7 tricks of amateur linguistics that science refutes

What is amateur linguistics

At school, we are taught to correctly place commas, distinguish between “not” and “neither”, and check unstressed vowels according to spelling rules. However, many native speakers are interested not only in writing correctly, but also in learning about the origin of words and the nature of the great and mighty. Professional linguistics talks about this from a scientific point of view, while amateur linguistics draws conclusions “by gut feeling” without relying on scientific facts.

Often the features of amateur linguistics are manifested at the junction of a lively curiosity and a lack of awareness in matters of linguistics and history. This leads, for example, to how easily a connection is established between the words "god", "ruin" and "hero". However, etymological dictionaries they sayM. Vasmer. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language

that "hero" is a borrowed ancient Turkic baɣatur, which translates as "brave warrior".

Fluency in a language gives rise to the illusion that we already know everything about it, we just need to think and listen to our gut. At the same time, any person every day faces the laws of chemistry, biology and physics, but not everyone really understands them. For centuries, people have been looking for the philosopher's stone, they believed that diseases are the tricks of evil spirits, and lightning is the wrath of the gods. So the "flair" suggested. However, scientists eventually dispelled these myths. Linguistics also uses scientific methods of research, but she was less fortunate: for some reason, it is believed that it is easier to understand the language than the human body or the world around her.

We decided to take some characteristic features of amateur linguistics and explain what is wrong with them. And for this we turned to bookBUT. BUT. Zaliznyak. From Notes on Amateur Linguistics famous linguist Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak "From Notes on Amateur Linguistics".

What signs indicate amateur linguistics

1. Search for arbitrary links between superficially similar words

The comparison of the English letter (“letter”, “letter”) and the Russian “fly” may seem quite poetic, and the story explaining the similarity of the Turkish kulak (“ear”) and the Russian “fist” is very convincing. However, it is better to restrain the flight of fancy.

Many similar words with different meanings sometimes actually turn out to be related. For example, Polish uroda ("beauty") and Russian "freak". Both ascendsN. M. Shansky, T. BUT. Bobrov. School etymological dictionary of the Russian language to one Slavic root. However, in Polish uroda, "y" is an amplifying prefix, as in "be born" or "harvest." And the Russian “freak” is the addition of “genus” and the negative “y”, as in “wretched”. It's not just "it seems so to us, because the words are similar" - this has been proven by scientific research. And the connection of these words is confirmed by the multitude of cognates in both languages. So there is no place for any fantastic theories about fundamentally different views on beauty in Russia and Poland.

If we consider the situation from the position of mathematics, it becomes clear that the similarity between words can be a mere accident. In any language, the number of sounds is relatively small - a few dozen. In Russian there are 42 of them, they are designated by 33 letters. At the same time, in Russian, for example, there are no nasal vowels, but in French they are.

But amateur linguistics usually ignores discrepancies in the sound composition of languages. Her favorite trick is to simply write down foreign words in Russian letters, that is, to simplify the original sound composition as much as possible. It is obvious that the structure “consonant + vowel + consonant”, which is standard for many languages, has a limited number of options. Given how many languages ​​there are in the world and how many words each language has, coincidences are inevitable.

To assert a connection between words, something more than external similarity is needed.

2. Ignoring historical changes in language

Another common method of non-professional linguistics is the comparison of modern words with each other both in one language and in different ones. However, this most often ignores the fact that words change significantly in the course of history. Two words that are very similar today looked completely different a few centuries ago.

Sometimes comparisons go even further when analogies are drawn between the words of ancient dead languages ​​and modern Russian. For example, Etruscan inscriptions of the 5th century BC. BC e. “read” in Russian, so that the words “whole” or “at the beginning” are found in them. However, in the course of a long scientific work, scientists found out that 25 centuries ago in the language spoken ancestors of modern Russians, the current "whole" looked like [koilos jos], and "in the beginning" - like [un nokindloi].

Professionals do not study random one-time changes in sounds, but regular and consistent changes. These occur not in one specific word, but in all words of a given language, where the changed sound was in a similar position.

3. Fantasies about the meaning of the word

For example, nearsighted means "seeing at arm's length." Well, how else? After all, “having a close hand” is some kind of nonsense, and it’s not clear what vision has to do with it. And so: he stretched out his hand, it is already hard to see behind it - here is the “myopic”. Such an explanation from the point of view of amateur linguistics looks reasonable and reasonable, but it does not suit the professional one at all.

Actually It wasN. M. Shansky, T. BUT. Bobrov. School etymological dictionary of the Russian language the word "short-sighted", formed from "zorok" - "vision". Over time, the repeating syllable "zo" remained only one and it turned out "short-sighted." The element "rock" here turned out to be incomprehensible and among the people was replaced by "hands". In order to come to such conclusions, scientists do not fantasize, but collect and analyze information about how the word was used before and at what point each sound changed.

But folk etymology does not take into account either the ancient forms of words or the processes taking place in the language. So, albeit logical, but incorrect interpretations of meanings are born.

4. Ignoring the morphemic composition of the word

“Heaven” is “heavenly demons,” that is, a place where there are no demons. “Joy” is “ra-dost”, the same as “ra to get”, that is, to get light - a gift from the sun god Ra. Let's see what's wrong here.

First, we recall that purely mathematically absolutely random coincidences of combinations of two or four letters are inevitable. We don’t have so many sounds that “ra” or “bes” occur exclusively in related words. Secondly, amateur linguistics pays absolutely no attention to the morphemic articulation of words.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful part of a word: a root, a prefix, a suffix, and an ending. Each morpheme occurs in different words and has a specific meaning. For example, consider the word "brought":

• The prefix "at-" means approach and indicates the completion of the action. In the same sense, it is used in the words "bring", "run" and others.
• The root “-nes-” means “to move” and is found in the words “carry”, “carry away”, “carry”, and so on.
• The suffix "-yonn-" indicates that this is a sign of some object, and is found in "detached", "saved", other words.
• The ending "th" indicates that the subject is masculine and one, and the word is used in the nominative or accusative case. The same ending is found in other words: “beautiful”, “cute”, and so on.

