Re: Conlangs in History

CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>Yep.  There are a couple tens of languages which, though studied in some
>detail, cannot be provably related to any other.  Basque in particular
>gains
>great attention from cranks who use it for their theories, like Saharan
This reminds me. I was thumbing through a book on Celtic Legends I had to
buy for my world mythology course last year, and in it, they say the
evidence for the link between the Celtic languages and Egypt is because
the syntax is similar to Hamitic:

"Evidence from Language
      Approaching the subject from the linguistic side, Rhys and Brynmor
Jones find that the African Origin --at least proximately-- of the
primitive population of Great Britain and Ireland is strongly suggested.
It is here shown that the Celtic languages preserve in their syntax the
Hamitic, especially the Egyptian type."

Then the footnote says:

 "The Welsh People", pp. 616-664, where the subject is fully discussed in
an appendix by Professor J. Morris Jones. "The pre-Aryan idioms which
still live in Welsh and Irish were derived from a language allied to
Egyptian and the Berber tongues."


What do you all think? My mind thinks "Oh, just another author who wants
to link yet another culture to the Egyptians to make them seem more
"noble"".



_________________________________________________________

This ain't a yes, this ain't a no, just do your thang, we'll see how it
goes