Pseudo-Linguistic Woo: "Edenics"

[Odin2005]

http://mr-verb.blogspot.com/2010/02/origins-of-specious-edenics.html

Wow, that is some insane batshit.

[ZombieHorde]

1. I was not impressed. nt

[realisticphish]

2. jeebus

most linguists believe in a "proto-earth?" Yeah, because Hebrew, Japanese, and Mayan are bascially the same goddamn language :eyes:

[TZ]

3. Its intelligent design for word loving woos.

Incredibly stupid.

[semillama]

4. Yes, even linguists have their fringe of woobaggers

Those guys also cross over into archaeology when they start interpreting plow scars on rocks as examples of the Celtic Ogham script, for example.

Check out a book called America BC by Barry Fell for a full blast of insanity on that front.

[Odin2005]

7. Still funny, but less nuts then these guys, are the "Nostraticists".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_languages

Their claim, that several of the language families of Eurasia are related to each other, is perfectly valid, IMO. There is lots of strange similarities in pronouns and verb endings among several of the language families of Northern Eurasia, the most obvious being a 1st Person pronoun with M and a 2nd Person pronoun with T (me/thou). The problem is that their reconstructions really suck and are full of handwavium. Another problem is that they try to include the Afro-Asiatic languages (Semitic, Egyptian, Somali, etc) in Nostratic, which I think is a mistake caused by a large number of Proto-Semitic loans into Proto-Indo-European.

I propose a smaller super-family I call "Mitian", named after the M-T pronouns. It includes Indo-European, Uralic, Etruscan, Georgian, Altaic, Chukchi-Kamchatkan, and Eskimo-Aleut. Mitian then may be a part of a slightly larger grouping that includes Dravidian (Tamil, etc.), Korean, Japanese, and a couple of Amerindian language families

[realisticphish]

8. I wonder

do they try to include Finno-Ugric languages as well? Because those are most definitely from East Asia, from what I understand

[Odin2005]

9. Finno-Ugric is a sub-family of Uralic

And Proto-Uralic was probably spoken in western Siberia, where the deepest branches of the family are.

Uralic may have a close relationship with the Chukchi-Kamchatkan languages of far NE Siberia as well as the Eskimo-Aleut languages.

[realisticphish]

10. well

I believe that the Finno-Ugric tribes settled in the urals for a while, so that makes sense

I'm just wondering whether these guys consider these languages to be part of their grand hypothesis

[mr blur]

5. Words fail me...

must be a glitch in my original programming.

"These proto-Semitic or early Biblical Hebrew words were programmed into our common ancestors, Adam and Eve, before the language dispersion, or babble at the Tower of Babel...blah blah argle bargle..."

[Nevernose]

6. It almost makes sense. A little bit of knowledge...

It's like a conspiracy-minded stoner took an undergrad course in the history of the English language and just started gluing shit together with other stuff she found on Google.there are hints in there that the original author has at least a cursory knowledge with actual things - Proto Indo European, for instance, and Chomsky's Nobel-winning work on language "hardwiring" - but other than the names for things and maybe having misunderstood some wiki entries, these people are total morans. Just when I think the stupid has been exhausted...

[LeftishBrit]

11. Unbelievable

One aspect that I find amazing is the implication that the Hebrew *writing system* is also determined by God. 'Children naturally read from right to left', states 'Hebrew Scholar'. No, children don't *naturally* read at all. Unlike spoken language, reading and writing are not universals, and are highly culture-dependent, and relatively recent in origin. And how, according to such a theory, do you explain Egyptian hieroglyphics?

[onager]

14. Or Arabic. Or Hebrew. Or Chinese, Japanese, etc.

Some languages are even written top to bottom, and still manage to be read and written.

A "Hebrew Scholar" said that? HEBREW scholar?

:wow:

He must not have been scholaring the language very long. With that comment, I suspect he's a student at Jim Bob's Fire-Baptized Seminary and Bait Store in Flaming Cross, Mississippi.

He needs to take lessons from Rabbi Kinky Friedman...

Well, I walked on into my House o' God
The congregation was on the nod,
Just the Chosen Folks doing their weekly thing.
Hear, O Israel! Yes indeed,
My book was backwards, I couldn't read,
But I got a good rise when I heard that Rabbi sing,
'Baruch atoh Adonoi,
What the hell you doing back there, boy?"

We reserve the right to refuse services to you,
Your friends are all on welfare
You call yourself a Jew?
You need your ticket and your tie,
To zip your prayers on through,
We reserve the right to refuse services...unto you.

[Iggo]

12. Oh dear god.

There really is no hope, you know.

Maybe a thousand years from now...

[TransitJohn]

13. He's not a very cunning linguist. n/t

n/t