Pseudolinguistics

Style over substance
Pseudoscience

Popular pseudosciences

* Alternative medicine
* Creationism
* Racialism
* Pseudopsychology

Random examples

* Polygraph
* Galileo Was Wrong, The Church Was Right
* Richard Milton
* Science woo
* Penis enlargement
* Aquatic ape hypothesis
* Parents Against Underage Smartphones
* James McCanney
* Nigel Cheese

v \- t \- e

We control what
you think with
Language

Said and done

* Speaking in tongues
* African American Vernacular English
* Tipping point
* Everyone is racist
* Fifth column
* Cunt

Jargon, buzzwords, slogans

* Technobabble
* The powers that be
* Transgender glossary
* Manosphere glossary
* Elitism
* Indian alt-right glossary

v \- t \- e

Pseudolinguistics is the study of language in a way that falls short of academic rigor. It is the linguistic cousin of the pseudoscientific family. Of course, pseudolinguistics has strong ties with other fields such as pseudohistory and pseudoarcheology.

## Contents

* 1 Basics of linguistics
* 2 Motivations of pseudolinguistics
* 2.1 Nationalism
* 2.2 Religion
* 3 Alternatives to the comparative method
* 3.1 Glottochronology
* 3.2 Other methods
* 4 Macrofamilies
* 5 Proto-World
* 5.1 In nationalism
* 6 Themes in pseudolinguistics
* 6.1 Connections between languages
* 6.2 Disconnections between languages
* 6.3 Undeciphered writing systems
* 6.4 Languages and the mind
* 6.5 Auxiliary languages
* 6.6 Aliens
* 7 Linguistic discrimination
* 8 Prescriptivism
* 9 See also
* 10 External links
* 11 Notes
* 12 References

## Basics of linguistics[edit]

In linguistics, the comparative method is the accepted method to show that languages are related. Related languages should descend from a definite proto-language, and the daughter languages should have words that transform according to definite sound laws from this proto-language. For example, in Uralic languages, the Proto-Uralic language split into at least two subgroups called Finnic and Ugric, where each 'p' in Finnic is replaced by 'f' in Ugric, e.g. Finnish pata corresponds to Hungarian fazék.

In contrast, pseudolinguists usually fail to use the comparative method, relying on false or folk etymologies, spurious similarities, various other kinds of pseudoscience (such as racialist arguments), or flat-out wild speculation.

## Motivations of pseudolinguistics[edit]

### Nationalism[edit]

Nationalists of various stripes are especially proficient abusers of linguistics. Many like to make up family relationships between languages or language families and then claim the newly discovered kin as a part of their nation. For example, a Turkish linguist might claim that the Finno-Ugric languages are related to Turkish and that therefore the Finns are actually Turks (for some reason, you'll rarely hear it the other way around, that my language is related to your language and therefore my people don't exist but are members of your people. This is because of egocentrism. To combat them, just ask them if they believe Germans are Iranian.). Language isolates (i.e. languages not demonstrably related to any others, such as Basque, Ainu, or many Native American languages) seem to be particularly popular choices for such theories, as well as any ancient language of some long-gone civilization (Sumerian, Egyptian, etc.). A typical pseudolinguistic language family claim will show a list of similar words with similar meanings in both languages. As the Zompist has already eloquently torn apart such claims,[1] there is no need for debunking them here.

One example of the 'other way around' can be found in the book Hebrew is Greek by Joseph Yahuda, who claimed that he was able to break a cypher that enabled him to prove that ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek are the same language, and that "the Hebrews were of Hellenic descent, and that the Arabs were of Hittite (Scythian) origin; that they were both intimately related to the Greeks by religion and custom…"[2] This is despite the consensus view among linguists that Greek and Hittite are in the Indo-European language family,[3] and that Hebrew and Arabic are in the Afroasiatic language family.[4]

It's popular for nationalists across much of Eurasia to claim their country or region was the Proto-Indo-European homeland.[5]

### Religion[edit]

If mixed with an unhealthy dose of religious whackery, you might find pseudolinguists looking for an "Adamic language", as allegedly spoken by all of mankind before the abandonment of the Tower of Babel. In the Middle Ages, perceptive scholars identified Basque as the Adamic language, as it was one of the few known languages clearly not related to any other language. (The search for Adamic languages should not be confused with the Proto-Human language theory, which is a legitimate - though controversial - hypothesis of all languages in the world having one origin.)

