Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture

["Laura Jones" <lmjones@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Omar!  Thanks for this message - lots to think about.  I will make a
reply when I have time, but I wanted to pause long enough to say thanks now.
My linguistic background is that worked with some friends to build the first
ever machine translation system which really had good syntactic and semantic
resolution.  Our company was called Logos (still is, I guess, I don't keep
up with them) and it was very badly run in a business way, with the result
that other people got our system and developed it while Logos is still
living off of venture capital. But nevertheless the experience actually
showed how science and technology advance together, because just as the
calculus was discovered simultaneously by Descartes and Newton at the time
when things were being invented which were capable of measuring things in
motion, so also when we had computers that could process literally millions
of sentences is when it became possible to really understand what language
actually is, not just theorize about it.  So on this basis, for instance,
English is about the most terrible language there is!  It's very irregular,
borrows from very diverse traditions, etc.  French also is difficult for a
machine to translate because not only is the spelling obsolete, but they
stick in little words when they don't like certain conjunctions of sounds,
etc.  German has problems because so much gets "nested" - although it was
our most successful language because as long as the meaning was there, the
German businessmen are not as fussy as are, say the French with their belle
langue francais.  Russian, by contrast, is, from the point of view of being
able to resolve the syntax, and understand the meaning of the words (it has
a finite number of stems and forms words by agglutinization like aymara, so,
for instance, when I come across mistakes or confusion in the English
translations of the Bible, I go first of all to the Russian, because they
used the Leningrad Codex which is known to be especially accurate) - so
Russian is, by these criteria linguistically very perfect.  I imagine one
reason might be that Saints Cyril and Methodius made up their alphabet for
them, so probably like those who wrote your grammars, they set some
standards.  As to how a language "is" or "should be" spoken, Sanskrit I
understand is not still today spoken as it is written, but it is used in
dissertations, etc., for clarity.  As for Greek, at the time I was studying
it I was more interested in getting all the homework translated than as a
language, but Aristotle's use of the language shows how very sophisticated
it had become -  I think he could not have developed his philosophy except
with such a linguistic tool.  What sticks in my mind is the term for
"potentiality".  I mean the word "potentiality" has very little meaning, it
just is something that has potency in some form or other.  But Aristotle's
Greek is "to ti ein einai" which means, literally, "the which was to be", we
usually translate this as "that which was to be" - but you see what
Aristotle actually does is take the very rich verb phrase and just put a
definite article in front of it, so that the noun phrase preserves all the
richness of the verb phrase, designating whatever can come into being.  So I
did not spend a lot of time on Aymara, what especially caught my eye were
the verb modalities.  At Logos I was the  one who made up our first
paradigmatic tables.  We couldn't just copy them out of the dictionary
because they had to be so that the computer could make the different
formations automatically, the language I used was Hebrew - we were at the
time looking at doing Arabic, and Hebrew is a more simple Semitic language,
and we had an Israeli who worked with me.  And the Aymara verbs are formed
very much the same way, plus the stems also can assume a noun form, this is
true in Russian also, and of course in Greek.  So, yes, I think it is very
important to look at the aboriginal American languages in this light,
precisely because of what you said: the rigors of the efforts of the
colonizers to destroy these cultures and replace them with their own.  There
is a very interesting fact you may not be aware of.  Mexico City, and most
specifically the site where Our Lady of Guadaloupe appeared to the Aztec
Indian, Juan Diego, who had recently become Christian, was already famous as
an Aztec holy site, and she spoke to Juan Diego in the Aztec language.  The
real significance of this is that in this manner Christianity actually
became a genuinely American religion, not imported from across the ocean by
invaders, but presented to America by the Mother of God herself, and in the
form of an ikon not made by human hands.  She herself imprinted her image
miraculously on Juan Diego's tilma.  And in fact in Latin America the
Catholic religion is lived differently from the way Catholics in North
America live and think, and this is because of the influence of the
aboriginal Americans.  Pope John Paul understands this, in the latest new
cardinals, 11 are Latin American.  So, yes, I don't think anyone needs to be
shy about talking about Aymaran and all the others in the same category as
Greek and Sanskrit.  I would be interested to know how much commonality
there is among the various languages you mentioned.  For instance, take the
Slavic languages: Bulgarian remains today basically the same as the Church
Slavonic - and Slavonic is much more like present day spoken Russian than,
for instance, Shakespeare is like modern English. I always know what Gospel
they are reading in the services, for instance.  (I'm Russian Orthodox)  On
the other hand, with the epistles and the Psalms, etc., I usually don't know
what it is, the language is less simple.  Russians who go to Poland or what
used to be Czechoslovakia can communicate with no problem.  So thanks for
sharing with me - I even manage somewhat with the Spanish, tho it's slow
going!  Lots of love to all my new friends - Laura
----- Original Message -----
From: Omar Beas <omarhbeas@yahoo.es>
To: <aymaralist@aymara.org>
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2001 3:38 PM
Subject: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture


> Hola amigos de Aymara Uta:
>
> Algunos comentarios rapidos sobre lo ultimo que nos
> plantean, Jorge y Laura:
>
> Ustedes consideran factible el  paralelismo de  los
> analfabetismos de la mayoria de los griegos y
> sanscritos y el pueblo aymara?
