More Global Language Monitor silliness

[Douglas G. Wilson]

Given that the reporters (or the editors, if there were any) could have run
this material past a "real" linguist or two -- or even a few educated
laymen -- before publication, but apparently chose to be careless instead ...

Can we know that the inanities in these articles are properly attributed to
Payack? Perhaps Payack made more reasonable assertions which were distorted
by the media? It wouldn't be the first time, maybe. [I haven't carefully
examined the GLM site archive.]

OTOH: Payack seems to be president of yourDictionary.com (which of course I
use all the time). The language dictionaries are grouped. "Indonesian"
appears (along with "Hawaiian"!) under "Australian Languages" while "Malay"
appears in a different ("Malayo-Polynesian") group. This strange
Malay-Indonesian separation has been maintained for years AFAIK.

-- Doug Wilson

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