> > Oppenheimer's arguments are ludicrous and don't meet any kind of
> > academic standards.
>
> Still don't care to elaborate?
I don't have the time or energy to type up every one of Oppenheimer's
ridiculous claims. I can mention a couple of his more glaring,
bone-headed ideas:
1) The Celtic languages spread from Anatolia via the Mediterranean
7,000 years ago.
[You will find few linguists who would support such a deep chronology
for the Celtic languages - we would seem much greater diversion from
the other IE languages if Celtic had split off so early]
2) Medieval Irish literature supports this alleged migration theory.
[in fact, the Irish migration legends are for the most part medieval
literary inventions based on Continental pseudo-histories - anyone who
would treat them as genuine folk memory is out of their mind! We can
easily detect the trail of transmission from early medieval Spanish
authors such as Isidore and Orosius to the Irish authors who compiled
books such as the Lebor Gabala Erenn]
3) He believes that the Germanic invasions of Britain during the 5th
were over-exaggerated by 6th century authors such as Gildas.
[Makes no sense whatsoever - Gildas may have been a little shaky on
the distant past, but he certainly knew what was happening around him
during his childhood...his book, which was meant for his
contemporaries, not 21st c. academics, would have carried no weight if
it was full of exaggerations and outright fibs about the state of
affairs in the island at that time]
[Thus he asks us to ignore the few historical sources from the time
period that we now possess, as well as ignore]
4) He uses the lack of Celtic words in English to support his idiotic
notion that the Belgae were Germanic speakers.
[The paucity of Celtic words in English can be explained not only by
the fact that Celtic was low-prestige to the Germanic invaders, thus
there was no incentive to use it, plus large areas of Britain were
apparently de-populated [both due to war, emigration to the Continent
or Western Britain, and plague/famine], thus there was no one around
to teach the newcomers Brittonic in the Eastern parts of the island.
Additionally, when they reached the Roman cities of Britain, Germanic
newcomers were more likely to have encountered Latin speakers than
Brittonic]
Ugg...there's so much other crap...I can't even get into it all here.
> > In fact, there is little-to-no doubt among modern linguists that
> > the Belgae spoke a Celtic dialect. -
>
> So Kuhn is old-fashioned? That is a serious accusation.
Well, if he thinks the Belgae didn't speak Celtic...he might be daft.
> > the onomastic material alone supports this fact.
>
> Actually, at least in the edition I have, the whole discussion he has
> of the northern boundary of the Celtic names seems to be founded in
> the discussion we had of it here in cybalist.
Funny that only tin-foil-hat types find any validity in his shoddy
linguistic research.
- Chris Gwinn