Archive for the 'Europe' Category

The Future of Neopaganism in the West, Part II: Going Organic

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

In the previous post, I outlined a model of prestige and stigma which predicts whether a language or religion will grow or wither in a society. Now let’s take the prestige/stigma model and look at Neopaganism today. By these measures, Neopaganism is in trouble.

Stigmatized Neopaganism

Imagine trying to revive the Latin language. Imagine speaking it at home, teaching it to your children, seeking out Latin translations of modern works, and using it instead of English whenever you could. What would your friends and neighbors think? Do you think lots of people would jump on the bandwagon with you? Do you think that the revived Latin movement — “Neolatinism” — would have much of a future in your society? There are no celebrities speaking Latin on TV. There are no government officials speaking Latin in press conferences. Latin is stigmatized as a dead language with no future; why would anyone want to learn it?

If the analogy between religion and language holds, Neopaganism is in exactly the same situation as Neolatinism would be. (more…)

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Europe, Latin, Massachusetts, Odin, Zeus, atheism, children as natural pagans, holidays, linguistics, monotheism, paganism, polytheism, religion, shamanism | 13 Comments »

What did “hand” mean before it meant “hand”?

Sunday, July 2nd, 2006

First, let me reiterate exactly why it’s probable that the word “hand” used to mean something different.

1. As explained in the previous post, the word for hand in the various languages descended from Proto-Indo-European are a very mixed bag, and do not derive from a single common ancestral word. The word for hand in PIE was probably “men”, but it is “handaz” in Proto-Germanic, “manus” in Latin, “lamh” in Proto-Celtic, and “cheir(o)” in Greek. Among the Slavic languages, they stopped mentioning the hand at all — to this day, most Slavic languages have no specific term for hand; they say “arm” (or “lower arm”) instead.
2. Why wasn’t the PIE word “men” retained in its daughter languages (except Latin)? The hypothesis is that “men” was a taboo word, a word of power, and people avoided it by using euphemisms. (Specifically, it was taboo because of its association with the sun god, who was imagined to have long or heavy hands, like the rays of the sun.)
3. A euphemism is some meaningful word (or phrase) in the language which is brought in to replace a word that cannot be spoken lightly. For example, “pushing up the daisies” is a euphemism for “dead”. The euphemism already has its own meaning, but when used as a euphemism, it takes on the meaning of the taboo word. And, notably, the original meaning of the euphemism is intended to be somehow reminiscent of the taboo word. For example, “pushing up the daisies” indicates being buried underground (and hence dead).
4. Therefore, the words used for hand in the daughter languages — “handaz”, “lamh”, and “cheir(o)” — already existed in PIE and already had their own meanings before being adopted as euphemisms for PIE “men”.

So — what did “hand” (or more accurately, “handaz”) mean before it was adopted as a euphemism? (more…)

Posted in English language, Europe, German, Germanic languages, Germans, Greek(s), Grimm's Law, Latin, Old Norse, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-European, Russian, Slavic, euphemism, hands, taboos | 4 Comments »