Pseudoscientific language comparison
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Pseudoscientific language comparison is a form of
pseudo-scholarship Pseudo-scholarship (from pseudo- and scholarship) is a term used to describe work (e.g., publication, lecture) or a body of work that is presented as, but is not, the product of rigorous and objective study or research; the act of producing such wo ...
that aims at establishing historical associations between languages by naïve postulations of similarities between them. While
comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...
also studies the historical relationships of languages, linguistic comparisons are deemed pseudoscientific when they are not based on the established practices. Pseudoscientific language comparison is usually performed by people with little or no specialization in the field of comparative linguistics. It is a widespread type of linguistic pseudoscience. The most common method applied in pseudoscientific language comparisons is to search two or more languages for words that seem similar in their sound and meaning. While such similarities often seem convincing to laypeople, linguistic scientists see this kind of comparison as unreliable for two primary reasons. First, the method applied is not well-defined: the criterion of similarity is subjective and thus not subject to verification or falsification, which is contrary to the principles of the scientific method. Second, the large size of all languages' vocabulary makes it easy to find coincidentally similar words between languages. Because of its unreliability, the method of searching for isolated similarities is rejected by nearly all comparative linguists (however, see
mass comparison Mass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison. The method is rejected by most linguists , though not all. Some of the to ...
for a controversial method that operates by similarity). Instead of noting isolated similarities, comparative linguists use a technique called the
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
to search for regular (i.e. recurring) correspondences between the languages'
phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
,
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
and core vocabulary in order to test hypotheses of relatedness. Certain types of languages seem to attract much more attention in pseudoscientific comparisons than others. These include languages of
ancient civilizations A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). Civi ...
such as
Egyptian Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...
,
Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy *Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization **Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities ** Etrusca ...
or Sumerian;
language isolates Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The numbe ...
or near-isolates such as
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
,
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
and Ainu; and languages that are unrelated to their geographical neighbors such as Hungarian.


