# Etymology of "hour"



## Thiudareiks

I hope someone here can help me.  I come across this a few times, but recently I've encountered someone who is making a highly fanciful case for the English word "hour" to have its origin in the name of the ancient Egyptian god Horus.  This based on some muddled stuff about Horus as a sun god and the vague similarity of the English derivative of the Greek   ὥρα with the English form of the ancient Egyptian "ḥr.w".  This guy acknowledges that the English word comes from the Greek, but then darts off into some speculative nonsense about "the Greeks borrowed many things from the Egyptians".  Any reference to the linguistic cognates in various Indo-European languages that show    ὥρα comes from the IE root *i̯ēro- are dismised by him as "status quo thinking" and he's painting himself as some kind of wise radical scholar who has discovered the truth.

Normally I'd let this loon fester in his own kookiness, but this nonsense is being peddled on Quora.com and lots of people are "up voting" his answer as the best explanation of the etymology of the word, which is ludicrous.  I want to present a  clear explanation of how we know that the word "hour" and the original Greek    ὥρα are from an IE root, but the resources I have and my philological knowledge aren't up to doing that in sufficient detail.  Does any one have a suitably detailed summary of the cognates and sound rules in question that can show people that this guy doesn't have a clue?  Thanks in advance.


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## Scholiast

Greetings

Others in this forum are more expert than I, but here's a start:



> *hora *_..._ kindred with ὥρα; Zend yare, year; ayara, day; orig. for ϝοsara, from ϝέαρ, ver, (lit., a definite space of time, fixed by natural laws; hence, as in Greek)



 - this from Lewis & Short.

Unfortunately LSJ yields no more illumination. But given that ancient Egyptian is Afroasiatic, there must be a _prima facie_ presumption that these roots are for your purposes utterly distinct.



> ...  ὥρα comes from the IE root *i̯ēro- are dismis*<s>*ed



You are quite right, this fanciful nonsense needs to be quashed.


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> You are quite right, this fanciful nonsense needs to be quashed.


In full agreement.
And given the fact that ὥρα originally meant _year_ or _season _in Greek, it is also semantically sensible that _ὥρα_ and_ year_ should be cognate.


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## CapnPrep

If you feel that you must engage in this debate, you can provide some standard references, like Pokorny (*_ei-_), and remind your "colleague" on Quora that skepticism is healthy if applied equally to all hypotheses, including one's own. While scientific revolutions in the past have proven the "status quo thinking" to be incorrect, simply going against the status quo is not an argument in itself. In most cases it just means you're wrong.

After that, I would encourage you to let it go, because people like this are usually impervious to reason.


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## Scholiast

Greetings, Thiudareiks

I'm afraid CapnPrep is probably right - he usually is. It's a bit like arguing with Biblical Fundamentalists (I write as a Christian who believes in Darwinian evolution, and see no contradiction). Grounds will always be found by the idiot-tendency to reject sense and science.The twerp who suggests this correlation is clearly out of his depth.

Twerp ~ "dwarf", anyone?


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## Thiudareiks

Scholiast said:


> Greetings, Thiudareiks
> 
> I'm afraid CapnPrep is probably right - he usually is. It's a bit like arguing with Biblical Fundamentalists (I write as a Christian who believes in Darwinian evolution, and see no contradiction). Grounds will always be found by the idiot-tendency to reject sense and science.The twerp who suggests this correlation is clearly out of his depth.



The twerp in question seems totally imperious to reason. But what I want to do is post an alternative answer that shows how and why "hour" is considered an IE word and how the twerp's silly New Age stuff about Horus is nonsense. So it's _other people_ (who should be open to reason) I'm trying to convince.The cognates and the resources given so far are very useful (thanks), but I think what is beyond my knowledge is how to explain the philological connections between them and how to show that they clearly go back to the IE. Simply saying they are connected and pointing to the similarities won't do it, since his argument is based on a similar assertion and similar (irrelevant) similarities ("'hour' looks a bit like 'Horus' so they must be connected!"). So I think what I need is a detailed explanation of how we get from ὥρα; Zend yare, year; ayara, day etc to *i̯ēro-.

