Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

[roninbodhisattva]

and according to generative grammar, all languages are essentially english (that's the impression i always got, anyway )

I think they've gotten away from this somewhat. But this is generally the problem I have with the theory. Well, that and other things.

[TallaFerroXIV]

Valencian an Catalan being the same language.

[Khvaragh]

I once got into an argument with an Egyptian friend here who said that there weren't any Coptic/Ancient Egyptian loanwords in Egyptian Arabic/no influence from the aforesaid langs on Egyptian Arabic. Then he went to ask a professor of his at his Egyptology school, and got scolded for being an idiot. And I got an apology

[linguoboy]

Valencian an Catalan being the same language.

Are you saying that's an example of quackery? Because I can't even tell when I'm reading something written in "Valencian" until I hit a shibboleth like seua, vinguera, or eixida.

[alice]

Valencian an Catalan being the same language.

Are you saying that's an example of quackery? Because I can't even tell when I'm reading something written in "Valencian" until I hit a shibboleth like seua, vinguera, or eixida.

Not so much quackery as ignorance of dialectal differences; it's probably not that different from confusing Galician and Portuguese.

[linguoboy]

Valencian an Catalan being the same language.

Are you saying that's an example of quackery? Because I can't even tell when I'm reading something written in "Valencian" until I hit a shibboleth like seua, vinguera, or eixida.

Not so much quackery as ignorance of dialectal differences; it's probably not that different from confusing Galician and Portuguese.

Actually, it is. I would go so far as to say that those who think they're distinct are the ones confusing dialectal differences. Many supposedly distinctive "Valencian" features are actually common to other dialects--seua, for instance, is also found in Western Catalan.

Have a look at this sample:

[L]a llengua pròpia i històrica dels valencians, des del punt de vista de la filologia, és també la que compartixen les comunitats autònomes de Catalunya i de les Illes Balears i el Principat d’Andorra. Així mateix és la llengua històrica i pròpia d’altres territoris de l’antiga Corona d’Aragó (la franja oriental aragonesa, la ciutat sarda de l’Alguer i el departament francés dels Pirineus Orientals). Els diferents parlars de tots estos territoris constituïxen una llengua, és a dir, un mateix «sistema lingüístic», segons la terminologia del primer estructuralisme (annex 1) represa en el Dictamen del Consell Valencià de Cultura, que figura com a preàmbul de la Llei de Creació de l’AVL. Dins d’eixe conjunt de parlars, el valencià té la mateixa jerarquia i dignitat que qualsevol altra modalitat territorial del sistema lingüístic, i presenta unes característiques pròpies que l’AVL preservarà i potenciarà d’acord amb la tradició lexicogràfica i literària pròpia, la realitat lingüística valenciana i la normativització consolidada a partir de les Normes de Castelló."

The only features that identify this to me as Valencian rather than Standard Catalan (aside from its provenance) are:

1. The inchoative augment -ix (Standard Catalan: -eix) in comparteixen and constituïxen.
2. The presence of the medial demonstrative eixe. (Technically found in Standard Catalan as well, but IME seldom if ever used because of its absence from the colloquial in most regions.)

That is literally all. Change these three words and I would've said this passage was in Standard Catalan. You can't find me a Galician passage of comparable length where that is true.

[TallaFerroXIV]

Valencian an Catalan being the same language.

Are you saying that's an example of quackery? Because I can't even tell when I'm reading something written in "Valencian" until I hit a shibboleth like seua, vinguera, or eixida.

Not so much quackery as ignorance of dialectal differences; it's probably not that different from confusing Galician and Portuguese.

Actually, it is. I would go so far as to say that those who think they're distinct are the ones confusing dialectal differences. Many supposedly distinctive "Valencian" features are actually common to other dialects--seua, for instance, is also found in Western Catalan.

