Crazy Linguistic Theories (ft. Lichen, Babelingua, and Agma Schwa)

In this video I talk about some crazy linguistic theories. Thanks to Lichen the Fictioneer for helping me with research, and to him, Babelingua, and Agma Schwa for contributing their lovely voices.
Nyland Links:
web.archive.org/web/200607050...
web.archive.org/web/200607040...
web.archive.org/web/200607100... ://www.islandnet.com/~nyland/saharan.htm
books.friesenpress.com/store/...
anthrogenica.com/showthread.p...
Intro visuals made by Parelthon
Join the discord - / discord
Support me on Patreon - www.patreon.com/ConnorQuimby?...

[@SnowAngel10329]

edo nyland is so real like, basques walked so the alpidoid macrogroup could run

[@thomasrdiehl]

"Oh look, something interesting with Basque" "Every language is fake!" Well, that escalated quickly.

[@mollof7893]

Considering the Finno-Korean Hyper War, which without a doubt happend, Finnish being Proto-World appear to be highly sensical, which is why I choose to believe in it.

[@GusThePrankster]

Based reference

[@zahra9890]

finno-korean war?????how

[@alexandruianu8432]

@@zahra9890 4chan meme based on ridiculous hyperborean ideas + advanced ancients, but taken a few universes farther.

[@roseCatcher_]

What rabbit hole did I fall into 😭

[@aurin_komak]

@@roseCatcher_ the best one

[@justlanguages]

If we are talking about crazy language-related people, then I have one more to the collection. There is a Polish guy called Benon Szałek, a self-proclaimed “heuristics specialist”, who has published at least a dozen of books describing how every language is related to either Tamil or Japanese, and saying that everything comes from now-nonexistent Dravidian empire in Central Asia. He even claims to have undeciphered the Linear A, Indus Valley and Rongorongo scripts, all of which of course depict a Dravidian language, because how can they not. I’m currently working on a video about him myself, because that guy genuinely caught me off guard when I was looking through the university library linguistic section.

[@EriniusT]

Does Japanese come from the Dravidian Empire too?

[@justlanguages]

@@EriniusT ofc it does, everything comes from the dravidian empire.

[@vaiyt]

Linguistics are a fertile ground for kookery, because the close connection between language and nationalism works as a strong incentive to make up shit.

[@justlanguages]

@@vaiyt and once you become an academic with a credible background, you can start making shit up and noone will dare to deny or challenge it🙃

[@danzoom]

@@justlanguages except other academics, of course

[@hya2in8]

I like the part where nyland couldn't deal with chinese because it was the only tonal language he bothered with

[@76rjackson]

He'd lose his mind, then, with Yoruba and the other tonal languages from Africa.

[@uwuifyingransomware]

My favourite crazy linguistic theory is that the Beach Boys time-travelled by accident while performing Barbara Ann, and the Ancient Greeks thought "wow, these guys are weird" and reused the sounds to make what we now know as the word "barbarian"

[@pattheplanter]

That theory was clearly formulated by someone who had listened to Robert Calvert's "Lay of the Surfers" from the album _Lucky Leif and the Longships_ while in the appropriately enhanced state of mind.

[@urquizabr]

It's more plausible than some hypotheses exposed in the video.

[@liimlsan3]

The Beach Boys were the sea peoples who collapsed the bronze age

[@holdingpattern245]

@@liimlsan3do you think that the Sea Peoples were actually called "Beach Boys," but it got translated as "Sea Peoples" by modern people trying to make sense of it?

[@jjaan]

My personal theory is that the Basque-Icelandic pidgin was an original language that separated into Basque and all Germanic languages, which evolved backwards for a small period of time

[@toranshaw4029]

Though there is a wild theory that the people who migrated to the Baseque region were some of the survivors from Atlantis.

[@nsawatchlistbait289]

Basque is agglutinative and Germanic languages are trans fusional, how could that be if your theory is to be true?

[@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit]

@@nsawatchlistbait289 time shenanigans.

[@anon3336]

Seems like Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian is a proposed thing now.

[@paulinalevina9690]

@@anon3336 LOL

[@memsom]

I spoke with Nyland. He was “dedicated” to his theories (read: blinkered and obsessive). The main issue (aside the insanity of it) was loan words in Basque. They got used in his “decoding” process along with native words. So, a lot of his work was flawed before you even process the fact it was bat s**t crazy.

