Re[4]: External links (Was Re: [tied] Re: oldest places- and watern

At 4:39:52 PM on Sunday, November 16, 2008, Arnaud Fournet
wrote:

> From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>

>> [...]

>>> Please use the currently accepted designations
>>> Afro-Asiatic or Afrasian. Hamito-Semitic et al. is not
>>> scientific and smacks of racism. There is no Hamitic
>>> branch and the term Hamitic is rooted in
>>> pseudo-scientific racist dogma that originally tried to
>>> find justification in the Bible by tainting Africans as
>>> accursed "sons of Ham".

>> It also implies the primary split is between Semitic and
>> everything else, which is certainly not demonstrated and
>> contrary to every classification that I've seen.

> This is about as shallow as thinking the word
> indo-european suggests a primary split between Indic and
> the rest...

Of course it doesn't: it's a different kind of construction.
Like 'Afro-Asiatic', it merely specifies the relevant
geographic region. The term 'Indo-Hittite', on the other
hand, *does* make a theoretical claim, albeit one with more
justification than that implicit in 'Hamiti-Semitic'.

> And Semitic is the only Asiatic branch,
> so the problem is the same with either name.

No, it isn't.

[...]

> The traditional name is perfectly acceptable.

It is completely unacceptable to a great many people and has
been for quite a while. Moreover, irrespective of French
usage, it is simply not the normal term in English, just as
'Indo-Germanic' is not normally used in English, even though
'indogermanisch' remains the normal German term.

Brian