Political or religious implications

In some cases, languages are associated with one another for political or religious reasons, despite a lack of support from accepted methods of
science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
or
historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...
: For example, it was argued by Niclas Wahlgren that Herman Lundborg encouraged that the posited
Ural-Altaic Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and former language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic (in the narrow sense) languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share ...
or
Turanian {{Short description, List of groups of people Turanian is a term that has been used in reference to diverse groups of people. It has had currency in Turanism, Pan-Turkism, and historic Turkish nationalism. Many of the uses of the word are obsolete. ...
, language family, which seeks to relate
Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
to the
Mongolian language Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and both the most widely spoken and best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residen ...
, was used to justify
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
towards the
Sami people Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
in particular. (There are also strong, albeit areal not genetic, similarities between the
Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
and
Altaic Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are c ...
languages, which provide a more benign but nonetheless incorrect basis for this theory.) Some believers in
Abrahamic religions The Abrahamic religions are a group of religions centered around worship of the God of Abraham. Abraham, a Hebrew patriarch, is extensively mentioned throughout Abrahamic religious scriptures such as the Bible and the Quran. Jewish tradition ...
have sought to derive their native languages from
Classical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of t ...
. For example,
Herbert W. Armstrong Herbert W. Armstrong (July 31, 1892 – January 16, 1986) was an American evangelism, evangelist who founded the Worldwide Church of God (WCG). An early pioneer of radio evangelism, radio and television evangelism, Armstrong preached what he c ...
(1892–1986), a proponent of
British Israelism British Israelism (also called Anglo-Israelism) is the British nationalist, pseudoarchaeological, pseudohistorical and pseudoreligious belief that the people of Great Britain are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendant ...
, claimed that the word 'British' comes from Hebrew בְּרִית (, meaning '
covenant Covenant may refer to: Religion * Covenant (religion), a formal alliance or agreement made by God with a religious community or with humanity in general ** Covenant (biblical), in the Hebrew Bible ** Covenant in Mormonism, a sacred agreement b ...
') and אּישׁ (, meaning 'man'), as supposed proof that the British people are the 'covenant people' of God. Pre-modern scholars of the
Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.
Hebrew: ''Tān ...
, debating the language spoken by Adam and Eve, often relied on belief in the literal truth of
Genesis Genesis may refer to: Bible * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
and of the accuracy of the names transcribed therein. On the other hand,
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
scholars
Johannes Goropius Becanus Johannes Goropius Becanus () (23 June 1519 – 28 June 1573), born Jan Gerartsen, was a Dutch physician, linguist, and humanism, humanist. Life He was born Jan Gerartsen van Gorp in the hamlet of Gorp, Netherlands, Gorp, in the municipality o ...
(1519–1572) and
Simon Stevin Simon Stevin (; 1548–1620), sometimes called Stevinus, was a Flemish mathematician, scientist and music theorist. He made various contributions in many areas of science and engineering, both theoretical and practical. He also translated vario ...
(1548–1620) argued that the Adamic language had been a dialect of their own native language,
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
. The
Sun Language Theory The Sun Language Theory ( tr, Güneş Dil Teorisi) was a Turkish ultranationalist, racist, pseudolinguistic, and pseudoscientific hypothesis developed in Turkey in the 1930s that proposed that all human languages are descendants of one proto-T ...
, positing a proto-
Turkic language The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
as the ancestor of all human languages, was motivated by
Turkish nationalism Turkish nationalism ( tr, Türk milliyetçiliği) is a political ideology that promotes and glorifies the Turkish people, as either a Turkey#Demographics, national, Turkish people, ethnic, or Turkish language, linguistic group. The term "ultrana ...
. The Israeli-American linguist Paul Wexler is known for his
fringe theories A fringe theory is an idea or a viewpoint which differs from the accepted scholarship of the time within its field. Fringe theories include the models and proposals of fringe science, as well as similar ideas in other areas of scholarship, such a ...
about the origin of
Jewish population As of 2020, the world's "core" Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewis ...
s and
Jewish languages Jewish languages are the various Language, languages and Dialect, dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the Jewish diaspora, diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following th ...
: * that most
Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...
are of Turkic origin, and that their language,
Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
, is ultimately derived from Judaeo-Slavic * that most
Sephardi Jews Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), pt, Judeus sefar ...
are of Berber origin, as is their language,
Ladino Ladino, derived from Latin, may refer to: * The register of Judaeo-Spanish used in the translation of religious texts, such as the Ferrara Bible *Ladino people, a socio-ethnic category of Mestizo or Hispanicized people in Central America especi ...
The
Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
n–American
archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
Marija Gimbutas Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis, ...
argued during the mid-1900s that Basque is clearly related to the extinct
Pictish Pictish is the extinct language, extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited num ...
and Etruscan languages, even though at least the comparison had earlier been rejected within a decade of being proposed in 1892 by Sir John Rhys. Her motivation was to show Basque was a remnant of an "
Old European culture Old Europe is a term coined by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to describe what she perceived as a relatively homogeneous pre-Indo-European Neolithic and Copper Age cultural horizon or civilisation in Southeastern Europe and part ...
".


