Secret Pidgin Language-Medieval Lingua Franca

kwaw

jmd said:
The most difficult point that needs to be accounted for, however, is that, unless only 22 letters are considered in Lingua Franca, how to account for the discrepancy of the then 24 Latin letters and the 22 cards (if, again, we are considering this as some kind of lingua Franca abecedarium).

As mentioned earlier in the thread, one of the primary sources of for a Lingua Franca glossary is a hebrew text, in which the Sabir words naturally are spelt in the hebrew script. We may suppose to that it was commonly known among jewish merchants. Also the italian or latin script only had 21 or 22 letters anyway didn't it?

JMD said:
The first (and clear distinction between this and Mark's presentation) is that Hebrew is considered a sacred language which, with Greek and Latin, formed the basis of a triune linguistic repertoire for languages of the sacred (Hebrew), learning (Greek), and legal and common communication amongst, by that stage, perhaps only the educated.

It would therefore make sense to have an abecedarium for any of those alphabets and languages, but not, it seems to me, for a pidgin that lacked those elements.

One of the weaknesses for me of the whole theory is that the wordlists generated seemed to me totally unsuitable and far too limited for any particulary purpose such as sacred or legal communication to be of any educational or practical value. Lingua Franca on the other hand is by nature limited to a travellors and merchants pidgin language and to me makes the greater rather than lesser sense.
Kwaw
 

Rosanne

Hi Kwaw- My neighbour has just read the article and says you have it right! It says "probably coming from the card Games of Naples"
Ouvriers journaliers are daily labourers and wear espadrilles which are fabric shoes with fibre rope soles- more like boat shoes than tennis shoes.~Rosanne
 

Rosanne

kwaw said:
One of the weaknesses for me of the whole theory is that the wordlists generated seemed to me totally unsuitable and far too limited for any particulary purpose such as sacred or legal communication to be of any educational or practical value. Lingua Franca on the other hand is by nature limited to a travellors and merchants pidgin language and to me makes the greater rather than lesser sense.
Kwaw
Are you talking about this deck in particular or the proposal that the cards in general are Lingua Franca in basis rather than the Hebrew alphabet? I take your point about the use of the symbols as limiting in teaching anything new a lexiconographical way; but in a 'pidgin' lesson it makes far more sense, especially given that sailors seemed to use the cards. ~Rosanne
 

venicebard

le pendu said:
Here's the site that has a lot of information on this...
http://www.uwm.edu/~corre/franca/go.html

So, let's bring me crashing back down to earth. What can we learn about the Lingua Franca, and is there any chance that this language is somehow connected to tarot?
I believe I left off at donar (German name of oak-god), no, with dopio, 'double' -- still in use at Starbucks -- to which we add due ('two'). This leaves devir, 'must', and dovere, 'duty', the motive of the hero's self-sacrifice, dozina, 'dozen' (his number again), and then dritto, 'right' (since he is the hero, not the antihero), drogman, 'translator' (D being the outer horizon), dubio, dubitar ('doubt', for hero's self-doubt -- as with Christ on cross!), durar, 'last' (end of oak-king's reign), and finally duro, 'hard', which is probably even cognate with Keltic duir, 'oak', based on the hardness of oak making it a fit wood to make a door (Hebrew name of letter) out of.

I will just check the vowel A here (before reading the rest of the thread): I don't see much here off the bat, except that aia, 'hey!', is what I (and H.W.Percival) call the unit in between the soul and conscious self . . . well, there's albero [and] arbor, 'tree', since A the silver fir is the tallest tree (in the alphabet), oh! and of course altessa, 'height', and alto, 'high' (which backtracks to allegro, 'happy', I guess), and alzar, 'raise' -- even amar, amor, 'love', if we take LeBateleur as the lover or Troubadour (being the doer, the getter-of-attention, akin to aposto, 'on purpose'), which does of course connect with amuzar, 'entertain', arte, 'art', and perhaps with aprestar, 'make ready', and aprir, 'open', as well as aquesto, 'this', and aqui, 'here', as well as avanti, 'before, ahead, fast', and avido, 'avid', . . . and avisar, 'warn', since fir is the lookout of the forest.

