Talk:Burushaski

unsubstantiated editing
I would very much like to see Chashule's work included on the page, there very few people who have put a lot of research into the genetic affiliation of Burushaski this century, and out of all the other theories on this matter, his is the the position with the most evidence provided for it, as the dene-caucasion theory isn't held to be tenable by most linguists. Please include his viewpoint and his evidence and let the reader make an informed decision. I found the article sparse when I read it, and I was disappointed when I couldn't find any updates on his recent work on the language. -August 16th 2012     — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kysius (talk • contribs) 23:31, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Kwamigami should be banned from editing this page. He calls Chashule, a respected linguist, a "crackpot" and deletes his work in the bibliography, even though it is published in the most eminent scientific journal. Can someone do something about this? Shqip


 * He *is* a crackpot. Fringe theories may get some mention, but they don't deserve half the biblio. Most linguists think Dene-Caucasian is nonsense, but there are at least a number of linguists working on it. No-one follows Chashule, despite the fact that it would be major news if he were correct, and would be picked up by newspapers and general science journals. The only reason he deserves any mention at all is that he somehow got himself published in a reputable journal. Pick the most representative of his pubs, and stick with that. kwami (talk) 02:18, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I want somebody to explain to me why kwamigwami keeps on censoring Chashule. Chashule's article is published in The Journal of Indo-European Studies, it's 66 pages long. The journal is considered in the European standard of journals of the top A standard. It is a more recent publication as well. The other erased items are also in reputable world journals like Central Asiatic Journal (published by the Harrasowits publisher) and Acta Orientalia, the organ of the Finnish, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish academies. All of these are of a reputation higher than Lincom publishers and all more recent. To call Chashule a crackpot twice is unacceptable and just shows the level of primitivism of the censoring done by Kwamigwami. In the real world one could be sued for such unsubstantiated claims. So I will put the references back and complain to Wikipedia about the censorship. After all, these are sources, and wikipedia never deletes sources. shqip  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.167.238.146 (talk) 02:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * And I'm deleting again. It's a matter of WP:Weight: Casule vs. everyone else in the world; normally we give the most space to everyone else. Pick a good representative work and use that. Since his latest has been announced on LingList, maybe we'll get a review that we can use for evaluation. If we actually have reputable sources that say he's on to something, great; but we don't parrot claims just because someone got himself published. (Hell, I've gotten myself published, but I don't add that stuff to WP.) kwami (talk) 01:55, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Someone keeps erasing and censoring Casule's work. Hamp's work is based entirely on Casule's extensive research. Note: Casule's findings (in regard to the Phrygian and Paleobalkanic connection) have made their way into linguistic encyclopaedias, such as Strazny (2013: 164) or Brown and Ogilvie (2009: 179), note also Tiffou’s brief skeptical comment (in Hock and Bashir (2016: 165). Most recently in Lyle Campbell’s (2017) capital volume Language isolates, Alexander Smith (2017: 17) considers that the exact nature of the Indo-European correlation [by Casule) should be clarified and concludes that “the proposals [for the origin of Burushaski] involving Indo-European (IE) merit serious consideration”. Note also the recent books by Casule: Čašule, Ilija. 2016. Evidence for the Indo-European and Balkan origin of Burushaski. Munich: Lincom Europa. Čašule, Ilija. 2017a. Burushaski etymological dictionary of the inherited Indo-European lexicon. Munich: Lincom Europa. The major linguistic encyclopedias make full and even detailed reference, yet Wikipedia puts him in a footnote. Is this political? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:2A0F:B300:E1CE:DCEB:D9D1:92AD (talk) 07:54, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

relationships
There is now a more recent (2009) book out, by the same author whom others are disputing, and published by Lincom (and announced on [Linguist List]), claiming that Burushaski is Indo-European. I am not qualified to evaluate this work, but the announcement at least has all the right words (systematic phonological correspondences in 500 stems, plus grammatical correspondences). If someone can evaluate this book (or wait until it is reviewed), it should probably be mentioned here, since it seems to be at least a reasonable claim. Mcswell (talk) 01:33, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd wait for a review. With the announcement in LingistList, hopefully that will happen. (That announcement was made by the publisher, which repeated the author's claims, and has nothing to do with LingList itself.) I find the claim dubious in the extreme: Burushaski has been well described for a century (i.e. Lorimer's 3-vol. tome in the 1930s), and described by linguists involved in the reconstruction of IE. It would be incredible for no-one to have noticed that it's IE. Even long-rangers try to link it up in Dene-Caucasian, not in Nostratic, which is where they put IE. Casule's also made bizarre comments about Paleo-Balkans that appear to be motivated by nationalism rather than science, so his credibility isn't very high. kwami (talk) 01:49, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