I hope that makes sense.


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## berndf

What you can do easily is the refute his timing:


> The Greeks learned much from the travels of Alexander.  The Greeks  learned much from Egypt.  And thus in the case of Hour also known as HRs  or HR as vowels were not used in the Ancient Kemit language.  The  Greeks honored the story of Horus in the word HoRa.....
> The story of Horae is the synthesized and adopted story of Horus by the Greeks.


Both words are attested in Homeric Greek already (here), about 500 years before Alexander.


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## berndf

Thiudareiks said:


> So I think what I need is a detailed explanation of how we get from ὥρα; Zend yare, year; ayara, day etc to *i̯ēro-.


It is well established, that some PIE initial /j/ become /h/ in Greek, see e.g. here.


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## CapnPrep

Thiudareiks said:


> So I think what I need is a detailed explanation of how we get from ὥρα; Zend yare, year; ayara, day etc to *i̯ēro-.


I think you may be asking for too much here…  Anyway ὥρα goes back to *_i̯ōro-_, and I doubt that anyone on Quora is really interested in hearing about ablaut grades. And then someone is going to notice that Pokorny lists some Celtic cognates referring to chickens and poultry… And the Horus-hypothesis is going to start looking pretty good again. 

And the fact is that Horus _was_ known to the Greeks, and for all I know, in the minds of Greek speakers (of some appropriate period), the native IE words ὧρος/ὥρα may have been felt to be related to Ὡρος. I doubt it, and I would not accept this idea without some substantive evidence. But the idea is not impossible. It would be a folk etymology, but folk etymology can be a real force in the history of a word.


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## Thiudareiks

CapnPrep said:


> I think you may be asking for too much here…  Anyway ὥρα goes back to *_i̯ōro-_, and I doubt that anyone on Quora is really interested in hearing about ablaut grades.



Well, maybe I am asking too much.  What I need though is some clear summary of how we _know _ὥρα goes back to *_i̯ōro-_ that is more than just saying so and giving a list of cognates.  Because that simply looks like the same thing that Mr Horus/hour is doing.  I need a summary that shows a non-specialist that there is a clear logic and solid method behind the philology here that shows Mr Twerp's speculations are simply nonsensical.

The question on Quora is "Where does the word 'hour' come from?"  How would those here answer that in a way that shows that it comes from an IE root and does so by doing more than just asserting this and listing cognates?  And Quora users might not totally grasp ablaut grades, but an explanation that at least used them would surely come across as more rational and scholarly than one full of crap about Horus and Luke Skywalker.  Yet that's the answer that has the highest votes on praise in Quora right now, which is ridiculous.


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## berndf

Thiudareiks said:


> Well, maybe I am asking too much.  What I need though is some clear summary of how we _know _ὥρα goes back to *_i̯ōro-_ that is more than just saying so and giving a list of cognates.


As I explained above, the shift from /j/ to /h/ in Greek is regular, as I explained above (#8), just as we know e.g. that English _that_ is cognate the German _das,dass_ because we know that English _th_ > _d_ and word-final _t > zz > s(s)_ are regular shifts in High German.

It is a bit more difficult to explain the different vowels in /jar-/ (as in English_ year_ and German_ Jahr_) and Greek /hɔ:r-/. According to Grimm (see entry on _Jahr_) this make the relation a wee bit shaky.

But given fact that we find the root not only very already in Greek history (if it were a loan we shouldn't find is before a certain date) but that we also find semantically congruent words obviously based on /jar-/ in so many Indo-European languages definitely moves the onus of proof the those who postulate an extra-Indo-European origin. In other words: there is a network of circumstantial evidence in favour of a common PIE root but not a single piece of evidence for the Egyptian connection and the only _argument_, let alone _proof_, he ever produced, viz. the Ptolemean culture which blended Greek and Egyptian elements, is _proven_ insignificant by the fact that the word in found in Homeric Greek.

