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Arabic origins of IE languages

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Doitsujin
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 Message 1 of 11
25 May 2015 at 5:08pm | IP Logged 
I've recently stumbled upon Saudi-Arabian linguist Zaidan Ali Jassem who has published several papers (mostly in vanity science publications) claiming that:
Quote:
[...] English, German, French, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit are dialects of the same language with Arabic being their origin [...]

For example, in his paper "I buy, Ich kaufe, & J'achéte as Arabic dialectal variants: A radical linguistic theory approach" he claims that that the French verb acheter is related to the Arabic verb ishtara and that the English noun price is related to the Arabic noun for profit ribḥ.

I thought that some HTAL readers might enjoy reading this paper for its entertainment value.

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Sizen
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 Message 2 of 11
25 May 2015 at 8:43pm | IP Logged 
Awesome, I guess this is the time to unveil my super secret theory now, too.

Basque as Modern Mandarin Chinese dialectal variant: A completely silly linguistic theory approach.
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tarvos
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 Message 3 of 11
26 May 2015 at 5:05am | IP Logged 
April Fools' Day was two months ago...
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Doitsujin
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 Message 4 of 11
26 May 2015 at 8:04am | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
April Fools' Day was two months ago...

Actually, the guy is dead serious. He wrote over 30 papers about this new "radical linguistic theory," which seems to be very popular among Arab linguists. Many years ago, when I was a student in Kuwait, an Arabic teacher actually suggested that Honolulu might be derived from the Arabic huna lu'lu' (= here [are] pearls). (He also came up with many other examples, but the Honolulu example is the only one I still remember.)
These ideas might have been inspired in part by the treatise Arabic - the Mother of all Languages, which was written by the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.



Edited by Doitsujin on 26 May 2015 at 2:51pm

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dhoeffer
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 Message 5 of 11
26 May 2015 at 9:28am | IP Logged 
Lots of people believe similar things about Hebrew. Science is hard, even more so if you need
to reconcile it with your religion.

If nothing else, these word lists make some good mnemonics...
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vonPeterhof
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 Message 6 of 11
26 May 2015 at 10:42am | IP Logged 
There's a Wikipedia article apparently started by someone who was really fed up with this kind of "linguistic" theories. A quote from the Talk page: "This reads to me as though it was written by someone who really dislikes pseudoscience". Can't say I blame them :)
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tarvos
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 Message 7 of 11
26 May 2015 at 11:21am | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:
tarvos wrote:
April Fools' Day was two months ago...

Actually, the guy is dead serious. He wrote over 30 papers about this new "radical
linguistic theory," which seems to be very popular among Arab linguists. Many years
ago, when I was a student in Kuwait, an Arabic teacher actually suggested that
Honolulu might be derived from the Arabic huna lu'lu' (= there [are] pearls).
(He also came up with many other examples, but the Honolulu example is the only one I
still remember.)
These ideas might have been inspired in part by the treatise
Arabic - the Mother of all
Languages
, which was written by the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community,
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.



Of course he is. Many people are dead serious when they spout nonsense. That's what
makes them so dangerous.
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Michel1020
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 Message 8 of 11
26 May 2015 at 10:31pm | IP Logged 
I think in India they claim everything came from one word - and by everything they don't mean only all words from all languages - they mean the Universe itself with everything in it.

The word starts with a H sound or not and ends with an undefined number of m sounds.

uk - oommmm
de sp ummm
nl oemmmmm
fr oummmm

Feel free to add H any now and then before or between the m too.

God built the World in 7 days - I just built 4 universes in 4 lines.

Edit I am dead tired.

Edited by Michel1020 on 26 May 2015 at 10:34pm



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