ARYAN BARBARIANS & THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Some linguists believe modern English dates back to a Viking trade jargon.

Hey Folks,

Have you ever wondered how the English language has shaped your mind? Or, if English isn’t your first language, have you ever thought about what role your native language had in making you the person you are?

To me, this is a fascinating question. To me, it seems like Latin Americans are significantly more family-oriented than Anglo-Americans or Germans are. There seems to be considerable cultural contiguity between speakers of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. Could this be partly explained by linguistics?

Inspired by the Italian anarchist Jean Weir, I recently posed the question:

The “Shopkeepers and Pirates” line comes from an interview with Jean Weir, who is most famous for translating the works of the late Alfredo Bonanno.

If you’ll forgive me a digression, I’d like to quote from than interview, which was published in the European insurrectionist journal 325. The following passage is taken from A Passion From Freedom, which is available at the Anarchist Library.

325: The publishing project you are involved in – Elephant Editions – is well known for being the main translator of Alfredo Maria Bonanno and other ‘insurrectional’ anarchists, whilst we don’t want to add to or create a cult of personality, can you explain why the ideas of Alfredo, and the other writers you publish, are important for the struggle to overthrow the conditions which oppress us?

JEAN WEIR: In the first place, we are talking about ideas, quite rare merchandise these days. Ideas with a subversive charge, which encounter and stimulate other ideas that take us out of the swamp of opinion and tolerance and help us to reach the lucidity necessary to act upon and transform the reality that oppresses us. I should say that I have never approached any of the texts that I’ve translated and subsequently published other than with the purely selfish intention of wanting to enter the discourse and clarify some ideas myself. When eventually (after a long struggle) the text becomes something tangible in English, I want others to read it too.

For (some) people reading such texts becomes an encounter, a level of self-discovery derived from seeing ideas set out in the written word with a certain level of clarity. Tensions that we already feel burning inside us become clearer, making it easier to gather and assimilate them in order to act.

So, the text takes on its own life, makes its journey within the context of the struggle, contributes to giving the comrades that so desire it an instrument for recognising and valorising their own ideas and dreams, turning them into a point of strength in life and in the struggle.

The text then becomes both a subjective encounter and a physical ‘thing’, which in the vicissitudes of its journey throughout social and ideal space, becomes an element in creating informal relations between individual comrades.

As well as that, we all need analysis — for example of the economy, the new technologies, the changing faces of power and the struggle, new enemies and false friends. And, let’s face it, many of us are lazy or lack method when it comes to gaining knowledge.

Without ideas, analyses and projectuality we are nothing, mere abstractions, building castles in the air, the hot air of formal structures and their organisational obsessions.

The structure of the Italian language, and these texts in particular, is quite different to the English language of ‘pirates and shopkeepers’; it always takes me a long time to get them readable to a certain degree, and to follow the argument through.

It’s quite a journey, particularly as these comrades, Alfredo and the others I have translated, are my comrades in struggle, we lived through the experience of these ideas in practice, they come from the development of the movement over the past few decades. I believe that these particular ideas, or theories, are an important contribution to the struggle today because they come from the part of the movement that doesn’t refer to any fixed organisation or formal structure and wants to attack oppression in all its forms directly.

When I read this, I immediately suspected it was true, which explains why the “Shopkeepers and Pirates” line stuck in my mind.

It has only been recently that I’ve realized how true it is. Indeed, English was so transformed by the Vikings that some linguists argue that English is a Scandinavian language!

Apparently, English grammar is extremely similar to Norwegian. Take that for what it’s worth.

Anyway, I’ve started comparing English language to other languages. One of the notable differences between English and most other languages is that it shows a preference for a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) sentence structure, which I call “HULK VERB NOUN”.

If you’ve ever studied another language, you will be aware that other languages use different word order. You may have heard that German puts verbs at the end of sentences, which seems very weird to Anglo brains, but did you know that the most popular word order across all the world’s languages is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV)?

In Is English a “Language of Shopkeepers and Pirates?”, I point out that the people of Merry Ole England got raped and pillaged quite a lot over the centuries. I point out that the original people of England were likely matriarchal Goddess-worshipping pagans, but they were invaded by hostile foreigners many times over the course of the centuries. Modern English is the result of a mishmash between many different languages.

This is why I propose that modern English began as a pidgin language.

So, I decided I’d look into pidgin languages, starting with the Chinook trade jargon of the Pacific Northwest, which prior to European invasion was one of the most linguistically diverse places on planet Earth.

It turns out that Chinook has Subject-Verb-Object word order, just like English. I started wondering whether this might be a common feature of trade jargons.

I have a hunch that SVO might be preferred by people who belong with different and possibly hostile ethno-linguistic groups because "VERB THE NOUN" is a short distance from "THIS FOR THAT".

