ARE WORDS A SHORTHAND?

Introduction

Almost from the inception of linguistics as a field of study, the possibility of a common source language has been mooted. Recently, for example, Ruhlen and Bengston [1]  have proposed 27 global roots.

I have empirically developed a standardized set of procedures which, when applied to words of a wide range of languages, consistently produces from each word a phrase descriptively relevant to the present meaning of that word. For example, the word “adore” produces “The hour of worship” while “obese” produces “He/She prefers to sit”.

These procedures, of which examples are given in following text, use the modified ‘Roman’ alphabet of strict Basque (Euskera). Interestingly, the process can be applied, with similar results, to words transliterated from non-‘Roman’ languages. A tentative hypothesis might be that I am expanding a shorthand which arose when written language was developed from the spoken, original form; and that the seeming universality of the process is due the various languages of today having been derived/developed from a common ancestor tongue. The words of written language – regardless of the form of representation be it Roman alphabet, cuneiform or hieroglyphic – are shorthand representations of a single, old spoken language. I refer throughout this paper to words having an occluded meaning; the occluded meaning is that which is elicited by the Nyland procedures.

Analogous to the process I seem to be reversing is the creation of acronyms; with subsequent incorporation into the language as a new word. The word ‘laser’ (light amplication by stimulated emission of radiation) being a recent example of this.

Empirically developed, the technique presented is an academic orphan; I know of no precursor work, nor of pointers to it in other writings. It’s  performance and consistency has been tested against a large number of Indo-European languages from Sanskrit to Greek, Latin and Spanish, and Germanic languages such as Dutch, German, and Yiddish. In the majority of English words the first vowel seems to have been lost. This contrasts to Basque, which has half of its vocabulary starting with a vowel.

Procedures

Some background comments:

a)      The occluded meaning in written words is hypothesized to be from a spoken precursor language similar to Basque. This shorthand for the occluded meanings is structured a vowel-interlocking formula:

  (V_x)CV₁-V₁CV₂-V₂CV₃-V₃CV₄-V₄C ….. etc.

Note that each vowel after the first, optional vowel, 'V_x', is repeated.That is to say that, if the two 'Basque' roots/morphemes – ‘ore’ and ‘eto’ - were combined by this system one of the e’s would be dropped and they would appear in the interlocked form 'oreto' (equals V₁CV₂-V₂CV₃). Since 'ore' means balance, hour or mole, and 'eto' means to come, origin or inborn, we might assign a tentative meaning to the word ‘oreto’ of 'inborn balance' or 'the hour has come'.

b)      This vowel-interlocking structure applies to Sanskrit vocabulary as well as all the Romance languages, including Latin, but there are differences in detail. In Latin words, vowels are persistent, most words generally adhering to the VCVCV structure. However, in English, many more of the vowels have disappeared leaving the CVC structure as shown in names (Bonner, Duncan, Hudson, Robson, Somner etc.) and, also in words (cellar, doctor, hawser, master, pillow, tartan etc.).

c)      The fewer the vowels, the greater the number of possibilities in expanding the ‘shorthand’ to discover the occluded meaning of the word. However, at least one vowel must accompany the consonants for decoding to be practical.

The examples which follow illustrate the process, starting with the simplest situation, that in which no vowels were discarded. If the spelling of name or word was changed over time, it becomes more difficult, or it may not be possible to recover the hidden meaning. However, quite often the change in the word's spelling becomes very obvious when decoding (e.g. 'recidivist' from 'recitivist' below). Occasionally more than one possible meaning appears in which case both should be reported and/or earlier spellings researched. In general, every consonant can elicit a full word, and the more consonants in a word or name, the longer the occluded phrase and the more likely it is that it can be recovered with confidence.  The accepted meanings of words will usually help guide the process.

 Imprecision in the extraction of meaning.

When dealing with one word only, we face a problem which is common in handling language – lack of context. Consider if one is given the task of finding a meaning for the English word “duck”. I could say quite validly that it referred to an aquatic bird, a quick downwards movement, a score at Cricket or the avoidance of an issue. Where the meaning elicited from the VCV shorthand can be checked by context, it is important that it be checked. Forced, unnatural or inappropriate results should be suspect.

 It is well accepted that in the Indo-European languages vowels are generally unstable i.e. they change frequently within the root (e.g. sing, sang, sung). In the Basque language on the other hand, the vowels seem very stable with only few, mostly purposely changed, exceptions (e.g. Euskera to Euskara, Kriatzaile to Kreatzaile) but the consonants are sometimes quite unstable: F = B, Y and J = I, Q and C = K, H is often omitted, D sometimes becomes T (e.g. in idi to iti, udikan to utikan). In languages other than Basque,  S, Z and X (pronounced 'sh') are often interchanged during word development.

Basque has no ‘C’, ‘Q’, ‘V’, ‘W’ and ‘Y’, although some have sneaked into the names and some words: The word Basque should itself be spelled Bask. The letter ‘X’ in English is spelled ‘KS’ in Basque.

When seeking the occluded meaning I have observed what seems to be a basic rule; where most English words are concerned, the first syllable represents a Basque-like VCV with the first vowel removed. If an appropriate VCV was not available, then a ‘Basque’ word starting with CV was recruited. Using a CV root for the first syllable is common in Greek and the Germanic languages, but uncommon in English and almost unheard of in Old Egyptian.