Traits and characteristics

There is no universal way to identify pseudoscientific language comparisons; indeed, it is not clear that all pseudoscientific language comparisons form a single group. However, the following characteristics tend to be more common among pseudoscientific theories (and their advocates) than among scientific ones: *Failure to apply an accepted, or at least systematic, method to demonstrate regular correspondences between the languages. Unsystematic comparisons are effectively unfalsifiable.Trask, p.395 *Failure to present grammatical evidence for relatedness: claims are based exclusively on word comparisons, even though in comparative linguistics grammatical evidence is also required to confirm relatedness. *Arbitrary segmentation of compared forms: comparisons are based on the similarity of only a part of the words compared (usually the first syllable), whereas the rest of the word is ignored. *Disregard for the effects of
morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
on word structure: uninflected
root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...
forms may be compared with fully inflected forms, or
marked In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...
forms may be used in preference to lesser- or unmarked forms. *Failure to consider the possibility of borrowing and
areal feature In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to ...
s. Neighboring languages may share much vocabulary and many grammatical features as a result of
language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...
, and adequate application of the
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
is required to determine whether the similarities result from contact or from relatedness. *Relying on typological similarities between languages: the morphological type of the language is claimed to provide evidence for relatedness, but in comparative linguistics only material parallels are accepted as evidence of a historical connection. *Neglect of known history: present-day forms of words are used in comparisons, neglecting either the attested or the reconstructed history of the language in question, or words of varying time depths (such as current, archaic, and reconstructed words) and reliability of reconstruction are used interchangeably. *Advocation of geographically far-fetched connections, such as comparing
Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...
(in
Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
) to
Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...
(in
Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...
), or
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
(in
Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...
and
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
) to Ainu (in
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
), or Castilian (in Spain) to
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
(in Japan). This criterion is only suggestive, though, as a long distance does not exclude the possibility of a relationship:
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
is demonstrably related to
Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
(in
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
), and Hawaiian to Malagasy (on
Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
). *Advocacy of fanciful historical scenarios on the basis of the purported linguistic findings, e.g. claims of unknown civilizations or ancient migrations across oceans. Proponents of pseudoscientific language comparisons also tend to share some common characteristics with cranks in other fields of science: * Overestimation of their own knowledge or competence in one or more of the languages under comparison, or their historical development, and underestimation of experts' knowledge. For example, assigning of incorrect meanings to words or sentences, quoting of rare or even spurious
lexeme A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken ...
s,
morph Morph may refer to: Biology * Morph (zoology), a visual or behavioral difference between organisms of distinct populations in a species * Muller's morphs, a classification scheme for genetic mutations * "-morph", a suffix commonly used in tax ...
s or meanings or of obscure dialect forms, misinterpretation of explanations in linguistic literature, or failure to take well-known developments or facts into account. When forms and meanings are simply compiled and quoted from dictionaries (or even only a single source), inaccuracies creep in very easily.Campbell, pp.325-326 Even linguistically trained native speakers are not necessarily linguistic experts in their own language, its dialectology, and its history; and even professional linguists are not necessarily experts in large numbers of diverse languages and families. *Claims that the purported remote linguistic relationship is obvious and easy to perceive. A distant relationship between languages is usually not obvious on a superficial examination, and can only be uncovered via a successful application of the
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
. *Failure to submit results to
peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
ed linguistic journals. *Assertion that criticism towards the theory is motivated by traditionalism, ideological factors or conspiracy on behalf of the linguistic community.


See also

*
Bongo-Bongo (linguistics) In linguistics, Bongo-Bongo is used as a name for an imaginary language. It is most commonly invoked in etymological studies to conceptualize random similarities between unrelated languages. Trask, R.L. ''The History of Basque'' Routledge: 1997 ...
*
Mythical origins of language There have been many accounts of the origin of language in the world's mythologies and other stories pertaining to the origin of language, the development of language and the reasons behind the diversity in languages today. These myths have simi ...
*
Folk linguistics Folk linguistics consists of statements, beliefs, or practices concerning language which are based on uninformed speculation rather than the scientific method. Folk linguistics sometimes arises when scientific conclusions about language come off as ...
*
False cognate False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the Engl ...
*
False etymology A false etymology (fake etymology, popular etymology, etymythology, pseudo-etymology, or par(a)etymology) is a popular but false belief about the origin or derivation of a specific word. It is sometimes called a folk etymology, but this is also a ...


References

* * *{{cite book , title=Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics , last=Hock , first=Hans Henrich , author2=Brian D. Joseph , year=1996 , publisher=Mouton de Gruyter , location=Berlin; New York , isbn=978-3-11-014784-1


External links


How likely are chance resemblances between languages?
Language comparison Pseudolinguistics