[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on Comparative Mythology

[jprussell]

I at last got around to reading and writing up my thoughts on Jaan Puhvel's Comparative Mythology, a book that I'm ashamed to admit I didn't know about a few months ago. If you're interested in the myths of folks who speak/spoke Indo-European languages, and most of all if you're interested in what we might be able to work out about the ancestral myths told by those who spoke the Proto-Indo-European mother tongue, you'll find lots to like here.

Comments

Indo - European

[moser99]

When I got my American Heritage Dictionary 55 years ago, I was curious about their language tree inside the cover. English came from Indo-European? I met a Frisian back in the 1980s.

Thanks for writing this. This is as close to a follow-up as I've gotten!

(I had to replace the dictionary. It physically wore out. In the 1970s, college kids entertained themselves looking up naughty words. You would not see them in print anywhere else. Laughter until your eyes watered. The world was a more innocent place.)

Re: Indo - European

[jprussell]

Thank you for the kind words! I have the American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European Roots, which has been a lot of fun. I'm also a big enough fan of the Online Etymology Dictionary to have its app on my phone and pay a subscription to keep the lights on (comes in very handy for my self-imposed constraint of writing prayers to the Germanish Gods in only words of Germanish stock).

For the overall shape of what we know about the Indo-Europeans, with not a ton of emphasis on language, David Anthony's The Horse, the Wheel, and Language mentioned in the post is the best overall book I know. For the history of the Germanish tongues specifically, I have, but have not yet read, Language and History in the Early Germanic World by D.H. Green, and for the history of English specifically, I haven't read, but would like to on the strength of this review, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter, which besides the pretty standard, accepted history of English (West Germanic tongue that absorbed some Brythonic Celtic elements, then underwent at least one creolization with Norman French, then enthusiastically adopted all the Latin and Greek words it could get its hands on), adds in the decidedly non-standard hypothesis that the Germanish language family was influenced by a Semitic tongue, likely from Phoenician traders (main evidence for this being Germanish's comparative lack of grammatical conjugation and declension compared to other IE tongues, and the presence of "strong" verbs, where the past tense is indicated by an internal vowel change rather than an ending, like "run" and "ran" or "drive" and "drove"). If you're especially interested in how the Norman influence pulled English rather far from its Germanish roots, How We'd Talk if the English Won in 1066 is a fun look at how pervasive the French influence was, and gives a bunch of Old English-derived alternatives. If you want to actually bring more Germanish root words into your speaking and writing, Plain English by Bryan Evans is invaluable, though sometimes helpfully supplemented by The Anglish Moot and the Anglish Times wordbook.

Anyhow, that's likely far more than you're interested in, but thanks again for your thoughts!

Jeff