Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

[Legion]

It's about humans going to remote place and finding about their alien precursors who turned out to be dicks and also have been involved in shoddy business with bio-engineered life forms. I did a Thing back then where I wrote 4 paragraphs summing up the plot of a movie, and it turned out that the summary could be applied equally to Prometheus and Alien vs Predator.

As I said, Alien is more subtle, but mostly because many of the original ideas were scraped, only to be later reused in Prometheus.

The Thing, appart from the obvious shoggoth creature trapped in ice, also shares the setting of At The Mountains of Madness: Antarctica (which is also where Alien vs Predator is set).

Alien and The Thing are obviously inspired by but as I said they then try to depart and do their own thing.

But Prometheus and Aliens vs Predator pretty much follow exactly the same narrative model, which is a simplification but still clear port of the original story, just filled with different details: dying millionaire old man Weyland organises a military-scientific expedition to a remote place where he believes lies the secrete of the origin of humanity, as gathered by a set of archeological hints from various place in the world which all point to the same pattern of a common, earlier source. Once there, the team realises they are actually in a breeding ground for biological abominations, and the great secrets to be found may have a high price; with most of them decimated, they finally manage to meet their precursors, who it turns out are assholes, one them even killed mister Weyland, and it's ultimatly done to one girl and one precursor against one biological abomination, the precursor is killed and the girl gets away, only to reveal the precursor's chest exploding and a new monster getting out.

It mostly changes the ending and adds a corupt corporate theme, but otherwise it's still the same story, with ancient civilization remains in a remote, hostile place, alien precursors who are dicks, and their laboratory created biological monstruosities.

[WeepingElf]

To get back to the topic, this is what Octaviano has said on the matter of Vasco-Caucasian about half an hour ago:

My current position isn't that Vasco-Caucasian doesn't exist, but instea it has been bad formulated. [spelling errors in original]

So he is still the kind of person as whom we know him; no change. Of course, one cannot rule out the possibility that Vasco-Caucasian is indeed real (it could, for instance, be a very deep family dating back to the first peopling of Europe by Homo sapiens); but people like Octaviano are certainly not the ones to prove it.

[Pressed Bunson]

*reads Vasco-Caucasian recon* *hangs head in shame*

On a simpler note, there was this one kid in my ASL class who asked if the sign for football was used to refer to soccer in Britain. It took the teacher a surprisingly long amount of time to explain that it's called American Sign Language for a reason.

[Pole, the]

On a simpler note, there was this one kid in my ASL class who asked if the sign for handegg was used to refer to football in Britain. It took the teacher a surprisingly long amount of time to explain that it's called American Sign Language for a reason.

ftfy

[Drydic]

If you're going to change the term, use pigskin.

[Morrígan]

It's called 100-yard rugby, or super-rugby, or "why are the buffalo bills such a bad team?"

[Drydic]

My father is from Michigan, and thus is a Detroit Lions supporter. I think this contributed to my zero interest in American sports.

[Morrígan]

My father is from Michigan, and thus is a Detroit Lions supporter. I think this contributed to my zero interest in American sports.

I can understand that. My father is a Giants fan, which isn't much better - mostly because they can play well sometime but still manage to lose to bad teams - I just never really cared. People in Buffalo are apparently really into their team, even though that team is absolutely miserable.

As a friend of mine, and Buffalo native is fond of saying, "So who are the Bills losing to this week?"

[Civil War Bugle]

I was raised in Bills country and never fathomed the appeal of football, so it was a while before I noticed that the Bills were not a great team on top of playing a not great sport. Also, everyone in my area except me seemed like a Red Sox fan for some reason, even though we didn't live in New England.

[Drydic]

Also, everyone in my area except me seemed like a Red Sox fan for some reason, even though we didn't live in New England.

I have a feeling that that reason is animosity towards NYC/the Yankees.

[Travis B.]

I never was much of a fan of baseball because the Milwaukee Brewers seemed to perpetually suck, and even when they did not they were always disappointing, aside from my finding baseball a quite boring sport in general.

[Civil War Bugle]

Also, everyone in my area except me seemed like a Red Sox fan for some reason, even though we didn't live in New England.

