Richard W wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2026 3:33 pm
There now seems to be a strong feeling around that the Basques descend from yet another group of steppe nomads.
Really?
On digging, it looks as though the evidence for 'another group' is purely linguistic. Basque men are overwhelming of the S116 subclade of R1b, which is also common in France and the Celtic parts of the British Isles. I suppose this raises the possibility of children learning their mother's tongue rather than their father's.
Wait, so is the feeling around that the Basque language also arrived in Western Europe with the Western Steppe Herder expansion? I'm not terribly convinced that the dominance of R1b-S116 is evidence of steppe origins for the language either, as we see the inverse of this situation in southern Scandinavia, where the dominant languages are IE (North Germanic) despite the dominant haplogroup being I1 from Mesolithic Europe.
I would also be cautious in particular about using R1 subclades in arguing for the IE expansion and its close relatives. Despite the fact that haplogroup R1 has been a consistent theme in the spread of Indo-European languages, the precise subclades keep changing through history (R1b-L23 in Yamnaya replaced by R1a-M417 in Corded Ware replaced by R1b-L51 in modern Western Europeans). I think this is evidence that as IE populations underwent their initial expansions into Central and Eastern Europe, they absorbed pre-existing EHG groups (who had all of these haplogroups), and various male lineages from this soup exploded every few centuries, evidently without changing the dominant language.
abahot wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2026 2:13 pm
I would also be cautious in particular about using R1 subclades in arguing for the IE expansion and its close relatives. Despite the fact that haplogroup R1 has been a consistent theme in the spread of Indo-European languages, the precise subclades keep changing through history (R1b-L23 in Yamnaya replaced by R1a-M417 in Corded Ware replaced by R1b-L51 in modern Western Europeans). I think this is evidence that as IE populations underwent their initial expansions into Central and Eastern Europe, they absorbed pre-existing EHG groups (who had all of these haplogroups), and various male lineages from this soup exploded every few centuries, evidently without changing the dominant language.
And aren't these R1 subclades far older than PIE can reasonably be? These and other discrepancies tell me that attempts at matching Y-DNA haplogroups to language families are utterly baseless. Genes and languages often travel together, but often enough they do not!
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf My conlang pages Yrgidrámamintí!
«lexically proven relationship» without a «morphologically proven relationship» can be more tenable simply because of the larger volume of possible evidence.
An actual thing George Starostin wrote. so I guess he wouldn't mind me calling Japanese and English related.
«lexically proven relationship» without a «morphologically proven relationship» can be more tenable simply because of the larger volume of possible evidence.
An actual thing George Starostin wrote. so I guess he wouldn't mind me calling Japanese and English related.
«lexically proven relationship» without a «morphologically proven relationship» can be more tenable simply because of the larger volume of possible evidence.
An actual thing George Starostin wrote. so I guess he wouldn't mind me calling Japanese and English related.
Name and namae have got to be cognates, right?!
That's what I've been telling mainstream academia because they are against me and trying to silence the truth.
An actual thing George Starostin wrote. so I guess he wouldn't mind me calling Japanese and English related.
Name and namae have got to be cognates, right?!
That's what I've been telling mainstream academia because they are against me and trying to silence the truth.
Unfortunately, neither of the two are simplexes, and the root is na- < PIE *Hneh3- in English name (-me < PIE *-men is a suffix) and AFAIK -mae in Japanese (na- is a prefix), and these two roots hardly match.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf My conlang pages Yrgidrámamintí!
That's what I've been telling mainstream academia because they are against me and trying to silence the truth.
Unfortunately, neither of the two are simplexes, and the root is na- < PIE *Hneh3- in English name (-me < PIE *-men is a suffix) and AFAIK -mae in Japanese (na- is a prefix), and these two roots hardly match.
I suspect that was satire on the part of Brilliant-Resource14. (Though it’s always hard to tell online.)
That's what I've been telling mainstream academia because they are against me and trying to silence the truth.
Unfortunately, neither of the two are simplexes, and the root is na- < PIE *Hneh3- in English name (-me < PIE *-men is a suffix) and AFAIK -mae in Japanese (na- is a prefix), and these two roots hardly match.
I suspect that was satire on the part of Brilliant-Resource14. (Though it’s always hard to tell online.)
Unfortunately, neither of the two are simplexes, and the root is na- < PIE *Hneh3- in English name (-me < PIE *-men is a suffix) and AFAIK -mae in Japanese (na- is a prefix), and these two roots hardly match.
I suspect that was satire on the part of Brilliant-Resource14. (Though it’s always hard to tell online.)
it was satire
I felt it was obvious enough that it didn't need a /s myself.
That's what I've been telling mainstream academia because they are against me and trying to silence the truth.
Unfortunately, neither of the two are simplexes, and the root is na- < PIE *Hneh3- in English name (-me < PIE *-men is a suffix) and AFAIK -mae in Japanese (na- is a prefix), and these two roots hardly match.