EDIT
One more thing: His repeated claim that linguists do not go beyond Latin and Greek when researching the origin of words clearly shows that the guy doesn't have the faintest idea what comparative philologists have been doing for that last 200 odd years. You can bet your balls that the origin of the Greek word itself has been thoroughly researched. Most dictionaries only give _attested_ source and going back in time beyond Homeric Greek, attestations become rather scarce.


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## Scholiast

Good afternoon everyone

I rush in again as a fool here where berndf and CapnPrep are much better qualified as philologists than I, but 



> folk etymology can be a real force in the history of a word


 (CapnPrep)

and



> Both words are attested in Homeric Greek already (here), about 500 years before Alexander



(berndf)

A Devil's Advocate might accept that through the archaeologically proven trade-links between Minoan Crete and Egypt, some linguistic exchange or development might have been possible. But unless there is anything in the Linear B material to confirm this, the _onus probandi_ is on the side of Sir Twerp.

Has Sir Twerp ever studied either ancient Egyptian, classical Greek, or in any way Philology?

Of course you are not trying to persuade _*him*_: he will be "impervious". But you need scientific definitions and help for convincing others. I trust that for once Berndf, CapnPrep and I are wholly at one here.

Oops, I meant in this excessively long post to mention the cognitive principle of Occam's razor.


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## aruniyan

The word hour could be its origin from the Indian word "Kaala" meaning period or time.
The word "Year/Jahr" again could be from the Tamil word "Gyaairu" meaning Sun,  this is again my assumption.


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> A Devil's Advocate might accept that through the archaeologically proven trade-links between Minoan Crete and Egypt, some linguistic exchange or development might have been possible.


Of course, earlier loans are possible as contacts with Egypt indeed existed long before the days of Homer. I mentioned this mainly to show that the guy doesn't really know what he's talking about because he only talks about Alexander, Ptolemy and Cleopatra which is completely the wrong time. This would be as if someone wanted to explain Anglo-French loans in English, like _to catch_, by referring to the_ Entente Cordiale_ of the early 20th century.


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## berndf

aruniyan said:


> The word hour could be its origin from the Indian word "Kaala" meaning period or time.
> The word "Year/Jahr" again could be from the Tamil word "Gyaairu" meaning Sun,  this is again my assumption.


Looking in Dravidian languages of the origin would be even more far fetched. I am afraid, just "assuming" won't do.


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## Thiudareiks

berndf said:


> As I explained above, the shift from /j/ to /h/ in Greek is regular, as I explained above (#8), just as we know e.g. that English _that_ is cognate the German _das,dass_ because we know that English _th_ > _d_ and word-final _t > zz > s(s)_ are regular shifts in High German.



Thanks, this is the level of detail I'm after.  And if you could point to other examples of the  shift from /j/ to /h/ in other words, I could begin to explain to non-specialists that this is a process of applying consistent rules to words, not just of coming up with similar sounding words and saying they are related.  Do you have any examples of that shift that I can use to show that this is a rule, not wishful thinking?



> It is a bit more difficult to explain the different vowels in /jar-/ (as in English_ year_ and German_ Jahr_) and Greek /hɔ:r-/. According to Grimm (see entry on _Jahr_) this make the relation a wee bit shaky.



I'm afraid I don't read German, so I can't see what Grimm is saying there.  And even if it is a bit difficult to explain the vowels, I'd appreciate it if you or someone else could give me some kind of explanation that, as I say above, shows that the relation between the Greek and the IE is based on rules and solid evidence.