[@Netro1992]

... Wait, what? Is he not aware of this or he claiming that basque doesn't have loan words but rather than all basque loan words are actually basque and the other languages borrowed them from basque?

[@memsom]

@@Netro1992 well, he is unfortunately no longer with us. And I don’t know. I believe he just didn’t take that in to account and because of that it only went to prove how flawed his theory was. Acknowledging obviously it is also completely nonsensical.

[@qwertyTRiG]

Ogham is well known to be ancient Irish, and is well understood. Did Nyland simply ignore anything that didn't suit his thesis?

[@user-ht1vg5we2p]

I think it had not been deciphered when he made his theory

[@ConnorQuimby]

He was the best academic of all time what do you mean

[@memsom]

Yes, he just ignored all evidence that contradicted his theories

[@wirelessbluestone5983]

He might’ve been talking about Pictish Ogham stones in Scotland some of which aren’t deciphered because small the sample size is. However most linguists think Pictish was a Brythonic language.

[@semi-useful5178]

As every good academic does

[@Jacob-yg7lz]

Agma Scwa's reading was so intense I almost wasn't distracted by the Lapis Lazuli waifu pillow.

[@aureavita8653]

Can't blame him. I sympathize.

[@taimunozhan]

The idea that someone ever had any success getting people to speak a conlang is the most ridiculous part of this whole ordeal, as any conlanger can attest

[@artifactU]

oðer ðen esperanto which is spoken by alot, & i þink intserslavic haz afew þousand speakers to

[@kyled2153]

@@artifactUyou forgot about toki pona

[@artifactU]

@@kyled2153 i dont know how easy it iz to have a conversation with such limited wordstock, seriously 120 are very few words & i dont speak it so idk what its like. but yeah ig i kinda did forget

[@wildstarfish3786]

​@@artifactUit is apparently very easy to learn though

[@artifactU]

@@wildstarfish3786 yeah i know

[@carver3147]

5:56 The theory is bad enough on its own, but wow did he even read the Odyssey? Paris isn't a place, he was a prince of Troy lmfao

[@ConnorQuimby]

That's me throwing that in there I think? I probably made that image 10 months ago.

[@rainrope5069]

Talking about John Lily and saying "LSD was involved" is always an understatement

[@AgmaSchwa]

After all these years it's finally here 🙌

[@babelingua]

OOF I straight up forgot we even recorded this. 11/10 video

[@lucasthirion5209]

As a flemish guy it is so funny that Nyland wanted to destroy Flemish, which is not even a language and just a particular Dutch dialect, but wanted to combine other languages. Don't be shy about your dutch it sounds good, if a Dutch guy says your g is not throathy enough, just say you like the flemish accent more and you are earning that.

[@tinuswl]

To add to this, Dutch speakers from the South (Noord-Brabant and Limburg) also do not speak with the “hard” g sound.

[@GojiMet86]

12:22 "All highly developed languages on Earth except for *possibly Chinese* have been shown to be developed from the original Saharan language" Well that was just random, lol.

[@dominikrode8184]

the amount of pure pain i was inflicted at 7:35 when he said Germany and showed a Belgian flag is indescribable

[@ConnorQuimby]

Good

[@pattedechat2457]

I was searching for this comment (but to be fair, he said German, not Germany, and German is spoken in Belgium, so he's technically correct).

[@ConnorQuimby]

This video took me a year to make and is the reason I got burned out and made nothing last summer :P

[@calindarul]

Can't wait to see the premier!

[@dimanyak373]

relatable

[@coloncp]

@@calindarul Bxmbz

[@memsom]

Oh man, you found Edo Nyland? He was totally and utterly convinced. I actually had an email conversation with him back in the late 90’ or early 2000’s (I wish I still had the email.) He seemed like a nice enough person, but he was absolutely obsessed with his theories. I think he was still in the process of writing the book. It was mainly based on the info on his website at the time. Yeah I just checked and it would be for an email address I no longer have access to. Shame. I used to check back in on his work from time to time and was sad to hear he had passed.

