The mysterious Sino-German connection

As discussed in a previous post, to anyone reviewing the evidence in detail, it is difficult to deny the obvious long list of cognates between Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and Chinese. These cognates include numerous  elements of core vocabulary: verbs, nouns and adjectives.  In many cases, these cognates extend to Thai, as well.

From a historical perspective, the obvious question is: how did this likely happen? A successful Eastern invasion led by an PIE-speaking horse-riding tribe is certainly one explanation, and legends of the blond-haired name-giving Huangdi would support this guess.

Yet even if that DID happen, several other mysteries remain unexplained. When we look at the cognate vocabulary, as Prof. Zhang Congdong pointed out, the similarities with ONE branch of Indo-European are far stronger than those with any of the others – the Germanic branch. Comparing terms for animals such as 馬 (ma, *mog, meaning “horse”), cognate with mare (en), marc (ir), Mähre (dt) and *mork (PIE),  牛 (*gou/gu, meaning “cattle”), cognate with cow (en) and Kuh (dt), 豕 (*sĕg, meaning “pig”), cognate with sow (en), Sau (dt), sus (lt) and *suk (PIE), or kinship terms like 孫 (“sūn”, male descendent), English cognate “son” make this apparent. While these terms are not exclusive to the Germanic branch of PIE, where there is a choice of terms, as for example in the word for cattle, Chinese almost always opts for the German variant.

Moreover, Chinese (and to some extent Thai) seem to also have a number of cognates for terms which occur ONLY in the Germanic branch of Proto-Indo-European. While the reconstructed Germanic, Greek, Latin/Baltic and Slavic proto-languages clearly have a common origin, it has long been estimated that approximately one third of the basic Germanic vocabulary has no PIE counterpart. This has usually been assumed to have been due to some type of substantial language substrate in an area conquered by the Germans. Common terms such as 壯 (“strong”, read zhuàng in modern Chinese, English cognate … “strong”) or 背 (read bèi in modern Chinese, “bek” in Thai and approximately “*bak” in ancient Chinese, English cognate “back”) are some of the more obvious examples. There are many more, but these cases show how amazingly close the relationship would seem to be.

So perhaps the invasion was comparatively recent in historical terms, say within the past 4000 years at a maximum. If we theorize that there was a massive emigration out of the once flourishing Baltic Sea civilization area when climatic conditions dramatically worsened approximately 3500 years ago, sending the Latins from Latvia to Latium, the (W)achaeans (Wikinger) from Denmark to the Pelopónnesos, and the Aryans from St. Peterburg to India, then the emigration of yet another group across Asia is easily imaginable.

And yet, let’s look at the evidence of a few other words, specifically the old word for dog – 犬 (something like *kün or *khü(ĕ)n in ancient Chinese, English cognate “hound”. Except for some words like “call” in peripheral dialects, in the Germanic languages the PIE k weakened in almost all cases to an “h”. Latin canis and Greek κυνός look far more similar to the Chinese than the Germanic “Hund/hound”.

So did the emigration simply took place before Germanic lost its k sound? Or is the explanation somehow linked to the mysterious non-PIE vocabulary? Could the unexplained words perhaps come from Asia? After all, if these substrate people lived in Scandinavia, why did their words not seep into any of the languages of any of the other PIE-speakers living around the Baltic? There seem to be no obvious answers to these questions, but I feel like we have a number of clues waiting for someone to piece them cleverly together.

Memorable Etymologies

These days it is becoming increasingly simple to find etymologies online. Besides our old friend etymonline.com, wiktionary.org now has quite a few (especially fr.wiktionary.org). Two other good sources are etimo.it (Italian) and etimologias.dechile.net (Spanish). The later one welcomes additions and thus includes quite a few original insights. Bit by bit so much of our history is revealed to still be with us.

For words in far Eastern languages, e.g. Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese etc. I have the feeling that our great etymological dictionary is still waiting to be written, but perhaps I’ll stumble across it one day. Some partial lists are out there (for example, Thai/Chinese word lists), but nothing comprehensive that I know of. The list of correspondences between all these and many European languages (especially Germanic) is long, so it would be a massive work.

