--- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:
> 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
>
> http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi15.htm
>
> 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
>
Yes, all true, but ... I don't know. I always read those sites with
relish. Usually, since these guys have the normal 1500 cc between
their ears (well, some of them) and they don't use space there for
the standard theory (ignorance or pigheadedness or whatever), they
have plenty space for making observations and connections that a sane
person would never make. These sites always (almost) have, among the
nonsense, something that makes you go hm! haven't thought of that.
Torsten