Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

[linguofreak]

Here's a bit of quackery I thought up on my own (of course, it's debatable if it can be called "quackery" if it's not proposed seriously in the first place):

The word for every animal can be traced back to an onomatopoeia representing its call.

Thus, some group of sound changes must exist that changes /bəkɒ::::/ to /tʃɪkɪn/, and a set that changes /ɒl læŋgwɪdʒɪz ɒr disɛndɪd frəm bæsk/ to /dək/ by way of /kwæk/. There also exists a set of changes that turns // into /fɪʃ/.

[finlay]

[Bob Johnson]

There also exists a set of changes that turns // into /fɪʃ/.

/fɪʃ/ is descended not from its call but from the noise it makes passing through the water

[WeepingElf]

There also exists a set of changes that turns // into /fɪʃ/.

/fɪʃ/ is descended not from its call but from the noise it makes passing through the water

Isn't /fɪʃ/ from Proto-Miscellaneous-Other *ghoti?

[Izambri]

Fish, fisc, fiskr, visc, vis, fisch, fisks, piscis, ψάρι, peis, peix, peixe, poisson, pesce, pez, paîsson, *peisk- "fish"... all come from the onomatopoeia of the noise a fish makes when dives into the water.

On the other hand, the very original word, related to Modern Basque arrain "fish", can be seen in ιχθύς, isda, eungkôt, iwak, balıqlar... (velar stem) and ryby, riba, ribe... (liquid stem).

[Vuvuzela]

Most words in English can be traced back to Sanskrit through either Latin or Icelandic.

[Wattmann]

...through either Latin or Icelandic.

[Bob Johnson]

...through either Latin or Icelandic.

reactionface.png

English is a Germanic language, after all; where do you think those elements came from?

[Wattmann]

[Yaali Annar]

Hangul wins alphabet olympics:

http://www.koreabang.com/2012/stories/k ... mpics.html

The 26 letters of English orthography is capable of expressing 300 kinds of sounds and more; and hangul can theoretically express more than 11,000 sounds and, practically, 8,700 sounds. In particular, Hangul excels at time-efficient communication.

[Qwynegold]

I saw this documentary about Pirahã. Huh, that's a nasty feud the lingvists have going there. Anyway, I read more about on the TV-channels website, and it was written by a n00b. -_-

[...]One example of that is that in Pirahã one word can mean five different things depending on how it is pronunced.

No shit! Differently pronunced words mean different things?!! D:

The word xaooi can mean either ear, skin, stranger, hand or nutshell. Only the stress decides the meaning. But even though this phenomenon is relatively rare among the world's languages[...]

Actually it's tone. And it isn't rare at all.

[Vuvuzela]

In all other languages, the verb reveals if you're talking about the present, past or future - I read, I read, I'll read.

No. No it doesn't.

[----]

It's especially egregious because they used an example that's ambiguous between simple past and present. They're doing their best to look silly, I think.

[clawgrip]

Google translate wrote that? Where?

[brandrinn]

Vuvu wrote that sentence in Greek and hit "translate."

[clawgrip]

Oh I see, it's the SVT link. I missed that.

[Qwynegold]

In all other languages, the verb reveals if you're talking about the present, past or future - I read, I read, I'll read.

No. No it doesn't.

lolololol so ironic!

[Pole, the]

Well, in English it does, it's just obscured by the orthography.

[marconatrix]

This subject interests me, but especially when you get myths propagated by academic and similar 'official' sources who you'd expect to know better. All part of the wider fascination with how people will believe what it suits them to believe even in the face of clear facts; the basis of all the best cons and hoaxes. I haven't gone through the whole of this extensive thread so please forgive me if you've heard this one before ...

I recently developed an interest in Latvian a language I knew next to nothing about but which for some reason I think is really cool Anyway, looking for materials on the internet I found a US Peace Corps language manual from 1992, the 'cultural notes' alone make this a fun read. It's here :

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j& ... Og&cad=rja

So here's the opening paragraph of the introduction :

The Latvian language is the second oldest language in the Indo-European language family tree which consists of most of the European languages. Latvian and Lithuanian (the oldest) have their own branch on the tree: the Baltic branch. Their grammars can be helpful in studying Sanskrit, a language that used to be on the tree, but is no longer spoken.