Religion often provides the basis for a lot of pseudolinguistics:

* Isaac Mozeson created something he calls "Edenics", which purports to trace all languages to old Hebrew by ignoring vowels and permuting consonants.[6]
* Some Mormon apologists claim that the Native American Uto-Aztecan languages are linked in some way to the Semitic languages, a supposed ground-breaking discovery that has attracted little attention in the wider linguistics sphere. The supposed language of the Book of Mormon (considered by non-Mormons to be a fabrication), "Reformed Egyptian" is also nonsense.[7]
* Young-Earth creationists sometimes claim that Chinese characters prove the veracity of the Biblical account of creation.
* The ideas of channelled languages and glossolalia.

## Alternatives to the comparative method[edit]

### Glottochronology[edit]

“” Glottochronology must be about the only scientific technique where the accuracy of one’s results is enhanced by the removal rather than the augmentation of data!

—Douglas Adams and J.P Mallory[8]:95

Glottochronology, also called lexicostatistics, is a method of estimating the date of divergence between two languages. It involves the comparison of several languages' basic vocabulary and then deriving a date of diversion. In some ways, glottochronology can be compared to genetic analyses or carbon dating. Glottochronology was invented by Morris Swadesh, a historical linguist in the 1950s.[9]:427-8

Glottochronology rests on the following assumptions:[9]:423, 426-7

1. That there is a basic vocabulary that is culture-free. This is assembled into a Swadesh list, a list of 100 (originally 200) words. These words include names for various body parts, basic verbs, colors, taxonomic terms like "fish", "bird" or "tree", various pronoun forms, Sun, Moon, Star, and geographic terms like "mountain".[note 1]
2. That this basic, culture-free vocabulary is lost at a rate of 14% every thousand years.
3. That this rate is constant across languages
4. That one can compute the time of divergence between two languages when the amount of basic vocabulary cognates between them becomes known.

Unfortunately, these assumptions are flawed:

* A lot of items on the Swadesh list such as "person" are not actually culture-free or are easily borrowable.[9]:429 Additionally, languages can have multiple words that each fit the meanings on the Swadesh list. Conversely, some languages have no equivalent words on the Swadesh list (colors are especially susceptible to this).[9]:429-30 Words can also be changed for cultural reasons or plain taboo.[9]:430-1
* The 86% retention rate is challenged by comparing English and Icelandic. Icelandic retained 97.3% of its basic vocabulary while English only retained 67.8%. The wide gap severely reduces confidences in the 86% number.[9]:431
* Borrowings from related languages would skew the date of splitting forwards.[9]:431-2

### Other methods[edit]

Mass comparison, like the comparative method, assembles a list of proposed cognates between a large number of languages. Unlike the comparative method, it relies only on superficial similarities between languages and ignores the possibility of coincidences or borrowings. This makes results derived from it more error-prone, and connections between languages derived from it less trustworthy. [10]:168-172, 202-3 This method has been used by Joseph Greenberg, John Bengtson and Merritt Ruhlen et al. to argue for their far-reaching macrofamilies and for proto-world.

Some people make proposals for language relations based on non-linguistic evidence, like genetics. These proposals are invalid for several reasons:[10]:206

* A person can learn multiple languages while only having one set of genes their entire lives.[note 2]
* Individuals and communities can abandon one language and adopt another.

## Macrofamilies[edit]

See also: Indo-European languages#Proposed external relations

Macrofamilies are proposals to link large numbers of language families (and sometimes isolates).

