flag]zh[/flag] ← fluent
[flag]nl[/flag] [flag]th[/flag] [flag]tlh[/flag] ← intermediate
[flag]fr[/flag] [flag]ddo[/flag] [flag]es[/flag] [flag]lo[/flag] ← conversational
...and also a little bit of [flag]la[/flag] [flag]zhc[/flag] [flag]pt[/flag] [flag]ru[/flag] [flag]tr[/flag] [flag]tpi[/flag] [flag]ja[/flag] [flag]bo[/flag] [flag]pl[/flag] [flag]id[/flag] and [flag]art-tkp[/flag]


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