There is no nationalism. Casule talks about fundamental relations with Albanian and Arumanian, yet he is Macedonian. He also looks at Germanic correlations and North-Western Indo-European. He is anything but a nationalist. In his new book the support by the eminent Indo-Europeanist Eric Hamp is noted on p. 69, i.e. Hamp "suggests an origin of Proto-Indo-Europeam and Burushaski from a common ancestor". Casule's "credibility" is of the highest order, as witnessed by the eminent journals where his findings have been published. You should read at least some of his articles before judging his scientific integrity. I am sure you haven't even read a page of his work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.111.13.200 (talk) 22:56, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I have included the most authoritative source on Indo-European - burushaski: Čašule, Ilija. 2003b. "Evidence for the Indo-European Laryngeals in Burushaski and Its Genetic Affiliation with Indo-European". Journal of Indoeuropean Studies. 31/1-2 : 21-86. For the Journal of Indo-European studies to give 67 pages to Casule's work is indicative of the high quality. For an Indo-European linguist to have his findings published in JIES is like a scientist being published in NATURE. So don't do editing war. SHQIP —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.90.207.12 (talk) 04:03, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Hamp's suggestion "an origin of Proto-Indo-Europeam and Burushaski from a common ancestor" is very different from claiming a close relationship between Burushaski and little known PIE daughter languages such as Thracian. I don't see how this could be considered to support Casule's 'theory'.Ko&#39;oy (talk) 03:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Hey, I could easily be wrong. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, in this case at the very least a favorable review by an independent respected scholar in the field. Perhaps the latest book will be subject to such a review. kwami (talk) 09:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Chashule's book should be in the references (which it is), but not every single derivative article that he's ever written on the subject. I daresay that all the data in the articles will also be found in the book.  Thus, listing all the articles is redundant.  Listing all the articles also gives the impression that his theory is mainstream, which it is definitely not.  At this point in time, Chashule must be treated as WP:FRINGE and his theories subject to WP:UNDUE.  (Taivo (talk) 14:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC))

None of Casule's articles are derivatives. The 1998 book, mostly superseded by his later work, was 90 pages. The rest of his articles and the new book are over 400 pages on totally new topics. Hamp's comments are directly based on Casule's work, and a sister relationship with Indo-European is still a genetic relationship. The new book contains little from the articles, it is specifically on the reflexes of the Indo-European gutturals and mostly new material. It is unbelievable that you list van Driem in the references who just makes a comment in passing in his book, or Bengtson whose work is not supported by anyone and is of a lower standard than Casule. Casule's sins are that he is Macedonian, if his name was Johnson or Schmidt all would be fine. How can a Macedonian or Albanian discover anything? Even though all the journals are of the highest scientific standard and he is supported by the most eminent Indo-Europeanist Eric Hamp, he should be censored according to all these people. It is a major discovery, and it is not true that his work is not supported (the Russian Phrygian specialist wrote about his 1998 book that it is a major discovery, so did E. Bashir, E. Vrabie, J. Andres Alonso de la Fuente, And the evidence is extraordinary. I still don't think anyone has even seen a page of Casule's work. Or maybe it's because he gives strong evidence that Thracian and Old Albanian show great affinities with Burushaski. shqip

This is Ilija Casule. I do not have the time to engage in these discussions that have little to do with scholarship, but I invite those who have called me a "crackpot" and a "nationalist", while hiding behind pseudonyms, to reveal their true identity and to apologise. You can e-mail me on ilijacasule@yahoo.com. If I do not receive an apology I will have to write officially to Wikipedia about this matter. Individuals like these actually devalue and destroy the very idea of Wikipedia. Finally, the verification of the worth of someone's contributions to science certainly doesn't come from Wikipedia. Thank you. Signed: Ilija Casule —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilijacasule (talk • contribs) 23:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * As you correctly note, Wikipedia is not a refereed journal with the purpose of evaluating your work. We merely report on what others have evaluated. Provide credible reviews of your work, and we may have s.t. to work with.
 * ELL2 in 2006 merely comments that "More tenuous lexical connections have been proposed with Northeast Caucasian languages and Paleo–Balkanic Indo–European languages (Casule, 1998)." This is presented in the context of loanwords, and doesn't even hint that it might be a genetic connection. Again, if the evidence were so obvious, you'd think that such a remarkable claim would be widely reported. The silence is rather deafening. kwami (talk) 06:13, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I concur with Kwami. Wikipedia is not the place to evaluate theories, but to report what the field as a whole accepts.  At this point, Casule's theories are not accepted within the fields of Indo-European linguistics, Burushaski linguistics, or historical linguistics as a whole.  That makes his theories WP:FRINGE and subject to Wikipedia's restrictions of WP:UNDUE.  Nationalism has nothing to do with this and it wouldn't matter if he were Macedonian, Swahili, Pitjantjantjara, or Texan.  His theories are not accepted by the community of scholars working on these languages--that's the story.  Burush and Shqip are correct that Bengtson's paper is in a less reliable source than Casule's is and that Casule's most recent monograph is the better volume to refer to.  But a complete Casule bibliography is not appropriate because his theories are not accepted by historical linguists.  (Taivo (talk) 11:07, 8 December 2009 (UTC))

