Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by viggity on Thursday March 23, 2017 @10:07AM (#13939822)

Fun fact, "Barbarian" is a Greek word as a label for non-Greeks. To the Greeks, foreign languages just sounded like they were mumbling "bar-bar-bar", hence Barbarians = Non-Greeks.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by gnicholasgreen on Thursday March 23, 2017 @10:11AM (#13939860)

I've heard this oft repeated over the decades. I wonder if there is a legitimate historical source for it.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by gglitch on Thursday March 23, 2017 @11:19AM (#13940479)

"from Greek barbaros 'foreign, strange, ignorant,' from PIE root *barbar- echoic of unintelligible speech of foreigners (compare Sanskrit barbara- 'stammering,' also 'non-Aryan,' Latin balbus 'stammering,' Czech blblati 'to stammer')." I don't know if the source I'm quoting is reliable, but I find the same reference to Sanskrit in a variety of sources.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by vram22 on Thursday March 23, 2017 @11:40AM (#13940726)

>compare Sanskrit barbara- "stammering,"

Interesting. Though I knew Sanskrit (well in school), didn't know or remember that word - but still know Hindi well, and in Hindi, bad-bad (pronounced like bud-bud) means blabbing, as in:

Kya bad-bad kar rahe ho - What are you blabbing.

And to close the loop, in Hindi, the sounds r and d are closely related and sometimes substituted for one another - at least while talking.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by gmarx on Thursday March 23, 2017 @10:56AM (#13940248)

Pretty sure this explanation is just really old speculation. Even if the ancient greeks kept records of word origins, those documents would likely be lost by now

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by astine on Thursday March 23, 2017 @11:17AM (#13940457)

Judging by this link: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=barbarian, the reasoning is based on words in other indoeuropean languages having a similar root to 'barbarian' being used to refer to stammering or incoherent speech.

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Re:Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones ... by jumasheff on Thursday March 23, 2017 @07:40PM (#13945365)

The most interesting part is this: `...meaning "rude, wild person" is from 1610s.`

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