Hunnish-Magyar language lesson.

[Chariovalda]

This might be interesting to some:
http://www.lib.helsinki.fi/bff/399/wiik.html

Hi Jyrki,

Thanks for this link, it did help me to *connect* certain things. I accidentally stumbled on some references to Kaleva's theory several years ago, mentioning his idea there was an "Uralic" substrate to the Germanic languages.

It appears that the ideas of Kaleva and his supporters have been largely rejected by the rest of the discipline of historical linguistics, though it certainly gave them, for as long as it lasts, fame and glory. 8)

I especially loved a comment by one of their critics, the German historical linguist Cornelius Hasselblatt, calling the way they built their hypotheses "methodikfreien transdisziplinären Hypereklektizismus". Ah, don't you love academic German?

A criticism in English, by the young Dutch linguist Merlijn de Smit can be found here: [url:1vha5vvh]http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=77[/url]

He also mentions Sigurd Wettenhovi-Aspa, a Finnish writer who was the father of "Fenno-Egyptology"...claiming a Finnish-Egyptian origin for all European languages and civilisation as we know it...
There's a hilarious list of Wettenhovi-Aspa's etymologies here: [url:1vha5vvh]http://koti.welho.com/msilvone/w-aspa/fenno.html[/url]

My favourite was doubtlessly Hispania as being derived from "Hiisipainijaisenmaa", "Land of the Terrible Frost Devil". Yup, sounds like Spain... :roll:

(You can find more information about Wettenhovi-Aspa in English in the excellent article "Revolution has no use for savants. A Fenno-Egyptian view of Afrocentrism" by the Finnish historian Pekka Masonen. The article deals with the problem of the abuse of ancient history, to be precise that of Egypt, by Afrocentrist "scholars". Not directly relevant to Rome and its enemies perhaps, but it does discuss nationalistically / racially inspired interpretations of ancient history. It can be found here [url:1vha5vvh]http://www.cairn.info/redirect.php?SCRIPT=/load_pdf.php&ID_REVUE=AFHI&ID_NUMPUBLIE=AFHI_001&ID_ARTICLE=AFHI_001_0169[/url]

By the way, I am starting to wonder whether this thread and some related ones shouldn't be moved to the OT section...it's more about outrageous claims involving Roman and ancient history and resulting criticisms than actual meaningful discussions of Roman and Greek history...