[@ConnorQuimby]

@@memsom Woah! So you think it wasn't actually satirization of comparative linguistics (which I should point out, I also thought he was legit to the extent that I could see from his archive website, and the only thing that got me going that it could possibly be satire was his forestry background and the fact that it was so far out there.) That's so neat though. Emails that predate me. Woah.

[@Technocolor00]

the reading of Edo Nyland's hypothesis makes me feel like im being assaulted

[@Ali-bu6lo]

I'm surprised the sun theory, which claims all languages are from Turkish isn't here, especially that unlike the ones here, it was taught and encouraged by the government for some time because apparently Ataturk was believer in the theory. Also Pan-Turks, especially their Azerbaijani nationalist kind, often make weird claims such as claiming Sumerian, Finnish, Basque, Etruscan, Median and many other ancient or living languages to be Turkic.

[@vaiyt]

Nationalists of all stripes like to claim everything great secretly came from their people

[@marcdigiambattista751]

This is pretty much just the Altaic Language Family theory with a nationalist twist. Though nobody remotely credible thinks Sumerian or Median belong there.

[@Ali-bu6lo]

@Marc DiGiambattista They are kinda four separate theories at the same time: First the Altaic that had some scientific support but is now debunked. Then is the Ural-Altaic theory which I have only heard from some Turkish and Azerbaijani scholars or wannabes. Then there's the Sun theory which I haven't seen much among modern circles. And finally there's the chaotic nonsense many Azerbaijani and some Turkish nationalists say that tries to claim anything they find as Turkic, just to prove that the original Turks were not East Eurasian and were living in Southwest Asia.

[@Zorunlutitle]

Linguists say that such a thing can happen to Atatürk, and Atatürk gives a source(money), nothing more. You're making history out of your ass.

[@simulacrumpilot2777]

The problem is Atatürk himself gave up on that theory later in his life and it hasn't been taught in schools for decades at this point. Since it no longer has any defenders it's not as funny as the nonsensical theories here.

[@marcdigiambattista751]

That last one was a hell of a ride. Somehow dude convinces himself that the Homeric epics actually took place in Scotland, then this leads him down a rabbit hole where the Basques are the last remnants of a lost Saharan master race and every other language in the world is a conlang created by monks to enforce the patriarchy.

[@user-iyhytgy]

Ah yes, my fave genre of KZbin is stickman PowerPoint presentations based on entertaining facts and knowledge of the world mixed with a side of humor. And I will always love it no matter what.

[@jaykaufman9782]

Years ago I read a scholar-like article by an American Indian activist who rejected the Out of Africa theory. He argued all human beings originated in the Amazon Basin and spread from there across the world. His evidence: linguistic families which put English into the same family as Chinese. The proof: "How are you?" and "Ni Hau?" have the same "word" pronounced "haw." Et cetera. His motive was to uphold American Indian myths which insisted the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere *originated* in their current homelands. I've been kicking myself ever since, because I didn't print up this article when I encountered it, or at least record the man's name. He was a professor in an Oklahoma college, I believe. Anyone out there know anything about this gem?

[@CellThePerfectAndroid]

Average citizen of Oklahoma💀

[@presidentJameskpolk-rm8gl]

I can't help but think this is why 95 percent of them are dead

[@pattedechat2457]

That professor should have a talk with the Tamil nationalists who invented an entire fake continent to claim they are the ancestors of the Mayas. I'm sure their conversation would be very entertaining.

[@CrisSelene]

So, according to his theory, all languages that have words which are homophones are related. Good to know 😵‍💫

[@deathmorphosis]

Just a sidenote; "Nyland" (If you're somewhat generally linguistically proficient as an English native speaker, you can pretty much guess what it means; "New Land") is a Swedish last name used by Finland-Swedes (it's the second most common last name among them), but you'll of course find non-Swedish speaking Finns today bearing the name as well, although it does mean that they are originally Finland-Swedes. So both the Swedish and Finnish pronunciation of the name are correct. Since we're on the subject of linguistics I figured I'd point that out. Although if said in English, the pronunciation you went with would be the "correct" way of anglifying the pronunciation of the name.

[@perf2.078]

If a sel- claimed "linguist" doesn't know how to pronounce Nyland and Chomsky correctly, there may be some doubts concerning his other opinions... :) Some facts are real gibberish of course, but several theories are still considered more or less probable.

