Bad Linguistics - pannous/hieros GitHub Wiki

Bad Linguistics

Opposite of Good Linguistics

Bad Linguists speak of certainty and impossibilities, when in truth most etymology is a question of probability and plausibility. As with many Arabic words, etymology is often obscure, because in clusters with dozens or hundreds of related words it can be impossible to reconstruct the earliest original form(s).

No absolute truth outside mathematics
Everything in linguistics outside the realm of epistemological corpora is conjection and surjection.

In general Linguists often have very strong opinions on very weak evidence which leads to lots of unnecessary toxidity and confident rejections of facts:

Laryngeal Theory was savagely attacked by many leading linguists of the time, including some seniorfaculty members of the Leipzig University, which was the acknowledged leader in Indo-European linguistics studies in 19th century. Because of this rejection,the theory was more or less forgotten for the next fifty years.

Linear B was universally 'proven' to be non-IE … until it was proven to be old greek.

Todo: remove polemics.

Cautious is not bad

*ʔuḏn- f

  1. 𓃾𓄕 ἀφτίον > ὠτίον ⇔ 𐎜𐎄𐎐
    𓇋 𓂧 𓄔 #jdn ʔuḏn 𐎜𐎄𐎐 ủ.d.n אוזן ózen 'Oschen' 𓃾
    𓇋 𓂧 𓄔 #ƒdn ὠτίον ōtíon ἀφτίον aphtíon 𐎜𐎄𐎐 ủ.d.n אוזן ózen (⇔ ‘Fotzen’ vulgar!) ⇔ audioⁿ

Linguists have good reason to be very cautious about putative etymologies: Some words exhibit such a complicated history that any '(un)educated guesses' or phonetic alignment would surely lead to completely wrong conclusions: Take the word lord<lourde<lowerd<louerd,loverd,laford<lhoaverd<hlāford < hlāfweard : hlāf “bread” + weard “guardian” : loaf-warden if you will. Without historic background any etymology would certainly be misguided, the correct derivation impossible to guess.

There is a gradient between words which possibly should be connected on wiktionary, but are left out because of doubt and words which should be connected but are actively rejected because of dubious arguments and "formal difficulties".

Therefore if two similar words in related languages have different but similar reconstructed roots, as is the case with flow and fluō (Latin), instead of writing "not cognate" the correct formulation should be 'not a proven cognate', or specified thus:

'flow' is not cognate with Latin fluō despite similarity, UNLESS the PIE roots *plew- “to fly, flow”, *bʰlewH- “to overflow” and or *bʰleh₁- “to swell, blow” are themselves related.

For example the words for shame:

Linguists seem to have forgotten the messy nature of language and now reject the most likely (if not obvious) cognates / loanwords due to "formal difficulties":

αἶσχος aἶskos “shame”
𐌰𐌹𐍅𐌹𐍃𐌺𐌹 aiviski “shame”

شرم • šarm शर्म śarma 𐭱𐭥𐭬 (šarm) from Avestan 𐬟𐬱𐬀𐬭𐬆𐬨𐬀 fšarəma shame
shame sharm Scar.mak Schaden scar.done scar.do hurt
شرم • šarm shame (⇔harm ok, but shame not lil)

სირცხვილი sircxvili
耻辱 chǐrǔm shame ( perhaps;)

Same with κάπρος caper gabor gafr hæfer (⋍goat)

"there is no way to unite *k with *g or *p with *b."

Insanity! The basic sound shifts 101-Linguistics are forgotten?

Have they lost their mind? Next they proof that cockroach and Kackerlake can't possibly be related due to "formal difficulties".

At least they connect αἰδέομαι aishame with ashamed ( but probably not because of the demi/semi nature of δ (dh⋍th⋍s) )

The vulgar reading αίσχος aíschos is even identical to the German 'aisch'.

ajá, ožỹs, αἴξ, ayc ‘goat’ cannot be reconstructed as PIE *h2eiǵ- … or *aiǵ-, a form that violates PIE phonology in two different ways:

  1. it starts with a vowel and 2) it contains **a.

The complete absurdity of proposing a language with just one vowel ('a' not included) is thankfully recognized by eminent Polish linguist Witold Manczak.

directionality

The focus on directionality is often misguided, for example in the lack of contemporary old Proto-Germanic documents it's near impossible to say whether a term entered Germanic from Latin or the other way round.

Absurdly linguists declared 'sabbat' the root and explain dozens of variants with 'm' sambet as nazalized(?) derivations.

crypt κρυπτή (kruptḗ), female form of the adjective κρυπτός (kruptós)

Good-Linguistics treats both forms equivalently

Sometimes wiktionary fails miserably,
connecting
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MuSchel (shell) with “little mouse” instead of
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shell#English and shelter

another thread reads that
Deus, Theus and Zeus are not related

Scheibe *skey- ⇔ dískeis missing

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/look not connecting with Celtic *lukato- lagad lagas llygad (eye)

Park PIE vocab https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/parc "French"

βυσσός ≠ βᾰθῠ́ς ≠ βυθός "deep unrelated to deep" W.T. actual F. !!!!
vathýs : deep waters ⇔ abyss

