Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

[Wattmann]

The topic is ripe and it would be shameful if we let this thread end this way.

On this day, I heard such unimaginable wisdom! Apparently, the sole reason why Iranians are Mohhamedans (intended word) is because the Iranian language (also intended) has the exact same vowels and sounds as Arabic, and that that feature let Arabic be translated more easily into Iranian!
Not all architects are cut out to be linguists, I hope someone else agrees.

[Pinetree]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but once when I was looking for videos on Youtube where I could hear some spoken Basque, if found this pile of bullcrap, whose hundreds of videos all claim that the Basque language and people are the origin of all of Europe, even making such claims that Jesus was a Basque, and that all the IE languages descend from Basque.

What?

[Wattmann]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but once when I was looking for videos on Youtube where I could hear some spoken Basque, if found this pile of bullcrap, whose hundreds of videos all claim that the Basque language and people are the origin of all of Europe, even making such claims that Jesus was a Basque, and that all the IE languages descend from Basque.

What?

"Barcelona is the original celestial jerusalem", what? What has Barcelona have to do with Basques? And Catalans built Rome what?

[Pinetree]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but once when I was looking for videos on Youtube where I could hear some spoken Basque, if found this pile of bullcrap, whose hundreds of videos all claim that the Basque language and people are the origin of all of Europe, even making such claims that Jesus was a Basque, and that all the IE languages descend from Basque.

What?

"Barcelona is the original celestial jerusalem", what? What has Barcelona have to do with Basques?

I dunno, but looking back through the rest of the list, I can see that she has an unhealthy and misinformed obsession with Basques.

[Wattmann]

Ok, my earlier post wasn't quackery, it was "being uninformed"; this is true and through quackery.

[Vuvuzela]

The topic is ripe and it would be shameful if we let this thread end this way.

On this day, I heard such unimaginable wisdom! Apparently, the sole reason why Iranians are Mohhamedans (intended word) is because the Iranian language (also intended) has the exact same vowels and sounds as Arabic, and that that feature let Arabic be translated more easily into Iranian!
Not all architects are cut out to be linguists, I hope someone else agrees.

Did someone just say this to you in person, or do you have a link?

[Wattmann]

The topic is ripe and it would be shameful if we let this thread end this way.

On this day, I heard such unimaginable wisdom! Apparently, the sole reason why Iranians are Mohhamedans (intended word) is because the Iranian language (also intended) has the exact same vowels and sounds as Arabic, and that that feature let Arabic be translated more easily into Iranian!
Not all architects are cut out to be linguists, I hope someone else agrees.

Did someone just say this to you in person, or do you have a link?

In person (girlfriend's friend and fellow student)

[Vuvuzela]

So THAT'S why speakers of Quechua and Greenlandic are predominantly Muslim! And it also explains why Americans don't tend to be Christian, considering our vowels are so different from those found in Greek and Hebrew.

[WeepingElf]

BTW: One of our favourite quacks is still alive.

[Culla]

BTW: One of our favourite quacks is still alive.

I kinda missed him being on here, he provided me with my daily dose of rage before I discovered glenn beck. You should have mentioned how Ket and the Na-Dene languages were found to be related by use of morphological comparison.

[WeepingElf]

BTW: One of our favourite quacks is still alive.

I kinda missed him being on here, he provided me with my daily dose of rage before I discovered glenn beck. You should have mentioned how Ket and the Na-Dene languages were found to be related by use of morphological comparison.

Well, I gave the examples of Indo-European and Afroasiatic, which both have been established by morphological comparison (lexicon came later in IE, and is still unsatisfactory in AA); both of these families are of course well-established to the point that someone like Octaviano can hardly dismiss them without making an even bigger fool of himself than he already is (though he has some, well, unorthodox views on the validity of the standard model of PIE). Dene-Yeniseian is a less appropriate example for the purpose of this discussion because it is still not generally accepted, and could easily be dismissed as controversial.

[Pole, the]

http://dorylillyhypotheses.blogspot.com ... chive.html

First, we know through the archaeological record that the Indo-European culture originated in what is now Ukraine. This is supported linguistically, as the modern Ukrainian language is the most similar to the reconstructed Indo-European language as compared to the other branches.

[Wattmann]

http://dorylillyhypotheses.blogspot.com ... chive.html

First, we know through the archaeological record that the Indo-European culture originated in what is now Ukraine. This is supported linguistically, as the modern Ukrainian language is the most similar to the reconstructed Indo-European language as compared to the other branches.

LOL.
And what of Russian? Lithuanian? Eh, Sanskrit? Have they decided to, suddenly, go on a group vacation?

[WeepingElf]

http://dorylillyhypotheses.blogspot.com ... chive.html

First, we know through the archaeological record that the Indo-European culture originated in what is now Ukraine. This is supported linguistically, as the modern Ukrainian language is the most similar to the reconstructed Indo-European language as compared to the other branches.

By that logic, IE would have to originate in Lithuania, and Germanic in Iceland!

[Morrígan]

http://dorylillyhypotheses.blogspot.com ... chive.html

First, we know through the archaeological record that the Indo-European culture originated in what is now Ukraine. This is supported linguistically, as the modern Ukrainian language is the most similar to the reconstructed Indo-European language as compared to the other branches.

By that logic, IE would have to originate in Lithuania, and Germanic in Iceland!

