Genocide, Satan and Salad

On August 14 of this year 500 people were killed and about 350 injured in an act of religious genocide. We only heard about it in passing. See if you can find it buried here in the Economist weekly review. The group that was targeted were the Yazidi who are considered by some orthodox Muslims to be Devil worshipers. This seems tragically to be based on a linguistic confusion of nomenclature. The Yazidi believe that the world was created by God and left to the care of seven angels, the highest ranking one being Melek Ta'us. So Melek Ta'us is the angel that holds the position that is most similar to the Christian angel of St. Michael who is considered to be the leader of the seven angels who stand before God.

In one of the Yazidi creation stories Melek Ta'us is created directly from God's illumination and is later tested by God when asked to obey his newest creation in Adam. Melek Ta'us passes the test by refusing and citing that he was created from a higher origin than Adam. So melek Ta'us is the one that disobeys God and opposes him. The Arabic word that means opponent (one who opposes) is Shaytan.

In an Islamic story Iblis is a pseudo-angel that disobeys God's direction to prostrate to Adam and so this Shaytan (one who opposes) is cursed by God for infinity to the Lake of Fire from where he promises to lead mankind astray and tempt them into hellfire. This Shaytan or opposer/disobeyer comes simply to be named by the descriptor of Shaytan and is who we know in English to be Satan.

But remember the other Shaytan (one who opposes) who is really most similar to St. Michael? Because the highest Angel in the Yazidi belief system is also known as Shaytan (one who opposes) he is mistakingly confused and equated with the Shaytan from the Islamic story and therefore equated with Satan, the being that tempts humans to hellfire. This is ironic since St. Michael's name was the war cry used by the Angels in a battle fought in heaven against Satan.

So the Yazidis are considered to be devil worshipers and therefore free game to eliminate from this world. This must be what those car-bombers were thinking when they targeted and slaughtered the large group of Yazidi on August 14.

This is the state of religion in the 21st century. A preposterously misguided etymological misunderstanding can move one group of people to kill another group en masse. A little linguistic education could have saved everyone a great deal of trouble and trauma. With just a little digging one could easily discover that Melek means Angel and that Ta'us is clearly related to the Greek words Theos or Zeus denoting God and thus Melek Ta'us is an Angel of God not an agent of evil.

A similar misunderstanding but with much less tragic consequences is made by the Yazidi themselves. The Yazidi believe that these seven holy beings are occasionally reincarnated in earthly forms as Koasasa. Their word for lettuce is koas which sounds like, but has nothing whatsoever to do with koasasa. This aural similarity however is enough to make it taboo for the Yazidi to eat lettuce. If only linguistic ignorance would lead to eating less salad and not to more killing.

Prolly Probably

I've noticed on more than a few occasions that some young people have begun to substitute the word prolly for probably. There are of course many examples of words that have been shortened to save on the number of characters required to send a text message but this one really bugs me. It only saves 2 characters so you gain very little but you lose a lot.

The word probably rests on mathematical and statistical underpinnings. It signifies that something has a better than 50% chance of being the case. So by using it and knowing the root of the word one displays an understanding of certain concepts of not only mathematics but also of logic and epistemology. By using probably one doesn't commit to a certainty, one claims that given the facts at hand the statement is not certain but only likely. By using prolly it only implies a vague likeliness not based on any rigorous consideration. It could be based on such nebulous folk concepts as intuition (see Malcolm Gladwell).

I'm convinced that some kids think that prolly is the proper spelling of the word and are already alienated from it's basis in inductive reasoning. I know that words alter in spelling and occasionally lose their original meaning. Terrific originally meant terrifying but hardly anyone today associates the word terror with terrific. Likewise, prolly is probably on it's way to becoming one of those words which will one day in the future be brought out by a stickler like me and shown to have had a much richer past than it would have been assumed.

Thanks for the Mammaries

Children make all kinds of mumbling noises when they begin to exercise their burgeoning verbal skills. One of the first sounds they make is the one that indicates that they would like to be fed. The Greek mamme is an observed form of baby-talk similar to the Sanskrit ma which came over time to take on the meaning of mother in many human languages.

The gland that secretes milk is called the mammary because this is what the baby is hoping to score when it makes that sound. In vocalizing a need or hunger the babies of the ancients like babies today blurted out a sound that came somewhat naturally to them. Perhaps this is analogous to how the baby bird knows how to chirp in a certain way when it's hungry.

Human languages are open source, they ebb and flow and evolve in a complex swirl of positive and negative feedback loops played out in myriad ways. Several languages have a word that sounds like meh-meh that could mean breasts or baby food depending on the context and there are variations on that word that morph into words like num-num which may be a novel transformation of mama.

Some think that all of our languages are variations and extensions of only a handful of naturally occurring exclamations that over time evolved into the thousands of languages that have been spoken throughout history. One linguist thought that all of language derived from only four syllables: sal, ber, yon, and rosh. The variables and assumptions required are far too numerous and complex for us to confidently make such assertions but there is some intuitive truth to the notion that the animal chirps of our ancestors with the power of some very extensive collaboration allowed us to develop our human languages which are so wonderfully rich that they have the power to address themselves.