No comments about Of Minds and Language: A Dialogue with Noam Chomsky in the Basque Country.

No comments about Le Verbe Basque (French Edition).

No comments about Éléments De Grammaire Basque, Dialecte Souletin: Suivis D'un Vocabulaire Basque-Français & Français-Basque (French Edition).

No comments about Grammaire Comparée Des Dialectes Basques (French Edition).

4 comments about Linguistic Archaeology: An Introduction.

1. Nyland's book describes a vast project involving the 'theory' that almost all languages were concocted out of Basque roots - analysed in terms of (a) a highly speculative system of syllable patterns and (b) alleged close links between Basque and a primeval 'Saharan' language. Much of this exercise is seen as part of an enormous Catholic Church conspiracy during the Dark Ages, aimed at obscuring the true history of humanity and concealing the replacement of ancestral goddess-worship by artificial religions with male deities. Nyland started from some obscure etymologies in Homer, and went on from there to Ogam script and eventually to Basque and the development of a novel general account of early human language. There have been many other amateur proposals of this kind, but Nyland is unusual in (a) not himself being of the favoured language background and (b) claiming that most non-Basque languages were initially not real at all. He has read more widely in linguistics than most such authors and cites in his support not only other amateurs but also very controversial near-mainstream figures (such as Gimbutas and Landsberg). But he has clearly misunderstood the genuine mainstream positions of Ringe and other scholars (whom he despises) on the nature of historical linguistics; he wrongly represents his own work as more scientific in character than theirs. I have the following summary comments: 1) The analysis of words and syllables into Basque roots involves huge amounts of extrapolation, in respect of both forms and meanings; on this basis, similar cases could be made out for almost ANY language as the source, and none of these could be 'disproved'; 2) The 'theory' implies that vast numbers of etymologies, synchronic analyses (grammar etc), genetic links between languages etc which are very well-established are all either concocted or simply illusory; 3) There is no known case of even one entire language being concocted along with an extensive literature; the requirements of the Church would not be sufficient to warrant labour on this scale, even supposing that it was feasible. In the absence of clear evidence that these events actually occurred, the proposal can thus be eliminated by Ockham's Razor. In addition, Nyland's reliance on fringe sources - and occasionally on religious texts - generates various factual errors.



2. I have my reservations about some of Nylands methodology. However, he was on top of the the connection between various European peoples and the Basque long before mainstream academics were. He made the claim that Welsh and some other languages/peoples had connections to Basque. Mainstream scholars laughed at him. However, genetic studies proved that there was something that needed to be looked at very carefully here. For example, the Welsh people have a high frequency of Y-chromosomes very similar to those found among the Basque. This was not predicted by mainstream linquists-but it was predicted by Nyland.



3. Edo Nyland lives in his own make beolieve world, and has no knowledge worth sharing. I would advise bypassing this book. I wish I had.



4. At the end of this review Amazon will ask you, whether this review has been helpful to you. In order to be helpful, the reviewer should help you finding out whether you will or will not enjoy the book, rather than telling his personal opinion about it.
   In order to estimate your reading pleasure or your reservations about this book, we have to check your attitude to official science: Please check the following statements:
   
   #1. The models/theories used by official science to describe observable phenomena of the world are the best alternative available at the moment. Only specialists of official science are able to develop such models.
   #2. Today's scientific beliefs are the superstitions of tomorrow. In order to overcome current scientific beliefs, you have to be a nonconformist. There are more nonconformists among amateurs than among established scientists.
   
   If you agree with statement #1, then you will probably not be amused by Edo Nyland's book. Edo Nyland is an amateur linguist; many of his theses are controversial to those of current linguistics and his argumentation is not restricted to linguistics, but is interdisciplinary.
   
   If you are aware of the fallacies of some scientific models, but are in doubt whether amateurs could do a better job than specialists, then you should first read the book of
   Frederico Di Trocchio: NEWTONS KOFFER. Geniale Außenseiter, die die Wissenschaft blamierten. Campus, Frankfurt/Main, 1998, ISBN 3-593-35976-6,
   in order to see which important contributions to science came from amateurs.
   
   Now, if you are still with me, let us have a look at some of the pioneering results, which you will find in Edo Nyland's book "Linguistic Archaeology":
   * Interpretations of place names of the Atlantic coast as a shorthand description of that place, in Basque language.
   * Description of a method of reverse engineering of such place names into a Basque sentence describing features of the place.
   * Application of the same reverse-engineering method for the following decodings:
   - Pharaoh's names. These names have been transcribed from Hieroglyph to Latin script, so we can now spell them, but we did not know what they mean. The meaning of the Pharaoh's names is revealed by Nyland's decoding.
   - Ogam inscriptions of Ireland and of Scotland (compared with decodings of Guiter, Jackson and Cox) and a decoding of the famous Horse Creek Petroglyph of West Virginia.
   - Linear-B script (compared with the decodings of Ventris).
   * Application of the reverse engineering method to words of so called "Indo-European" languages, showing that reverse engineering of a word reveals a sentence in Basque language describing the meaning of the word. This lead Nyland to his thesis that all Indo-European languages have been constructed by linguists from Basque roots.
   * Revealing close relations between languages of Berber, Basque, Dravidian, Ainu and Inuit.
   
