RACE and LANGUAGE
__________________________

The concept of 'race' is rather a silly idea. It appears to stem from the notion that a group of people living in a particular area having the same 'properties'. The longer they live as a group, the more they become a 'race'.

Humans soon place a 'name-value' on anything that they see as an entity, thus a group of people living in a particular place find they have an identity. For example: the group living over there in the mountains with a stream are the XYZ tribe. The notion is self-limiting. The notion that any one race is 'pure' is a total refutation of the notion of sexual reproduction which is the basis of our individuality and not our sameness.

I would submit that the earliest groups of human animals were all tribes. Moreover, these tribes would mostly have been nomadic.

However, this is not an essay on early human history.

What interests me is the notion that languages appear to be defining race. Thus is you speak a certain language, you are part of a race. This is patently not true. Because you speak a certain language does not make you part of a race.

Philology is the study of language. It has its own language (as do all sciences). Philologists study languages in relation to each other as well as their history and chronology. They can also lump alike languages together. Thus we can have Aryan languages, Semitic languages and so on. The language is not the people. It is essential to remember this as many  are confused by references to languages as people.

Aryans are not a people (race etc.). People speak an Aryan language (Armenian, Albanian, Balto-Slavic, Keltic, Italic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Tokharian. These expand into many more), they are not Aryans.

Semitic refers to language types (Aramaic, Hebrew etc.), not a people. People who speak a semitic language are not semites (they are persons who speak a semitic language). People who speak and Aramaic language are not Aramaics and so forth.

Anyone can speak several languages, it does not make them many different types (races) of people.

Differences between individual humans should never be exploited by those individuals. The notion of so-called racial 'differences' is the hindrance that creates human problems. People can or cannot live with certain others either on an individual basis or a group basis. That is a fact of animal life, it should never be mandated otherwise.

You cannot class people by their language.

A language is not a people.




Return to CONTENTS page