"Linguistic Archaeology: An Introduction"
I have a soft spot for crackpot theories. And Edo Nyland's theory of why all languages evolved from Basque, a language which is commonly taken to be an isolate among languages spoken in Europe, is a great example of such.
The story starts with a radio programme suggesting that Odysseus didn't actually sail the Mediterranean, he possibly went to the North Atlantic instead, and goes on as follows:
Could it be that the peoples along the Atlantic coast of Europe had belonged to the same migration and that all these had spoken the same neolithic language we now call Basque? To test this idea I tried the Basque dictionary on "Laistrygonian" and very quickly there appeared "lai-istri-goni-an". Using the full Basque words: laino-istripu-gonbidatu-aniztasun, meaning: fog-accidents-invites-many, or "fog invites many accidents". Indeed the excellent geographical details provided in the epic, and the entrance problems hinted at in the name perfectly fitted only one place on the west coast of Ireland: Killary Harbour in northern Conamara. My linguistic adventure was off to a good start.
For those of you playing along at home, this sort of "linguistic research" - splitting interesting words into random syllable groups, finding vaguely related Basque words and making up etymologies for the word out of them - is a staple of his theories. It's also complete bullshit.
I'd have a look at his book, but not for £17, and unsurprisingly the UL doesn't have a copy since Trafford Publishing appears to be a vanity press.
They charge a hundred dollars to submit your manuscript, two dollars per page to correct formatting errors in your manuscript among other things that are fairly normal in the editorial process for a non-fiction book as far as I'm aware, and a whole host of expensive packages if you're desperate to be "published" and want more cachet than, say, typesetting your own books and selling them on Lulu will bring you. For what it's worth, at least Lulu is honest that it's effectively Cafepress for books.
(Found this while I was tagging old Livejournal posts and discovered the old link in my original post didn't work.)
The story starts with a radio programme suggesting that Odysseus didn't actually sail the Mediterranean, he possibly went to the North Atlantic instead, and goes on as follows:
Could it be that the peoples along the Atlantic coast of Europe had belonged to the same migration and that all these had spoken the same neolithic language we now call Basque? To test this idea I tried the Basque dictionary on "Laistrygonian" and very quickly there appeared "lai-istri-goni-an". Using the full Basque words: laino-istripu-gonbidatu-aniztasun, meaning: fog-accidents-invites-many, or "fog invites many accidents". Indeed the excellent geographical details provided in the epic, and the entrance problems hinted at in the name perfectly fitted only one place on the west coast of Ireland: Killary Harbour in northern Conamara. My linguistic adventure was off to a good start.
For those of you playing along at home, this sort of "linguistic research" - splitting interesting words into random syllable groups, finding vaguely related Basque words and making up etymologies for the word out of them - is a staple of his theories. It's also complete bullshit.
I'd have a look at his book, but not for £17, and unsurprisingly the UL doesn't have a copy since Trafford Publishing appears to be a vanity press.
They charge a hundred dollars to submit your manuscript, two dollars per page to correct formatting errors in your manuscript among other things that are fairly normal in the editorial process for a non-fiction book as far as I'm aware, and a whole host of expensive packages if you're desperate to be "published" and want more cachet than, say, typesetting your own books and selling them on Lulu will bring you. For what it's worth, at least Lulu is honest that it's effectively Cafepress for books.
(Found this while I was tagging old Livejournal posts and discovered the old link in my original post didn't work.)