> But given fact that we find the root not only very already in Greek history (if it were a loan we shouldn't find is before a certain date) but that we also find semantically congruent words obviously based on /jar-/ in so many Indo-European languages definitely moves the onus of proof the those who postulate an extra-Indo-European origin. In other words: there is a network of circumstantial evidence in favour of a common PIE root but not a single piece of evidence for the Egyptian connection and the only _argument_, let alone _proof_, he ever produced, viz. the Ptolemean culture which blended Greek and Egyptian elements, is _proven_ insignificant by the fact that the word in found in Homeric Greek.



And I intend to make that case.  But if I can do so while giving at least some explanation of the rules behind that indicate the cognates lead back to IE I'll be able to make a solid counter argument.  To the non-specialist, the circumstantial evidence looks like the equivalent of his silly guesswork, so I need more than that.  Thanks in advance.


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## Thiudareiks

*<Some text removed>*

What I still need, if someone can provide it, is a level of detail that shows how the philology in relation to "hour" and ὥρα actually works.  Some other examples of the  shift from /j/ to /h/ resulting in words like ὥρα would be a good start.  As I've said a few times, simply stating that ὥρα goes back to to an IE root and giving some cognates isn't going to do the trick.  I need to show that this is solidly based on sound rules and is not simply speculative thinking like Mr Twerp's "Horus = hour" nonsense.  I don't need a full analysis of how ὥρα can be traced back to *_i̯ōro-, _just enough evidence of how doing so works so that non-specialists can see that there is more to philology than making guesses about similar-looking words.


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## CapnPrep

For a brief summary of the development of PIE _i̯-_ in Greek, see Fortson (2010, §12.22). berndf already provided a link to an older article with more details and examples in his post #8.

The (non-)development of the vowel in Greek is completely straightforward: *_ō_ > ω. (This is why philologists love Greek so much.) I think berndf was saying that it's hard to explain the vowels in the Germanic forms. For example, Grimm says that the expected Gothic form should have been _jōr_, but the attested form is _jēr_. The correspondence with the Indo-Iranian cognates is clearer, but there's no way to know exactly what the original vowel was, since all non-high vowels merge into _a_/_ā_ in this branch.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> I think berndf was saying that it's hard to  explain the vowels in the Germanic forms. For example, Grimm says that  the expected Gothic form should have been _jōr_, but the attested form is _jēr_.


Yes indeed. Thank you for the clarification. The etymological information given Wiktionary gives a clue to explain the different vowels: _From Proto-Indo-European *yōr-ā, the suffixed o-grade of *yēr, "year, season".

_This would mean that the neuter Germanic and Slavic forms would be derived from the non-suffixed e-garde form while the feminine Greek form would be derived from the o-grade suffixed form. This is consistent because it would also explain the difference in gender.

Do you think that the feminine Greek from should be an original neuter plural?


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## Thiudareiks

CapnPrep said:


> For a brief summary of the development of PIE _i̯-_ in Greek, see Fortson (2010, §12.22). berndf already provided a link to an older article with more details and examples in his post #8.



Berndf's link is probably a lot more useful to those who have access to JSTOR - I'm afraid I don't.  I more or less understand what the section in Forston says, but I'm not sure that a comparison of the scholarship's  reconstruction of these sounds before and after the laryngeal theory is going to help me show non-specialists how we can tell  ὥρα goes back to to an IE root.  Perhaps if I had some other words like  ὥρα and their similar cognates I would be able to illustrate how this works to non-specialists.

I'm grateful to the resources people have provided, but I guess what I'm asking is this: how would YOU answer the question "Where does the word 'hour' come from?" in a way that helps non-specialists understand how philological analysis actually works?


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## berndf

Thiudareiks said:


> how would YOU answer the question "Where does the word 'hour' come from?"