   These research results led Nyland to the following hypotheses:
   1. The current forms of Berber, Tuareg and Basque language are current remains of a primeval 'Saharan' language.
   2. Due to change of climate at the end of the IceAge the Saharan region became a desert, causing an exodus of Saharan tribes to the coasts and river valleys of Europe, the Mediterranean and to even more remote places (Indus valley, southern China, Japan).
   3. The Saharan people, which recolonized post-glacial Europe, brought with them their religion of the mother goddess and their Saharan/Basque language, which therefore have been the common religion and the universal language spoken all over Europe and the other regions where Saharan people settled.
   4. This culture has been successively destroyed by aggressive male-dominated societies; who replaced the mother goddesses by father gods and replaced the universal Saharan/Basque language by new languages ( alleged Indo-European languages) concocted by skilled linguists out of Basque roots.
   
   Current linguists adhere to the stammbaum paradigm of language families, organized in form of a language tree to show language evolution. European languages are said to belong to the "Indo-European language family". The dilemma is, that the root language of this family could not be found.
   Edo Nyland declares the paradigm of Indo-European language family as "a faulty theory", thus attacking one of the basic assumptions of current linguistics.
   But this can no longer be wiped away as Nyland's personal opinion, because another scholar came independently to the same result:
   
   Prodosh Aich: Lügen mit langen Beinen.
   Entdeckungen, Gelehrte, Wissenschaft, Aufklärung.
   Acharayya Verlag, Oldenburg, 2003. ISBN 3-935418-02-7
   
   Another controversy between Nyland and the linguistic establishment concerns the Basque language. Linguists have taught for decades that Basque is a language isolate, i.e. not related to any other language. Nyland claims that Basque is the universal language, from which all Indo-European and many other languages have been constructed by skilled linguists.
   
   The migration of Saharan tribes to the coasts and river valleys of Europe has been confirmed by genetic research, e.g.
   
   Cavalli-Sforza: Genes, Peoples and Languages. Scientific American, Nov. 1991.
   
   Nyland assumes long range sea travel at postglacial times. If you are in doubt whether stone age people were able to manage long range sea travel, then the following book may be of interest:
   
   Thomas Walli: The Raetiasstone GPS. Rediscovering a 6000 year old Prehistoric Navigation System. ISBN 978-3-8334-8963-1.
   
   Nyland's thesis of Basque being the current remains of the primeval language of the European continent has been confirmed, for example by
   
   Prof. Colin Renfrew: The Human Inheritance. Oxford University Press, 1999,
   and by
   Elisabeth Hamel, Theo Vennemann: Die Ursprache der Alteuropäer. Vaskonisch war die Ursprache des Kontinents. Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Mai 2002, Seite 32 - 40.
   
   And even for Nyland's apparently keen hypothesis of invention of complete new languages by skilled linguists there may be found supporting info in the literature, see for example:
   
   Saint Yves d'Alveydre: L'Archéomètre.
   Clef de toutes les Religions & de toutes les Sciences de l'Antiquité.
   Réforme Synthétique de tous les Arts Contemporains.
   Paris 1934. Réimpression par Guy Trédaniel, ISBN 2-85707-217-1
   and
   Abbé D. Tardi: Les Épitomae de Virgile de Toulouse.
   Boivin (ed.), Paris 1928.
   
   Nyland identified Sanscrit as one of the many invented languages and D'Alveydre, a French occultist who allegedly visited India in search for ancient science is telling us that Sanscrit is a specialized language, created by monks of a patriarchal religion in order to describe celestial constellations and their influences.
   Tardi translated (from Latin to French) the book of Virgile de Toulouse, a linguist, who may have lived around 550, who boasts of knowing 12 variants of the Latin language.
   In his introduction, Tardi declares the 12 Latin variants as invented languages.
   (if we admit D'alveydre's statement that language invention is done in a religious/astronomical/astrological context, then we may assume a relation between Virgile's 12 variants of the Latin language and the 12 zodiacal signs).
   
   Thus Edo Nyland's book "Linguistic Archaeology" may be exciting for unbiased, exploratory minds, but it may be unacceptable for members of the linguistic establishment.
   Now make your choice!