I have a feeling that that reason is animosity towards NYC/the Yankees.

I lived in a part of NY where one would have expected Mets fandom if it was anti-Yankees. Sore losers, all of them!

Actually, even though I am a Yankee fan, I am not a diehard enough baseball fan to hate other teams. Blue Jays before Red Sox, though (go Canada!)

[Herr Dunkel]

I never even got baseball. There's like three dudes that play and a handful more that like kinda stand around and one that runs in a circle.

[Hallow XIII]

Do you Germans not play Brennball in school? It is mostly the same except with pitching and hitting balls with sticks.

[Herr Dunkel]

Asthmatics don't play anything. My biggest achievement in sport was a SC2 platinum league ranking

[WeepingElf]

Meanwhile, Octaviano and another crank called Arnaud battle each other on the Substratumlanguages mailing list, and here is another gem from that:

No, there's no H2 in most IE languages, including Hurrian.

This doesn't require any comment.

[KathTheDragon]

This might be worth watching more closely.

[patiku]

Octaviano was my favorite L&L regular, I miss the guy.

[WeepingElf]

Octaviano was my favorite L&L regular, I miss the guy.

Yes, it was kind of fun, but soon reached the point where most of us simply had enough of all that. It's like what Sam Gamgee said of lembas on the trip to Mordor: it may taste good, but if you have to eat it everyday and nothing else, you get fed up with it. Of course, Octaviano isn't Galadriel

What is currently going on on Substratumlanguages (the archive is unfortunately not public) is that Octaviano and Arnaud take rounds in posting bogus etymologies, and saying that those proposed by the other side were "nonsense" (in which both are right ). And Arnaud occasionally launches an ad hominem at Octaviano. Of course, I do not comment on it all - I just read the posts, laugh about them, and stow them away.

Arnaud, as the example I posted shows, believes that Hurrian was an IE language, even if an early divergent one. He somehow managed to get the co-authorship of Allan Bomhard for a paper on this matter, but Bomhard has since then found that he had made a mistake and distanced himself from that work, and no scholar except Arnaud himself takes the paper seriously.

Both have managed to get banned from Nostratic-L, by the way.

[WeepingElf]

Hittite k is represented by h, as you previously agreed.
Nakh and Hurrian H1s- results in initial affricate ts-
Everything's in its place.

[Morrígan]

Hittite k is represented by h, as you previously agreed.
Nakh and Hurrian H1s- results in initial affricate ts-
Everything's in its place.

This makes me want to cry

Both have managed to get banned from Nostratic-L, by the way.

Hilarious

[WeepingElf]

Hittite k is represented by h, as you previously agreed.
Nakh and Hurrian H1s- results in initial affricate ts-
Everything's in its place.

This makes me want to cry

Both have managed to get banned from Nostratic-L, by the way.

Hilarious

Nostratic-L now is a rather quiet place where often nothing is posted for days, as there are currently no crackpots over there (unless you count people like Bomhard as crackpots - which I don't, as he shows very civilized behaviour and takes other people and their opinions seriously), so there is no flaming and no trolling.

[Drydic]

Hittite k is represented by h, as you previously agreed.
Nakh and Hurrian H1s- results in initial affricate ts-
Everything's in its place.

This makes me want to cry

Both have managed to get banned from Nostratic-L, by the way.

Hilarious

Nostratic-L now is a rather quiet place where often nothing is posted for days, as there are currently no crackpots over there (unless you count people like Bomhard as crackpots - which I don't, as he shows very civilized behaviour and takes other people and their opinions seriously), so there is no flaming and no trolling.

That sounds incredibly depressing and boring.

[WeepingElf]

Nostratic-L now is a rather quiet place where often nothing is posted for days, as there are currently no crackpots over there (unless you count people like Bomhard as crackpots - which I don't, as he shows very civilized behaviour and takes other people and their opinions seriously), so there is no flaming and no trolling.

That sounds incredibly depressing and boring.

Well, there are other things elsewhere to lighten me up But it would indeed be better if there was a lively but constructive discussion over there.

[Click]

So Mayan languages apparently got grouped in the Sino-Tibetan family.