15.1027, Disc: Re: How China discovered America...?

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List:  Vol-15-1027. Sun Mar 28 2004. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 15.1027, Disc: Re: How China discovered America...?

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1)
Date:  Thu, 25 Mar 2004 09:18:34 -0600
From:  Ken_Decker at sil.org
Subject:  Re: How China discovered America

2)
Date:  Thu, 25 Mar 2004 09:38:36 +0100
From:  Rémy Viredaz <remy.viredaz at bluewin.ch>
Subject:  Disc: Re: 15.986: How China discovered America...?

3)
Date:  Thu, 25 Mar 2004 08:24:23 -0600
From:  Mike_Cahill at sil.org
Subject:  Re: 15.986, Disc: How China discovered America...?

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Thu, 25 Mar 2004 09:18:34 -0600
From:  Ken_Decker at sil.org
Subject:  Re: How China discovered America


Several years ago, in Belize, I met a lady that was doing research
comparing possible cognates between Chinese and Mayan varieties. What
I saw of the data looked like coincidental similarities, but there was
a large number of comparisons.

A search on the Internet led me to an article from Harvard reviewing
the evidence for Chinese contact with the Americas:
http://hussle.harvard.edu/~zhang/docs/Pre-Columbian%20Contact.pdf

It seems there is room for more research, and linguistics may provide
valuable clues.


- Ken Decker




-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Thu, 25 Mar 2004 09:38:36 +0100
From:  Rémy Viredaz <remy.viredaz at bluewin.ch>
Subject:  Disc: Re: 15.986: How China discovered America...?


Re: Linguist 15.986

Menzies' statements look very suspicious indeed.

sanpan means "three planks" in Chinese, thus a small boat, not a
sailing ship. palso 'raft' does not look Chinese. balsa means
basically a kind of tree (with a very light wood, used among others
for making rafts).


Rémy Viredaz
1, rue Chandieu
1202 Genève
remy.viredaz at bluewin.ch



-------------------------------- Message 3 -------------------------------

Date:  Thu, 25 Mar 2004 08:24:23 -0600
From:  Mike_Cahill at sil.org
Subject:  Re: 15.986, Disc: How China discovered America...?


Very interesting indeed! But such resemblances are not terribly
unlikely, even by pure chance. Mark Rosenfelder has put together a
website "How likely are chance resemblances between languages?" which
takes you through the math to show this, at
http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm .

As a matter of fact, very much to the point of your query, he even has
a list of Chinese and Quechua words which resemble each other, but
which he contends are NOT real cognates. This is at
http://www.zompist.com/proto.html#chinesequechua .

-Mike Cahill



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