Re: Korean/Japanese/Inupiaq/Aleut/Yupik/Samenoid(sp)

Marcus Smith wrote:

> Tom Wier wrote:
>
> >> No languages are proven to be related to Ainu.  Lots of speculation though.
> >> Japanese, Altaic, even Indo-European.  (They must not have actually looked
> at
> >> the language for that last one. :) )
> >
> >That would depend on what you consider "speculation".  I seriously doubt
> >that any linguist who holds a position at a respectable university would
> >posit a link between IE and Ainu.
>
> Well, I got that tidbit of info from an Ainu grammar.  It was accompanied by a
> quote from the linguist who proposed it (Russian I think; but the Germans did
> Ainu work as well) that said it was obvious just by looking at them that the
> Ainu are European by ancestry.  Now, I've only seen pictures, but they don't
> seem that European to me.
Well, a *lot* of Russian science of the last 80 years has been really kooky.
I mean, the minister of Agriculture under Stalin wasn't even a Mendelian!
Velikovsky got his start there too IIRC.   It's not that it's all like that:  it's just
that in Russia under Communism, science was supposed to serve the interests
of the state. And so, any theory that could not immediately be used for propaganda
purposes tended to be neglected (or, in extreme cases, persecuted and its proponents
liquidated).

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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