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Matters Arising (The History of Britain Revealed)
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Mick Harper
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I am still (not) making waves. This is going on right now

The Gaels did not speak Germanic. Their word for Saxon is Saesanact
MJ Harper in his book The History of Britain makes for a reasonable case that at least some did.

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The Belgae didn’t speak a Germanic language, as is clear from their coins and personal names. The ones in Britain, at least. I haven’t studied the Belgae on the continent in any depth but it is my understanding that the academic consensus is that they spoke a Celtic language, not Germanic. Don't know who MJ Harper is but if he claims the Gaels are Germanic, he's mistaken, likewise the Belgae & the Atrebates are Celtic. You are confusing Celts with Germans.

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He does not state the proto Irish were Germanic, just that many could have been speaking 'English'.

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Not likely. English didn't even exist in the 5th century. Though I personally doubt it, it's possible that a few Gaels might understand Saxon then. It's most definitely not their native tongue. Personally I doubt that even one Gael could speak Saxon in the 5th century. Too little contact with each other. I believe there is a consensus of one that believe the Belgae are Germans.

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The North Sea used to be called the German Sea. Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany all have a Germanic language. It makes complete sense that the other areas around that sea, modern day northern Belgium (Flanders) and England also shared that language root, simply due to trade. The reason why English is the major language today is due to trade. It's not everyone's first language, but it is most peoples second.

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Today & the 5th century are very different times. As I said English didn't exist yet. The Scotti were creatures of the Irish sea not the North sea. It's doubtful that a Scotti & a Saxon had ever met at this time. The Scotti are to the west of the Britons, the Saxons to the east. The Saxons have to carve up & digest the Britons before they have much contact with the Scotti, that's gonna take a few centuries. In fact the Saxons never quite complete the task before they are themselves conquered by the Normans.

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Mick Harper's book is a spoof history. It's written in the vein of the Henry Root Letters. Harper's law of applied epistemology allows him to slice Occam's razor through centuries of academic assumption.

"At some point in Michael Harper’s life, a member of the academic establishment must have done something truly awful to him – like decapitating his Action Man®. "

He is taking the p**s out of the academic establishment by making claims that the English have always spoken English since England was repopulated at the end of the ice age. He loves it when a few academics take him seriously and challenge him.

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There is some truth to what you say, but let's compare the apparent conquest of England by Anglo-Saxons with that of the definite invasion by the Normans. Archaeological evidence proves that 'peasants' were not pushed out, by either invader, confirmed by other sciences as well. So how were the AS invaders able to achieve the shift in language from 'Celtic' to Germanic, and what mechanism was used?

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The entire "English as a fourth Germanic language" is fringe theory which was adopted by ambitious archaeologists who never held any research post in any academic institution like Francis Pryor. They latched onto the experimental work of a geneticist, Peter Forster, whose algorithm used the evolution of human biology as a proxy for the evolution of language. He had a 4000 year margin of error for the date when English began to be spoken. No linguist would countenance it, simply asking, "Where is the evidence"? There is not a shred of evidence.

It was a very short lived hypothesis, one to two years, that was never taken up as there is simply no evidence. It was posited in support of the minimalist acculturation models because that model had been unable to explain the swift and and widespread transformation from Brythonic to Anglo-Saxon. The minimalists argued that "they didn't have to because Anglo-Saxon was always spoken".

No linguist discusses it and it is never cited in peer reviewed papers. The people who jumped on this short lived bandwagon, people like archaeologist Win Scutt, were writing papers which were not published. If English had been spoken, there would of course be English place names dating to that period but the poor quality of his work undid his assertion when he was claiming that places like Meysey did prove a Germanic language was spoken in the pre-Roman period when anyone with a book on place names could have told him that it was named after the 12th century De Maisey family who came from Normandy.

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It was a hypothesis created by the medical practitioner Stephen Oppenheimer who relied on the work of a geneticist, Peter Forster, to help sell his book which was based on the hypothesis that the Basques were some sort of living fossil of the European population during the Ice Age, a notion too that has been comprehensively trashed. No peer reviewed researcher ever took it up and it died a death within a couple of years. It was a good marketing campaign which sold a lot of Oppenheimer tests at £420 each plus the book sales but it was never science.
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Ishmael


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They ALWAYS mention the money these writers made, from novel ideas they themselves were unable to conceive. One can almost smell the envy.
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Mick Harper
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I don't think it's envy. It is more an explanation for why these people so bafflingly reject what is obvious in favour of something that's completely fruitcake. As I say in a book that is due to go off to the printer's any day now (there's still time if anyone's got any more):

Tip No 10

Grow a leathery carapace. If you report your
findings in a public arena, you will be accused
of any combination of the following


not being an academic
needing to do some proper research
a conspiracy theorist
a fantasist
a member of a cult
the leader of a cult
an exponent of fake news
a political extremist
a professional contrarian
only out to make money
writing a spoof
an exhibitionist
a troll
a fool
a liar
a crook
an abomination
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Hatty
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Mick Harper wrote:
(there's still time if anyone's got any more):

a madman
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Mick Harper
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This is too close to the 'mad professor', 'mad inventor' et al who always turn out to be right in the end. I prefer 'clinically insane' which I have been called multi-times, and which I shall add.