To be fair the same (apart from the reference to Sanskrit) is often said about Welsh, on what basis I can't imagine. What after all do folk mean by 'oldest'? Clearly not oldest literary tradition, in the Baltic that only goes back to the Reformation afaik. Not the inflexions since these are more complex in the Slavic languages and probably even in modern literary Greek and German. And while the Baltic vocabulary includes some familiar friends like vīrs and tauta etc. which have cognates in Celtic (e.g. Gaelic fear, tuath, Welsh gŵr, tud) and which are always featured in comparative linguistics books, the vast majority of Baltic words are totally weird, e.g. zirgs 'horse' or māja 'house' and many more 'core' words. It makes you realise just how little languages really own to lineal descent and distant origins.

[WeepingElf]

The Latvian language is the second oldest language in the Indo-European language family tree which consists of most of the European languages. Latvian and Lithuanian (the oldest) have their own branch on the tree: the Baltic branch. Their grammars can be helpful in studying Sanskrit, a language that used to be on the tree, but is no longer spoken.

To be fair the same (apart from the reference to Sanskrit) is often said about Welsh, on what basis I can't imagine. What after all do folk mean by 'oldest'? Clearly not oldest literary tradition, in the Baltic that only goes back to the Reformation afaik. Not the inflexions since these are more complex in the Slavic languages and probably even in modern literary Greek and German. And while the Baltic vocabulary includes some familiar friends like vīrs and tauta etc. which have cognates in Celtic (e.g. Gaelic fear, tuath, Welsh gŵr, tud) and which are always featured in comparative linguistics books, the vast majority of Baltic words are totally weird, e.g. zirgs 'horse' or māja 'house' and many more 'core' words. It makes you realise just how little languages really own to lineal descent and distant origins.

The Baltic languages are often referred to as "old" because of their conservatism. Lithuanian is about as close to PIE as is Latin, despite being spoken about 2,000 years later. This makes it the most conservative modern IE language (note: modern - Ancient Greek, Vedic and Avestan are still more conservative than Lithuanian). Latvian is a bit less conservative than Lithuanian, finishing second in the conservatism "contest". What regards the Insular Celtic languages, they are anything else than conservative, but they were spoken in the British Isles before English came there (and even before Latin came there), and are thus "very old" (as "is" Basque). Of course, the Insular Celtic languages have changed a lot in the perhaps about 2,500 years that elapsed since Celtic was first brought to the British Isles.

[linguoboy]

Latvian is what happens when Livs try to speak Lithuanian. It never seemed particularly "conservative" to me even in comparison to Russian.

[Qwynegold]

māja 'house'

In Finnish maja means like hut or treehouse.

[hwhatting]

māja 'house'

In Finnish maja means like hut or treehouse.

Probably no accident. Speakers of Baltic and Finno-Ugrian languages have been neighbours for millennia.

[marconatrix]

Latvian to me feels only a little more IE-like than Scots Gaelic (Irish in the mouths of Vikings?) Lithuanian I've only scanned the grammar, but it 'feels' about on a par with say Middle Irish. That is some of the IE morphology is retained, but other parts are heavily remodelled, simplified etc. I admit that Baltic still has actual case endings, verb inflections etc. where in Irish they're reflected mainly as vowel alternation, consonant quality and mutations, but the information content is still there (and you have to learn to do all of this stuff).

Go here for a run down of Baltic grammar (go down a bit to "Grammar Points"):

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/ ... -TC-X.html

Not much like Sanskrit thank goodness

[Qwynegold]

māja 'house'

In Finnish maja means like hut or treehouse.

Probably no accident. Speakers of Baltic and Finno-Ugrian languages have been neighbours for millennia.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. *checks things* Ah, it means house in Estonian too.