* Altaic holds that the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families are related. Occasionally the Koreanic and Japonic languages are included as part of a broader "Macro-Altaic" family with the other three being "Micro-Altaic". Even more rarely Ainu is included.[10]:235 Many of the proposed cognates may not be cognates, but borrowings[10]:238 and many of its proposed characteristics are typologically common, such as vowel harmony, or can be distributed areally.[10]:240 Because of the way Altaicists handle evidence, like their ignorance of the sociopolitical and cultural history of languages,[12]:75-6 reliance on wordlists and dictionaries instead of looking at texts,[12]:76 lack of regular phonological correspondence between proposed cognates,[12]:76-7 treatment of ghost words,[12]:77-8 treatment of loanwords,[12]:84-5 stretching of the semantics of compared words,[12]:81-3 and occasional misrepresentation of data[12]:78-80 it has been called a cult by at least one former supporter.[note 3] Ural-Altaic combines Altaic and Uralic, and thus inherits most of the problems of the former. This idea predates Altaic proper.[10]:237-8

* Nostratic has many varied forms. In the form proposed by Vladislav "Slava" Illich-Svitych, who originated the hypothesis,[note 4] it included: Dravidian, Altaic, Kartvelian, Afroasiatic, Uralic, and Indo-European.[10]:243 A different version proposed by Allan Bomhard includes Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Uralic-Yukaghir, Elamo-Dravidian, Altaic, and possibly Sumerian.[10]:243 There is a wide variety of families included or excluded from Nostratic, so it may not make sense to speak of Nostratic as a single hypothesis. A similar hypothesis proposed by Joseph Greenberg is Eurasiatic. It includes Indo-European, Uralic, Yukaghir, Altaic, Ainu, Korean, Japanese, Nivkh, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, and Eskimo—Aleut. It was meant to be a competing hypothesis, but includes numerous families that have at various times been thought to be Nostratic.[10]:243-4 Allan Bomhard's version of Nostratic includes a different reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European with the Glottalic hypothesis, where traditionally reconstructed b, d, g are instead p' , t' , k' . This means his version includes different cognates than Nostracists who use the traditional reconstructions.[10]:244

## Proto-World[edit]

Proto-World, or Proto-Human, is the hypothetical ancestor of all languages today. While the idea that all living human languages go back to a common ancestor has merit, claims to have reconstructed what it looked like do not. Reconstructions of Proto-World typically use the following methodology:[10]:368

> A. Ignore vowels entirely: Any vowel matches any other vowel

> B. For consonants, roughly similar places of articulation suffices to match cognates [though non-initial consonants are sometimes allowed drastic differences]. Minor place changes are acceptable: velars match uvulars, palatals, etc. Other features play no role whatsoever, so that oral stops correspond to nasals, etc.

> C. Any differences in place which parallel widely attested sound changes such as lenition are acceptable, so that any consonant can be reflected by [h]

> D. In semantics, any narrowing or any metaphorical extension is acceptable without further justification (such as cultural or historical arguments), so that 'dog' corresponds to 'fox, lynx, deer' etc. and 'arm' to 'elbow/hand, fingernail, foot, armpit, shoulder/arm,' and so forth.

This methodology creates the potential for numerous false cognates. *kuna "woman", one of the most commonly cited examples of a supposed Proto-World word, exemplifies these problems:[10]:369

* The initial k sound can be "k, k', g, x, q, x, h, w, b, ž, ʔ, č etc."
* The final n sound can be "n, r, m, ã, w?, ʔ, and ∅ etc."
* The words to support the existence of *kuna have a variety of meanings: "‘wife,’ ‘woman,’ ‘lady,’ ‘mother,’ ‘female’ (of any species), ‘spirit of dead woman,’ ‘girl,’ ‘daughter,’ ‘maiden,’ ‘daughter-in-law,’ ‘small girl,’ ‘young woman,’ ‘old woman,’ etc."

