Kopis/khopsh etc. - Egyptian swords

[tom hyle]

Originally Posted by Kamil

1. (ancient Egyptian language was related to Hebrew or Arabic no closer that the modern English to ancient Greek).

I don't know whether this is contrary to what I've heard; that they are all part of the Afrasian/Afro-Asiatic language group, and I heard this in a recent University of Houston African history class; specifically, in fact, as an assault on the conceptual validity of the "Middle East"; the proffessor was calling it either Northern (Steppes related) vs. southern/Western (Afrasian, which she stressed as essentially African). I don't know which is more correct, but I do know this is recent revisionist information; such can be driven by politics or by truth.......She had archaeological data that's new or formerly unavailable in N America, too, to back up various of her statements; she was far from "half cocked"; maybe wrong; I don't know; but far from slipshod or shrilly rhetorical.
In any event, of course, Greek and English are related though the seperation of protogreek from protogerman populations was for some time more perhaps more extreme than that of the various Afrasian groups; English contains a great many Greek words; modern Greek would not surprise me if it had some Germannic ones, though nationalism over this sort of thing in Europe is something I've heard much of (for example laws in various Germannic countries about what one can name a child, and how to spell it......).
One addition; the entire concept of "correct spelling" seems rather provincial to me, and it has no objective truth, of course, changing vastly with time and place.