In the creation of English words it is fortunately infrequent to find many consonants clustered together, such as appears in Sanskrit (“samskrta”, with five contiguous consonants) or Dutch (“angstschreeuw”, with its eight contiguous consonants). In English three consonants together are common e.g. conclude, country, destroy, irksome, naughty, puzzle etc. but four is rarer e.g. instruct, minstrel etc. In decoding such words, the vowel-interlocking rule can be applied as usual, but the number of letter combinations that need to be tried increases considerably and the reliability of decoding can diminish.

[It is interesting to note that one quarter of all VCVs have no meanings attached and these ‘unused’ syllables are only rarely found in the English vocabulary – mostly in words misspelled or altered over time].

The Tools.  
a)      The vowel interlocking formula (discussed above).

This formula was worked out during research into the Ogam inscriptions of Scotland and Ireland. It may not be too surprising that there seems to be some linguistic relationship between Ogam and Basque. The Basques are a people genetically closely related to the Irish and Scots, especially as shown in their high frequency of Rh-negative blood, 25 - 32%; with the Berbers, the only peoples in the world with those high percentages.

  b)      The VCV word list.

This is available at the end of the book. It was created by listing all 400 VCVs (ABA, ABE, ABI, ABO, ABU, EBA etc) and then listing the core meanings associated with these VCV’s. Some 107 of these 400 VCV's have no meanings attached and merit particular study. Also, of the 293 VCV’s with recognisable meaning(s), many fall into related groups. Also, many of these word groups seem to be related. For instance ABA which is used for words connected to the Christian 'manger scene'. Some VCVs have only one meaning such as “iho” (thunder) but some, like “r” and “rr” collect a very large variety of meanings. The “rr”  is treated as single “r”  for the purpose of decoding, but not for translating. The VCV list is only an aid and the Basque dictionary should be consulted.

c)      Basque Dictionary.

I have used the Basque-English and English-Basque dictionary by Gorka Aulestia (University of Nevada Press) as our standard source.

 The simplest way to set out the decoding process is as a list of steps and illustrate these by examples. The least complicated English words for decoding are the ones in which full VCVs exist, as in the first examples which follow. The examples become more complicated as more vowels are missing. Occasionally, non-interlocking roots are combined into one, e.g. 'inoculate'. Decoding requires that matching words only are taken from interlocking pairs. That is the connecting vowel (or lost vowel) is common to both words. (see below). In the case of a double vowel (diphthong), an 'h' has often been eliminated. This is common in Basque e.g. the word 'custom' is both ‘oitura’ and ‘ohitura’.

 Decoding – the process

The steps are:

a)      Arrange the letters of the word to be analyzed into the form V₁CV₂CV₃CV₄. (It may be helpful to place dots where vowels are missing or an 'h' has been lost). Then replace ‘C’ and ‘Q’ with ‘K’, ‘V’ with ‘B’ or ‘F’, ‘W’ is sometimes replaced by ‘U’ otherwise ignored and ‘Y’ is replaced with ‘I’ or ‘J’;

b)      Convert the sequence so obtained into VCV-VCV-VCV-VCV etc. in which the vowels of either side of the hyphen are the same;

c)      Using the VCV list (or a Basque dictionary), list the appropriate words for each VCV. There is usually no need to list words which are obviously unrelated to the meaning at hand, a skill acquired with practice; and

d)      Select those words which make a phrase or sentence most closely fitting the meaning of the word being decoded.

  Decoding – the results

Although the procedures have been applied successfully to languages as variant as Old Egyptian and Yiddish, the few examples that follow are from English. In these I show a few only of the possible meanings of each VCV. (For a more complete list the VCV list or Basque dictionary should be consulted). 

 (i)         Words with a VCV structure (i.e. no vowel loss)

  adore, ado - ore

                            ado    ado    adoratu                to worship 
                            ore    ore     oren                     hour 
                           "hour of worship".  

ebony, ebo - oni

                                ebo  ebo  eboluzionatu               to develop, create 
                               oni  oni  onizan                     something useful        

                            "create something useful".  

evade, eba - ade

                       eba    eba    ebasle                       swindler                                                         ade    ade    adeigabeko                rude                            
                        "rude swindler".

  enumerate, enu - ume - era - ate

                             enu     enu    enulkeria                             sedentary/stay at home                             ume    ume   ume                                     offspring/birth                                           era     era     erakutsi                                to show, to sample                                           ate     ate     atez-ate                                door to door

                             "go door to door to sample the offspring at home"

  obese, obe - ese

                        obe    obe    obetsi         to prefer

                         ese    ese     eseri           to sit

                         "(he/she) prefers to sit"

  (ii)               Words with one vowel missing.

cupola, .ku - upo - ola,     first vowel is missing.

                        .ku     iku    ikusgarri     scenic

                        upo    upo   upohol        barrel shaped

                        ola     ola    olana          canopy

                        "scenic barrel-shaped canopy"

delegate, .de - ele - ega - ate

                        .de        ide          idetu                 to compare, to swap

                        ele        ele          ele                     story

                        ega      ega         egarritu              to make someone thirsty

                        ate      ate          aterapen              consequence

                        "the consequence of swapping stories is that one gets thirsty"

  energy, ene - er. - .gi

                          ene      ene       -enetan                        always

                        er.       era       eragin                           to motivate

               .gi       agi       aginbidedun                  powerfully

                        "Always powerfully motivated"

  obdurate, ob.-.du-ura-ate

                          ob.   obe   oben egin                   to sin

                        .du     edu   eduki                          to have

                        ura     urra   urratu                        to break a law

                        ate     ate    atergabeki                  continually

                        "He has sinned by breaking the law continually”

 (ii)               Words with two vowels missing

begin, .be-egi-in.