I agree with shqip. Bengtson's paper from 2001 was never published yet it is in the references. What are the criteria here? burush —Preceding unsigned comment added by Burush (talk • contribs) 22:56, 7 December 2009 (UTC) I have included the most authoritative source on Indo-European - burushaski: Čašule, Ilija. 2003b. "Evidence for the Indo-European Laryngeals in Burushaski and Its Genetic Affiliation with Indo-European". Journal of Indoeuropean Studies. 31/1-2 : 21-86. For the Journal of Indo-European studies to give 67 pages to Casule's work is indicative of the high quality. For an Indo-European linguist to have his findings published in JIES is like a scientist being published in NATURE. So don't do editing war. SHQIP —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.90.207.12 (talk) 04:05, 12 December 2009 (UTC) The 2003 article is on the laryngeals and the grammatical correspondences, crucial in determining genetic relationship. There is no justification whatsoever to delete the Journal of Indo-European Studies article. If you don't know what the book is about don't intervene. Go to the Linguist List to see the contents. shqip If you can't tell the difference between gutturals and laryngeals do not intervene. shqip
 * No matter how much you want to make Chashule's work relevant and no matter how many different works he writes, it is still fringe. His most recent reference is all that is necessary.  (Taivo (talk) 06:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC))

This has been put here before, but I will give more information that Chashule is not fringe and that there is important response to his work. 1. Vladimir P. Neroznak in his forward to Chashule's 1998 book says: "The lexical parallels proposed by the author between Burushaski and Phrygian (the most documented ofthe Paleobalkanic languages) are highly convincing' (p. 10) "The research undertaken by Ilija Casule opens a new page in comparative linguistics." (p. 11) Neroznak is an authority on the Ancient Balkan languages (check out any Paleobalkanic language on the web and his work is central) and author of two books on Phrygian. Is this deafening silence? Is this fringe? 2. Emil Vrabie, Balkanologist and Arumanian specialist, Review of Chahusle 1998 in the journal Balkanistica 13, 2000:pp208-211: "IC's book is, indisputably, the work of an erudite scholar, a keen observer and an imaginative yet cautious etymologist and comparativist' (p. 208), "The heuristic importance of this book for the further progress of both Indo-European (mainly Balkan) studies and as well as Burushaski studies seems to me obvious, and I strongly believe that this author deserves considerable credit for his extremely interesting anc courageous work". 3. Elena Bashir, Urdu, Kalasha and Burushaski specialist, review of Casule 1998 in Pakistan Studies News (Newsletter of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies) p. 5-12 : "This book is an important contribution to Burushaski studies and will be of interest to historical linguists, Indo-Europeanists in particular, and to specialists in northern Pakistani languages and ethnography. (p. 12 "many of the etymologies are convincing". 4. Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics (20 volumes)(Elsevier) - this was mentioned by someone, cites the book. 5. Jose Andres Alonso de la Fuente, in Revista Espanhola de Linguistics 2006: Vol 35/2. 551-579 dedicates a whole article in assessing Casule's work and states that it is the best new comparative project in the last 30 years. 6. If we look at all of Casule's refereed articles it means that some 10 anonymous referees recommended his work. 7. I agree that the Journal of Indo-European Studies article is highly significant. If you look at the instructions for contributors it states that articles shouldn't be longer than 5000 words. In Casule's case, they gave him 67 pages, which is some 20,000 words, a small booklet and most of the 2003 issue. This shows that his work is held in high regard. Once again, this is not deafening silence, it is deafening to those who ignore the evidence and it is not fringe. For these reasons I will add his newest book in the bibliography. Forgot to sign previous notes: burush
 * First, 1) is not a "source" since it's the intro to the book. Second, none of these journals are mainstream historical linguistics journals--they are all virtually unknown in the linguistics community as a whole.  Third, none of these authors are mainstream Indo-Europeanists--Ringe is unconvinced, Hamp is unconvinced, Campbell is unconvinced, Trask is unconvinced.  Fourth, you don't compare Burushaski with Phrygian to get a relationship!  Any first-year historical linguist can tell you that.  Fifth, getting your work successfully refereed in a journal does not imply that the peers who reviewed it thinks the author is correct--they only think that his work is well-written and falls within the boundaries of scientific.  Authors can be dead wrong and they can still get their work published in refereed journals because they write well and write scientifically.  Finally, none of these articles are actual historical linguistic textbooks or Indo-European analyses.  they are all just review articles--not any kind of indication on Chashule's impact on the field.  His impact on the field measures whether he is fringe or not, not whether an unknown reviewer says something nice or not.  For example, Fortson's most recent revision of Indo-European Language and Culture (2010, Blackwell) contains not a single, solitary reference to Chashule.  Not one--and it is the most up-to-date Indo-European textbook out there.  Not a single mention.  That makes him fringe.  (Taivo (talk) 04:49, 17 December 2009 (UTC))