[@PlayerX330]

Nyland is also the swedish name for the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland.

[@starseeing]

@@perf2.078«Chomsky» произносится с буквой «ч» на английском языке. Почти уверен, что сам Хомский произносит собственное имя так.

[@aitorherrera5937]

Im Basque and cried when I saw the word "merezi" which is very clearly a romanic loan world lmao

[@aitorherrera5937]

zerbitu too btw

[@mondomola]

Puede que este video sea pura paja mental y haya elegido euskera porque nadie lo conoce

[@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana]

Humans cannot speak without their vocal chords either. A sane version of the dolphin experiment would be to genetically engineer lab mice to have human vocal chords or a parrot (like) syrinxes.

[@lukesmith8896]

"sane"

[@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana]

@@lukesmith8896 We do far worse to lab mice for far less. Plus, when the mice are actually physically able to speak, their mind can be accurately analyzed (obviously dependent on the competence/creativity of the scientists).

[@seneca983]

@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana Mice have far less "brain power" than dolphins so I suspect that kind of experiment wouldn't really test what the dolphin experiment was supposed to.

[@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana]

@@seneca983 Them having less brain power should make the experiment easier. Then we can move up to dolphins and similarly intelligent animals, once we perfect it with mice. Wouldn't want the dolphins to get most of the (almost certainly minor) harm, would we?

[@seneca983]

@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana I don't think mice are capable of the level of understanding the experimenters were aiming for.

[@mrelephant2283]

Every word of this is absolute insanity 10/10 would conspiracy again

[@mr.flibblessumeriantransla5417]

I can’t count the number of interactions ve had with people trying to connect some language with Sumerian. Turkic, Hungarian (and Uralic in general), and Dravidian being the most frequent. Also Albanian for some weird reason. It’s mind-numbing after awhile.

[@AnAverageItalian]

Most Albanians always try to connect their culture with something ancient to make it seem one of the "world proto-cultures" Source: my parents are Albanian, fortunately they don't do this, but they know far too many individuals that do

[@ConnorQuimby]

@@AnAverageItalian I've done historical linguistics research work on Proto-Albanian and I can debunk any Albanian nationalist trying to make themselves feel better about speaking Albanian

[@AnAverageItalian]

@@ConnorQuimby absolutely based

[@Vesporeon]

@@ConnorQuimby It's strange thing considering there's nothing wrong with speaking Albanian...

[@samhaine6804]

MATE i cant believe you didnt mention cymru-glyphics (the ancient egyptians were welsh ofcourse)

[@ConnorQuimby]

That's not a crazy theory it's true smh

[@bowaxer7952]

As a basque person it’s always fun to see people struggle with the basque ‘z’

[@ConnorQuimby]

Oh yeah I am aware I horribly anglicized the Basque in this video. I recorded this in February of 2022 and if I did it now I probably would have tried a bit harder, but at the same time, Nyland didn't care about butchering up the Basque language lolll

[@cephalosjr.1835]

Do you hear English ‘s’ as closer to Basque ‘z’ or ‘s’?

[@owneyyuwu2804]

​@@cephalosjr.1835 the Basque /s/ is almost the same as the English /s/

[@garklein8089]

"brought with them a matrilinealy organized society, a nature-based goddess religion" hmmm someone's been reading The White Goddess

[@Methus3lah]

My ultra-detailed language theory: Humans have been using language for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. The first language was likely a pidgin of quick sounds to coordinate hunts, label objects, and teach children the ways of the world. These pidgins evolved over time into more complex words and grammar, and new words were created as people migrated and encountered new things. And then languages kept evolving, drifting further and further apart, until they were completely unrecognizable. To the point that we can’t tell how some languages are related anymore. The only reason that we have large language families like indo-European is because of major migrations relatively recently (8,000 years ago). Even then, languages like English and Hindi are so different that it’s barely possible to see their relationship. So yeah, all languages are related, but the relationships are so ancient that we can’t see them anymore.

[@holdingpattern245]

Crazy theory: the original language was a sign language which existed for so long that humans physically adapted to it, which is why they (we) use so much body language while speaking, however this was gradually replaced by spoken languages which are slightly more useful, and most macrolanguage theories are actually true but only in the sense that they are all independently relexed from this common sign language.

