Talk:Michael Ventris

Greek and Etruscan

Can anyone verify this passage added by an anon?

Interestingly enough, Ventris' initial hunch had been that if any language emerged from his endeavour, it would be Etruscan

I thought the initial theory was that LB was early Greek. adamsan 08:59, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC).

Have checked and rewritten to clarify. adamsan 09:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It may be worth mentioning that scholars were virtually unanimous that it was not Greek. (IIRC Ventris tried Greek for a fit almost as a lark, after noticing the structure of the words that could already be interpreted as 'boy' and 'girl'.) FWIW, there were still scholars insisting that it couldn't possibly be Greek as recently as the 90s. — B.Bryant 13:44, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Linear B article

Shouldn't much of this be moved to the Linear B article? Apart from the first and last line, the rest is all about Linear B and doesn't concern the man Ventris. I think that other stuff should be written here (about Ventris, his life, family, education. etc.). On the other hand, this vital information presented here is missing from Linear B! I think it must be restructured. --Spryom 11:24, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

This is a common problem; for example does material on the discovery of Knossos belong under Knossos or under Arthur Evans? My inclination right now is to agree with you but I need to see what is where. Certainly, we need to make use of "main", "see also" and the like, which no one is currently doing. This is on my agenda to check, this pass.

I checked Linear B. It currently is a huge and rambling article, which is as much my fault as anyone's. Basically we all want to put the biographies of several people under Linear B. Can't reasonably be done. The article already has a full plate just presenting the language. So, I think we should go over the essential stages of the decipherment here without getting too detailed. Then we can cut down over there.Dave (talk) 11:46, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Asperger's Syndrome

Simon Baron Cohen, a specialist in autism, writing in his book 'The Essential Difference', diagnoses Ventris as having had Asperger's syndrome. Maybe this should be added? - A.C.

Seems to me you can't diagnose someone without examining him. What did Cohen actually say? Hm, I wikified his name before Showing Preview and he's notable. "In Baron-Cohen's book, The Essential Difference (2004), he argues there are innate differences between male and female brains. Female brains are predominantly wired for empathy, he reasons, whereas male brains are predominantly wired for 'understanding and building systems.' He describes autism as an extreme version of the male brain, which he postulates as an explanation for why autism is more common among males." But what did he say about Ventris? Evertype 16:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think think we should be playing neurologist, psychiatrist or any of the other things those idiots who like to write pot-boilers pretend to dabble in. Leave medicine to the medicos, hey? If it is well-known his father died of tuberculosis, fine, and ditto if his mother got depressed and ended it all. Further conjectures, personal or family diagnoses by ignoramuses are ignorant and arrogant, and I wouldn't give them a dime for it; in fact, they should be sued.Dave (talk) 15:21, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Education

I'm having trouble understanding the second sentence in the article: "Ventris was educated in Switzerland and at Stowe School. (Stowe is an 18th century country house; by contrast, his mother, Dorothea (Dora) Ventris, lived in Berthold Lubetkin's Highpoint modernist apartments in Highgate)." Where in Switzerland did Ventris study, what did he study? What is an 18th century country house, would it be a good or bad place to get an education? What are we supposed to learn by contrasting this with his mother's place of residence? These questions are significant because Ventris' contributions were important yet it has been said that he had no degrees or titles as a scholar - rather, he was an amateur who succeeded where the pros failed.Friendly Person (talk) 18:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Ramble

There is some rambling about Dorothea Ventris in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.168.208.123 (talk) 10:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Needs to be brought together

Well this certainly is an article of ends and rag-tags. Needs to be brought together. I notice the section on Linear B is venomous. We get the feeling that the awful Arthur Evans personally held back the decipherment of Linear B for Lord knows how long. Lordy, Lordy. Rambling on Dorothea? I almost missed it. Well, I don't think we should even say he had a mother. His mother is not him. His father, that needs to come out also. And his place of birth, well, I hardly see how that is relevant. Come to think of it, what good is his birth date? What does that have to do with him? I don't think we should admit he had a mother or father or was born of men. No, he created himself, he lived of by and for himself, and any of these ramblings about stuff that is non-self should go. We should start, Michael Ventris is MIchael and then he is Ventris. He is that. One day Linear B popped out of his head, but only because he was interested in it. Then there there three, Michael and Ventris and LInear B. The current approach is a kind of ring cycle, the perfect man, Michael Ventris, comes forth to keep the universe together by compensating for the evils of the cruel dwarf, Arthur Evans. Well, I took a little liberty with the plot. Can't we use some other theme than the persecution of evil sorcerers or are we stuck with Cottom Mather for eternity as punishment for our sins? Wanted: one objective article here that gives a legitimate biography, an objective statement of the decipherment, and is supported by notes and inline references. Arthur is not guilty, your honors.Dave (talk) 02:03, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

"Half-Polish"