Have a look at this sample:

[L]a llengua pròpia i històrica dels valencians, des del punt de vista de la filologia, és també la que compartixen les comunitats autònomes de Catalunya i de les Illes Balears i el Principat d’Andorra. Així mateix és la llengua històrica i pròpia d’altres territoris de l’antiga Corona d’Aragó (la franja oriental aragonesa, la ciutat sarda de l’Alguer i el departament francés dels Pirineus Orientals). Els diferents parlars de tots estos territoris constituïxen una llengua, és a dir, un mateix «sistema lingüístic», segons la terminologia del primer estructuralisme (annex 1) represa en el Dictamen del Consell Valencià de Cultura, que figura com a preàmbul de la Llei de Creació de l’AVL. Dins d’eixe conjunt de parlars, el valencià té la mateixa jerarquia i dignitat que qualsevol altra modalitat territorial del sistema lingüístic, i presenta unes característiques pròpies que l’AVL preservarà i potenciarà d’acord amb la tradició lexicogràfica i literària pròpia, la realitat lingüística valenciana i la normativització consolidada a partir de les Normes de Castelló."

The only features that identify this to me as Valencian rather than Standard Catalan (aside from its provenance) are:

1. The inchoative augment -ix (Standard Catalan: -eix) in comparteixen and constituïxen.
2. The presence of the medial demonstrative eixe. (Technically found in Standard Catalan as well, but IME seldom if ever used because of its absence from the colloquial in most regions.)

That is literally all. Change these three words and I would've said this passage was in Standard Catalan. You can't find me a Galician passage of comparable length where that is true.

^that is correctíssim
I live at the border of Valenicia and Catalunya and have to keep hearin about all this dialectal shit. If you say to someone from my village that he's speaking a transitional dialect he'll start flaming you with stuff like: "Then Catalan is a dielect of spanish and french!".

The Valencian-Catalan conflict is mostly used by the shitty politicians we have here and their shitty politics.

[Izambri]

Have a look at this sample:

[L]a llengua pròpia i històrica dels valencians, des del punt de vista de la filologia, és també la que compartixen les comunitats autònomes de Catalunya i de les Illes Balears i el Principat d’Andorra. Així mateix és la llengua històrica i pròpia d’altres territoris de l’antiga Corona d’Aragó (la franja oriental aragonesa, la ciutat sarda de l’Alguer i el departament francés dels Pirineus Orientals). Els diferents parlars de tots estos territoris constituïxen una llengua, és a dir, un mateix «sistema lingüístic», segons la terminologia del primer estructuralisme (annex 1) represa en el Dictamen del Consell Valencià de Cultura, que figura com a preàmbul de la Llei de Creació de l’AVL. Dins d’eixe conjunt de parlars, el valencià té la mateixa jerarquia i dignitat que qualsevol altra modalitat territorial del sistema lingüístic, i presenta unes característiques pròpies que l’AVL preservarà i potenciarà d’acord amb la tradició lexicogràfica i literària pròpia, la realitat lingüística valenciana i la normativització consolidada a partir de les Normes de Castelló."

The only features that identify this to me as Valencian rather than Standard Catalan (aside from its provenance) are:

1. The inchoative augment -ix (Standard Catalan: -eix) in comparteixen and constituïxen.
2. The presence of the medial demonstrative eixe. (Technically found in Standard Catalan as well, but IME seldom if ever used because of its absence from the colloquial in most regions.)

That is literally all. Change these three words and I would've said this passage was in Standard Catalan. You can't find me a Galician passage of comparable length where that is true.

Correct. I would add the use of estos (este -a -os -es, which is aquest -a -s -es in my dialect), although you find it in Western Catalan too (my grandma, who was from la Terra Alta (SW Catalonia), used it) and, also, the acute accent in francés, which would be grave (francès) in the other dialects.

[TallaFerroXIV]

The also use the article lo instead of el.

Phonetically, Valencians have no reduction in their non stressed vowels.

[Risla]

Sanskrit is an absolutely perfect language that has never ever changed and Proto-Indo-European is a Eurocentric conspiracy!

[Yng]

The also use the article lo instead of el.

Phonetically, Valencians have no reduction in their non stressed vowels.

Differences between Welsh dialects include:

* Form of the demonstrative
* Form of the third person singular masculine pronoun
* Degrees of gender concord
* Use of plural adjectives
* Mergers of different tense/aspect combinations
* Degree of verbal inflection
* Sizable lexical differences

And yet we still call them the same language. Why do you believe that a few minor lexical differences and an accent equate to a separate language?

