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Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
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https://moniyawlinguist.wordpress.c...trigger-warning-incarnate-i-am-the-white-man/

Hehe.

That is a very interesting blog.

Joe, I am a scholar and so I question things. Socrates taught me this, but he was an extreemly annoying man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro

Here he whacks down poor Euthyphro who is reduced to saying "Certainly Socrates" many times, makes his excuses and leaves.

Questioning stuff is a good trait but it mustnt go too far...

For the record; I was brought up in a respectable household and swearing was forbidden. I would not have much respect for a person who had a potty mouth. However a language with no swear words would baffle me as swearing, much as it is of doubtful desirab
 

Tengu

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Jan 10, 2006
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Yes he is long dead, but good ideas last forever, dont they?

The Athenian one.

And he died rather than leave it.
 
I really enjoyed that - thanks! It was interesting to see the same knife and ulu designs as over here - but a bit alarming to see bone carving with a Dremel but without face masks.

I believe that there were no swear words. In the days before electric lights, a very stable mental state was pretty vital to withstand dark freezing winters. Also without total cooperation with neighbors, you die. And if you get mad at the weather conditions, or the lack of stuff to hunt, then you will make a mistake when you are distracted - and die. Even where I live, I've known many people in these times of electric light and TV, who could not tolerate the short days in winter and months when you never see the sun for overcast skies and continual rain or snow. Now of course when indigenous kids grow up in poverty (in material terms) around other kids who have (apparently) everthing, then they may learn anger and swearing in a hurry. Their parents and family, who have a different definition of wealth are totally blindsided, and unable to comprehend - as you would be if your kids came home from school and told you to dump the mansion and Range Rovers and get to somewhere you could risk your life to get fishy tasting meat by virtue of working with friends, in order to get some proper wealth. In my early years on the coast, 40 years ago, when kids were raised by their grand-parents because their parents had been destroyed by residential school, I had a difficult task explaining the clash of cultures. The points of view were incomprehensible to the other people involved, so maybe I never did. Anyway swearing is about small stuff that usually won't kill you - unless you simply you use it by habit in a really bad situation. Since everything in the north is life threatening, there isn't really any small stuff.
 

boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
78
Cornwall
The Inuit do not row umiaks? The women certainly did.

38064.jpg
 
Last edited:
Published in 1935, the Secret Museum is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index. Published by "Manhattan House" and sold by "Metro Publications", both of New York, its "Five Volumes in One" was pure hype: it had never been released in any other form.
And that's where this pic came from..

Other than the long oars and plank seats made from big trees, does anyone else see any issues with this pic being involved with far northern people who often live where no trees grow?
Please no offense intended. Back in the day on the prairies, I once drove 200 miles just to see a tree. Here on mountains a fully grown tree can be half the length of a forearm. I would never have believed that I would ever drive a long distance to see a tree or the existence of tiny trees either... Anyway anybody see any trees in the documentary?
 

Tor helge

Settler
May 23, 2005
739
44
55
Northern Norway
www.torbygjordet.com
I really enjoyed that - thanks! It was interesting to see the same knife and ulu designs as over here - but a bit alarming to see bone carving with a Dremel but without face masks.

I believe that there were no swear words. In the days before electric lights, a very stable mental state was pretty vital to withstand dark freezing winters. Also without total cooperation with neighbors, you die. And if you get mad at the weather conditions, or the lack of stuff to hunt, then you will make a mistake when you are distracted - and die. Even where I live, I've known many people in these times of electric light and TV, who could not tolerate the short days in winter and months when you never see the sun for overcast skies and continual rain or snow. Now of course when indigenous kids grow up in poverty (in material terms) around other kids who have (apparently) everthing, then they may learn anger and swearing in a hurry. Their parents and family, who have a different definition of wealth are totally blindsided, and unable to comprehend - as you would be if your kids came home from school and told you to dump the mansion and Range Rovers and get to somewhere you could risk your life to get fishy tasting meat by virtue of working with friends, in order to get some proper wealth. In my early years on the coast, 40 years ago, when kids were raised by their grand-parents because their parents had been destroyed by residential school, I had a difficult task explaining the clash of cultures. The points of view were incomprehensible to the other people involved, so maybe I never did. Anyway swearing is about small stuff that usually won't kill you - unless you simply you use it by habit in a really bad situation. Since everything in the north is life threatening, there isn't really any small stuff.

Interesting. Dark and Cold, harsh living conditions; no swearing?
In Norway it is actually the Northern Norwegians that swear the most. Up here it is almost an artform.
 

Scots_Charles_River

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Dec 12, 2006
3,277
41
paddling a loch
www.flickr.com
Published in 1935, the Secret Museum is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index. Published by "Manhattan House" and sold by "Metro Publications", both of New York, its "Five Volumes in One" was pure hype: it had never been released in any other form.
And that's where this pic came from..