It needs some work, but basically my thesis is that SVO requires lower levels of intersubjectivity, thus making it ideally suited for use amongst people who disliked each other.

It seems very easy to construct aggressive HAMMER SMASH FACE sentences with SVO. Certainly English seems much more aggressive to me than French or Spanish, the other two languages I speak.

What do you guys think? Am I on to something? Some quick online research seems to confirm my theory so far.

Here's a convo I had with ChatGPT about word order in trade jargons.

Enjoy!

Crow Qu’appelle

Do trade jargons show preference for SVO?

ChatGPT: Trade jargons, like many specialized vocabularies, tend to follow the syntactic structures of the dominant language in which they are used. In the case of English, which is the predominant language in global trade, the standard sentence structure is Subject-Verb-Object (SVO). As a result, trade jargons in English typically follow this SVO pattern.

For example:

• "The company exports goods."

• "They signed the contract."

• "The buyer pays the invoice."

In these examples, the trade-related actions (exports, signed, pays) follow the SVO structure. This is not unique to trade jargon; it's a feature of English grammar in general. However, in other languages where different syntactic structures are common, trade jargon would likely conform to those structures. For instance, in Japanese (a Subject-Object-Verb language), trade terms would be used in SOV order.

List ten regional pidgin languages like chinook jargon

ChatGPT: Certainly! Here are ten regional pidgin languages, similar to Chinook Jargon:

1. Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea)

2. Bislama (Vanuatu)

3. Haitian Creole (Haiti)

4. Nigerian Pidgin (Nigeria)

5. Hawaiian Pidgin (Hawaii, USA)

6. Papiamento (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao)

7. Krio (Sierra Leone)

8. Samoan Plantation Pidgin (Samoa, Hawaii)

9. Pidgin English (Cameroon)

10. Solomon Islands Pijin (Solomon Islands)

These pidgin languages arose out of contact between speakers of different native languages, often in trade, colonization, or labor contexts, and have since developed into fully functional languages in their own right.

Do all 10 have SVO?

ChatGPT: Pidgin and creole languages often adopt the SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) word order, which is a common pattern in many of the languages that influenced their development.

Here's a look at the word order of the ten listed pidgin languages:

1. Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea) - SVO

2. Bislama (Vanuatu) - SVO

3. Haitian Creole (Haiti) - SVO

4. Nigerian Pidgin (Nigeria) - SVO

5. Hawaiian Pidgin (Hawaii, USA) - SVO

6. Papiamento (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao) - SVO

7. Krio (Sierra Leone) - SVO

8. Samoan Plantation Pidgin (Samoa, Hawaii) - SVO

9. Pidgin English (Cameroon) - SVO

10. Solomon Islands Pijin (Solomon Islands) - SVO

While these pidgin and creole languages generally follow the SVO structure, it is important to note that word order can sometimes be more flexible compared to their lexifier languages (the languages that contributed the most vocabulary to the pidgin or creole). The SVO pattern is dominant due to its prevalence in the European languages that heavily influenced the development of these pidgins and creoles.

Well, there you have it, folks…

I hope that it doesn’t sound like I’m knocking English too hard. English is my mother tongue, and I spend much of my time writing and reading, mostly in English. Hopefully it’s obvious that I love the English language. If you’re a lover of the English language, please don’t take what I’m saying the wrong way.

In all honesty, I haven’t even really decided how I feel about the relationship between language, culture, and politics. I’m merely exploring a subject which I find fascinating.

My suspicion is that the English language might be less neutral than we might think, but I see language as inseparable from culture and politics, meaning that it is likely impossible to isolate linguistic variables enough to draw any reasonable conclusions.

But, hey, I’m a philosopher. My job is thinking about things. And man, is linguistics ever fun to think about!

What I am suggesting at this point boils down to this: each language is a unique tool which calibrates cognition differently. Like other forms of technology, languages are not neutral. And some may be better-suited to certain aims than others. If our goal is to create an anarchist society, our goal is to create an anarchist culture. There are certain cultures that are commonly described as “culturally anarchist”, among them the Maya, the Anishnaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Kurds, and the Mapuche. Each of these cultures has their own languages. Could there be something about these languages that predispose them to more egalitarian forms of social organization?

I don’t really know, but it seems worth considering. I suspect that the Anglo-American obsession with the accumulation of money might have something to do with modern English being derived from a trade jargon.

I’m more than willing to be proven wrong, however, and in fact I would prefer that my theory weren’t true!

So, if you’re able to debunk it, please do so!

I will leave you with the words of Kandiaronk, the great Huron philosopher:

I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’.

I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake.

Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, – of all the world’s worst behaviour. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money.

In the light of all this, tell me tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as to look at silver?