I don't know what racist corner of the country this wierd appellation comes from but I don't like it. Now let's see, the Polish half, was that different from the non-Polish half? This term comes from the good old days of half-breeds when the states were a murderous slave republic and most people thought that was perfectly OK, as long as they were never in that category. As far as I am concerned the matter was settled [in] 1860-1865 and 1938-1945. We aren't calculating racial fractions here as far as I know so I insist all this "half" and "quarter" etc come out.Dave (talk) 12:43, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Well I certainly got carried away on that one, didn't I? I was pretty abashed to see that Chadwick uses "half-polish" in decipherment. The long trail leads to him, except that some wit introduced "half-English." Well, we can thank the British Empire and British society for the creation of slavery and racism of all sorts before they became revolted with their disgusting behavior and decided to junk the whole thing. Then they had to go around and suppress it in every place they had introduced it. "Half-Polish" isn't even human. We want to think, aha, so that is reason for his mother's inability to meet the challenges of history. She was a sub-human half-breed, not a normal person such as we English. Polish! Oh good Lord. It is strangely ironic that the most guilty culture had just been defeated by the second-most-guilty culture. I think it is much better not to perpetuate Chadwick's concession to conventional language and I think he would have wanted it that way. They were all Labor Party socialists, you know, especially Ventris.Dave (talk) 12:01, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

In England it's Labour Party, and I don't know that they were all socialists. IAC-62 (talk) 11:14, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Picture of Ventris

In contrast to Evans', the works of Ventris are all sewn up tighter than a shroud on the Internet. No free books, no previews. No even mentioning anything without someone's permission. If the public wants to work on Linear B, well, too bad for them. Somebody has to be paid off in grand style for that. We need to leave these matters to the experts who can pay for it, in contrast to Evans, who held a public lecture attended by a certain 14-year-old boy. Do you think Evans had a non-Platonic interest in the boy? If I had a website, I'd charge you to find out. What are we here for if not to extort money from each other? And, it does not matter how much money we already have. In keeping with the closed-door policy on Ventris and Linear B, there is not ONE picture of Ventris here. What do you say, how about donating a picture of Ventris? Do you think you can spare it?Dave (talk) 16:16, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hatzinikolaou fiction

I'm removing the ref to Hatzinikolaou's total fantasy on the grounds that it is not in the right place and it is not on the topic. This is a biography. If we put this novel in additional reading it will be confused with real biography. It seems to me there might be a section "Fiction based on the life of Ventris." However all we have it this one work in a one-item list. My guess is, if you wrote up Hatzinikolaou's book, then it would go somewhere else, such as the biography or works of Hatzinikolaou. Sorry, it seems to me this is the wrong place to sell Hatzinikolaou. This is supposed to be fact about Ventris.Dave (talk) 11:24, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Tetlow

• Tetlow, Simon; Harris, Ben; Roques, David; Meredith, A.G., (preface by John Chadwick), Michael Ventris Remembered, Buckingham : Stowe School, 1984

This additional biblio is not used in the text. That is because the editor never saw it, nor has anyone else for decades. Wherever it is, that is not for sale, in a lbrary, or on the Internet. It was only a pamphlet. I suspect it is in the papers somewhere, which no one is going to get without trouble and money. The editor no doubt copied the ref from the work of some scholar. So, I'm storing this item here for now. If I'm wrong, and if you find something that can actually be referenced, by all means format it correctly and put it back. Otherwise I think the sources who reference it can serve themselves as references in its place.Dave (talk) 14:22, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Influenced.....

according to the 'influenced' bit in the profile box of this article, he influenced 'Every person in any status interested in Aegean civilization'
it's unreferenced and really seems as though it should be written better. he may have been hugely influential but perhaps it could be presented in a different way?

I have improved the effort. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.65.2.31 (talk) 11:43, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Intense v. intensive

As to whether Mr Ventris studied Russian intensely or intensively:

"[Intensive] is the kind of word that we ordinary mortals do well to leave alone; see POPULARIZED TECHNICALITIES. Unfortunately, a particular application of the philosophic use emerged into general notice, and was misinterpreted — intensive method especially of cultivation. To increase the supply of wheat you may sow two acres instead of one — increase the extent — or you may use more fertilizers and care on your one acre — increase the intensity; the second plan is is intensive cultivation, the essence of it being concentration on a limited area.

Familiarized by the newspapers with with intensive cultivation, which most of us took to be a fine name for very hard work or intense work by the farmers, we all became eager to show off our new word, and took to saying intensive where intense used to be good enough for us.

The war gave this a great fillip by finding the correspondents another peg to hang intensive on — bombardment. There is a kind of bombardment that may be accurately called intensive; it is what in earlier wars we called concentrated fire, a phrase that has the advantage of being open to no misunderstanding; the fire converges upon a much narrower front than that from which it is discharged.

But as often as not the intensive bombardment of the newspapers was not concentrated, but was intense, as the context would sometimes prove; a bombardment may be intense without being intensive, or intensive without being intense, or it may be both.

Not that the confusion is confined to the newspapers; it seems to have affected even those whose duty it is to plan bombardments. ‘Why must you write “intensive” here?’ wrote Sir Winston Churchill to the Director of Military Intelligence on the 19th March 1944. ‘ “Intense” is the right word. You should read Fowler’s Modern English Usage on the use of the two words’ (The Second World War, v. 615)."

Fowler, Modern English Usage

Paul Magnussen (talk) 16:50, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure we should be beholden to century-old prescriptist style guides, especially since "intensive" is commonly used to describe language study of the type Ventris did (e.g. [1][2]), but I'm not going to press the point... – Joe (talk) 17:53, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. This is actually from the 1983 edition, so it's not quite that old. Paul Magnussen (talk) 19:16, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

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Jewish heritage

If his mother was of partly Jewish ancestry, shouldn't we add relevant Jewish categories to this article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 00:00, 23 May 2023 (UTC)