[@Methus3lah]

@@holdingpattern245 That makes a lot of sense. Most animals use body language to communicate, and I suppose it’s only natural that humans started out the same way.

[@ZealousWins]

I really love your theory! It seems to make so much sense. Given the migration of humans over time, as well as the global diaspora of language families, it only makes sense that humans had created some sort of basic mode of communication from the very start, evolving on its own once people began to move to other locations to hunt and eventually settle.

[@ZealousWins]

​@@holdingpattern245This is also an interesting idea, seeing that spoken communication is likely more complex than sign language & gestures. Although, an idea I just came up with is this: perhaps we used body language at first, and later kept and adapted it due to how some situations may make listening alone rather difficult. Hence why we still express ourselves using gestures today as we speak aloud. And personally, I like this extra detail -- it gives communication with each other extra pizzazz. :)

[@modmaker7617]

Most crazy linguistic theory; Altaic

[@Somebodyherefornow]

Proto-altaic

[@realhawaii5o]

2:05 thank you for correctly depicting England and the Aral sea.

[@enelabe]

16:16 this is so funny because it's wrong in so many levels: first of all, "zerbitzatu" ("zerbitu" is not conisdered correct) is a loan word coming from Spanish verb "servir" (to serve), which is so obvious but I guess this guy flipped the whole loanword situation around. However, the funniest part is that the ending "-tu" is just the infinive marking for most of Basque verbs (e.g. "ikutu", "apurtu", "lotsatu", "asmatu"), so it has nothing to do with the specific meaning of the verb "to serve"

[@enelabe]

16:33 also, "ikerlari" means "researcher" and not "visitor"

[@blakeliu8200]

This makes me think about a conlang that was written in high school, strategically placed and manipulated to form a religious language to get off class on Tuesdays

[@ConnorQuimby]

"Zœt ðorœşp úro tœgro ú vafílœk" or something like that

[@samuelvancik3762]

you crossing out Hungary at 17:20 is the best part of the video, laughed for like 5 minutes 💀💀

[@robert9016]

Not the Steven Universe bodypillow

[@kahlilbt]

Well it took ya a year but you made this linguist very happy. Subscribed

[@yaguetept9340]

1:04 Lol the kiki bouba experiment reference is golden

[@Artur_M.]

One thing I wish Nyland was right about is the number of Ainu speakers. BTW, your comparing of his crackpot theory to a work of art reminds me of a Polish artist, mainly sculptor (quite good and iteresting one), Stanisław Szukalski, who developed his own pseudohistorical theory, involving linguistics. It's called Zermatism, and it makes Nyland look sane in comparison.

[@earsoles]

I get the point he makes at the end but I don’t want Scottish Gaelic to die, it’s an important art of my identity

[@patronsaintoflostcauses4029]

Nyland thought he could pull a sneaky on us, but Connor ain't having it!

[@seneca983]

Wettenhovi-Aspa also thought that the Swedish "människa" (person) comes from Finnish "maanussija" (ground fucker) even though I wouldn't count that as a real word.

[@aurin_komak]

Well the Finnish word "hunsvotti" (a messy, poor mannered person) comes from the Swedish "hunds fitta" (dog's cunt) Most Finns don't know hunsvotti is derived from a curse word, and it's not seen as such here

[@user-jm3xl7rg5k]

What a funny words Finnish has)))

[@seneca983]

@@user-jm3xl7rg5k This isn't in any way specific to Finnish. If it was, I couldn't have translated it to English. I'm pretty sure you can translate it to other languages to (assuming they don't e.g. lack the word for "ground" or something).

[@aureavita8653]

"maanussija" meaning ground fucker is really funny to me as a native Indonesian speaker as it sounds like "manusia" meaning human lmao

[@Ibrahim666ss]

I am surprised that you didn’t mention Sun language theory

[@ibn_klingschor]

"foreign words like the French wattman, in French stemming from watt and man, were claimed to be of Turkish origin by a Turkish scholar" Man... watt??

