Argumentation, debate, and dialectic in Science, applied to Linguistics

The title is somehow formal, but I couldn’t find a better one.
I tried to talk with my uncle again about Indo-European: I don’t care about a thousand ignorants saying “PIE is an invention”, but it’s obvious I don’t like a learned Latin professor like him promoting this idea among his students…

So, after introducing the question (“how are things in the Uni?..Oh…hmm, and, about Indo-European…”), and beginning the debate, we ended up by saying:

(Me) – How can you say you are objective? The whole family believes you (and not me) only because you are a Latin professor, but

… Read the rest “Argumentation, debate, and dialectic in Science, applied to Linguistics”

Doubtfully proven hypothesis: Holocaust vs. Revisionism, Creationism vs. Evolution, and Indo-European vs. Latin & Greek?

About the Proto-Indo-European language, one could say that a “proven hypothesis” is a fact. It’s not a certainty and it never will be until we invent time machines, but it’s a well-supported and widely accepted theory. With this kind of theory, it’s not a question of proven or unproven, because you can’t ever prove it. As far as the PIE reconstruction goes, there are a lot of competing reconstructions, and we’ll never know which one is right, although certain features can be established with a high level of confidence.

After reading what some pretentious guys from textkit.com had to … Read the rest “Doubtfully proven hypothesis: Holocaust vs. Revisionism, Creationism vs. Evolution, and Indo-European vs. Latin & Greek?”

Wikipedia articles: accuracy, vandalism, spam and administrators

I have discovered (among tons of anti-spam spam) a mail from a Wikipedian asking for collaboration on the discussion about some controversy regarding an article on Dnghu’s project, about Indo-European language revival – as far as I’ve read, it seems to deal with the question “is Modern Indo-European as Modern Hebrew?” – Even if I wanted to participate, I don’t know what else could I say, that is not already written down in our grammar.

Some months ago I saw that some links were coming from the Wikipedia article “Europaio” – of course, I felt excited … Read the rest “Wikipedia articles: accuracy, vandalism, spam and administrators”

Tamil vs. Sanskrit, or Indian ‘official classical languages’, and the first tongue in India (AKA. Indus Valley Civilization language)

I have read and heard many stupidities regarding linguistic status and language differences:

– Brazilian is a different language (i.e. not Portuguese), because Galician is a language also (yes, Galician is interestingly enough a ‘language’ which stops in the administrative division between Spain and Portugal – more or less like Valencian and Catalan).
– French is a beautiful language, and because of that many African countries learn it (yes, South-American Indians also wanted to learn Spanish because it was so cool).
– English comes from Latin, as French, Spanish or Portuguese (no comments)…
– Language x (say, Esperanto, Spanish or … Read the rest “Tamil vs. Sanskrit, or Indian ‘official classical languages’, and the first tongue in India (AKA. Indus Valley Civilization language)”

WordPress Translation Plugin (Catalan, Polish, Ukrainian, Esperanto, etc.) – update v. 1.21 due to invalid XHTML code

The new version 1.2 of the WordPress Translation Plugin had some XHTML invalid code, namely some characters “&” instead of proper XHTML “&” in the new language pairs’ URLs, from some specific Automatic translators.

Thanks to Weakish Jlang for pointing out and solving this error.

[tags]Wordpress,Google,Google translator,Altavista,Altavista translator,Babelfish,Wordpress plugin,translator plugin,blog plugin,blog translator,Wordpress translator,Wordpress translation,translation plugin,blog translation,blog translator plugin,blog translation plugin,WP,WP-translator,WP-translation,WP-plugin,WP translator,WP plugin,WP translation,Tranexp,Poltran,Opentrad,Google translation,Altavista translation,Tranexp translation,Systran,Systran translation,Google plugin,Altavista plugin,Babelfish plugin,Systran plugin,traducteur,Übersetzer,traductor,traduttore,tradutor,vertaler,WP traducteur,WP Übersetzer,WP traductor,WP traduttore,WP tradutor,WP vertaler,Wordpress traducteur,Wordpress Übersetzer,Wordpress traductor,Wordpress traduttore,Wordpress tradutor,Wordpress vertaler,Intertrans,Global,Interpret[/tags]… Read the rest “WordPress Translation Plugin (Catalan, Polish, Ukrainian, Esperanto, etc.) – update v. 1.21 due to invalid XHTML code”

WordPress Translator Plugin, now version 1.2 in English and Spanish – inglés y español

I’ve added some new pairs which seem to work well – but for the Thai version, which gives usually an error message.

Catalan and Polish languages are now translated automatically, as there is no need to copy and paste the text. New languages include Danish, Persian, Ukrainian, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Hebrew, as well as experimental Latin and Esperanto options.

Remember you can ask for a translator that works with any language pair included in the English one, although some non-English alternatives include very (very) bad translations.

The Spanish version has been changed to … Read the rest “WordPress Translator Plugin, now version 1.2 in English and Spanish – inglés y español”

Indo-European Grammar, 1st Printed Version in English, translated into Deutsch, français, español, italiano, Nederlands, Polski, português, Russian, and other languages thanks to direct web machine translation

The Final Version of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, 1st Printed Edition, is ready for the Printer, after the Indo-European Revival News.

For more information on this release and the changes made since last version, please go to the Indo-European language Association.

The association has some collaborative websites prepared for volunteers ready to add some translated sections of the book, and also for experts and people interested in IE languages, to add information about the Proto-Indo-European language and its revival as a modern language within the European Union, namely Indo-European (in English), Indo-Europeen (en Français), Indogermanisch (auf Deutsch), indoeuropeo… Read the rest “Indo-European Grammar, 1st Printed Version in English, translated into Deutsch, français, español, italiano, Nederlands, Polski, português, Russian, and other languages thanks to direct web machine translation”

Translation of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European from English into Spanish: Gramática del indoeuropeo moderno

The two introductory sections of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, the main work of the Indo-European Revival Association, has been translated into Spanish as Gramática del indoeuropeo moderno.

The book is, as always, licensed under GFDL – CC-by-sa, so that everyone can copy, redistribute, modify, etc. the work and indeed translate it into any possible language, and then edit and/or publish it.

The association has some collaborative websites prepared for volunteers ready to add some translated sections of the book, and also for experts and people interested in IE languages, to add information about the Proto-Indo-European language and … Read the rest “Translation of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European from English into Spanish: Gramática del indoeuropeo moderno”

WordPress Translation Plugin v. 1.1, now also in Swedish-Svenska

Thanks to George Joyce for the corrections about Araby and Farsi – version 1.1 includes the correct language name.

I’ve also added pairs for Swedish, but they are Tranexp-only, which in my opinion is worse than the usual Google -Altavista solution which is used in other lesser supported languages like Spanish or Italian.

Also, there seems to be some problem in how Tranexp deals with UTF-8, as the output shows wrong character processing. If you have any idea on how to correct this (not including the changing of the character set…), please share!

Thanks to all for your comments … Read the rest “WordPress Translation Plugin v. 1.1, now also in Swedish-Svenska”