Interestingly, the Soviets in the fifties and sixties genuinely thought dissidents must be clinically insane and locked them up in psychiatric units. Though as I have pointed out, the dissidents must have been pretty cracked to sound off whatever they believed, knowing what would happen to them. But see today's TV post.
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Mick Harper
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I gotta a Google alert for something we’ve dealt with before: how Wiki deals with THOBR. But now my Magnum Opus is due out, this might get altered. Not necessarily for the better. In the good old days THOBR and me got a little featurette on Wiki’s History of English page under a section ‘Alternative theories’. Wiki was a bit wacky in those days and soon I disappeared from the public part to the Talk part where Wiki insiders and interested outsiders chat amongst themselves. As far as THOBR was concerned the question was whether it should disappear from the Talk section as well. The jury’s still out

Are there alternate theories of the history of English? Actually I know there is at least one, that of M. J. Harper, as presented in The History of Britain Revealed (namely that English was spoken in Britain long before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, and that Beowulf is a good example of "not-English" rather than "proto-English"). So my question really is, is his theory so marginal that it shouldn't be mentioned at all? Or should it be mentioned to be refuted, or relegated to the loonybins of the English Department? Or is it legitimate to discuss? --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 22:19, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

There then follows a long digression about tangential stuff until

I looked M. J. Harper's book up. Apparently his theory includes the idea that Modern English existed from medieval times, and that it gave rise to modern European languages. This seems highly implausible to me, and I haven't heard it before. — Eru·tuon 23:37, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

There then comes an English teacher who does not seem to know what a novel is

I'm not the top expert in this area, but I teach History of the English Language at the university level and have the strong sense that Harper's argument is highly marginal. The subtitle of his novel is sensationalizing ("the shocking truth about..."), the publisher is not an academic press, and the few reviews at amazon.com are very mixed. Jk180 (talk) 15:52, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

and some harsh word from some bod called John

Totally WP:FRINGE, and should not be mentioned. Johnbod (talk) 16:13, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

followed by the Wiki-bloke who controls this section and knows perfectly well who I am (we used to correspond fulsomely), who knows perfectly well I am not anti-evolution and knows perfectly well that THOBR has been commercially published both in Britain and America

An anonymous author (that's not his real name) who is also anti-evolution and a self-published book? No. Doug Weller (talk) 20:02, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Johnno adds one more 'fact' to the groaning pile

He's pro-book advances; I'm not sure more than that can be said with certainty! Johnbod (talk) 20:47, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

All of which reminds me why I chose to be Malvolio in our Guess the Shakespearean Character for our latest Zoom quiz night. (And not at all because I did Twelfth Night for O-level and is the only play I know much about.) Plus you had to provide quotes that people had to guess were either real or made up, in my case

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
When I take Olivia to wife ye shall all be as the coxcomb.
Illyria shall not see my like again, I bid you farewell.
I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you.
Go, hang yourselves all! You are idle shallow things: I am not of your element: you shall know more hereafter.
Marry, Fool, ‘tis not as thou sees but as the world sees.

I can't even remember which is which myself now!
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Mick Harper
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The Definition of Mixed Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 May 2021
Very interesting read.


1.0 out of 5 stars
a muddle of a book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 May 2021
a muddle of a book, dos not really explain is main idea.


Amazon
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Mick Harper
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The 'I Didn't Even Ask' Department

M.J. Harper - stellabooks.com
M.J. Harper. You are viewing stock written by "M.J. Harper"
We currently have 0 books by this author in stock
https://stellabooks.com/books/mj-harper
Rank 32 - this is relevant | irrelevant
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Mick Harper
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An anonymous author who is also anti-evolution and a self-published book? No. Doug Weller

He's pro-book advances; I'm not sure more than that can be said with certainty! Johnbod

A lovely example of anything goes when you are dealing with an outlaw. Old Johnbod is so used to accusing fruitcakes of being in it for the money (they always do; we always say, "If only") that he's clean forgotten that a self-publisher can't really pay book advances.