The outline of my argument would be as follows:
- First you say that it is not true that philologists stop at Greek when researching etymology and the earlier history of languages far beyond Greek has been studied at great length by many eminent scholars for centuries.
- Then you argue that Greek is a IE language. In the absence of concrete evidence of an extra-IE loan one would normally fist explore a satisfactory IE etymology.
- The word can be traced back at lest to Homeric Greek which rules it being a more recent loan from the days of Alexander or the Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt. 
- The original meaning of  ὥρα is _season_. Linguists have reconstructed an PIE  root (here you explain that PIE is the common ancestor of most European and of Indo-Iranian languages) _yer-_ or _yor-_ meaning. Here you give the cognates and you explain that the /j/>/h/ shift is a regular phenomenon in Greek and refer to the articles given by CapnPrep and me (even without JSTOR access you can read the first page and that gives already some examples). For the <o> vs. <e> variation you point to the Wiktionary entry referring to an _o-grade ablaut_. If you want to give a simple explanation of what _o-grade ablaut_ means, give the example of English verb _t*e*ll - t*o*ld - t*o*ld_.
- Finally you conclude from all this that there is a plausible and likely IE etymology and that a Egyptian etymology cannot simply be taken for granted and would need some concrete evidence to be considered.


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## artion

If this is any help, ώρα is considered cognate to the Gr. έαρ (spring (season)), attested in the Hymn to Demetra, 174 and 455. The older form was Fεαρ.


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## Thiudareiks

berndf said:


> The outline of my argument would be as follows:
> - First you say that it is not true that philologists stop at Greek when researching etymology and the earlier history of languages far beyond Greek has been studied at great length by many eminent scholars for centuries.
> - Then you argue that Greek is a IE language. In the absence of concrete evidence of an extra-IE loan one would normally fist explore a satisfactory IE etymology.
> - The word can be traced back at lest to Homeric Greek which rules it being a more recent loan from the days of Alexander or the Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt.
> - The original meaning of  ὥρα is _season_. Linguists have reconstructed an PIE  root (here you explain that PIE is the common ancestor of most European and of Indo-Iranian languages) _yer-_ or _yor-_ meaning. Here you give the cognates and you explain that the /j/>/h/ shift is a regular phenomenon in Greek and refer to the articles given by CapnPrep and me (even without JSTOR access you can read the first page and that gives already some examples). For the <o> vs. <e> variation you point to the Wiktionary entry referring to an _o-grade ablaut_. If you want to give a simple explanation of what _o-grade ablaut_ means, give the example of English verb _t*e*ll - t*o*ld - t*o*ld_.
> - Finally you conclude from all this that there is a plausible and likely IE etymology and that a Egyptian etymology cannot simply be taken for granted and would need some concrete evidence to be considered.



Many thanks berndf.  Here's the answer I just posted on Quora, which should set a cat amongst the New Age pigeons:

_The scientific study of the origin of words and the historical  relationships between languages is comparative philology.  It is a  precise and careful discipline which has been developed over the last  200 years and works via carefully worked out sound laws.  The etymology  of a word like "hour" or any other word is not a matter of finding two  similar(ish) sounding words and creating a fantasy story about them  involving Horus, Luke Skywalker and Alexander the Great.  The idea that  the Egyptian word ḥr.w  (Horus in English) is somehow the origin of the Greek word  ὥρα and  therefore of the English word hour is complete and utter nonsense and  demonstrably so.

To begin with, Greek is a member of the Indo-European family of languages, while the word ḥr.w is  clearly Afroasiatic.  Before anyone can justify going as far afield as  an Afroasiatic language to find the origin of a Greek word like ὥρα,  they first have to eliminate the idea that it has an Indo-European  origin, as most Greek words do.  A philologist would do this by looking  at other Indo-European languages to see if they have any corresponding  words, or cognates, that by their sounds indicate that they and ὥρα have  a common Indo-European ancestor or root.

And  that's exactly what we find.The primary meaning of ὥρα is "year,  season, any part of a year" and we find cognates across a range of other  Indo-European languages: Modern English year, Old English gear, Old High German jar, Old Norse ar, Gothic jer, Avestan yar, Old Persian yaram, Latin hornus, Bohemian jaro, Old Church Slavonic jero.  The  sounds of these cognates and their wide distribution across related  language families as diverse as Persian, Slavic and Germanic show that  ὥρα is clearly and undoubtedly an Indo-European word and not a later  Afroasiatic loan word.  

