A couple of people have sent me this BBC News story by Sean Coughlan about a research project led by Jacob Dahl, fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and director of the Ancient World Research Cluster; they have a device that “is providing the most detailed and high quality images ever taken” of ancient clay tablets”:
It’s being used to help decode a writing system called proto-Elamite, used between around 3200BC and 2900BC in a region now in the south west of modern Iran.
And the Oxford team think that they could be on the brink of understanding this last great remaining cache of undeciphered texts from the ancient world.
That last sentence is typical journalistic heavy-breathing bullshit insofar as it implies the researchers, or anyone else, are going to “understand” proto-Elamite (which, by the way, probably has nothing to do with either Linear Elamite or the Elamite language). To quote Andrew Robinson’s wonderful Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World’s Undeciphered Scripts
Decipherment of proto-Elamite has been hampered by various factors. As already remarked, there is effectively no help available from the underlying language since we know nothing about it (unlike that of proto-cuneiform); neither are there any bilinguals. Then there is the content of the tablets—self-evidently lists and calculations as in proto-cuneiform—which warns us that the correlation between the script and the spoken language may not be an exact one (how much could we learn of a modern spoken language working only from a series of supermarket till receipts?). Furthermore, there are no lexical lists, only lists of people and objects, so far as we can tell. […] The various attempts at compiling a proto-Elamite sign list have therefore relied mainly on internal analysis of the characters.
The most that’s going to happen is that they’ll find some plausible meanings for a few more characters. But that doesn’t make for an exciting headline.
However, I did find this section of the BBC story quite interesting:
But why has this writing proved so difficult to interpret?
Dr Dahl suspects he might have part of the answer. He’s discovered that the original texts seem to contain many mistakes – and this makes it extremely tricky for anyone trying to find consistent patterns.
He believes this was not just a case of the scribes having a bad day at the office. There seems to have been an unusual absence of scholarship, with no evidence of any lists of symbols or learning exercises for scribes to preserve the accuracy of the writing.
This first case of educational underinvestment proved fatal for the writing system, which was corrupted and then completely disappeared after only a couple of hundred years. “It’s an early example of a technology being lost,” he says.
“The lack of a scholarly tradition meant that a lot of mistakes were made and the writing system may eventually have become useless.”
Intriguing to think about, whether it’s actually true in this case or not. (Thanks, Eric and Stan!)
The Forces of Progress are clearly pretty ancient in Education.
“The lack of a scholarly tradition meant that a lot of mistakes were made and the writing system may eventually have become useless.”
On the plus side, the Elamite prescriptivists surely enjoyed the greatest “I told you so” moment in curmudgeon history.
I reckon that at 3200 BC they had not invented schools yet.
So how do the mistakes appear relative to those in archaic cuneiform in Sumer? When did the first symbol lists and learning exercises appear in Sumer? I’m sure Dahl could address this, but it’s a pity that the article doesn’t.
“. . . the content of the tablets—self-evidently lists and calculations as in proto-cuneiform, which warns us that the correlation between the script and the spoken language may not be an exact one (how much could we learn of a modern spoken language working only from a series of supermarket till receipts?).”
Once scholars recognized Linear B tax returns as an early form of Greek, they managed to extract quite a lot of information about the history of the Greek language and its shape in the Mycenean era, even though the tablets are written in a script that is extraordinarily ill-suited to Greek.
Contrast Linear B with Linear A, though. We have the same sort of material for Linear A as we do for Linear B (although not as much of it for Linear A). Because of Linear B, we have good reason to believe that we understand the Linear A script. But we can’t get much out of Linear A because we have very little idea of what the language is.
With Proto-Elamite, the situation is worse than it is for Linear A. Not only don’t we know what language the script is encoding, but we don’t understand anything about the script except for the number system and some of the logograms. Without knowing what the underlying language is, deciphering the script is exceedingly difficult if not impossible (as Robinson makes a pretty good case in Lost Languages).
There is an interview with Dr. Dahl about it on the Listen-again feature of the BBC Radio 4 programme Material World here. It’s 22 mins into the 30 min prog. I was interested that Dahl spoke of coo-NAYE-form writing. I always have mentally said coo-nee-form, with only a slight emphasis on the nee syllable.
LH: your opinion would be welcome.
There is interesting stuff on the prog beforehand – a discussion of the recent Italian court judgement against six scientists for failing to warn the population of L’Aquila adequately about the earthquake there, for example, with eminent seismologists calling it “Monday morning quarterbacking.”
I was taught to pronounce “cuneiform” with four syllables.
I too use four syllables: KYOO-nee-i-form.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard it spoken, so my internal voice has been using KYOO-naye-form.
kyoo-NEE-ih-form, for me.
I vaguely recall having been told that it’s properly kyoo-NEH-ih-form (sic, per my recollections, though I could easily have been misremembering a -NEE- form as per LH and Cowan), but the one actual spoken use of it that sticks in my mind is the Modern Major General’s, and he makes it a three-syllable word rhyming with “uniform”.
Perhaps some day I’ll finally get around to properly watching the hour-long (as I recall) YouTube lecture on the history of cuneiform decipherment that had been recommended to me once on Twitter. I imagine it would use the word quite a few times, and then I would hopefully have a reasonably-authoritative idea on how to pronounce it. I’m not sure if I’ve had the video saved in my YouTube watch history, though.