Correction: I misremembered about Japanese namae, and it is actually na which means 'name, call', while mae means 'before', and both are kunyomi, i.e. genuine Japanese morphemes. So the argument against Japanese namae being a distant cognate of the IE 'name' words is null and void. Still, probably nothing more than a chance resemblance involving one very common consonant and one vowel.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf My conlang pages Yrgidrámamintí!
I don't understand Proto-Yukaghir (or, more specifically, the fact it can have approximately 9 words for a single Swadesh topic. also the list of reconstructions from Wiktionary)
Brilliant-Resource14 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 23, 2026 10:09 am
Bomhard: Hi guys! I have a reconstruction of Proto-Nostratic, including Indo-European with voiceless aspirates! I know you love that!
also btw voiceless aspirates replace plain stops for some reason. it would just be easier and more likely to have plain, especially the correspondences
Brilliant-Resource14 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 23, 2026 10:09 am
Bomhard: Hi guys! I have a reconstruction of Proto-Nostratic, including Indo-European with voiceless aspirates! I know you love that!
also btw voiceless aspirates replace plain stops for some reason. it would just be easier and more likely to have plain, especially the correspondences
what is this version of glottalic he has. voiced aspirates, voiceless aspirates, and ejectives. what the hell dude
Brilliant-Resource14 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 23, 2026 10:09 am
Bomhard: Hi guys! I have a reconstruction of Proto-Nostratic, including Indo-European with voiceless aspirates! I know you love that!
Bomhard is into the glottalic theory - that's the main point of his dissent with the Moscow school. BTW, I met him on the late Nostratic-L mailing list, had even some private e-mail exchange with him; he was a rather nice guy who could appreciate the works of others who had different ideas, though he was of course emotionally attached to his own theory, and eventually, my contact with him petered out. Of course, the fact that both he and the Moscow school could reconstruct hundreds of Proto-Nostratic roots using different sound correspondences sheds serious doubt on the endeavour: they can't both be right, which probably means that both are wrong.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf My conlang pages Yrgidrámamintí!
Brilliant-Resource14 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 23, 2026 10:09 am
Bomhard: Hi guys! I have a reconstruction of Proto-Nostratic, including Indo-European with voiceless aspirates! I know you love that!
Bomhard is into the glottalic theory - that's the main point of his dissent with the Moscow school. BTW, I met him on the late Nostratic-L mailing list, had even some private e-mail exchange with him; he was a rather nice guy who could appreciate the works of others who had different ideas, though he was of course emotionally attached to his own theory, and eventually, my contact with him petered out. Of course, the fact that both he and the Moscow school could reconstruct hundreds of Proto-Nostratic roots using different sound correspondences sheds serious doubt on the endeavour: they can't both be right, which probably means that both are wrong.
didn't predict that me making a joke about nostratic would cause me to virtually be two degrees from the guy I was joking about
Brilliant-Resource14 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 23, 2026 10:09 am
Bomhard: Hi guys! I have a reconstruction of Proto-Nostratic, including Indo-European with voiceless aspirates! I know you love that!
Bomhard is into the glottalic theory - that's the main point of his dissent with the Moscow school. BTW, I met him on the late Nostratic-L mailing list, had even some private e-mail exchange with him; he was a rather nice guy who could appreciate the works of others who had different ideas, though he was of course emotionally attached to his own theory, and eventually, my contact with him petered out. Of course, the fact that both he and the Moscow school could reconstruct hundreds of Proto-Nostratic roots using different sound correspondences sheds serious doubt on the endeavour: they can't both be right, which probably means that both are wrong.
didn't predict that me making a joke about nostratic would cause me to virtually be two degrees from the guy I was joking about
i'm testing his "sound correspondences" against PIE swadesh
didn't predict that me making a joke about nostratic would cause me to virtually be two degrees from the guy I was joking about
i'm testing his "sound correspondences" against PIE swadesh
Well, part of it might be that you're still relatively new here. When someone arrives about whom we don't know anything yet, it might take us some time to judge with some certainty whether they're seriously a crank or joking about being one. Sometimes, real cranks do show up here.
That's what I've been telling mainstream academia because they are against me and trying to silence the truth.
Unfortunately, neither of the two are simplexes, and the root is na- < PIE *Hneh3- in English name (-me < PIE *-men is a suffix) and AFAIK -mae in Japanese (na- is a prefix), and these two roots hardly match.
Correction: I misremembered about Japanese namae, and it is actually na which means 'name, call', [...], [(i.e. genuine Japanese morpheme)]. So the argument against Japanese namae being a distant cognate of the IE 'name' words is null and void. [...]
wiktionary wrote:
*h₁nómn̥
name
Kloekhorst 2008:518 argues for a *-mn̥ derivative of the root *h₃neh₃- (“to name”), reflected in Hittite 𒄩𒀭𒈾𒄿 (ḫannai-, “to sue, judge”) (originally “to call to court”) and Ancient Greek ὄνομαι (ónomai, “to blame, scold, insult”) (with a semantic shift comparable to English to call names).