I’ll list some memorable word collections here (and add to it later). Those that strike me tend to be those which reveal cognates which I had not previously thought of.

asare (lt), asar (es) = to roast, asado (es) = barbeque, cf. ash (en), Asche (dt)
ardere (lt), arder (es) = to burn, cf. ardor (lt, en), presumably related to asare

tela (lt) = woven stuff, texere = to weave (cf. texture), tekton (el) = carpenter, tekhne (el) = art (cf. technical), tejado (es), Dach (dt) = roof… but also: towel/toalla (disputed) and even toilet

For those who minds are filled with elections

Are you sure that the whole show is worth taking seriously? Think about it. After all, you seem to have a pretty good grasp of what is going on…. so why not follow the rabbit down the hole to the obvious conclusion? If it’s all a game, then… why play along? Other than for amusement, how many minutes of your CPU time is it worthy of? I mean, sure, political decisions do make a difference – such as those to create trillions of new dollars, or to prevent teenagers from selling lemonade on the street, or to deny medical freedom, or to send poor youngsters from one country to kill other poor youngsters from other countries. But these are different matters entirely from the election show(s). Those are merely there to create a false sense of legitimacy for those nasty political decisions.

Face it, “democracy” is just a big game, a big illusion. Moreover, it always has been.

It’s also a religion which it is blasphemous to criticize. Priests (aka Supreme Court ‘justices’) are in place to keep watch over the legitimacy of the system, so the masses needn’t worry their pretty heads about such high matters. While there are always a few bad apples, these are the exception to the rule of justice, right? Does such an assumption stack up with their track record?

The truth is, faith in the neutrality of the courts is incredibly resilient. People are taught that by virtue of this not-to-be questioned concept, they are supposed to put up with their lot and make the best of matters, because no matter how bad the results, under democracy “the people” rule. They are also taught to look to the State for solutions to all of their problems, despite the state’s terrible track record on this front — and instead of finding workarounds for themselves.

I suggest you might want to choose to opt out of the faith. It’s a faith with a terribly low return on investment.

Living under the terrorist state

While there is probably no state whose inhabitants are never subject to terrorist raids, the type of terrorism which has become commonplace in the US seems quite exceptional. Is this perhaps a symptom of the fact that the feudalistic profit-sharing model has broken down over wide areas there? In other words, have the proceeds of the state’s standard coerced “profit-sharing” model simply become insufficient to satisfy the appetite of the predator class? After all, as soon as the geese cease to lay golden eggs, they no longer require coddling.

If this LRC article is to be believed, on average approximately 200 so-called “no-knock” raids are now inflicted every day on the unfortunate US population:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/122986.html

A pre-dawn terrorist raid in Billings Montana left a 12-year-old girl with first- and second-degree burns after one of the armored heroes threw grenades through the window of her second-floor bedroom. The terrorist gang leader claimed that the no-knock raid – one of about 70,000 carried out in the U.S. each year – was part of a “narcotics investigation”. No drugs were found, and no arrests were made. [Note: Newspeak partially translated into standard English.]

Another recent egregious attack is documented here on video. The raided couple was apparently assaulted for advocating a return to constitutional rule:

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/hes-constitutionalist.html

Once again reminds me how lucky I am to live in a state which is mostly preoccupied with simple corruption.

Time Preference & Currency Zones

Over the course of the last decade multiple countries across Europe gave up their individual currencies (and interest rate levels) and adopted a common one: the euro. Of these, the Mediterranean countries traditionally had higher interest rates and occasional currency devaluations in pre-euro times, the more Northern European countries by contrast had relatively low rates and occasional revaluations. Post-euro adoption, the rate of debt accumulation in Mediterranean countries accelerated, industry was dismantled and houses built. At the same time, trade deficits expanded to new highs.

Without belaboring the details, it seems to me that this a clear consequence of different average time preferences. The former provinces of the Roman Empire share a relatively high time preference, whereas the non-Roman parts of Europe have a far lower one.