Lyle Campbell and William Poser found that numerous Spanish words with known etymologies and histories fit the patterns established by *kuna.[10]:370

Reconstructions of Proto-World face one major problem: After 6000 years, two languages are expected to share only 7% of their words. After 14000 years, nearly all of a language's basic vocabulary can be expected to change. This would make it very difficult to find true cognates even in situations where it is known that two languages are related (such as Hindi and English).[10] :380-6 At the time depths Proto-World is presumed to have existed, there is more than enough time for this to have happened several times.

### In nationalism[edit]

See the main article on this topic: Nationalist pseudohistory § Similar words prove we speak the master language

Many nationalists like to claim that the language they speak was Proto-World. Some of the languages that been claimed to be Proto-World include Sanskrit, Hebrew, Gaelic,[14] Tamil[15], Guarani[note 5], Romanian, and Dutch.[17] The Sun Language Theory, claims that language was invented by the Turks as a way to convert ritual blathering into a means of meaningful communication. This "theory" was promoted by the Turkish government under Atatürk in the 1930s.

A particularly stupid example is Valery Chudinov.[18] He concluded that Russians are more ancient than most civilizations by "noticing" monosyllabic Russian words enscribed on ancient artifacts, the ocean floor, the sun's surface and drying plaster.

Occasionally, a lost continent like Mu, Lemuria, or Atlantis is invoked to explain how a language family spread.[19] Tamil has at one point been claimed to have spoken on the lost continent of Lemuria.[15]

## Themes in pseudolinguistics[edit]

### Connections between languages[edit]

Some people like to make connections between languages. These attempts are protoscience at best. Some examples include:

* Celtic and Amazigh (this idea is quite popular in some circles in France).[note 6]
* Basque and a bunch of other languages. This is particularly common with apparent linguistic isolates.
* Some Romanian nationalists advance the ~~theory~~ idea that Latin is actually a dialect of Dacian.
* Native American tribes speak or spoke Welsh, Chinese, or Hungarian. Proponents of these ideas may appeal to assertions in historical documents, avoiding the more obvious route of juxtaposing texts in the supposedly identical languages in question, even if the languages are still alive or at least have reasonably sized bodies of texts available for comparison. A milder version of this is the idea that certain Native American languages have countless words from Old Norse.
* Various theories about Pictish, now generally considered P-Celtic (or Gallo-Brittonic).

### Disconnections between languages[edit]

Conversely, some people like to claim that their language isn't related to another:

* Indian nationalists claim that Indian Indo-European languages are actually unrelated to European languages and that the language family was created as an excuse for European colonialism. Their claims may stem from the fact that the man who coined the term Indo-European, one Sir William Jones, was a British colonial judge and philologist who made the observation that Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek share word roots and so paved the way for the field of comparative linguistics.[22][23] The nationalists are in some ways as wrong-minded about Indian Indo-European languages being unrelated to European languages as Jones was right about a great many things.
* Modern Hebrew has been claimed to not be a Semitic language, and that it is instead a Yiddish based creole of some sort, or a constructed language.[note 7]
* At least one book alleges that the Romance languages are not descended from Latin.
* Some Hungarian nationalists believe that the Hungarian language is actually related to various non-Uralic languages, such as Hunnic[note 8] or Sumerian.[24][25] Usually mixed with conspiracy theories (Like claiming "the Finno-Ugric theory was pushed by the Hapsburgs"[26][27] or the Bolsheviks),[28]:15 wishful thinking, and national mysticism. This idea is usually predicated by charlatans with expensive books.

### Undeciphered writing systems[edit]

Undeciphered writing systems like Linear A from Crete or Rongorongo attract people who claim to have deciphered them but invariably have not.[29]

The Voynich Manuscript also attracts people who claim to have deciphered it, but invariably, they have not.[30]

### Languages and the mind[edit]

Weak interpretations of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (the concept that language has an effect on how we interpret the world) are considered to be a part of legitimate linguistics. However, many linguists now regard the original proposition of the hypothesis, and stronger interpretations (suggesting that language defines and constrains our thoughts) as pseudolinguistics. (Modern linguistics regards the thought-control through language in Nineteen Eighty-Four as impossible.) Related to this are linguistic myths such as the claim that the Inuit have hundreds of words for snow, supposedly reflecting their deep interest in the subject.[31]

Neurolinguistic programming also incorporates some pseudo-linguistic claims.

xenoglossy, the idea that an individual can spontaneously learn a language, is nonsense.

