Grant Barrett takes on the latest in a long line of bad books on lexicography in this blog entry. Daniel Cassidy has written a book, How the Irish Invented Slang, in which he traces most slang in US English to Gaelic-speaking Irish immigrants to New York. Mentioned by two great friends of language and lexicography: Michael Quinion in his recent newsletter and in an entry by Steve at his Languagehat blog. Grant cites one of the linguists over at Language Log who quotes a German linguist at the beginning of the last century:

quote:

Linguist Bill Poser wrote compellingly about the tendency of amateur etymologists to make these wrong-headed leaps of faith. Poser translates Georg von der Gabelentz from his 1901 book Die Sprachwissenschaft:

quote:

"It is terribly seductive to roam the world of languages comparing words from them at random and then to bestow upon scholarship a series of newly discovered relationships. Very many stupidities also result from this; for the most urgent discoverers have unmethodical minds.

As von der Gabelentz says, spelling and phonetic similarities must be looked at, but they are simply a starting point. They prove nothing. They merely provide a clue to be investigated by gathering evidence for and against the connection.

I have a term for this evil phenomenon: Slang just got tingoed!