Philiologists  can use sound laws to trace ὥρα and its cognates back and reconstruct  the original Indo-European root word that is their point of orgin: *i̯ōro-.  The  /j/>/h/ shift is entirely regular in Greek and the connections to the cognates and back to the IE is absolutely clear. This  is not speculation, this is not fantasy and this is not a silly New Age  story about Horus and Luke Skywalker.  This is scientific historical  linguistics and sold, cold hard fact.

The  fantasy idea that ὥρα was somehow borrowed into Greek from Egyptian  during the time of Alexander is demonstrably nonsense.  ὥρα is attested  in Homeric Greek, spoken c. 800 BC, and so was clearly part of the Greek  language  centuries before Alexander was even born.  The Indo-European  cognates show why this was so: it is a word with an ancient  Indo-European root and is part of the original word stock of the Greek  language, not a loan word.

Etymology  isn't the process of making up silly stories to create a fantasy  connection between two similar sounding words.  It's a precise  linguistic science.  Anyone who wants to come to this site making claims  about the origins of words needs to get a grasp of that science or they  will just end up looking like an idiot._


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## Ben Jamin

_"Etymology  isn't the process of making up silly stories to create a fantasy  connection between two similar sounding words.  It's a precise  linguistic science.  Anyone who wants to come to this site *making claims  *about the origins of words needs to get a grasp of that science."
_I propose to make these two sentences a motto clearly visible for everyone placing new posts on the forum. 
PS. I think that naïve *questions* should still be allowed.


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## Thiudareiks

Ben Jamin said:


> _"Etymology  isn't the process of making up silly stories to create a fantasy  connection between two similar sounding words.  It's a precise  linguistic science.  Anyone who wants to come to this site *making claims  *about the origins of words needs to get a grasp of that science."
> _I propose to make these two sentences a motto clearly visible for everyone placing new posts on the forum.
> PS. I think that naïve *questions* should still be allowed.



Well, my post on Quora has had the desired effect.  People have voted it up as the most useful answer and the twerp has removed his post and run away.  Mission accomplished.  Many thanks to all here who helped - much appreciated.


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## CapnPrep

Thiudareiks said:


> Well, my post on Quora has had the desired  effect.  People have voted it up as the most useful answer and the twerp  has removed his post and run away.  Mission accomplished.  Many thanks  to all here who helped - much appreciated.


 Nice work!

To address some of the more general issues that came up in this thread and in your reply, the problem is that "solid, cold hard facts" are very difficult to come by when we're talking about prehistoric languages. They're pretty hard to come by for attested languages, or sometimes even for living languages like the one we're all using right here. I think it's important not to overstate the "precise" nature of linguistics, and to welcome reasoned and informed attempts to re-evaluate earlier results. These attempts can be based initially on conjecture and intuition. This is not incompatible with scientific thinking, on the contrary. But if all there is is conjecture, and no willingness or desire or ability to go beyond conjecture, then there is no science. 

And from a "sociological" point of view, the best science is collaborative and cumulative. This means, among other things, being informed about existing research and giving it the respect that is deserves. In some rare cases, it doesn't deserve any respect, and in all cases, one must remain skeptical. But one sure sign of a crack-pot, conspiracy theorist, etc. (or simply a bad scientist) is that they either don't know about their supposed colleagues' and predecessors' work or they dismiss it without justification and strike out blindly in a new direction. It's usually too late to call them back, and not worth it to send out a search party. I'm delighted, however, that you were able to prevent others from going down the same path in this case.


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## Scholiast

Greetings, especially to CapnPrep (#26), for this:



> "solid, cold hard facts" are very difficult to come by when we're talking about prehistoric languages.



That's why, in scholarship and science - linguistic, philological as well as physical - we need Occam's razor.


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