If you split the word "brought" into smaller units, then they will not add up to a common meaning. "Pr", "ё", "us" do not carry any semantic load, these are only parts of morphemes.

Now let's analyze the composition of the word "heaven":

• Root "-sky-".
• The suffix "-es-", which indicates the plural, as in the words "miracles" or "teles".
• The ending "-a", which indicates the nominative case.

That is, “heaven-es-a”, and not “heaven-demons” at all. “Not” in this word is the same meaningless unit as “pr” in “brought”. We put the word in the singular form - "sky" - and that's it, the "demons" are gone.

Finally, let's look at the morphemic composition of the word "joy":

• The root is "-rad-".
• The suffix "-ost-", which forms nouns with the meaning of the property, like "difficulty", "pregnancy" or "youth".

“Ra” here is the same as “we” in “brought”. And fantasies about the god Ra generally raise questions about competence in the field of history and mythology, but we will limit ourselves to linguistics.

In the above examples of amateur linguistics, parts of words are selected randomly. Professionals, on the other hand, are guided by morphemic division: there cannot be an indivisible part of a word, say, a hybrid of a root and a suffix.

5. Reverse reading of words

For example, "Samara" in the reverse reading - "A-Ramas" - means "Rome", that is, the capital. Amateur linguistics is guided here by the similarity of consonants: “Rms” is, one might say, “Remus”, that is, “Rome”.

The idea to read Russian words in reverse order is inspired by the fact that such a principle operates in some other languages. For example, in Arabic, words are read from right to left, and amateur linguistics assumes that Arabic speakers in the same direction will read words written in Cyrillic. But if a person knows the Cyrillic alphabet, then, obviously, he knows and in what order to read. However, the assumption about the sanity of people who get acquainted with someone else's writing is not very consistent with the methods of amateur linguistics.

Reverse reading in the native language is generally more about games than about science. Writing is secondary, pronunciation is primary. If we know how a word is pronounced, then Russian speakers will write it from left to right, and Arabic speakers will write it from right to left, but the sound itself will be preserved.

However, from the position of amateur linguistics, it seems quite natural that, for some mysterious reasons, individual words in the letter are fixed in reverse order. And how they actually sound, we learn only with the "correct" reading.

6. Free handling of letters and sounds

From the point of view of professional linguistics, any change in sounds should be systemic. This means that if “e” was pronounced in a word, and then “o” began to be pronounced, then such a change occurred in other words where these sounds were in similar phonetic conditions. Amateur linguistics fully admits that some sound has changed just like that in one word. For example, there are versions not supported by any scientific data that “fleet” is a modified Russian “raft”, and “Tver” is a “campaign” in the past.

Vowel sounds in the system of amateur linguistics are generally presented as some kind of joke: “Consonants are important, but vowels can be anything.” The argument is simple - there are scripts where there are no vowels in principle. It is, of course, so. However, in those languages ​​where there are separate letters for vowels, there are also rules for their use. If it is customary to use the letter “a” for the sound [a], why would someone write “y” instead of it? Ignoring vowels again indicates that amateur linguistics does not take into account the secondary nature of writing relative to oral speech.

7. Elevation of the native language to the rank of progenitor

When amateur linguistics turns to the question of the relationship between the words of Russian and any other language, it is Russian that is considered as the basis. Moreover, the idea is often heard that it is our great and mighty one that is the progenitor of all European languages, and not only them.

Of course, there are family ties between languages. However, they are not at all what amateur linguistics paints them. Let's imagine an abstract fiery red Mary, who has three daughters. All of them are also red, but the shades of hair are different. Each of Mary's daughters gives birth to three more daughters. The variety of shades of redhead is becoming more and more - here and copper, and almost chestnut, and almost blond.

Maria's granddaughters also give birth to daughters. One of them, let's call her Alena, ends up in an orphanage as a child and does not remember her parents. One day she meets her second cousin Olga. They do not know about the relationship, but Alena notices a similarity in hair color. And he decides that she is - neither more nor less - Olga's mother.

Then Alena meets other sisters, after which she begins to think that she is the mother of them all. Any attempts to explain to her that they have a common great-grandmother, and 20-year-old Alena cannot be their mother, turn out to be in vain. And even acquaintance with the mothers of second cousins ​​\u200b\u200bcannot convince her.

This crazy story about Alyona in the spirit of Latin American TV shows, at first glance, has nothing to do with amateur linguistics. But the same story is perceived in a completely different way when we change people into languages ​​in it. The speaker of each of the related languages, if desired, can discern the “ancestry” of their native language. Because there is a similarity, because they are relatives. However, non-professional linguistics simply passes off a great-grandson as a great-grandfather.

No language has remained unchanged since antiquity. And there is no “more accurate” than the rest, which would retain the mythical “divine power”.

Why amateur linguistics is dangerous

Very often, amateur linguistics goes along with alternative history. Both can be just innocent fun, or they can serve as fertile ground for the cultivation of certain social and political ideas. For example, xenophobia or the desire to "return the leadership to their people." The sectarian preaching of "true knowledge" is an effective way to manipulate the mass consciousness.

Plus, they make good money on it. There are various schools of "true linguistics" where "innermost knowledge" is shared with students - of course, for money.

The best way to avoid falling into the trap of pseudolinguistic and other pseudoscientific theories is to develop critical thinking.