>
> <<Una pregunta dificil de responder, sobre todo si no
> hay una posicion ideologica de por medio. En todo caso
> aunque es interesante hacer comparaciones, creo que
> ellas no deben llevarnos a mayores conclusiones (a una
> "explicacion" o algo misterioso como ello en este
> caso) que la descripcion misma de los hechos. Quiza en
> este contexto sea igual de importante poner de relieve
> las diferencias>.
>
> I'm a little surprised that when the language is so
> tremendously sophisticate, I don't see anything about
> a
> literature or a writing system.
>
> <<I do not understand what you mean by "sophisticate".
> Is it in the sense of the grammar? Which aspects? If
> so, what about another languages?>
>
> Of course, the literature can be oral, Greek
> literature was transmitted orally for a long time, and
> even when the great tragedians, etc., came along, I
> never researched it because I never before was
> interested in the issue, but I bet most of the Greeks
> were still illiterate and knew the literature orally.
>
>
> <<I agree with your intuitions and the comparison that
> you establish. In case of Quechua and Aymara cultures
> (that are closely related), we could suppose that
> there was a kind of "literature" (in the western
> sense)that was transmitted orally (Comentarios Reales
> and Cronicas could give a clue to make such
> conjecture). Since literature and education have
> always been related, we could say that Inka family and
> relatives had some access to oral traditions in the
> "standard version". Peruvian history, however, has
> been extremely violent to our native cultures and
> Spanish Conquest is a proof.
> Another important difference could be the diversity of
> cultures during the Inka Empire, which is stronger
> than in the case of Greeks (we had different
> "kingdoms" with different customs and
> languages/dialects (!!)Cuzco Quechua, Quiteño Quechua,
> Mochica language, Culle language, Puquina language,
> Mochica language, Quingnam language, etc)the tendency
> was, however, to a functional multiculturalism /
> multilinguism where a dialect of quechua worked as a
> koine.
>
> I guess, come to think of it, that having a good
> grammar would be one way to preserve the purity of a
> language so it would not degenerate as the vernacular
> changed, already with koine Greek, the Greek language
> is linguistically declining
>
> <<You are right in a prescriptive sense when you say
> that "having a good grammar..." and definitively
> Bertonio was a genius. I say that because he could
> make an excelent and accurate description of Aymara
> despite of the limitations fo this period. He has not
> comparison in the Aymara world and perhaps Domingo de
> Santo Tomas/Gonzales Holguin are only comparable in
> the Quechua side. So, Bertonio's grammar is not only
> important because of its prescriptive role (that is
> how "to speak correctly"), but -I think- because of
> its descriptive power (how Aymara is spoken in...).
> I think we could say that there was a koine here but
> -which is obvious- with different functions and roles.
> During the Spanish Conquer and colony, Quechua,
> Aymara, Mochica, Puquina (in a first stage) were taken
> as a way to spread the Catholic religion. They were
> "lenguas generales", that is, languages that had a
> wide range of influence.
> Perhaps it is interesting to point out the well known
> case of Quechua. Along the lines you mention, Quechua
> "koine" of Domingo de Santo Tomas (1583)(DST)was not
> the same of Gonzales Holguin (1610?)'s. The first one
> was based on Quechua dialect which was spoken, mainly,
> in the Peruvian coast; while the second one is a true
> koine, based on aspects both from Cuzco Quechua and
> DST Quechua, a "construct" to be used to functional
> purposes. The former as a tool of Catholic religion
> dissapeared because of the latter.
> It is a complex picture... definitively, and that is
> why it is more interesting!!
>
> Take care,
>
> Omar
>
> P.S. Tengo la mala costumbre de escribir "discursos",
> pero es lo mejor que puedo hacer por ahora, amigos.
> Cuidense mucho.
>
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