Wednesday, February 6, 2013

RULER deciphered



DECIPHERED:
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Most people, who have tried to decipher the Maalan Aarum, have made the incorrect assumption that the recorded Lenape sounds were error free.  Their task has been made even more difficult by the prevalent academic belief that the Lenape sounds cannot be divided.
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But, by the time I got to this stanza, I had gained confidence that Sherwin's
comparisons were correct.  
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The Lenape Language was Old Norse.  Truly, someone who spoke Old Norse created the Maalan Aarum.
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Then I hit this stanza!
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As fate would have it, I had chosen the pictograph for this stanza for the first page of the Frozen Trail to America:
Talerman.
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The original words were,
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“Floating up the streams in their 
canoes,
Our fathers were rich.
They were
in the light,
when they were 
is those Islands.”
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Except for the phrase “Floating UP the streams," the translation looked reasonable   But, when I went through the Old Norse decipherment, the paraphrase of the Lenape/Old Norse words came out to be:
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“You swarm of buzzers,
which little bit 
will you snicker at?
I told you we had
 a ruling priest
in the light 
on the other side.”
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No floating! No streams! No canoes! 
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I could not come up with an over all meaning similar to the original English translation.  The Recorders had written an English version that was not even close to the Lenape words!
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The mismatch of the original English and the recorded Lenape words in this stanza is another indication that the original Maalan Aarum SOUNDS are authentic, but sometimes flawed.  
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No intelligent person in the nineteenth century could have devised a Lenape phrase of a “swarm of buzzers” to describe a man in a canoe.
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I rechecked my decipherment.  The first Lenape word is “amok.”   Eleven (11) translators from eleven (11) Lenape tribes reported that “amok” meant, “swarm of bees.”
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[I have not investigated where “running amuck” came from, but “amok” looks like a strong contender.]
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The Recorders apparently did not realize that the sounds that they recorded did not match the pictograph, which was explained to them by the historian using broken English and Lenape "mission" words.  
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The Historian may have said the incorrect words deliberately to inform future readers, who might understand Lenape and English, that the recorded English version was not valid.
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Or the Recorders may have copied those sounds as the Historian expressed his anger over the proposed English explanation of stanza.  Those recorded sounds may have been paired with the pictograph instead of the correct memory stanza.
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WHATEVER HAPPENED
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or why it happened, the recorded words for the this pictograph are very strong evidence that the Recorders were trying to write sounds of a language they did not fully understand.
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All things considered, they got the sounds more correct than the translation of the sounds to English. 
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[Sixty years after the recorders wrote down the sounds and the English translation, Lenape students, who knew English, stated that the "Walam Olum" was a Lenape story but the recorded sounds were so flawed they could not understand them and the English translation was not valid.]
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Poor recording of sounds are extremely difficult for someone to understand.  But Sherwin’s comparisons of over 15,000 Lenape “words” with over 15,000 Old Norse phrases is a very precious resource.
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The EXASPERATION.
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ADDENDUM 
FEB 5. 2018
Because the English translation did not match the recorded sound at this stanza, I decided to stop the decipherment using the Old Norse words.

Today, in the history course, I raised the question.  Were the original sounds in the DROTTKAVAETT format.  If not, then the Historian may have been using his own words on this stanza.

The LENAPE (not the Old Norse) sounds are:
A mok o lon nal la  = A, R
He men a gun ou ken
= NO A, R(3)
Pa wa si nep wa pa
= 2 A, R(4)
Si nep a kom e nep. =A, R

with all of the sets of six syllables having an Alliteration and a Rhyme, EXCEPT the second set, which may have been the 1831 Historians own words.
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To know, for sure, someone must take the time to look up the sounds in the VIKING and the RED MAN and compile the stanza with orginal Old Norse syllables.

I have demonstrated my ability to decipher the Maalan Aarum using the VIKING and the RED MAN.  I suggest that looking up the original Old Norse syllabes would be a good experience for a person interested in the linguistic process.
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