Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Hallow XIII »

Well.

At least now we know why the Welsh are so rowdy!
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by WeepingElf »

Tolkien must have missed this. Just look at his Eldar:

The Noldor speak Quenya, which has hardly any voiced fricatives, and they make an awful noise (see Feanor and his sons).

The Sindar speak Sindarin, which has voiced fricatives without end, and are comparably wise and peaceful.

He had it backwards!
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Dewrad »

This is also clearly why Dutch settlers became so much less prone to violence when they settled in southern Africa! [ɣ] is clearly a pernicious phone.
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Particles the Greek »

Dewrad wrote:This is also clearly why Dutch settlers became so much less prone to violence when they settled in southern Africa! [ɣ] is clearly a pernicious phone.
Not as pernicious a phone as this:

Image

I don't remember if it was voiced or voiceless, though, but definitely a fricative.
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by linguoboy »

That is totally the phone I would like to have if I had to club someone to death with it.

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Lyra »

TOO MUCH EVIDENCE! MAST BE TRUE!!
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Some prick on fb is hissy fitting over how I thought it was BS.


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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by KathTheDragon »

Summary please? I can't d/l it.

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Zju »

tl;dr in a 150 or so pdf he argued that Basque is IE in a style that could convince someone new to the area. I'm not saying all of his conclusions and presumptions are quackery, but still...
And in this pdf he replies to the critics in the same style, if not even more convincingly sounding. What attracted my attention was that he actually replied to the critics, a thing a lot of the others don't do and on top of that he seems to have good counterarguments.
And both pdfs are free to download, you only need to register.

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

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Last edited by KathTheDragon on Wed Mar 19, 2014 7:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by sangi39 »

Proto-Sumerian. I'm sure people here have seen this before, since it's the first external link from Wikipedia's "Sumerian Language" article, but I starting reading it and the further I got, the worse it got. I'm sure some of it is correct, but things like:
Having identified the sets of ideas associated with each proto-Sumerian consonant, the question arises as to why these particular associations and not others. The answer is foreign to the modern mind, accustomed as we are to words which are constructed of arbitrary consonants and vowels, words which we commit to memory as unbreakable morphemic sequences. In modern languages, except for a few words which are recognized to originate in sound symbolism, meaning is divorced from sound. The sounds that make up modern words do not have meanings which everyone acknowledges. This was not the case for the inventors of the proto-Sumerian language because they were trying to use the mouth and the sounds that it produced to 'point' at objects and actions. One can think of these sounds as 'mouth-gestures' or 'mouth-pictures'.
Just go a bit far in the "wtf" direction...
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by KathTheDragon »

Wut.

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by prettydragoon »

Stephenson (1992) hinted at such a direction for research.
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Kereb »

Lyra wrote:TOO MUCH EVIDENCE! MAST BE TRUE!!
Image
Image

:O :O :O :O
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Zju »

sangi39 wrote:Proto-Sumerian. I'm sure people here have seen this before, since it's the first external link from Wikipedia's "Sumerian Language" article, but I starting reading it and the further I got, the worse it got. I'm sure some of it is correct, but things like:
Having identified the sets of ideas associated with each proto-Sumerian consonant, the question arises as to why these particular associations and not others. The answer is foreign to the modern mind, accustomed as we are to words which are constructed of arbitrary consonants and vowels, words which we commit to memory as unbreakable morphemic sequences. In modern languages, except for a few words which are recognized to originate in sound symbolism, meaning is divorced from sound. The sounds that make up modern words do not have meanings which everyone acknowledges. This was not the case for the inventors of the proto-Sumerian language because they were trying to use the mouth and the sounds that it produced to 'point' at objects and actions. One can think of these sounds as 'mouth-gestures' or 'mouth-pictures'.
Just go a bit far in the "wtf" direction...
From the same website:
/h/: This is a velar voiceless fricative, pronounced like the ch in German Buch or Scottish loch. The back of the tongue is held close to the velum so that when air is forced past the constriction the result is a series of small explosions. The repetitive explosiveness is what led to the meaning 'numerousness'. This contrasts with the 'quantity' of /š/ in the same way that 'many' contrasts with 'much' - the distinct explosions of /h/ correspond to 'many' and the sustained, smooth friction of /š/ corresponds to 'much'. This consonant refers to saliva or phlegm because of its similarity to the sound of hawking phlegm.
Apparently, fricatives are series of stops. /x:/ [k k k k]

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Kereb »

Zju wrote: Apparently, fricatives are series of stops. /x:/ [k k k k]
what I think is happening here is you've got an Anglophone who, like many of us have done at some point, thinks that a velar fricative is the same thing as a really phlegmy and rattley uvular [χ] (don't know what the diacritic is for lots of phlegm and turbulence). I'd bet this guy pronounces "loch" like an actor portraying a Klingon. So he attributes meaning to the cycles of uvular rattling he hears from himself -- that must have been how the sumerians pronounced their [x] too, after all
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by WeepingElf »

...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Kereb »

Neat, he even repurposes "guttural" for describing a vowel sound!
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Shm Jay »

WeepingElf wrote:Russian ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky wants to abolish a Russian vowel ;)
Well, that's silly. How on earth are they going to be able to watch the famous Soviet film Кин-дза-дза! then?

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Qwynegold »

WeepingElf wrote:Russian ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky wants to abolish a Russian vowel ;)
lol:
des von nlsn-hydn wrote:It’s Zhirinovsky that needs disemvoweling!
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Zju »

In English, one is the cardinal number and first is the ordinal; in Arabic, wa2id or a2ad (one)is the cardinal and 2adi (first) is the ordinal. As can be seen, these cardinals and ordinals do not seem to be related at all. However, they really are because Arabic has another commoner synonym for 2adi which is awwal (one, first). That is, one is directly derived from the latter,commoner Arabic ordinal word awwal via two sound changes: (i) initial syllable deletion (i.e.,/aw/-loss) or /?/-merger with /w/ as commonly happens in Arabic in similar cases suchas ?akhkhir → wakhkhir (go back) and ?irth → wirth (inheritance) and (ii) the replacement of /l/ by /n/. In other words, the course of this phonetic change in English might look like this:
awwal → wal → wan(one).
https://www.academia.edu/2230123/_2012a ... _languages

Now I understand why we couldn't reconstruct a single PIE word for one - it's because all numerals in all IE languages are borrowed from Arabic! Never mind *Hoino-, *Hoiwo-, *Hoikʷo-, *Hoi(H)nos or *Hoi - the ultimate source is awwal! The apparent possibility to reconstruct a single protoword for all words for one is just a side effect of later SCs.

The crackpottery is strong with this one:
https://www.academia.edu/2229724/_2012e ... y_approach
https://www.academia.edu/2237324/_2012f ... y_approach
Ultimately, every single word from every single language comes from Arabic, you can see how here: https://qu-sa.academia.edu/ZaidanJassem

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Tropylium »

"402 followers" ;_;
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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by pharazon »

Kereb wrote:Neat, he even repurposes "guttural" for describing a vowel sound!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEfF6inQbDY

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Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Post by Arzena »

He even links Mandarin and Arabic!

And there's this crazy under his 'Talks' section:
Zaidan Ali Jassem wrote:The aim of this seminar is to show that Arabic and English as well as European languages are
dialects of the same language, whose differences are due to natural and plausible causes of phonetic, morphological and semantic change
A New Yorker wrote:Isn't it sort of a relief to talk about the English Premier League instead of the sad state of publishing?
Abi wrote:At this point it seems pretty apparent that PIE was simply an ancient esperanto gone awry.
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