### Auxiliary languages[edit]

Some claims[32] used by proponents of international auxiliary languages (such as Esperanto) can be classified as pseudolinguistics.

### Aliens[edit]

Because aliens are not here to comment, anything specific about extraterrestrial languages, i.e. astrolinguistics, is pseudolinguistics since it's mostly speculation.

That doesn't stop some people from thinking that ancient astronauts taught us writing or that dead languages such as Egyptian are in fact descended from alien tongues. Aliens have in all likelihood never visited Earth for much the same reasons that we have not visited them, and if they did, it is highly unlikely their languages would be pronounceable by humans. Think Chewbacca.

Then there's this guy:

## Linguistic discrimination[edit]

See the main article on this topic: Linguistic discrimination

Pseudolinguistics has been used a tool to discriminate. Until a few decades ago, the French claimed the regional languages of France were dialects of French[33] in the Vergonha in an effort to discredit them and weed them out from daily use. The French were mostly successful in that effort, as the minority languages (Occitan, Arpitan, Gallo, etc.) are almost extinct today and are kept going only by a special effort of their respective provinces. African American Vernacular English has also been discriminated against.

## Prescriptivism[edit]

It is a common misconception that your average linguist is a portrait of an old-school English teacher who viscerally reacts to "bad English" as if it were bad breath or a mental illness. A linguist would perhaps want to hear how you speak naturally – no need to be on your best behavior [citation NOT needed]

Real linguistics is about understanding how real people use language, and the chief reference is the language as it is really spoken. In contrast, prescriptivists want to tell people how language should be used, based not on real-life examples but on a variety of bizarre and illogical arguments, including historical arguments, comparison with other languages (usually Latin for English-language prescriptivists), and other logical fallacies. Oxford Bibliographies Online says of linguistic prescriptivism: "this ideology and its practices are now usually ascribed to nonlinguists or nonacademic linguists, whereas modern academic linguists ... restrict themselves to the study and description of the structure of language and its natural use."[34]

One common example is the so-called ban on splitting infinitives in English, such as in the phrase "to boldly go" which is considered bad writing by some. These have existed in English at least since the 14th century, but have been criticised by pedants since the Victorian age. Some people say this is based on a comparison with Latin because there is no such thing as a split infinitive in Latin: an infinitive in Latin is a single word, while in English it is two words ("to go"), so it is impossible to split an infinitive in Latin but easy in English. On the other hand, others point out that "go", not "to go", is actually the infinitive in English, and therefore suggest that there's no logic behind the prohibition: most of the infinitive police think it's uneducated or just don't like it.[35][36]

## See also[edit]

* Linguistics
* Alphabet
* Occam's razor — the majority of nationalist pseudolinguistics is based around the notion that this doesn't exist

## External links[edit]

* Why is linguistics such a magnet for dilettantes and crackpots?, Gaston Dorren
* Folk linguistics on Wikipedia
* Of the Antiquity of the English Tongue, a satirical piece by Jonathan Swift

## Notes[edit]

1. ↑ For the full list, or rather lists, see the Wikipedia article on Swadesh list
2. ↑ There are instances of a person having two different genotypes,[11] but these are rare and present from birth.
3. ↑ From Alexander Vovin's extremely snarky review of the book Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages (EDAL):[12]:123

> The only tangible explanation for everything that can be seen in EDAL in that respect, is that the Altaic hypothesis at least in its Moscow version became a set of beliefs highly reminiscent of a religion. However, religion and science cannot coexist, because the first is based on faith, while the second seeks the explanation of the facts that are in need of explanation. EDAL does not explain these facts, it simply creates the "evidence" for the pre-existing belief that is, of course, non-evidence.