[@jakubolszewski8284]

Your map is awesome. That sad Aral sea and lack o e*gland. :D

[@dovydass]

I watched one of your videos and thought you are a multimillion subscriber channel cuz your videos are so well made

[@tadesubaru1383]

It was just yesterday I was telling a friend about the story of Tartalo, and how close it is to Polyphemus in the Odyssey! As a child, I used to confuse both stories a lot. I am a native Basque speaker and live in the Basque Country! If you have questions, I can answer them!

[@denniskozevnikoff1209]

in your daily life, do you speak spanish or basque with others? do you think there is any truth to the theory in the video, are there any basque words in english? what do you think was the origin of basque people?

[@valentinmitterbauer4196]

As a non- english/dutch- native- speaker, it's really eye opening to see how incredibly biased Nyland (and others) are/were when it came to language development by their mother tongue. Sure, english is the easiest language to learn, gendered nouns are nonsensical and illogical, abugidas only exist to mess with people and all languages write their verbs with "to" in front of them when they are written out of context.

[@Kasasasassasasasasasas]

I love this, this is like sam o'nella but instead of history it's linguistics. So awesome. Subscribed.

[@EdbertWeisly]

Yes all Finns are Indonesian🇮🇩🇮🇩🇮🇩🇮🇩

[@tovarishcheleonora8542]

Well. Time to work on an Uralo-Indonesian family theory. I guess.

[@gergelygalvacsy2251]

17:17 the erasure of Hungarian speaking areas lol

[@ConnorQuimby]

Never heard of Hungarian, that's crazy though

[@tovarishcheleonora8542]

@@ConnorQuimby Never heard of English. lol

[@Hwelhos]

wow those r amazing theories, and great dutch :p

[@bobmcbob9856]

Is Jovan Deretić on the list? He’s the unfortunate embarrassment who thinks Serbs are the Proto Indo Europeans. His method is finding any toponym with [S/Z][optional vowel][R/L][B/M/N/V] and claiming it means the current or ancient inhabitants of the area are or were descended from the Serbs regardless of how other supposed SRB related toponyms from the same language look or how that fits into sound changes in other cognates, real or imagined, between that language and a Serbian, so like he might claim that Zrn and Sulv are both one language’s cognates of Srb. Also the Pope, and the Byzantine and Habsburg empires and today the English and Americans are conspiring to hide this and the Serbs had a massive ancient empire, no relation to the real Serbian empire. [edit: sadly he is not]

[@vaiyt]

Ah, "Everything great is secretly Serbian", my favorite movie next to "Everything great is secretly Hindustani", "Everything great is secretly German", "Everything great is secretly British", "Everything great is secretly Chinese" and "Everything great is secretly Russian".

[@AnAverageItalian]

@@vaiyt don't forget "Everything great is secretly Albanian"

[@ahG7na4]

​​@@vaiyt "everything great is secretly alien" (von Däniken et al.)

[@bobmcbob9856]

@@vaiyt And everything is secretly Catalan

[@cadian101st]

I like that Nyland has batshit takes beyond linguistics, dabbling into batshit theology by saying that the scattering of languages at Babel is a commandment to be enacted rather than a divine punishment that already happened

[@Kamarovsky_KCM]

Kashubian mentioned LETSGOOOO!

[@rosaburgs6019]

Can’t wait for next year’s video

[@jequanamousse4280]

10:20 Body pillow: out Gamer lights: on Volume: 10 morbillion Fucking wild

[@keylime6]

Now we just need artifexian and biblaridion and we’ll have the all of the conlang KZbinrs in one video

[@josephshlanta8870]

Awesome video. I do want to point out tho, that the fine syllable in "benedictine" is pronounced with a short "i" and not a long one

[@changer..]

I didn't processed a single word of the agma schwa clip because the vibes were just too overwhelming

[@zerodelgato3842]

Hi Conner I just found your channel and was wondering if you had ever looked into the koasati language and if would be willing to do a video on it, it's spoken on the Alabama-Couashatta and the Couashatta reservations in Texas and Louisiana respectively.

[@enelabe]

I love to come across Basque in these niche linguistics videos on KZbin :) But it's so funny to me because most of the example words used on the video don't really exist (like "mudapen", "tara" or "kiritu"), so I have no idea where Nyland supposedly took them from and their translations to English are obviously wrong.