No comments about Grammar of Basque (Mouton Grammar Library).

No comments about Basque-English English-Basque Dictionary and Phrasebook.

3 comments about Odysseus and the Sea Peoples: A Bronze Age History of Scotland.

1. 
   ...until I hold my breath.
   
   A century ago Samuel Butler built a case that "The Odyssey" was written by a woman in Sicily. George Bernard Shaw listened to one of Butler's lectures and became convinced. Robert Graves, author of "I, Claudius" was sufficiently intrigued that he later wrote a novel with Butler's claims as the basis. Whether true or not, it's generally agreed that "The Iliad" had a different, earlier author.
   
   However, the gyst of this book is that the story of Odysseus was borrowed by the Greeks from the British Isles, and that when restored to what is in Nyland's opinion their correct context, 1000 years is added to Scottish and Irish history. In a way, Nyland follows a number of others before him, such as whoever claimed that someone named Brutus fled Troy and founded Britain, or Vergil who composed "The Aeneid" to create a mythic past for Rome, or even those who sinisterly claim that somehow the Europeans are the real Jews and the modern Jews imposters, or Martin Bernal who claims all kinds of things.
   
   Following an historian named Edward Furlong, Nyland finds the supposed British roots to placenames and other words in the Odyssey. He also links the ancient Ogam inscriptions of the Celts (a writing system that is quite pre-Roman, not "early Christian" as Nyland states, and found throughout western Europe at the very least) with Basque. He assures us that the tale has been "dreadfully distorted and added to", which is something I'd apply to Nyland's book.
   
   It's still worth reading, because of the actual historical details he includes, and entertaining because of his unsubstantiated leaps. Go ahead, give it a try.
   
   Nyland used to have a website only. The website was still up last I checked, complete with the warning that he isn't "Dr. Edo Nyland, professor emeritus of geo-physics at the University of Alberta".
   
   



2. Attempting to illuminate the links between Marija Gimbutas' Old Europe and the birth of Western Civilization, Nyland focuses on the Homeric epic of the Odyssey to show how it was transposed in locale from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, from goddess worshipping sea-farers to patriarchal culture heroes. His primary tool is an idiosyncratic linguistic analysis of geographic names based on the Basque language, backed up with a close reading of the text. His speculations on the origins and diaspora of the Sea Peoples, Odysseus' kin, becomes a revelation with immense historical ramifications.



3. First, from the product description here at Amazon:
   
   "His next effort is expected to be the translation of the 1200-year-old Aurai'cept na n' ees, the operations manual of the Benedectine monks. It was writte in codified Basque shorthand and promises to be very time-consuming."
   
   This is nonsense. The 'Aurai'cept na n' ees' [sic], or more properly the 'Auraicept na n-Éces', is a 7th century Irish text, and most certainly not written in Basque. The 'Auraicept na n-Éces' is a grammar text with some valuable parts dealing with old Irish ogham.
   
   Second, the book itself: more nonsense. It is nothing but strongly revisionist history that M. Gimbutas would have adored during the last ten years of her career. I would put it nearly on a par with the Oera Linda hoax, except that the author of this text seems genuinely serious about what is being written.
   
   Reviewing it in any more depth than this would be a waste of time.

No comments about Basque-English, English-Basque Dictionary (The Basque Series).

5 comments about Beginner's Basque (Hippocrene Beginner).

1. I have several of the Hippocrene books, such as the beginner's book on Arabic and their Spanish Grammar, which is the best brief grammar of Spanish that I have, and their language books are some of the best values out there considering the quality and features you get for the price.

   This is another fine book from Hippocrene on Basque, or Euskara, as the Basques call it, a language that is uniquely different from the other European languages. Basque is what linguists call an ergative language, unlike most Indo-European languages. In fact, Basque is the only ergative language in Europe. In ergative languages, the subject is marked with an agentive prefix or postfix, so that the direct object of a transitive verb has the same case as the subject of an intransitive verb. This is what is called the ergative case, and its case marker is different from the absolutive case for subjects of transitive verbs.

   There are three grammatical cases in Basque, the ergative, absolutive, and dative, although there is something that could be called the vocative, too. And there is something called the partitive although it is not a true grammatical case since it has a semantic meaning and not a pure grammatical function. The ergative case is marked with what is called an "epenthetic" k at the end of the word. Epenthetic letters occur in Basque when certain word syllables or word morphomes adjacent to each are forbidden, and so an extra letter is inserted in between.

   One odd aspect of Basque transitive verbs is known as "weather predicates." A transitive verb, for those whose grammar is a little rusty, is one that takes a direct object, as opposed to an intransitive verb, which doesn't. For example, In the sentence, John died, "died" is an intransitive verb. In the sentence "John threw the ball to Richard," "threw" is the transitive verb and "ball" is the direct object, since it's receiving the action. Richard is the indirect object.

