Talk:Indo-European

reworking into summary article

due to a suggestion on WP:PR, I'm reworking this article into a summary, pointing to several sub-articles, as listed in Template:Indo-European

Indo-European (linguistics) is supposed to give background on the history of research. Maybe someone can think of a better title?

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Re: "PTC": Does this stand? Does anybody have some background for this (e.g. geneticists' views)? My suspicion is that this is just a random theory picked off the net (continuitas.com seems to be mainly about two italian authors). Regarding the theory itself, my suspicion is that genetic analysis of *any* region (except obvious "melting pot"/crossroads, such as Malta etc.) would show strong continuity, since large-scale long-distance migrations are very rare (in pre-modern times, of course), and genetical traces of "invaders" will be very scarce, which does not mean that the language was not completely replaced at one point.

Even minor migrations, minor compared to the population total, may incuce major linguistic change. "Migrations" that go on over several generations are better described as diffusion to avoid mental images of warlike conquering horsemen looting, raping and burning etc.

Anyway, I have created a separate article for PTC for now. Some smoothing of this (Indo-European) article is certainly still necessary. I'm trying to make it more coherent, but at some point, somebody else should check my edits for POV. Dbachmann 09:57, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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The article needed serious NPOVing: it did not have one particular bent, but there were lots of little paragraphs, partly redundant, that were at odds with each other. have a look at the top of The Search for Indo European Origins where I tried to neutrally mention the different "emotional" issues. Some more integration work is still needed, though. Some POV claims I removed, for instance the assertion that 19th century research was tainted by racism from the outset. This simply doesn't do justice to the bulk of serious research. It's true that the Nazis made a big fuss of the 'Aryans', but the scholarly literature was only very marginally affected by this, so that the history of these distortions have a more adequate home in an article on the Nazis. Similarly, RSS style nationalistic views may be linked, but should be constrained to articles such as Aryan invasion theory. Dbachmann 08:57, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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Can somebody explain to me how a philosopher like Friedrich Nietzsche can have contributed to the discovery of the Indo-Europeans? It seems implausible to me. Thanks in advance. Andries 23:17, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't know anything about this in particular, but Nietzche was originally trained as a philologist, not as a philosopher, you know, so it's not at all beyond reason that he might have dabbled in this territory. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 00:20, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

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Wow, is Indogermanen really the German word for "Indo-European"? Those wacky, wacky Germans. [1] I thought the "Indo-Germanic" thing was long dead... -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 17:18, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

-- Look,

• Nietzsche was trained as a classical philologist. This doesn't mean he has the slightest involvement with PIE. It is ridiculous to mention Nietzsche in this article, and to leave out people like Jones and Sommer etc. Mentioning Dumezil may be in order, even though his theories are badly outdated, and the controversies should be alluded to.
• "Indogermanisch" is a technical term and has no Nazi bent whatsoever! I don't know what people are thinking. Probably the fact that some steppe tribe called themselves "arya" in 2000 BC makes them Nazis, according to this argument? "Indo-Germanic" as originally intended in the 19th century was a linguistic term supposed to express the geographical range of the language family, as it were a bracket, including the most eastern and the most northern, to avoid having to call it "indo-aryan-graeco-armeno-italo-celto-albano-germanic" or something. It was never meant to express dominance of germanic (or indic) languages of any sort. After the discovery of Tocharian, we would have to switch to "Tocharo-Germanic", but of course the confusion would not be worth it.

I will try to modify the article accordingly, as gently as I can manage.

Dbachmann 13:18, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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I have removed "Mostly for political reasons" before "their very existence is also questioned by scholars". George Feuerstein's book In Search of the Cradle of Civilization gives many cogent arguments for India as the origin of Sanskrit, and perhaps of other Indo-European languages. In his book, Hinduism: a Short Introduction, Klaus Klostermaier summarizes and seems to accept these arguments.

It is true that tools of the right-wing BJP have made similar arguments for political reasons, but the inclusion of this clause may lead right-thinking readers to unnecessarily reject these lines of inquiry.

Does BJP mean what I think it does!!??

If you were thinking Bharatiya Janata Party ("Indian People's Party"), then yes!Goethean 17:35, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

apparently BJP means "Blowjob principle" on Usenet (though not widely used, it seems). This would make for a cool disambiguation page!

BJP

• British Journal of Photography
• Blowjob principle, principle of tit-for-tat or something
• Bharatiya Janata Party ("Indian People's Party"), right-wing nationalistic party of India

:-) Dbachmann 09:48, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)