Posted by araucaria
(here)
Samwise, your thoughts on language are very welcome. You basically present two insights into language, not one, and as a language specialist myself, I would comment differently on each. While broadly in agreement with the second, I have to disagree with your first point, but I think you will find my disagreement highly empowering. I think one needs to beware of the Jordan Maxwell brand of popular etymology. He means well, but he simply does not understand how languages evolve. The Tower of Babel was perhaps a controlled demolition of communications, but there is nothing contrived about the outcome of a demolition. A demolition is by definition the passage from the orderly state of metal beams, concrete slabs etc. to a cloud of rubble. What happens to the rubble is uncontrolled and depends on outside circumstances. Some may fall over water and get wet; some may rise up in the wind and be scattered over a long distance, while the rest lands in a hopelessly disordered heap on the spot, where if left alone, it might evolve into a semi-natural pyramid.
Take Latin, spoken across the Roman Empire. As the empire crumbled, it evolved differently in various places that were no longer in communication – into French, Spanish and Italian. Far from being contrived, these languages evolved as the people spoke them, while the PTB continued to operate in Latin. You find large numbers of popular terms gradually becoming more acceptable; this is language rising from the grassroots. Let me give you an example. The French word
tête meaning head has replaced the word
chef (which is all we have left from the Latin
caput). It comes from the Latin
testa meaning shell and hence skull; imagine the informal word ‘nut’ gradually becoming the accepted English word for the head.
Le chef is the chief or the boss, so we see both how popular language takes over, and how abstract ideas are conveyed by outmoded concrete terminology. Now take the word
gouvernail, which has nothing to do with government (
gouvernement): it simply means a rudder; so, etymologically speaking, a government would actually be no more than a steering committee, but for the authoritarian behaviour of leaders like the ‘Great Helmsman’ Chairman Mao. In other words, it is not our language subverting our culture, it is our controllers’ behaviour that is subverting our language and trying to wrench it out of our hands. I’m afraid Maxwell and Passio are falling into this trap. Similarly, the suffix –
ment (Latin –
mentum, which is neuter in gender) has nothing to do with
mens mentis, a feminine noun meaning mind. It is actually derived from –
men, itself derived from the Greek suffix –
ma, which is merely a suffix, carrying no more meaning than the English plural –
s. You need to understand that parts of a sign system have always served a purely grammatical purpose. For example, Egyptian hieroglyphs use a box called a cartouche to tell you that it contains someone’s name. So in actual fact, to claim that government is not simply steerage but mind control is in itself a subliminal form of mind control – reverse engineering language to match the current reality. True government is steering a course and we are getting back to that.
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