[@vrixphillips]

it's like... the Basque version of New Chronology lol i love it

[@TheGribblesnitch]

chad agma schwa with the body pillow in the background

[@Yan_Alkovic]

Nyland is pronounced as if it were IPA. Also it means “new land” The way you said it sounds like “nylon”

[@ender7278]

0:12 That's actually a pretty good upload schedule. Don't feel ashamed.

[@ConnorQuimby]

that was a year ago lol

[@takashi.mizuiro]

this needs more likes

[@teucer915]

Love that you listed "Independence days" as a major English export. Fun trivia fact: 10% of the world's population lives in countries that declared independence specifically from Elizabeth II, and she only missed India and Pakistan by a couple years.

[@pertxuprogamerxd5895]

Some basque words you use as examples in this video came fron latin or spanish language, I advise you serch the origin of each words you will use in future videos about languages to make sure is a valid exaple. Other than that this video is one of the most informative videos I've seen about the teories of the origin of the basque, congratulations. Nothing more to say, greetings from the spanish basque country.

[@theoneandonly1833]

barely into the vid but a monthly schedule aint bad at all

[@user-lz4qs2qg2b]

Nikolai Marr "A New Doctrine of Language." 1. Language originated from "labour cries" as a result of "sound revolution" and is connected with the beginning of human labour activity. 2. All words of all languages have a common origin (monogenesis), namely from the "four elements" - the original labour cries SAL, BER, YON and ROSH 3. A pre-language cannot divide into several new languages; languages can only interbreed.

[@southronpapist]

Here's my crazy theory: Crimean Gothic is derived from Anglo-Saxon. We know without a doubt that Anglo-Saxons did migrate into the lands of the Byzantine Empire following the conquests of William of Normandy. It is reasonable, if not certain therefore, that Crimean Gothic is just an advanced form of the Anglo-Saxon English.

[@jakobbruhspenning]

As a flemmish person I would like to mention the voiced velar fricatives to be a recent evolution of the dutch language as it was historically (and still is in flanders where this horrendous shift hasn't taken place) an approximate instead of a fricative.

[@adriennequimby3983]

cool intro!

[@bobmcbob9856]

To be fair, the idea that Macedonian is merely a dialect of Bulgarian is one presented by legitimate linguists too. I’m not sure, I don’t speak either so I’m not familiar with the differences but as a speaker of a relatively similar language (Serbocroatian) they do sound very similar to each other, but that doesn’t really prove shit since obviously they are more similar to each other than to anything else so they’d seem about the same to an outsider.

[@hrafnagu9243]

Okay, there was some freaky shit goin on in that dolphin experiment.

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

Theo Vennemann has gotta be in here somewhere

[@innsj6369]

These kinds of conspiracy theories are weird, because they always weave little bits of truth into them, isolated from context. Yes, there was a late migration out of Africa, one associated with the spread of the Afroasiatic language family, which could have some connection to Neolithic languages in Eurasia. It's true that pre-Bronze Age societies were more equalitarian-but the emergence of patriarchy cannot have been a special effort by a single religion, rather a series of deimic migrations and invasions, like the Indo-European expansion. Essentially people who love conquering their neighbours are typically obsessed with male warriors. The rest is crackpot nonsense, of course, but that's how conspiracy theories get you: by sprinkling it with just enough truth to make it appear plausible to those who don't know any better.

[@timflatus]

That was inspiring. If he was Swedish (which he probably isn't) it would be more like Nü, but with the growing trend in l-vocalisation, the l would become like w, then we could nasalise the an and I don't know what the d is doing there anyway. So his name would then sound like a passing motorbike. In Basque.

[@martinomasolo8833]

I tjought you were gonna talk about Homer in the Baltic and the baltic origin of the Greeks :( but this is still more than I can take lol

[@theaureliasys6362]

I just now noticed that agma schwa sounds like Krimson Rogue

[@FerdinandCesarano]

0:13 - That **raises** the question.

[@TikoVerhelst]

14:30 as a Dutch man, I love how this wasn't even close to /ui/ Also, yeah, together with /ij/, the Dutch just love having vowels that no foreigner can pronounce. We're not xenophobic, we just really, really, really, really want to discourage you from learning our language. (Which is why we are always very honoured whenever people do try and learn our language and do an actual decent job at it.) The /g/ was kinda good though, ngl. At least it was in the right direction. EDIT; 14:59 THE DUTCH SHOULD SUFFER, yes random evil monk, yes we should, I 100% agree And yes, if you're failing at Dutch pronunciation, not being Dutch is a skill issue

[@jakobbruhspenning]

as a flemmish man, I agree with the diacritics being funny but I don't agree with your pronounciation for /g/ and /ch/ since these are supposed to be approximates not fricatives.