[TallaFerroXIV]

The also use the article lo instead of el.

Phonetically, Valencians have no reduction in their non stressed vowels.

Differences between Welsh dialects include:

* Form of the demonstrative
* Form of the third person singular masculine pronoun
* Degrees of gender concord
* Use of plural adjectives
* Mergers of different tense/aspect combinations
* Degree of verbal inflection
* Sizable lexical differences

And yet we still call them the same language. Why do you believe that a few minor lexical differences and an accent equate to a separate language?

I posted this here because I think IT IS just bull šit that Catalan and Valencian ARE considered different languages. As I stated earlier.

[Bedelato]

Sanskrit is an absolutely perfect language that has never ever changed and Proto-Indo-European is a Eurocentric conspiracy!

Now the question is, when an original parent language, Sanskrit, is already in existence, why was the ‘Proto-Indo-European’ term designed, and, instead of deriving the ancestral relationship of the languages of the world with the Sanskrit language through the findings of the Sanskrit apbhransh in them, why was an inferior parallelism of the Sanskrit language drawn along with the Greek and Latin languages?

Yep. You Fail Linguistics Forever, indeed.

[Yng]

I posted this here because I think IT IS just bull šit that Catalan and Valencian ARE considered different languages. As I stated earlier.

Ahh, I must have missed that. In that case I apologise.#

Also in English we say 'shit'.

[Acid Badger]

(...)The Korean language has over 600 different word endings to be used in different social situations, depending upon seniority. This makes Korean the hardest language in the world to learn, despite its simple 24 letter alphabet (Hangul).

-listverse.com

Well.

[linguoboy]

You know what I love about the Web? We've finally reached the point where an example of almost any kind of jackassery imaginable is within easy reach. Case in point: One poster was telling another that Sanskrit tattoos are passe, African language ones are much cooler. So I Googled "Sanskrit African language" and found her evidence that Sanskrit is an African language!

[TomHChappell]

.

[treskro]

Japanese is a combination of many Nigerian languages.

!!

[Bedelato]

Is it just me, or are these examples of linguistic fail getting more and more hilariously outrageous?

[WeepingElf]

You know what I love about the Web? We've finally reached the point where an example of almost any kind of jackassery imaginable is within easy reach. Case in point: One poster was telling another that Sanskrit tattoos are passe, African language ones are much cooler. So I Googled "Sanskrit African language" and found her evidence that Sanskrit is an African language!

Where do I get the strange mushrooms that guy smokes?

[Pellonpekko]

My favorite Finnish linguistics quackery are the theories of the late Sigurd Wettenhovi-Aspa. Unfortunately, they are not discussed in the English Wikipedia page on him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigurd_Wettenhovi-Aspa

If you can read Finnish, or at least are willing to look at his etymologies, you can follow the link to the Finnish page. Basically, his claim was that all languages in the world are derived from a Finnish-Egyptian protolanguage. His proofs were of the typical sort: namely, he derived various words and names in foreign languages from Modern Finnish words in very creative ways. This is not so original, but his derivations are so utterly amusing that I, as a Finnish speaker, cannot but admire them.

Of course, I am by no means convinced of any of this stuff. I'm not even sure if this fine gentleman was being completely serious with his theories either. In fact, the Finnish Wikipedia article mentions the possibility that he was satirising some of the current linguistic theories of his time on purpose.

This is the Finnish section you might want to skim evne if you can't read it.

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigurd_Wet ... en_taustat

[Bedelato]

That Proto-Finno-Egyptian actually sounds like a good conlang idea

[Bristel]

This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

explains how all words can be traced back to Ancient Egyptian, and that Atlantean was actual a native american language.

[tezcatlip0ca]

This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

explains how all words can be traced back to Ancient Egyptian, and that Atlantean was actual a native american language.

Noe itte duzzent.

[Morrígan]

This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

explains how all words can be traced back to Ancient Egyptian, and that Atlantean was actual a native american language.

You mean it explains how you are an insufferable cunt.