Very often wiktionary fails making obvious connections (and deletes corrections):
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wissen ⇨ videon (vision / idea(n) = see / know )

They didn't figure out that soup < sirup/sroup(Lithuanian) < s-r-p @ Semite ?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soup

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/book 1. bark 2. park (reserve)
le bark => liber(que)
pe bark ⇔ paper ⇔ papyrke plant? papyrusk ⇔ tamarisk ⇔ Esche

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/garen#German "≠gären" Garum, Vinegar ⇔ a'gjar sour sauer @ jar !
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aigre#Old_French

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/invective#English ok but also VOC:voice!
colete ժիլետ žilet < γιλέκο giléko > yelek@Turk vs (<,<)

jar < Arabic جَرَّة (jarra, “earthen receptacle” < jaraf,ḡurf,√saraf "drink/liquid…" super-root > karaffe carafe
غُرْفَة (ḡurfa, “cup or dipper”, from غَرَفَ (ḡarafa, “to ladle”

Celtic and Germanic isoglosses are a priori suspect, because there was no independ- ent Germano-Celtic proto-language; similarities between the two branches can only indicate one of the following three relations: 1) Indo-European archaisms that were coincidentally preserved in Germanic and Celtic only; 2) borrowing from Celtic into Germanic or vice versa, and 3) shared contact with a third lan- guage.  

What does "no independent Germano-Celtic proto-language" even mean? No subbranch of PIE which influenced Germanic and Celtic languages? No people in Europe before the Romans? He should get his mental model about the colonization of Europe and the constant hybridization of languages right.

root of wind = *h₂uh₁-ent- even though all languages have a 'w'! 𒄷𒌋𒉿𒀭𒍝 (ḫu-u-wa-an-za /hūwanza/)

king of kings/ xerxes / kan'kan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khagan 天可汗 Kěhán anyone? *karcan 汗<干 gan(ges) kong

They connect path and Boot/bottle bottom to pontos instead of pod
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/pónteh₁s
Which is interesting and might contain some truth as pod is Bein in German

Also, the hypothesis that PIE schwa *ə was a consonant, not a vowel, … [makes no sense]

father help us:
"Slavic languages use words derived from another word: átta
https://www.reddit.com/r/etymologymaps/comments/kextkw/the_word_father_and_its_many_siblings_fixed_6228/gg565fl?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

get⇔prehendō ? "get … Cognate with {{cog|la|prehendō}}." just NO!

Proto-Germanic *bragną “brain”, from Proto-Indo-European *mregʰnom “skull, brain”, from Proto-Indo-European *mregʰ- “marrow) WTH

ts=c/q BAD orthography in Tocharian : unnecessarily alienates sister languages!

https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/nz5avj/today_i_learned_that_jubilee_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

बूर्यते būryate ब्रूयते brūyate ब्रू brū < *mlewH- “say” ܐܡܪ 'émar ambira WTH

Hieroglyphic names are not suitable for language familiy identification!
Apart from Phono-semantic matching, because of lacking vowels there is just too much leeway, given a few consonants!

Claiming a name is "purely Akkadian" when there is infinite insecureity in the pronunciation:
𒉌𒉌𒅖𒈠𒉌 Ili-ishmani (𒉌𒉌𒅖𒈠𒉌 i3-li2-isz-ma-ni) was a ruler of Elam around 2200 BCE. ("purely Akkadian name")
𒉌𒉌𒅖𒈠𒉌 Ninis.man (very Persian name) …

*falsō, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)gʷʰh₂el- “to stumble” gefälle gvall fallen

𓇋 𓃀 𓃙 𓈗 𓀜 ⇔ Ibrahim Abraham אַב aḇ הֲמוֹן hăˈmōn 𓏠 WOT

Onomatopoeia everywhere

Though there is no doubt that onomatopoeia forms a fundamental part of human speech, what linguists often overlook is that there are hundreds of plausibile sounds connected to entities. In the example of cow its "moo, boo, hoo, …, …".
So if neigboring languages use similar words for animals, onomatopoeia is no carte blanche to dismiss relatedness.
Point in case: bull
If the whole planet uses different sounds to describe an object and two neigboring languages use “pop” there is a high chance that these two “pop” are related, onomatopoetic or not.
The question of onomatopoeia is orthogonal to the question of relatedness!

Bad Egyptology

Premature identification

In the past some mistakes were made by premature identification of alternate signs in words with the same (or similar) meanings, e.g. :

Two words for sky
sky 𓊪 𓏏 𓇯
sky 𓁷 𓏏 𓇯
may lead to an unwary identification of 𓁷 as 𓊪. This should never be done since it is possible that these are completely different words that just happen to have a final (middle?) 𓏏 :

𓇯 sky, heaven
𓊪 𓏏 𓇯 sky, heaven
𓁷 𓏏 𓇯 sky, heaven
𓁷 𓂋 𓏏 𓇯 sky, heaven
𓄿 𓂋 𓏏 𓇯 heaven, sky