   So in Basque, one can say,

   Gorbeian elurra egiten du neguan
   'In Gorbea, it snows in the winter'
   (literally: 'In Gorbea, (it) makes (a) snow in winter')

   (I thank Itziar Laka of the University of the Basque Country for this example and information on weather predicates from his Basque or Euskara webpage.)

   What this shows is that there are no true weather verbs in Euskara. Rather, weather predicates are composed of the verb "egin," 'to make, do,' and the corresponding weather noun in a determined noun phrase, which is declined in the absolutive case.

   Basque also has several other unique features among the Indo-European languages. It lacks the passive voice, and another oddity is that there are no reflexive pronouns such as myself/himself/herself/ourselves/themselves, although it has the standard set of pronouns. In an interesting article on Basque, Jon Patrick, a professor of psycholinguistics, points out, "Generally it can be said that Euskara (or Basque) has a limited vocabulary but a comprehensive set of grammar rules that makes language generation a highly constructive/creative act, whereas English relies on an extensive vocabulary to provide a breadth of expression. To my mind this feature makes Euskara a more powerful language than English, for example, one word in Euskara can have up to 458,653 different forms just using up to 2 levels of recursion of the standard suffixes."

   So Basque is a fascinating and even unique language among the many more famous European languages, and I wanted to include the above information in my review to perhaps pique your curiousity and motivate you to learn a little more about Basque if only for that, and this is an excellent beginner's book that should serve you very well in that regard. Each chapter will help you progressively build your Basque skill, and contains vocabulary building lists, discussions of the grammar, and exercises and drills to reinforce the concepts presented in the test. The grammar is presented as it is need to understand what is going on in the conversations and phrases, so it's not a rigorous approach to the grammar, but it's fine for a beginner's book like this. But if you're like me and you want a more systematic treatment of the grammar, you'll probably supplement this book with a real grammar book on Basque on the side.

   Hence, throughout the book, you'll find discussions on such topics as inflections or declensions of nouns and adjectives, verb conjugations and how to form the present, past, future, and conditional of verbs, and other topics on grammar. So overall, another excellent beginer's language book from Hippocrene. Once you've mastered this book you should be ready to go on to the intermediate level in your Basque studies.




2. The author of this book makes reference to my online grammar of Basque (just type Basque grammar in your favourite search engine and you'll find it free in the internet): the author thanks "...itziar laka for his examples..." (just see below in the summary of the book).
   Two remarks:
   (1) Do please never refer to a person whose gender you don't know assuming maleness; througout my academic life I have been transformed into a man by strangers a few times; it is most disturbing, and makes women even less visible than we already are.
   (2) I happen to be a woman; anyone familiar with Basque culture, not even necessarily a speaker of the language knows that Itziar is a very stereotipycal female name among us (Itziar is in fact a very common and widespread Basque name, inside and outside the Basque Country, just type it in your search engine again). The fact that the author of a Basque grammar does not know this makes it extremely doubtful (or alternatively awfully surprising) that the material is either reliable or first-hand, or even both.



3. I have seen this book in the store and the library, but do not own a copy. HOWEVER, the reason I am adding a 5-star review is to correct a wrong inflicted on this author by a supposed Basque expert with apparently very low ethics and credibility herself.
   
   The reviewer named Laka gave this book a 1-star rating even though she admits she has never read it. She is basing her "review" on a misunderstanding. She thinks the author referred to her name Itziar as masculine when she is a woman and that is apparently a common woman's name in the Basque country. What a stupid reason to give a book you have never seen a low grade.
   
   In reality, it was NOT the author who referenced Itziar as masculine, but another online reviewer (who was being complimentary of her, I might add). The author of this book makes no mention of this Itziar Laka anywhere. He has been wrongly accused by an ignorant college professor.
   
   A reader posted a comment to her bad review trying to alert her to her error. I went further and tracked down her e-mail and sent her a polite note explaining her error. She has ignored these and let her 1-star review stand. Thus the reason for my 5-star effort to make up for her error.
   
   Hope this all makes sense. It's a good book from all I can tell and considering the dearth of materials for Basque, we should be thankful it exists at all.



4. I am going to add another 5 star rating, to counterbalance the absurd, juvenile, misdirected rant by Professor Laka. I originally commented on this, but the erroneous review was not changed. Another reader contacted her directly, but still there was no response. There should be some mechanism on Amazon for removing such reviews. I know that Professor Laka is more meticulous about the intricacies of Basque grammar than she is about reading book reviews.



5. I never received the Book!!
   You charge me the aamount and after I received a credit, but I lost some amount with the different exchange rates.
   I hate it!!!!