Other than the long oars and plank seats made from big trees, does anyone else see any issues with this pic being involved with far northern people who often live where no trees grow?
Please no offense intended. Back in the day on the prairies, I once drove 200 miles just to see a tree. Here on mountains a fully grown tree can be half the length of a forearm. I would never have believed that I would ever drive a long distance to see a tree or the existence of tiny trees either... Anyway anybody see any trees in the documentary?

Maybe driftwood or whale bone ?
 
Native craft like the canoe, the dug out canoes from the pacific northwest and the Umiaks - which are used by the women are paddled using single paddles facing forwards.

Oars and sitting facing the wrong way around is a european invention.

The fact that there is a picture showing a umiak being rowed using oars means only one thing; and thats that european habits and customs were sometimes adopted or used if this was thought useful.

I have seen europeans paddle canoes in the same way we do - forwards facing and using a single paddle. Does that mean that europeans use this method for paddling/rowing all boats??

The umiaks,like Kayaks were made out of timber frame/skin covering. Even if the coastal communities had no trees on or near their land there was always drift wood and this is what was used in the old days and still is today if you don't want to pay to import lumber.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,999
4,652
S. Lanarkshire
That's a very good point ....there's another thread started just a day or so ago by Earthgirl about the debris and detritus that she clears from a beach, and the things she makes from it.
In the Northern Isles, where trees struggle to grow to any size, driftwood from North America was commonly used for boatbuilding as well as roof beams.

In our very modern world of import/export and huge container ships, we often forget that the seas surround us, and the sea currents (we called them rivers in the sea in the past) carried very useful materials around the globe.

Our coracles are rowed much like your canoes, but currachs are rowed backward, with the men each having two oars apiece.
They called it getting their back into it. They can certainly go at some speed in them

M
 

demographic

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Apr 15, 2005
4,697
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-------------
If I remember right Fridtjof Nansen studied driftwood washed up at Greenland (which doesn't have trees) that had come from Siberia, got trapped in the ice then the ice moved around and let it go to get to Greenland.

So I know it gets that far at least.
 

Tengu

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Jan 10, 2006
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Yes.

Wood of Greenland kayaks in museums in this country has been analysed and it is indeed of Siberian and Scandanavian origin.

(But if my memory serves me correctly one had indeed a partialy whalebone frame...)

H C Petersens `Skinboats of Greenland.`
 

boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
78
Cornwall
Please see the film Nanook of the North. The fact that rowing might have been adopted from Europeans is irrelevant to the statement the the Inuit didn't row.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4kOIzMqso0
You might just as well say that they didn't fire rifles because they were adopted from Europeans.
 

boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
78
Cornwall
GrnldUmiak1_0003.jpg
Greenland umiak under oars, W.A. Graah, 1832, image from H.C. Petersen,
Skinboats of Greenland
.

!832 early enough?
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
Remember on the first day at forestry college when we were introducing ourselves one chap said that his girlfriend was from the Faroe Islands and that they were going to live there when he qualified. quite a few stunned looks from some of us in the class, not renowned for it's trees the Faroes.
 

Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
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No its not.

But I recall they have tried planting some Tieera del Fuego (sic) trees there...Similar climate and all.
 

Swallow

Native
May 27, 2011
1,545
4
London
Not having a word that is a 'swear' word doesn't mean that they don't use the same emotions.

I insisted that my pre-school sons could not insult their brother unless they used words of at least four syllables.

So 'pig', 'cretin', 'fool', and the like were all verbotten; but my four year old got his tongue around, "Infuriating brachyosaurus!", to rail at his brother.

We're not calling the lady, or you, a liar, we're simply expressing disbelief that they never find some way of vocally expressing common emotions.

"Thunder and Lightning!", "For heaven's sake!", or my own, "Sugarallywater", are all 'technically' swear words, if used in context.

It's the context that's important, iimmc.

M

That assumes that the emotions actually are common. A lot of emotions are driven by mental concepts.

You can't think of someone as bad person, and then cuss them, for not saying thankyou unless you have the concept is the correct thing to do and that you are owed a thankyou.

And that is just one example of a concept that doesn't exist in all cultures.

Swear words require a kind of thinking that makes you separate from the rest of the world. And again that is not a universal concept.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,999
4,652
S. Lanarkshire
So is swearing. It used to mean using words that were blasphemous. It is often considered to be offensive because it is slanderous, but the reality remains; everyone gets irritated. Even apes and monkeys get irritated, angry and annoyed, and are both vociferous and physically demonstrative of it.
That's all swearing is.

M
 

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