--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <tgpedersen@...>
> To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 11:30 AM
> Subject: [Nostratica] Re: Gerry!
>
> Incidentally, there's this BIT thing (British Invasion Theory),

which ascribes the origin of the American language to a migration or
a series of migrations from the British Isles in relatively recent
times (that would make American a descendant of British English,
which is absurd: everybody knows that American English is more
archaic -- all the etymological /r/'s are pronounced there, etc.).
Needless to say, there are plenty of extralinguistic arguments
against the BIT as well. How could a handful of migrants colonise
such a vast country in such a short time? And how could they forget
so quickly all about the place where they allegedly came from? :-))

>

It also includes the weird claim that the invaders transferred
placenames to make themselves feel at home - Boston, Cambridge,
Birmingham, Washington, Richmond, New York, that the Principia of
Newton (a professor at Cambridge) is not American, and that their
oldest sacred text (King James version) was imported! How can anyone
seriously claim that New York is named after a Lincolnshire or a
Sussex village? Some even go so far as to claim that the Hispanics
are not indigenous and brought the name 'Sierra Nevada' from their
homeland! [Not quite parallel; sorry.]

Richard.