Dear John,
The affinities of Hittite, Sumerian,
Akkadian, Sanskrit, Old Egyptian and Zuñi (and of Latvian, of course) have been
studied for a long time and believe me, the results can be trusted. There's no
need to reinvent the wheel. We know, for example, that Hittite and Sanskrit are
Indo-European and thus distantly related to each other and to Latvian. I the
Phaistos Disk and/or the Indus Valley script should turn out to be in
Indo-European languages (pretty unlikely, IMO, though not a priori impossible),
they would be related to Latvian too, but certainly not _similar_ to it in a way
that would make Latvian useful in deciphering them. The other languages
are not recognisably related at all, either to Latvian or to one another
(except for Akkadian and Old Egyptian, which are _very_ remotely
related).
As Mr. Kaulins really believes Latvian
has some kind of special relationship to all of the above, and that it offers a
key to the decpipherment of ancient scripts, please don't call him a scholar.
What he writes at
demonstrates that while he's done some
reading he has no grasp of the principles of historical linguistics and even the
history of his own native language is a closed book to him. A detailed
refutation of his wild theories would be a waste of time.
It's very easy to fool onself into
believing that one "understands" an exotic text in terms of one's own language,
especially if nobody knows what the text _really_ means. I have seen a Ukrainian
Internet author "prove" that the Phaistos Disk was written in Ukrainian (not
even Proto-Slavic, but specifically Ukrainian), and that Hittite, Lycian,
Etruscan and even Classical Greek could be analysed in the same terms. At the
same time he confessed that he knew no foreign languages except his rather bad
English and I suppose Russian, and that all his understanding of Greek was via
Ukrainian. What can one say to such maniacs? Argue with them? Life's short and
I've better things to do.
Regards,
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 1:54 AM
Subject: [tied] Check out Origin of Ancient Languages
Click
here: Origin of Ancient Languages
Dear
Friends,
I just had this link sent to me for the
first time, I would assume that some of you have seen it before. A Latvian
scholar, ANDIS KAULINS
translates the Phaistos disk, Phaistos Disk Decipherment
,notes that Hittite, Sumerian, Akkadian, Sanskrit and Indus Valley writing are
all related to Latvian. To add a real treat, he adds the American Indian
Zuni language from New Mexico and Arizona.
As a
historian I would have to say that all of the above is impossible. If
anyone has nothing better to do than debunk hoaxes, I would appreciate a sound
opinion to return to the person who sent me the website address.
Somehow I just don't think that Latvian and the
other Baltic languages which probably split with with German in the early 1st
Millenium BC could be either ancestral or sister languages with Hittite,
Pharonic Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Indus Valley or any other ancient
language.
Does anyone know of anyone fluent in
English, Latvian, Hittite heiroglyphic, Akkakian, Sanskrit and Sumerian? Sounds
like a lifetime of work with a photographic memory to me. Would such an adept be
ignorant of Lithuanian, German and French?