I would conclude, from this preliminary survey, that a simplified tongue such as this increases the density of indications of the role of some sort of bardic tradition in the shaping of language in the West -- and perhaps elsewhere (beyond my ken, unless it be the 'Masters of Wisdom' perhaps). It does this because the words that have bardic resonance are most solidly rooted (in both nature and, judging from poets' Keltic reputation, human psychology). It would not surprise me, in other words -- and I hope to find out -- if the same density of 'resonant' words will be found in the rest of the letters, which brings us to . . .
 

venicebard

jmd said:
. . . how to explain the apparent lack of tarot in northern Africa or, in the earliest times, in Spain and further afield?
Truncation due to cultural censorship, possibly? (a guess)
The most difficult point that needs to be accounted for, however, is that, unless only 22 letters are considered in Lingua Franca, how to account for the discrepancy of the then 24 Latin letters and the 22 cards (if, again, we are considering this as some kind of lingua Franca abecedarium). I realise that Ross has also mentioned (in another thread) the possibility of reconciling the Latin to the 22 of the Hebrew alphabet. Nonetheless, this seems to me to be an element that is very problematic as currently presented.
Sticky problem, Latin letters. Still, some of it is solid. Let's see . . .

Without W and X, the solid ones are A-B-D-E-G-H-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T. Yeah, it's a pretty messy bunch, you're right.

[Edited to add:]
kwaw said:
As mentioned earlier in the thread, one of the primary sources of for a Lingua Franca glossary is a hebrew text, in which the Sabir words naturally are spelt in the hebrew script. We may suppose to that it was commonly known among jewish merchants. Also the italian or latin script only had 21 or 22 letters anyway didn't it?
Ah, now that makes a world of difference, does it not. As for Latin, U/V/W was the same, ditto I/J, while K and Y were used for Greek words only, I think, but it did have X, so yeah, 22, but 24 when transcribing Greek. Hmm. But then runes have 24 and they are the actual letters of the 22-letter bardic tree-alphabet (pillars B-Boaz and I-Jachin still retain their tree-names birch and yew), 24 because they include variants (P-Kelt) P and (Q-Kelt) Ng, and two varieties of G-ivy or desire: Y, 'harvest', and G, 'gift', the latter related to Greek chi, initial of Christos.

[Edited to add:] Personally, I look for F-alder under F (but also V?), knowing it is an offshoot of P (what feh-sofit [peh final] stands for); for II-yod-mistletoe/loranthus under I and Y; for I-zayin-yew under I, J, and Z perhaps; for C/K-kaf-hazel under K but also C; U-vav-heather under U, V, and Y perhaps; one might look for Ng-reed (Hebrew samekh?) under N; but this leaves me no place to look for St-straif-'strife'-blackthorn (tzaddi), really, except perhaps under S or Z -- or St! (I'll go look now.)
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
. . . but this leaves me no place to look for St-straif-'strife'-blackthorn (tzaddi), really, except perhaps under S or Z -- or St! (I'll go look now.)
Yes, St does yield 'blackthornisms': stablir, 'establish', stendir, 'extend', for la mere du bois (vanguard in forest's extending of itself to reclaim acreage from man), stancar, 'tire', and stanquessa, 'weariness', are from said strife, stivale, 'boot', and stomaco, 'stomach', are what an army marches on (the latter according to Napoleon), as well as strada, 'road', which leads stretto, 'straight', towards the straniero or 'stranger' with whom one must strive (in battle),while stoffa, 'stuff', is what you feed (or do to) the stomaco, studiar or 'study' is what the military does in time of peace, and stupor (a stupefato or 'stupified' state) being what one hopes to produce in one's enemy (basis of all strategy worthy of the name), whom one also hopes will be stupido. A few may be stretched, but this uses up all but star, 'be' (which is surely for estar), and stella, star. The trump here of course is XX LeJugement, Armageddon, which shows an angel with trumpet and phalanx of points emanating from the cloud of war (smoke and dust of battle).

E-aspen was not rich in aspenisms, which is puzzling, and F does not bowl me over with its relevance to F-alder (though 30-40 terms I found worth writing down). So I am not a complete convert yet but will continue to probe.
 

venicebard

le pendu said:
Here's the site that has a lot of information on this...
http://www.uwm.edu/~corre/franca/go.html
To continue, the alphabet of Lingua Franca is shrinking. There is virtually no K (words starting with same, that is), so coll the hazel has to be C, though there is at least one Hebrew qof there and the soft Cs would be something else, surely. Indeed the most common C prefix is con-, com-, meaning 'with', and this shows hazel's compactness in grouping things together.

There is also very little Q, but at least enough to connect it to its normal interrogative status, the question whose womb (Q as qof) gives birth to fruit (Q as quert the apple) in the form of its answer.