4. ↑ Nostracists have been accused of revering Illich-Svitych in an almost cult-like way:[13]:108, 121

> Vladislav Markovich ("Slava") Illich-Svitych (1934–1966), henceforth IS, is highly revered by many who work with Nostratic, particularly by scholars from the ex-Soviet Union. IS is largely credited for launching the Nostratic hypothesis and for assembling much of the evidence upon which it is based. While the reverence is commendable, at times there appears to be almost a Slava cult, that is, an emotional attachment to all that IS wrote such that any attempt to move beyond it or to refine it — and heaven forbid to criticize it —, is simply rejected out of hand by those who share these sentiments (cf. Bulatova 1989, Dybo 1989a, Manaster Ramer 1993:228–231). This is the "style and sociology that always seem to loom large in any discussions of the Nostratic hypothesis", "the excessive veneration of Illich-Svitych's memory and the defensiveness about just about every aspect of his theory" about which Manaster Ramer (1993:228, 230) wrote. For example, one suspects there is something of the Slava cult lying behind the very critical reactions from various Nostraticists towards Bomhard's (1984, 1986, 1990, cf. also Bomhard & Kerns 1994) alternative view of Nostratic (see Kaiser & Shevoroshkin 1987, Markey & Shevoroshkin 1986:xxxii–xxxiv). The very strongly worded polemic from the very dedicated among the former Soviet inner circle of Nostraticists has often been observed (cf. Kaye 1989:223, Manaster Ramer 1993).

Campbell later describes an incident where a Nostraticist uses an obsolete reconstruction of Proto-Finno-Ugric, because Illich-Svitych used it:[13]:120-1

> I suspect that there is something of the "Slava" cult lying behind Dybo's remarks. The thinking would appear to go something like the following. Since IS used these earlier Uralic sources, others not yet being available to him, and since they are for this reason deeply interwoven into IS's Nostratic reconstructions, and since these are held by the very dedicated to be absolutely correct, then the Uralic forms upon which IS relied must be valid by implication, given the asserted correctness of IS's Nostratic achievement.

5. ↑ There is an article, ostensibly about computational analysis of the Guarani lexicon, that quickly devolves into comparisons between Guarani, Sanskrit, and Ancient Greek. It concludes that Guarani must be Proto-World, unchanged for thousands of years. ("It is undoubtedly true that Guarani does not descend from any language; it merely sprang up naturally from observation of the world that surrounds us." Also, "How is it that [Guarani did not] stray from its roots over the centuries?" There is a mention of Homer's "Eurythmy", with the Greek letters having certain meanings, such as A meaning "clear, open" and I meaning "thin, small", among other cited examples. "These values, these gestures of the letters, do not coincide with any language besides Greek, yet we are astonished to find that they are exactly the same in Guarani. [...] We would say that one could invent words, based on Homer's descriptions and Eurythmy, which would then be perfectly understandable to any speaker of Guarani.") We also find the bizarre assertion that Guarani is so logical that it resembles an artificial language like Esperanto (!) more than it does a natural one.[16]
6. ↑ There is some speculation suggesting a Celto-Semitic Sprachbund,[20][21] but not much more.
7. ↑ This does not include the claim that Hebrew was revived in the 19th and 20th century, because that is indeed true.
8. ↑ What is preserved of the Hunnic language are some proper names and three common words, all three believed to be Indo-European borrowings. The idea that Hungarian is related to Hunnic is therefore absolutely untestable on linguistic grounds.

