Talk:Pseudoscientific language comparison

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Re: "Certain types of languages seem to attract far more attention in pseudoscientific comparisons than others. These include languages of ancient civilizations such as Egyptian, Etruscan, Sumerian, and Classical Hebrew, […]": Should it be clarified that Egyptian and Classical Hebrew are related to each other? —Ruakh_TALK 00:34, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ==bias==

This reads to me as though it was written by someone who really dislikes pseudoscience. I think a value judgment on the topic is unnecessary and undesirable, but that's the impression I get from it. The list of ways of identifying pseudoscience at the end brings to mind some sort of paranoid witchhunt. 129.15.106.21 (talk) 06:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. I find it interesting that most of the mentioned languages (Egyptian, Etruscan, Sumerian, Basque, Japanese and Ainu) have some connection to each other. The article now seems to be no more than a frantic political propaganda trying to discredit all who do not see the world as the writer does. Some examples:

- Failure to apply an accepted method in order to demonstrate regular correspondences between the languages.

Accepted method?? Accepted by whom? And why MUST everybody accept those methods? Just let me remind everybody of Dr. Semmelweis's discovery of disinfection. He was the laughing stock of the whole world because he did not accept the 'accepted methods' and demanded his doctors to wash their hand. This sentence alone discredits the whole article.

- Failure to consider the possibility of borrowing.

While this is generically true, the opposite is happening right now. Hungarian is 'proved' to borrow from other languages to such an extent that no actual hungarian words left. One has to ask: How on earth did Hungarians speak before meeting others?? The so called 'professionals', the accepted Finnugorists happened to go too far in their efforts of anti-Hungarian propaganda.

- Neglect of known history:...

Absolutely true. This is an area what the 'accepted Finnugrists' simply ignored.

-Ignoring established results in favor of new, speculative hypotheses.

Again, you are not allowed to voice anything that is not in the direction of the 'accepted propaganda'.

- Advocation of fanciful historical scenarios on the basis of the purported linguistic findings

Yes. This is exactly what the 'accepted' Finnugrist group is committing.

-Assertion that criticism towards the theory is motivated by traditionalism, ideological factors or conspiracy on behalf of the linguistic community.

Exactly what the Finugorists are saying.

Nobody supports pseudo-science. At the same time people who don't accept other opinions are not scientists.

Regarding using pseudo science to justify racism ... a dictatorial system will always find a reason and justification to committ atttrocities. This is exactly what Pope Piccolini and the Habsburgs did regarding Finnugorism.

I find this article not scientific but a desperate effort to preserve the status quo by discrediting everybody from the start who dares to think differently. The 'accepted method' is to turn them into a laughing stock by calling them 'pseudo scientists'.

Real scientists would not write such an article because they know that pseudo science does not stand the times. In the minute the supporting dictatorial system collapses the theory collapses too. Finnugorism was well and alive as long as the Habsburgs and the following kommunist terror of Hungary needed and supported it. As soon as the terror collapsed, the theory collapsed too.

It is very interesting that Finnugorism that breaks most of the 'accepted' rules is not mentioned as pseudo science. Is the writer a Finnugorists?

And finally, I hunted down some proof regarding Sumerian-Hungarian language relation.

Anton Deimel - father of Sumerology - writes to Prof. Badiny-Jos in a private letter, 5. January 1953, Rome "Ich habe nicht die geringste Schwerigkeit eine Verwandschaft des Ungarishen mit them Sumerishen ancunehmen." (I have no hardship accepting sumer-Hungarian relation.) Additionally, Prof. Samuel Kramer advocates the Sumerian-Hungarian-Turkish relation. Kramer spent only fifty years on the subject and Deimel ... never mind, they must be pseudo scientists too for they are not in line with current 'methods'. (Magi) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.122.121 (talk) 15:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the former statement. While I also dislike pseudoscience, and do not think Wikipedia or any other source of knowledge should be encouraging it, the article - even though the author is careful not to list any actual examples of what he/she personally considers "pseudoscientific language comparison", or to give any names - seems to be directed not so much at really obvious pseudoscience, but at those spheres of language comparison that lie outside "mainstream" comparative linguistics. In other words, there is a crucial difference between a "controversial" theory and a "nutty" non-theory, and the article gives absolutely no hints at how to distinguish the two. Given these "criteria", one might dismiss as "pseudoscience" such widely varying approaches as, say, Merritt Ruhlen's Proto-World; Illich-Svitych's Nostratic; Laurent Sagart's Sino-Austronesian; and the local crackpot's "Japanese (or Arabic, or Hebrew, or Serbian, or Kiswahili, or Rapanui) is the original language of all mankind" - whereas the only kind of theory out of these that has no scientific use whatsoever will probably be the latter.

In the light of this, the article needs to be seriously rewritten. I do not think it should be deleted, because pseudoscientific language comparison is a reality that needs to be tackled. But too many of the statements given in the text are seriously debatable to be presented as facts. Just to name one example: "In comparative linguistics also grammatical evidence is required to confirm relatedness" - this is utterly false, since many languages are extremely poor in terms of grammatical morphemes, and their relationship can only be established on lexical evidence (e. g. Chinese and Tibeto-Burmese, or Thai-Kadai).

Also, while the two last criteria ("failure to submit results to peer reviewed linguistic journals" and "assertion that criticism towards the theory is motivated by traditionalism, ideological factors or conspiracy on behalf of the linguistic community") are indeed fairly characteristic of true pseudoscience, they are equally applicable to theories that are merely "controversial" and do not represent pseudoscience; their authors frequently have problems submitting their results to peer reviewed linguistic journals because the latter may be unwilling to accept anything that comes from the "minority".

I understand that the author of the article probably does not intend to state that violation of even a single one of the listed criteria turns the proposed theory into "pseudoscience". But in its present form, the article conveys exactly that feeling. Therefore, it needs a much more NPOV rewrite.Gstarst (talk) 15:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)