This kind of identification is however rampant in the reconstruction of phonetic sign values, often because we just dont have the phonetic value for many extra alphabetic signs and determinants , which value was usually assumed to be known and rarly spelled out, e.g.
𓋁 𓊡 east wind was known to represent the longer form 𓋁 𓃀 𓏏 𓊡 ( ⇔ wind bend levante )

Similarily, permutations may represent different states, stages, variants or branches of a root,
e.g. ‘earth’ and ‘acres’:
𓎛 𓄿 𓏏 𓈅 𓏥 fields, arable lands, earth, mould hearth
𓄿 𓎛 𓏏 𓈇 field, arable land, earth, mound ahert

even though words can have very similar meanings, if they are written differently, there is a high chance that they were infact different branches and instances on the language tree:
𓅱 𓊪 𓄋 open
𓄋 𓊪 𓏴 separate

Concluding 𓅱 = 𓄋 “w” would be very wrong

Upward sound change

In by far the most cases sound-change happens from high entropy to low entropy.
osteo < 𒄩𒀀𒀸𒊭 /ḫāssa/ bone *h₃ésth₁ < Кость < 𓈎 𓋴 𓌟 qʳstwo
If an upstream word appears in the tree of related cognates, it has to be taken as a root form!
Especially if it is explicitly attested in the historic record (as is the case with Кость < 𓈎 𓋴 𓌟 qʳstwo )

Bad Linguistics violate the nature of downward sound change too often, for the sake of their own cute frameworks and theories.

Other examples

Garaus machen "gar austrinken" carouse ⇔ carrousel vs √circle

𓊅 wohnen as verb: *wunāną, from Proto-Indo-European *wenh₁- “to wish, love”. WRONG
𓊅 wohnen as verb: < 𐌱𐌰𐌿𐌰𐌽 bauan, búa, bo *būaną. boun > wohn ⇔ being
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/b%C5%ABan%C4%85 reside

flow “not cognate with Latin fluō despite similarity”

7 seven PIE *septḿ̥ and PS *s¹abˁ- “there is no way those two are related unless we completely revise the sequence of sound changes in both families”

"The discrepancy of root vocalism between Slavic and Baltic is problematic and requires two different Proto-Balto-Slavic reconstructions, with short -*e- and long -*ē-. Thus, no common form can be reconstructed. Latvian and Old Prussian have syncopated the suffixal -e-"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B1%E1%BC%B0%CE%B3%CF%85%CF%80%CE%B9%CF%8C%CF%82#Ancient_Greek

"influence of αἰγυπιός “vulture” by γύψ gúps, “vulture” seems unlikely"


"irregular pattern PIE *k > Proto-Germanic *k"

Corruption

Often the reconstruction of words is too conservative: when the corroded reconstruction of a word results in a sequence of vowels, one should consider longer variants:

Despite 𒀀 a/mû/bu4 being within the realms of the wildcard-fallacy, one should consider all forms based on it:

𒀀𒅇𒀀;𒀀𒄷𒋛𒀀 a-u₃-a;a-u5-a a'u'a ferryman veerman (𒀀 mû mein ≈ man ) מַעְבּוֹרַאי ma'aborai
𒀀𒉺𒄐𒉻𒋛𒀀 au towman towman of a boat a'u A-PA-GISAL-PAD-SI-A > apgi'l'osio #āgilu
𒀀𒌑;𒀀𒅇;𒀀𒄷𒋛;𒅇;𒄷𒋛 a-u₂;a-u₃;a-u5;u₃;u5 high water a'u over ≠ Ebbe hyper ≈ hygh hoch(wasser)

father The reconstruction of 'father' 𓇋 𓏏 𓆑 𓀀 as #jt is absurd, given longer forms are known 𓇋 𓏏 𓆑 𓀀 | father | ⲓⲟϯ eiōt aita @ basque ⇔ Eidam Adam Alter, Eltern vs 𒇻 UTU≈aita 𓇋 𓏏 𓆑 𓀀 | father | ⲓⲟϯ eiōt aita <> ᚺᚨᛁᛏᛖ haite 𐌷𐌰𐌹𐍄𐌰𐌽 haitan heissen father-names bin … 𓇋 𓏏 𓆑 𓀀 | father | πⲓⲟϯ ↔ ⲓⲱⲧ (p)eiōt (p)eiote < Pjotre

The Coptic form is corroded so that it hides the 𓆑 ƒ component of father, however ommiting it in reconstructions is a big faux-pas, even if very common: 𜎼𜎅𜏧 ᵛAtta father (𜎼 VA < PA 𓊪 ) 𐌰𐍄𐍄𐌰 Vatta ( not atta! see 𐌰 alpha and alphabetic-change )

Names

Calling bad linguists by name Robert W. Thomson considers the etymology of Haykʻ Հայք from Hayk Հայկ to be impossible, good scholars consider the connection between the two to be obvious. ( Armenia and its founding father)

Unwarranted connections

dziewięć девѧть *devętь ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁néwn̥.
تَرَامُح tarāmuḥ ⇔ trauma τραῦμα (traûma, “wound, damage”) ≠ τιτρώσκω (titrṓskō, “to wound”)

اَلْمُشْتَرِي al-muštarī "Jupiter" … secondary etymology Bad-Linguistics