## References[edit]

1. ↑ How likely are chance resemblances between languages? Zompist 2002
2. ↑ Hebrew is Greek by Joseph Yahuda 1982) Becket Publications. ISBN 0728900130.
3. ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Indo-European languages.
4. ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Afroasiatic languages.
5. ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Proto-Indo-Europeans.
6. ↑ Did Adam and Eve Speak Hebrew in the Garden of Eden? Philologos (certainly a pseudonym), Forward 17 November 2013
7. ↑ "The Who, What, and Why of 'Reformed Egyptian' in the Book of Mormon", Book of Mormon Central, May 13, 2019
8. ↑ Mallory, J.P; Adams, D.Q. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-929668-2.
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 Campbell, Lyle (2020-12-31). Historical Linguistics. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-6313-3.
10. ↑ 10.00 10.01 10.02 10.03 10.04 10.05 10.06 10.07 10.08 10.09 10.10 10.11 10.12 10.13 Campbell, Lyle (2008). Language classification : history and method. William John Poser. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-41450-3.
11. ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Human chimera.
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 Vovin, Alexander (2005). "The end of the Altaic controversy (review of Starostin et al. 2003)". Central Asiatic Journal. 49 (1): 71–132.71-132&rft.date=2005&rft.aulast=Vovin&rft.aufirst=Alexander&rfr_id=info:sid/rationalwiki.org:Pseudolinguistics" class="Z3988">
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Campbell, Lyle (1998). "Nostratic: A Personal Assessment". Nostratic. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 107–152. Retrieved 2024-05-15.107-152&rft.pub=John+Benjamins+Publishing+Company&rft.date=1998&rft.aulast=Campbell&rft.aufirst=Lyle&rft_id=http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cilt.142.08cam&rfr_id=info:sid/rationalwiki.org:Pseudolinguistics" class="Z3988">
14. ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Goídel Glas.
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 See the Wikipedia article on Devaneya Pavanar.
16. ↑ El guarani.
17. ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Johannes Goropius Becanus.
18. ↑ Чудинов. Archived from lurkmore.to.
19. ↑ Everything You Need To Know About Lemuria, The Lost Continent Of Lemurs
20. ↑ Orin Gensler. A Typological Evaluation of Celtic/Hamito-Semitic Parallels. Berkeley, 1993. Via Librik. Answer to "Are there other pairs of languages that are as close grammatically despite not being in the same language family as Korean and Japanese?". Linguistics Stack Exchange, 2011-09-21. Accessed 2014-02-02.
21. ↑ Steve Hewitt. "Remarks on the Insular Celtic / Hamito-Semitic question". Academia.edu. Accessed 2014-03-25. Believed to be preprint of Hewitt, S. (2009), The Question of a Hamito-Semitic Substratum in Insular Celtic. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3: 972–995. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00141.x.
22. ↑ Comparative Linguistics Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2011, November 23.) Encyclopedia Britannica.
23. ↑ Discourses Delivered Before the Asiatic Society: And Miscellaneous Papers, on the Religion, Poetry, Literature, Etc., of the Nations of India by Sir William Jones, accessed October 14, 2021. Google Play Books
24. ↑ A ‘Paradigm Shift’ in Finnish Linguistic Prehistory Merlijn de Smit 22 august 2004
25. ↑ The Hungarian Horseradish John Feffer Huffpost 15 april 2014
26. ↑ Johanna Laakso, Linguistic Shadow-boxing. Archived from univie.ac.at.
27. ↑ The controversy on the origins and early history of the Hungarians. hunmagyar.org.
28. ↑ Hamans, Camiel; Hock, Hans Henrich, eds. (2024). Language, history, ideology: the use and misuse of historical-comparative linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-882789-4.
29. ↑ TimesHigherEducation Silent letters from the past 24 May 2002
30. ↑ Cipher Mysteries Voynich Theories
31. ↑ The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax, Geoffrey Pullum
32. ↑ As mocked here
33. ↑ Speakers of France’s endangered languages demand recognition. France24, 4 April 2012.
34. ↑ Linguistic Prescriptivism, Robin Straaijer, Oxford Bibliographies Online, 23 Aug 2017
35. ↑ To Boldly Split Infinitives, Arrant Pedantry, Sep 8, 2016
36. ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Split infinitive.

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