Nors Josephson's Theory about a linguistic and culturalinfluence of Ancient Greek on East-Polynesia

[Ross Clark]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Another tiresome piece of mock-linguistics (retailed by Charles Berlitz,
wouldn't ya know?). I think this came up a year or so ago, but perhaps
not on this list. The only really amusing part is that some of the
Hawaiian words (such as those for "bread" and "plough") are actually
from Greek -- 19th century loanwords introduced by educated
missionaries.

Is this the same Nors Josephson who has a day job as a musicologist?

Ross Clark

>>> <X99Lynx at aol.com> 10/15 2:39  >>>
In a message dated 10/13/99 5:33:08 PM, MF1107 at mclink.it wrote:

<<I should like to know some scholarly opinion about N. Josephson's theories
concerning a presumptive linguistic Greek influence on Pacific area (ex. gr.
cf. N. Josephson, Greek Linguistic Elements in the Polynesian Languages,
Universitaetsverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg, 1987; or Idem, Eine
archaisch-griechische Kultur auf der Osterinsel, Universitaetsverlag C.
Winter, Heidelberg, 1999 ).>>

For those interested, there's a brief page on Josephson's '87 piece with word
comparisons at:
http://www.ancientgr.com/Unknown_Hellenic_History/Eng/Words_in_Hawai.htm

(the url may wrap around in e-mail and have to be deleted back to one line)

S. Long