And there is almost no Y, nor Z. And frankly I don't know quite what to make of V, though vindemia/vindemiar and vino link it to M-muin the vine -- as do vine and wine in English, for that matter. I guess most (like vista, a universal word by now) are from Latin V/U, hence originally vav I presume (U-ura-heather), and indeed vuoto/vuotar, 'empty' (adj./verb, respectively), relates directly to vav's meaning the 6 directions of space in the Name (by tradition).

But taking P as initiation (into poetic-prophetic tradition) yields the following: pagana ('pagan'), palabra, parola, 'speech, word', and parlar, 'speak, say', palazzo, 'palace' (symbol of initiation as hekhalot, 'palaces', in Judaic esoteric tradition), papaz, 'priest' (perhaps), perhaps pasear, 'to take a local walk or ride', certainly passagio, 'passage', probably passar, 'pass, spend (time)', patron, 'master', pazienza, 'patience', pazion, 'passion', pecado, pecato, 'sin', perhaps pena, 'punishment', certainly pensar, 'think', and pensiere, 'idea, scheme', per, 'by, for, in order to', perche, 'because' (the reason for things), pericolo, 'danger', perir, 'perish' (to be reborn), perhaps perla, 'pearl', permis, permettir, 'permit', perque, 'why', persistar, 'persist', and I am out of time (I hear sighs of relief).
 

venicebard

Okay, rowanisms, L. I'll go with la, 'the', itself even, as it is when we are teaching that we identify 'the' this and 'the' that; lago, 'lake', L's rune's name -- *lagu, if memory serves -- which is in (LF) lagua, 'water', and akin to lacrima, 'tear', no doubt; hah! laion (and Latin leo, of course), 'lion', since L at aquarius is the recumbent lion hieroglyph in Egyptian (meaning where the full moon is at when the sun is in aquarius, leo itself perhaps being considered a nonrecumbent lion); lampa, 'lamp', and lampo, 'lighting', of course (basic prerequisite of teaching); launchia, 'launch', perhaps, and surely largo, 'broad', and larghezza, 'breadth', an attribute of lakes (distinguishing them from puddles: "I am a wide flood on a plain" is one version of L's line in the Song of Amairgen in Graves [possibly his own wording]); lavorar/lavoro, 'work' (v./n.), relates learning (adjusting) to its trump, XIIII Temperance; lege, 'law', is part of what is taught; lento, 'slow', is how the teacher takes things at first, n'est ce pas? and lettera, 'letter', again part of one's lessons (another L-word); libero, libre, 'free', is what learning makes one; libro, 'book' is what one learns to read; limpiar, 'clean, wash', may be the previous month's (birch's, the year's birth) continuation in the learning process that comes next (B-L was the most common god-name used by ancient Phoenician and Keltic seafarers and colonists, in the 'New World' and elsewhere); lingua, 'language', again what one learns; liscio, 'plain, smooth', is how one must make one's explanations; locheza, 'foolishness', what L-rowan-learning or XIIII Temperance seeks to overcome; the lodevole or 'praiseworthy' is the crux of what is taught in the bardic sense (and should be in present tense, but is not); lucir, 'shine', perhaps; luna, 'moon'? (from aquarius being the completion of the primordial water triad, the one that points down towards libra, the ground); the lunetta, 'eyeglass', is for learning something; and luta, 'napkin', something one must be taught to use -- and that is actually most of the L-words!

Having covered one's L (left) or receptive side, I will spare you R, since it would be a more involved search.

T's holly-isms: taba, 'seal, stamp' (Arabic), stands for Phoenician T-tav as one's "X" or mark (with which it is surely cognate); tobacco is considered martial by occultists (T-holly is the Mars-like antagonist opposed to the Jupiter-like D-oak protagonist); taca/tacar, 'stain' (n./v.), is the stain of evil (being antagonist); talento replaces 'ethical high ground' as one's strength (in the waning year of the anti-hero or holly-king); talone, 'heel', is where the antagonist of the Iliad 'got it' (though this incident is not in the Iliad); tardar, 'be late', and tardi, 'late', are perhaps from holly's ruling the 2nd half of the year, not the 1st half; tre, 'three' -- terzo, 'third', is where T falls in its group-of-five in ogham evidently precisely because the sequence H-D-T-C-Q yields the initials of the first five numbers in Keltic --; tiranno, 'tyrant', etc. mean antagonist; tocar, 'beat, touch; strike, fire (a weapon)', is martial; tornar/torno, 'turn' (v./n.), since the 2nd half of the year turns back towards shorter days; ('torent', and the earlier 'storm', since D and T both represent storm gods); traidor, 'traitor', another antagonist; tremar, 'tremble', and tributir, 'give tribute', also relate; and so on (outta time).