I vaguely recall having been told that it’s properly kyoo-NEH-ih-form
Some people definitely say it that way, but it’s an incoherent pronunciation; the Latin word cuneus from which it’s derived has -NEH- in restored classical pronunciation, but that’s irrelevant to English (or should be), where Latin -e- in such positions is said like English e. We say jee-nee-ol-o-jee, not geh-neh-o-lo-jee. The OED gives both JC’s /kjuːˈniːɪfɔːm/ and my /ˈkjuːniːɪfɔːm/.
Yes, but we also say “noo-KLAY-ik”, not “noo-KLEE-ik”, in nucleic acid, presumably for similar incoherent reasons. And similarly with homogeneity and spontaneity. Some people even do it with deity.
What do you mean “we,” kemosabe? I say -ee- in all those words. If people insist on being incoherent I won’t try to stop them, but I won’t follow them over the cliff.
@languagehat: Even in nucleic? The others are unremarkable, but that one sounds genuinely bizarre, and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard it.
(And shouldn’t Tonto’s quote be: “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man“?)
Yes, even there. Note that it’s the first pronunciation given in AHD. Furthermore, I’ll bet cash money you’ve heard it; you just dismissed it automatically because it wasn’t yours. Funny how what we don’t use personally sounds bizarre to us.
OED:
British English
/njuːˈkleɪɪk/
nyoo-KLAY-ik
/njuːˈkliːɪk/
nyoo-KLEE-ik
U.S. English
/n(j)uˈkliɪk/
nyoo-KLEE-ik
/n(j)uˈkleɪɪk/
nyoo-KLAY-ik
just realised (“Jurusi uhu, Pa’hi and Tatitu, three members of the Zo’é people, talk with a kirahi (“white woman”)”) that translation “white people” imposes a certain self-image. “White” is natural when you are speaking about the contact of Africans with Europeans, because colour in this case is the most unusual thing about both. But then Europeans developed a very specific concept of race (and even racism attached to it) and colour words are used to refer to it, and for an arbitrary people in a different part of the world it is not obvious at all, what attributes of Europeans matter the most to them.
The Arabs got there first with “black” = “African”, as the name “Sudan” testifies …
Within Oti-Volta, several of the more easterly languages use “white people” for “Europeans”, but I strongly suspect that this is calqued from French. “Aliens” also occurs, but the most popular terms over Oti-Volta as a whole are ultimately based etymologically on either “Christians” or “Fulani.”
A lot of West African languages have terms for “Europeans” that are of obscure origin, but at least certainly don’t come from “white people.” The Akan word seems to mean “bush people”, presumably on the grounds that Europeans have not been exposed to the civilising influence of Akan culture. “Barbarians”, I suppose …
“Black people” is the usual term for “Africans” in Oti-Volta languages, but that is surely a calque. I mean, you hardly need a “word for ‘Africans'” if you’ve never encountered anyone who isn’t African, and if you’re a Kusaasi, say, the salient thing about a Mamprussi person is that they are Mamprussi, not that they’re “black.”
I think I’ve mentioned a Kusaal story in which three brigands wandering in the bush see in the distance ka si’el zi’e sabili wʋʋ nid nɛ “that something was standing, black like a human being.”
Why from Fulani?
“… have not been exposed to the civilising influence of Akan culture.”
Maybe the world would be better if the English-language culture were not the only source of “civilising” influence. Cultures are not merely storerooms of ancient wisdom, culinary ideas and culturally-relative peculiarities of little use to others. They change (and include “progressive ideas”, that is, ideas that in your opinion are worthy of popularisation globally).
Why from Fulani?
Fulani are proverbially lighter-skinned.
North America has a north to south gradient, from doughy to pink to beige.
I have mentioned before that if you look at Japanese wood-block color prints from the post 1854 period when “white people” started turning up in increasing numbers and outside the traditional Dutch trading enclave down on Kyushu, they are not shown as lighter-skinned than the Japanese but as redder-skinned, since what we would call a “ruddy” or “rosy-cheeked” complexion was apparently what was most visually noteworthy about the newcomers to the eye of the Japanese artists. (That’s a more common feature in some parts of Europe than others, but those parts of Europe dominated the ancestry of the white U.S. at the time as well as being overweight among the non-U.S. European powers involved early on in trade with Japan.)
About the Scots… sorry, Ainu
“[In 670], an embassy came to the Court [from Japan] to offer congratulations on the conquest of Koguryŏ. Around this time, the Japanese who had studied Chinese came to dislike the name Wa and changed it to Nippon. According to the words of the [Japanese] envoy himself, that name was chosen because the country was so close to where the sun rises.[Q] Some say, [on the other hand,] that Japan was a small country which had been subjugated by the Wa, and that the latter took over its name. As this envoy was not truthful, doubt still remains.[R] [The envoy] was, besides, boastful, and he said that the domains of his country were many thousands of square li and extended to the ocean on the south and on the west. In the northeast, he said, the country was bordered by mountain ranges beyond which lay the land of the hairy men.;[35]"
what we would call a “ruddy” or “rosy-cheeked” complexion was apparently what was most visually noteworthy about the newcomers
Since the newcomers would have reached Japan after spending months at sea, they would very likely have been weatherbeaten and sunburned, especially those of northern European origins. Sailors in those days, even the officers, were not known for their skin-care and moisturizing routines.
The usual way to describe a lighter-skinned person in Kusaal and its relatives is also “red” (at least before the leprous Europeans put in an appearance.)
The probably-not-mythical grandfather of Gbewa, the founder of what became the Mossi-Dagomba kingdoms, is supposed to have come with his band of hooligans/heroic empire-builders from the region of Lake Chad: he’s traditionally called the “Red Hunter” (Tɔn’ɔs Zin’a in Kusaal.)