[@TikoVerhelst]

@ruhspenning I've given up trying to learn the English about that. Anything that isn't an English g is good enough for me by now......

[@roawesomeface1947]

Wonderful video! I have another crazy pseudolinguist I need to mention. Nikolai Marr was a Georgian academic who promoted a "Japhetic Theory" before and after the October Revolution. He claimed that some Caucasian languages were related to Semitic languages, having a common origin from which (of course) Basque also originated. So far, so standard bad linguistics, right? But no, it goes much further. Marr fully supported the Soviets, and so became the USSR's top linguist in the 20s and 30s. Promoted for his "proletarian", not "bourgeois" science, he started to develop loonier ideals. Taking the Marxist perspective that nationalism is used by the ruling classes to sow discord between workers and foster "false" (i.e., non-class) consciousness as a starting point, Marr began to propose that this applied to language as well. The belief that workers and capitalists of a nation spoke the same language was considered a pernicious myth. A consequence of this idea would be, say, an Ethiopian worker and a Dutch worker understanding each other better than an Ethiopian worker and his Ethiopian employer. Taking the Marxist view of history and its end-goal of full Communism, Marr believed that, as classes would become indistinct, so would different languages. All of the world, under Communism, would evolve to speak a single language. This spurred an odd latinisation campaign amongst USSR's minorities' scripts. Other weird bits include his belief that the primordial proto-world contained four "diffused exclamations": sal, ber, ton, rosh (apparently), which can be paleontologically seen in every language, in accordance with its "development". Marr died in 1934, though his students continued his idras until the 60s. Hilariously, Stalin thought his work was garbage and called it "anti-Marxist" in a 50s essay about linguistics (stopped clocks and all that). While most cautionary tales and morals can be derived from other Soviet manglings of science (see Lysenkoism and "sluggish schizophrenia", to name a few), this guy probably did the least real harm out of all of them.

[@ender7278]

Is nobody gonna mention that the "historian" in the CBC presentation suspiciously has the same name as an actor best known for playing John Connor in Terminator 2?

[@slusieous]

love you buddy

[@junirenjana]

IMO the closest macrofamily to be widely accepted in the near future would be Austro-Tai (rather than Dene-Yeniseian), actually. Like, the list of core cognates is pretty robust, and the regular correspondences are plenty, including even the tones of Kra-Dai languages with the final consonants of AN...

[@RyRy2057]

never heard of it before but im now a Borean stan. long live the Dene-Daic branch

[@themadmanwithapen]

Linden Pentecost is gonna end up in a crackpot theory video like this

[@aarongadbury4561]

24 seconds and i love you

[@wgolyoko]

Make an episode on Chomsky, it will be very funny.

[@realdealteal111]

For anyone looking to find out more about insane human-dolphin studies, highly recomend one of my alma mater's most famous alumni's book "wet goddess"

[@TheMariner21]

Ayyy go bills. Great vid tho!

[@UpperCumberlandGamers]

Ya know there's a stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee. The stadium is called Neyland Stadium. It's pronounced like Knee-land

[@malegria9641]

my personal favorite as a learner of chechen is that ancient greek is not, in fact, indo-european, but vainakh. Prometheus - Pxarmat Lykos - Borzosh Ego - So Su - Xo Auta - Uish yeah this theory is bullshit

[@jamesidk1575]

Ngl if you’re fucked up off two bang energy drinks and an elf bar the theories of Edo Nyland kinda make sense like the pieces really start coming together.

[@nicolalobosco825]

Dante Alighieri himself had a theory that Latin was a constructed language made by the elites to help the speakers of four languages (language of si, really all Italian languages, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan, language of oil, really French, and language of oc, Occitan) understand one another. De vulgari eloquentia was wild

[@dionysianapollomarx]

A little on the nose implying Chomskians quacks, though Edo Nyland obviously is.