China’s New Silver Bank – ICBC

Bank in Chinese is 银行 – literally “silver merchant”. Alas, like so most countries around the world, China has not had a real “silver merchant” for half a century. With their paper gold accounts, Hong Kong’s banks have arguably come close. But no silver.

That has now changed.

In August 2010, ICBC (工商银行), the world’s “largest” bank in terms of market capitalization, after a break of over 60 years, began offering savings accounts in silver again. ICBC account holders can hold paper silver, paper gold, physical silver and physical gold. Admittedly it’s not yet possible to actually make payments in silver, but with extremely tight buy/sell rates perhaps we can forgive them this blemish for the moment.

According to various online accounts (e.g. this one from goldcore.com), interest in holding real money is considerable. According to an ICBC spokesman,  even without calculating paper silver, in January alone about 13 tons of physical silver were purchased, compared with 33 tons in the whole of 2010. Were that demand to continue then demand for silver from ICBC alone could be as high as 156 tons for the entire year.

Gold sales are equally impressive, with the ICBC reporting sales of around 7 tons of gold in January alone. That’s quite a bit – over $300m worth. Reportedly over 1m new accounts have been opened since December.

It seems that a number of people out there between Pearl River and Amur River are reading the writing on the wall.

Copying Locked Files

Using Windows Backup

For many years I have used the Windows Backup tool to save video files I had finished viewing in a browser. By taking advantage of the Windows “Shadow Copy” functionality, you can do this despite the files being copy-protected. You simply start Windows Backup, find the copy-protected .tmp file in Local Settings\Temp, backup that file and restore the backup to a new location – without security. The final step is to rename the file as xxxxx.flv. Then you’re done.

Using Firefox Extensions & Youtube Downloader

Of course now there are several Firefox extensions which allow downloading of Youtube videos, as well as the “Youtube Downloader” for the desktop. But given that we don’t always plan that far in advance, the Backup tool still provides a handy alternative method. [Installing Youtube Downloader also has the disadvantage that it screws around with your IE settings to steer you towards its site.]

Using Hobocopy

Still, though, the Windows Backup method does NOT work with Google Video. It doesn’t work because Google Video “locks” the file in addition to copy-protecting it. This causes Windows Backup to skip the file during backup.

So what to do?

One answer is to use a little program called “hobocopy”. This is a little backup routine developed by the “Wangdera Corporation” and available here. It copies files regardless of their state – locked or not, everything is copied. Depending on your previous configuration, you may also need to install a version of runtime C++, which is also provided on the same page.

Once you have the zip file, create a new folder in a convenient-to-access place. Then open up a DOS window and navigate to it. To save your locked video file, type something like this:

D:\Apps\Hobocopy>hobocopy c:\DOCUME~1\MYPROF~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ D:\Temp\ flaF4.tmp

Note: This example assumes that the user profile is called “My Profile”. Folder names longer than 8 characters are abbreviated as above, with spaces ignored.

This will copy the locked .tmp file to your folder D:\Temp, where is can be renamed and accessed normally.

One other note: If you have a TrueCrypt drive open, you will need to close it before hobocopy will work, even if the file concerned is not on the TrueCrypt drive. Otherwise hobocopy will simply produce a “DoSnapshotSet failed.” error. Thanks to http://www.pluralsight-training.net/community/blogs/craig/archive/2007/01/08/45624.aspx for pointing this out.

Additional useful information on hobocopy can be found here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/backupcopy-files-that-are-in-use-or-locked-in-windows/

Just in case that disappears one day, I’ll include an excerpt here:

Using HoboCopy to Backup/Copy a Single File

The syntax is a little weird, because HoboCopy is really meant to be used for backing up an entire set of folders. We can use it to backup a single file by passing in the filename argument at the end.

Note: on Windows Vista you will need to launch an Administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking on the Command prompt in the start menu and choosing Run as Administrator.

Syntax:

hobocopy c:\directoryname\ d:\backupdirectory\ <filename>

For example, I want to backup my c:\users\geek\mail\outlook.pst file to d:\backups\outlook.pst. Here’s the syntax that I’d use:

C:\> hobocopy c:\users\geek\mail\ d:\backups\ Outlook.pst