I normally wouldn't bother commenting on nationalistic scholarship like what I am about to share below, but this caught my eye because a well-respected Indian writer who I personally know and respect as an accomplished scientist and engineer wrote and shared some articles that I consider a bit ridiculous.
Because of my respect for him personally, I want to hear thoughts from anyone who actually has some formal linguistic, anthropological, or archaeological training (unlike myself and, I assume, the author Dr. Kak). Or, at the least, someone who has put more time into studying it as an amateur than I have.
First, here is the article he wrote. The name of the site alone is a bit of a red flag and neon sign flashing the word "NATIONALISM" in our faces, but I want to focus on the content of the article itself. What do you think of the arguments he puts forward?
Second, here is the article he shared (but did not write), whose apparent quackery levels are off the charts. In this article, Chinese scholars claim that English descended from Chinese (specifically modern Mandarin, by the looks of it :/). No, it isn't satire. Moreover, it resembles comments I see all over social media from Indian users, claiming that all languages descend directly from Sanskrit. Dr. Kak, it would seem, at least seems to believe that European languages descend from Sanskrit, but I'm not sure where he stands on the rest of the world's languages.
I'm considering dropping by his office sometime before I move in the next couple weeks. But even though I stand on the side of what I *believe* to be current consensus (that there is a Proto-Indo-European language that predates Sanskrit), I am still an amateur who has spent less time researching this than he has. I would like to have an idea of what current scholarship has to say about PIE before I talk to him and hear his thoughts from his own mouth.
Because of my respect for him personally, I want to hear thoughts from anyone who actually has some formal linguistic, anthropological, or archaeological training (unlike myself and, I assume, the author Dr. Kak). Or, at the least, someone who has put more time into studying it as an amateur than I have.
First, here is the article he wrote. The name of the site alone is a bit of a red flag and neon sign flashing the word "NATIONALISM" in our faces, but I want to focus on the content of the article itself. What do you think of the arguments he puts forward?
Second, here is the article he shared (but did not write), whose apparent quackery levels are off the charts. In this article, Chinese scholars claim that English descended from Chinese (specifically modern Mandarin, by the looks of it :/). No, it isn't satire. Moreover, it resembles comments I see all over social media from Indian users, claiming that all languages descend directly from Sanskrit. Dr. Kak, it would seem, at least seems to believe that European languages descend from Sanskrit, but I'm not sure where he stands on the rest of the world's languages.
I'm considering dropping by his office sometime before I move in the next couple weeks. But even though I stand on the side of what I *believe* to be current consensus (that there is a Proto-Indo-European language that predates Sanskrit), I am still an amateur who has spent less time researching this than he has. I would like to have an idea of what current scholarship has to say about PIE before I talk to him and hear his thoughts from his own mouth.