And the best part is that this reasoning is based on a premise which is exactly the opposite of the observed tendency, that marginal areas are most conservative. How they even get that "modern language is the most similar to the reconstructed Indo-European" is beyond me.


Also, fucking Octaviano is still peddling is "mainstream scholars are biased" bullshit?

[WeepingElf]

http://dorylillyhypotheses.blogspot.com ... chive.html

First, we know through the archaeological record that the Indo-European culture originated in what is now Ukraine. This is supported linguistically, as the modern Ukrainian language is the most similar to the reconstructed Indo-European language as compared to the other branches.

By that logic, IE would have to originate in Lithuania, and Germanic in Iceland!

And the best part is that this reasoning is based on a premise which is exactly the opposite of the observed tendency, that marginal areas are most conservative.

Right.

How they even get that "modern language is the most similar to the reconstructed Indo-European" is beyond me.

I have no idea what makes Ukrainian especially conservative (surely, it is, like most Slavic languages, structurally more conservative than many languages of western Europe, but that's all about it). Most Indo-Europeanists award that prize to Lithuanian, but the latter's conservativism is often overrated as well.

Also, fucking Octaviano is still peddling is "mainstream scholars are biased" bullshit?

Yes. He still says that the standard model of PIE must be overthrown, and claims that IE was something like a convergence area involving several languages that were ultimately related, but dating back to the Upper Paleolithic. Also, he claims that lexicon was better suited to long-range comparison than morphology. Well, like many long-range comparison crackpots, he prefers comparing dictionaries over comparing languages.

[WeepingElf]

Octaviano's tenure at FrathWiki is over. The denouement unraveled today within less than an hour.

For long, I was of the opinion that Octaviano was a lunatic, but his behaviour did not warrant banning him or closing the discussion. But today I found that he had not only spewed out more nonsense about the history of Indo-European, but also accused me of ad hominem attacks and likened my rejection of his hypotheses to the persecution of Copernicus and Galilei by the Catholic church. At that point, I decided that he had overstretched his limits and closed the discussion. Octaviano reacted by defacing my user page, at which point I banned him from FrathWiki in order to prevent further damage to the wiki. He sent me a complaint by e-mail on which I replied as politely as I could, laying out the reasons for my measures.

Since then, I have reponed the discussion page and moved the discussion with Octaviano to another page for those interested.

[Morrígan]

accused me of ad hominem attacks and likened my rejection of his hypotheses to the persecution of Copernicus and Galilei by the Catholic church.

That's nothing new, remember when he collectively compared all of his intellectual opponents on this forum to the persecution of intellectuals by the Nazis?

Octaviano reacted by defacing my user page, at which point I banned him from FrathWiki in order to prevent further damage to the wiki.

While definitely a dick move on his part, I can't say I'm totally surprised, given his tendency to histrionics when he doesn't get his way. I seem to recall him doing something similar in the past, actually, though I can't recall the details. I think it involved inserting some obnoxious sentences into the introduction to an article on Europic, or something similar.

[WeepingElf]

accused me of ad hominem attacks and likened my rejection of his hypotheses to the persecution of Copernicus and Galilei by the Catholic church.

That's nothing new, remember when he collectively compared all of his intellectual opponents on this forum to the persecution of intellectuals by the Nazis?

I remember that all too well!

Octaviano reacted by defacing my user page, at which point I banned him from FrathWiki in order to prevent further damage to the wiki.

While definitely a dick move on his part, I can't say I'm totally surprised, given his tendency to histrionics when he doesn't get his way. I seem to recall him doing something similar in the past, actually, though I can't recall the details. I think it involved inserting some obnoxious sentences into the introduction to an article on Europic, or something similar.

Indeed, I expected him to wreak much more havoc than he actually did, and I think he would have done so if I hadn't reacted so swiftly. I expected him to do such things as blanking the Europic page, or rewriting my user page as a biography of a "Nazi". In order to prevent such damage, I blocked him.

[Legion]

Iikened my rejection of his hypotheses to the persecution of Copernicus and Galilei by the Catholic church.

It's funny because Copernicus was never persecuted by the Catholic church.

[Whimemsz]

Fun Mormon linguistic crackpottery (though often rather more subtle than some of the other stuff from this thread, since the guy is also a Serious Linguist)

[Whimemsz]

Okay back to unsubtle crackpottery again (of many kinds, not just linguistic). Presenting Dr. Clyde A. Winters:

http://olmec98.net/
http://bafsudralam.blogspot.com/


(and yes, he is a real PhD. He is in fact a professor!)
[also I know the whole "ALL GREAT CIVILIZATIONS WERE REALLY BLACK AFRICANS SO TAKE THAT CRACKERS" thing isn't exactly new or unfamiliar, but this stuff is still pretty entertaining. Plus it involves language idiocy so it's relevant]

(also, please look at his profile picture on blogger)

[masako]

(also, please look at his profile picture on blogger)

That warrants death by rusty nail.

[Nesescosac]

This is not quite crackpottery, but facepalm-worthy nonetheless.

[Vuvuzela]

This is not quite crackpottery, but facepalm-worthy nonetheless.

Language is just a tool, so you shouldn't care about "redundant*" languages like Maori. BUT language is SACRED, so you should use every word strictly according to it's strict definition. I knew she meant "intuition". YOU knew she meant "intuition". EVERYONE WHO READ THE QUOTE knew she meant intuition.

*The fuck is this even supposed to mean? Is it redundant to be bilingual? Is Maori's use of reduplication just too much? Huh?