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Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2010 8:34 pm
by dhok
It seems that the old one was pruned. I therefore offer the Hungarian-Sumerian hypothesis.

Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2010 9:42 pm
by MrKrov

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 8:55 am
by Tropylium
In his defence, historical linguistics does kind of stop making sense if one takes the Earth to be 6000 years old. (But then again, so do a lot of other things.)

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 9:15 am
by MrKrov
The guy who can't fathom why isolates would exist has no defense.
At one time I considered condensing a video about all the things wrong with that page. And it would have been lulzy.
For instance, when Europeans first came to Australia, they found hundreds of aborigine languaes, no two of which apparently resembled eachother any more than English and Japanese resemble eachother.
Easy shooting.

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 9:31 am
by Tropylium
If you allow tend of thousands of years for them all to diverge, sure. If not, that'll be more difficult to explain.

I suppose my point is that this isn't a separate issue from the age of the Earth; it's all the same question of how attempting to flatten history leads to weird consequences.

Tho it is beyond me why he also claims that "English is closer to Russian than Lithuanian is"… and that "reversal" stuff is just lulzy indeed.

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 9:41 am
by MrKrov
Oh, no, I get that. It's just he makes it even worse for himself than he has to.

High grades for creativity, at least

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:23 am
by Delthayre
Communications amongst humans before the flood were telepathic in nature, other than for a small vocabulary of spoken words used by priests for ritualistic purposes. This was enabled by the electrostatic charge near the Earths surface and by the plasma of the antique solar system in general, and involved the use of the right side of the human brain as Julian Jaynes notes.
Wait... what?

Re: High grades for creativity, at least

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 2:07 pm
by alice
Delthayre wrote:
Communications amongst humans before the flood were telepathic in nature, other than for a small vocabulary of spoken words used by priests for ritualistic purposes. This was enabled by the electrostatic charge near the Earths surface and by the plasma of the antique solar system in general, and involved the use of the right side of the human brain as Julian Jaynes notes.
Wait... what?
Absolutely classic!

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 6:31 pm
by jmcd
Tropylium wrote:Tho it is beyond me why he also claims that "English is closer to Russian than Lithuanian is"…
I think he might've got Lithuanian mixed up with Estonian.

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 7:03 pm
by Mbwa

Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 4:41 am
by WurdBendur
http://www.zompist.com
The motherlode.

Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 7:04 pm
by Nesescosac
Mbwa wrote:http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb

quackery abounds
Half of the languages they talk about there don't even exist! It's gotten so bad there are separate sections for this drivel!

Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 10:42 pm
by LinguistCat
We have entered a self-referential loop. Oh dear...

Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 5:18 am
by Soap
I was a Catastrophist once, when I was a teenager. It seemed right to me to believe that those old gods actually did exist, or else there wouldnt have been such a strong temptation for humans to worship them. I was actually Creationist and evolutionist at the same time, not that I had any unique explanation that harmonizes the two; I just hadnt really thought about the question long enough to realize the contradictions. I grew out of all of that, and now I believe in God but am skeptical of much of the Bible. Anyway my contribution to this thread is Edenics, the original language spoken in the Garden of Eden:

http://www.edenics.net/

It describes itself as a game, but some people are taking it seriously and trying to put Edenics etymologies onto Wikipedia now.

Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 10:05 am
by Kai_DaiGoji
I checked it out - it basically says that Biblical Hewbrew is the original garden of Eden language, My favorite is the guy behind it all - you see his bio page, and all his degrees are in English lit.

Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 10:08 am
by Morrígan
Kai_DaiGoji wrote:I checked it out - it basically says that Biblical Hewbrew is the original garden of Eden language, My favorite is the guy behind it all - you see his bio page, and all his degrees are in English lit.
Well this makes perfect sense; after all, El Shaddai spoke the world into creation using Hebrew.

Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 6:55 pm
by MrKrov
citation needed

Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 6:42 pm
by Z500
MrKrov wrote:
citation needed
The bible should be good enough

Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 7:36 pm
by MrKrov
Well this makes perfect sense; after all, El Shaddai spoke the world into creation using Hebrew.
citation needed

Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:14 pm
by Morrígan
Genesis 1:3 wrote:וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר

Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:26 pm
by MrKrov
The funny thing is not one word of that says this יהוה character
used Hebrew
to do that.

Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:46 pm
by Morrígan
MrKrov wrote:The funny thing is not one word of that says this יהוה character
used Hebrew
to do that.
No, you are right. It is only implied there. Here is a better source:
ספר יצירה wrote:בִּשְׁלשִׁים וּשְׁתַּיִם נְתִיבוֹת פְּלִיאוֹת חָכְמָה הָקַק‎
‏יָהּ יְהוָֹה צְבָאוֹת אֱלהִׁים הַיִּים וּמֶלֶךְ עוֹלָם אֵל שַׁדַּי‎
‏רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן רָם וְנִשָּׂא שׁוֹכֵן עַד מָרוֹם וְקָדוֹשׁ שְׁמוֹ‎
‏וּבָרָא אֶת עוֹלָמוֹ בִשְׁלשָׁה סְפָרִים *בִּסְפָר וְסִפּוּר‎
‏וְסֵפֶר׃ עֶשֶׂר סְפִירוֹת בְּלִימָה וְעֶשְׂרִים וּשְׁתַּיִם‎
‏אוֹתִיּוֹת יְסוֹד׃ שָׁלשׁ אִמּוֹת וְשֶׁבַע כְּפוּלוֹת וּשְׁתֵּים‎
‏עֶשְׂרְה פְשׁוּטוֹת׃‎
or
Sefer Yetzirah wrote:Yah, the Lord of hosts, the living God, King of the Universe, Omnipotent, All-Kind and Merciful, Supreme and Extolled, who is Eternal, Sublime and Most-Holy, ordained and created the Universe in thirty-two mysterious paths of wisdom by three Sepharim, namely: 1) S’for 2) Sippur and 3) Sapher ‏which are in Him one and the same. They consist of a decade out of nothing and of twenty-two fundamental letters. He divided the twenty-two consonants into three divisions: 1) three ‏mothers, fundamental letters or first elements 2) seven double and 3) twelve simple consonants.
And there is this part:
The decade out of nothing is analogous to that of the ten fingers (and toes) of the human body, five parallel to five, and in the centre of which is the covenant with the only One, by the word of the tongue and the rite of Abraham.
Emphasis mine, natch.
The rest of Sefer Yetzirah discuss the letters and the properties in depth.

Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 9:24 pm
by MrKrov
'K.

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 12:52 pm
by masako
A guy at might work thinks there are "300 German dialects".

Srs.

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 1:08 pm
by Åge Kruger
Qang wrote:A guy at might work thinks there are "300 German dialects".

Srs.
Everyone knows there are over 9000.