I'm thinking about this general subject because I am pacing up and down waiting for Missing Persons to come back from the printers. I have adopted an innovation that, as far as I know, will be unique. Self-publishers always obscure the fact because they understand nobody ever buys self-published books. Since nobody buys them even if you put a fancy publisher's logo on, I've decided this time to put 'Harperbooks' as the publisher and boast about it being self-published on page one. I was going to put 'Harper Collins' but some sixth sense stopped me.

The Critics: That Harper! More cunning than a barrel load of monkeys. Let's hope the book is as good.
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Mick Harper
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This is not (just) being self-indulgent I need to make a record and the AEL is the best place to stash it. I live in a high-crime area. A low-maintenance flat in a high crime area. No need to interrupt Sunday lunch to read it, unless you're Borry and it's Horse Box Clearance Day. (Thanks for that one, kids, I do sympathise but all parents go through a vegetarian stage, it doesn't mean they don't love you very much.) Basically it's a record of which libraries have got which books

THOBR 33 British & Irish 60 USA 12 Austriala 6 French 6 German 2 NZ 1 each Dutch, Swedish, Polish, South Africa
It also claims there are 10 editions published between 2002 and 2007 which is news to me but then I haven't heard from the publishers for ten years or so. For all I know, there's a Classics Illustrated version out there, Readers' Digest, all sorts. Somebody's swanning around on a yacht bought out of my royalties. If only I hadn't lost their address. (See above)

Secret History 46, all US except 2 Aussie. Mainly duplicates I would think, I haven't checked.

Megalithic Empire 6 British 2 German

Forgeries 5 British 1 Australia and 4 US (including Morgan Pierpont which is a worry)

Unreliable History 1 British (the legal requirement one at the British Library Depository, Wethersfield, Yorkshire (what a way to treat books, top quality tarpaulin or not). However World Cat, where all this comes from, does include a review

Review from goodreads.com
by Abdul (GoodReads user published 2021-01-10 )

Analysis of WW2.

Abdul, when I asked you to...
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Mick Harper
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But at least Ishmael has been more on the ball. I know it's only Canadian cable but I thank him anyway

Séries télévisées sur DVD | Walmart Canada
An Unreliable History of the Second World War. 0 évaluations. Prix Prix. Non vendu en ligne Offert en ligne Rupture de stock en ligne.
https://www.walmart.ca/fr/films-musique/films-et-series-televisees/series-televisees-sur-dvd/N-2810/page-53

Would it be too much to ask for an English language version? Dubbed or subtitles, I don't mind.
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Mick Harper
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Search 2: All of: "history of britain revealed", Show site repeats, Safe search off (web)

خنزير جنيني - ويكيبيديا
هذه مقالة غير مراجعة.ينبغي أن يزال هذا القالب بعد أن يراجعها محرر مغاير للذي أنشأها؛ إذا لزم الأمر فيجب أن توسم المقالة بقوالب الصيانة المناسبة. يمكن أيضاً تقديم طلب لمراجعة المقالة في الصفحة المخصصة لذلك.
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%AE%D9%86%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%B1_%D8%AC%D9%86%D9%8A%D9%86%D9%8A -

Rank 62 - mark as relevant | irrelevant

What do we reckon, relevant or irrelevant?
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Chad


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You might have warned us about this:

Could put have put the more delicate amongst us, off our bacon butties.
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Mick Harper
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The way I figured it was that, yes, I could post up the pic and, yes, it would make a lot of my dearest friends feel sick to their stomach so, no, I wasn't going to do so, not even if wild horses dragged me in that direction. Safe in the knowledge that one of my dearest friends would do it for me. My money was on Borry who likes this sort of thing as an adjunct to sex, or 'breeding' as they call it in the countryside, but since country people are getting up later and later now that summer days are proving so vexatiously long, it turned out to be you. My second choice.
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Mick Harper
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It Never Stops

March 3, 2021
This was an instructive thread. Well, the contributions from From Catsidhe were. Anyone who thinks that this was an interesting discussion with two sides is probably capable of watching a “debate” between a scientist from NASA and a crackpot Flat Earther from YouTube about whether the earth is flat and thinking “yes, they both make valid points”. M J Harper, one of those crackpots who relies on people’s ignorance on a subject, along with their reluctance to research it, to make money for himself.
(from 'Ianto' on Vulpes Libris)

Somebody who had actually read the book put the insolent puppy down

July 24, 2021
In a bid to make money, Ianto, though it would be a first, I am bringing out 'Missing Persons' tomorrow. As well as sections lambasting Welsh historical and linguistic pretensions, there are lambasts of the French, Germans and English. Learn, for instance, how the Canterbury Tales, Pepys' Diaries, the Secret Treaty of Dover and dozens of other things you studied at school are cheap later knock-offs. Actually not so cheap, they mainly required the state's intervention. But my book is. At the price.
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