Re[2]: [tied] Uralic Loanwords in Germanic

At 9:10:08 PM on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, stlatos wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "bmscotttg" <BMScott@...>
> wrote:

>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson"
>> <liberty@> wrote:

>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
>>> <fournet.arnaud@> wrote:

>>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson"
>>>> <liberty@> wrote:

>>>>> The latter from P.I.E. *kan-tlom, no doubt.

>>>> How do you explain -tele out of -tlom- ?
>>>> Why should it not be kantolo or kantala !?
>>>> => very strange vocalic scheme.

>>>> 8 messages. None of them explains how kan-tlom could be
>>>> become kantele.

>> And here, ladies and gentleman, we have a fine specimen
>> of homo inattentus.

> Did you also consider the first reply an obvious joke,

Next time you respond to a year-old message, at least have
the courtesy to give a link; had I not suspected that even
the lousy Yahoo Groups search engine would return useful
results for 'inattentus', I'd have ignored this altogether.

Yes, it was an obvious joke, for reasons that have nothing
at all to do with the word itself; apparently you're as
inattentive as Arnaud was. Look at the original post, which
you will find at
<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62491>;
in particular, note the last line before the signature.

> since you don't believe they're related by borrowing?

You have no idea what I believe about them: I've never said
anything about the matter at all, directly or indirectly.
(No, my comment to Arnaud has nothing to do with my
understanding of the history of the word in question.)

[...]

>>> Have you applied the Sean Whalen etymological method to
>>> it?

>> For some reason I keep wanting to read that as
>> 'cryptological method'.

> Goodness, I use established and proven methods of
> linguistic reconstruction (including borrowing,
> metathesis, and dissimilation), mostly regular rules (and
> those that aren't mostly optional, which is a
> well-established possibility in historical linguistics)
> and yet am subject to extreme criticism for it.

Because much of what you do is an elaborate (albeit
unintentional) parody of the real thing, combinatorial games
played almost in a vacuum. But I concluded quite a while
ago that it's a waste of time to go into detail: you have
too much invested to give real consideration to the
possibility that much of it is seriously flawed, and in any
case you seem to be missing something fundamental, something
akin to a sense of proportion and plausibility.

Brian