Since we ref 1998, we use 1998 in the refs. kwami (talk) 05:00, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Where are your references for Hamp? Hamp is convinced that Burushaski is related to Indo-European, basded on Casule,just not as closely as Casule believes. And Taivo, why don't you see the worth of the other sources. Who supports van Driem's 6 pages in his book on Burushaski. What you are doing is wrong - you are restricting quality sources and playing with them. The JIES article must stay,.\\. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.90.207.12 (talk) 07:35, 17 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, we've spent enough time on you crackpots. Repeating nonsense doesn't make it sensible, you need evidence, and you don't have any. Burushaski is an isolate; various people have proposed connections to other families, none of which have been accepted. We mention a couple (van Driem because he's well known, Casule because of the journal he got published in, DC stuff because that's well known to Long Rangers), but that's all they're worth, a mention. If you keep it up, we'll just protect the article from what is becoming a nuisance. kwami (talk) 09:59, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Mr Kwamikagami, I am still expecting your apology for calling me in a public forum a crackpot and a nationalist. You may know how to manipulate entries in Wikipedia, but your language and demeanour is disturbing. You keep ignoring the evidence others have produced and seem to believe you are in a superior position to all other discussants whereby you can censor them at will. Please learn some humility, being humble is the essence of scholarship and civility. I neither gain nor lose anything from the debate here by anonynomous debaters. In fact I lose because of the superficial way editing is done. I am taking out the references to me altogether. But you still need to be apologise, signed ilija casule —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilijacasule (talk • contribs) 00:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC) I apologise for the misprint: I said: :"But you still need to be apologise" should say "But you still need to apologise". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilijacasule (talk • contribs) 00:37, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Great Kwamigami and Taivo, looks like we got rid of the 'crackpot' Skopyan! He is a nuisance. Talks about civility yet they take our history. Hellas77 forever —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hellas77 (talk • contribs) 01:22, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, it looks like Casule now doesn't even want to be mentioned.
 * Ilija, I do apologize for my intemperate remarks. There is of course nothing wrong with speculation on linguistic relationships and gathering evidence to support it. There are all manner of such proposals, and I did not draw a proper distinction between your own research and those who would present it on this article as if it had been demonstrated or accepted by the academic community. It was the presentation that was inappropriate, and I should not have said that the suggestion of connections was inappropriate as well. kwami (talk) 05:49, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

The German version, which is ranked as an excellent article devotes a whole section to Casule's hypothesis. shqip —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.241.64 (talk) 04:35, 19 December 2009 (UTC) Mr Kwamigami, I accept your apology. I hope everyone involved has learned something from this exercise. ilijacasule —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilijacasule (talk • contribs) 04:39, 20 December 2009 (UTC) And might I add it was an honorable thing to do. You ask for an apology from someone for whom you have some respect. That is why I would never ask Hellas forever for an apology. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilijacasule (talk • contribs) 07:07, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Well I must say, if it turns out that you are right, it would be an amazing discovery. When's the last time a new extant branch of IE was discovered? Albanian in 1854? It's precisely that which makes me so dubious: something this sensational should be all over the news, with strenuous counter-attacks by those supporting the status quo. kwami (talk) 07:46, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm confused here. Surely we're not going to decide how much to mention Casule's work here by what the author himself wishes.  A WP:COI is a COI. whether it's inclusionist or deletionist.  Is there something I'm missing?  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  07:53, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Personally, I don't think any of the proposed connections are very notable, except maybe Dene-Caucasian since that warrants an article of its own. I added the mention of van Driem, but it doesn't look as though that's gone anywhere either. kwami (talk) 08:25, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I happen to think that an attempted identification of Burushaski as IE or even a close relative is patent nonsense, myself. But there is material published on the connection. Rather than delete all reference to such material, is it not preferable to reword it? Wrotesolid (talk) 05:27, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * JIES published Casule's hypothesis on pronominal connections, with commentary by other authors. Bengtson & Blazek reject it; I don't have access to Huld's or Hamp's reviews. — kwami (talk) 03:04, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link. I just ordered photocopies of the articles and the reviews from interlibrary loan.  We'll see.  --Taivo (talk) 05:52, 23 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Funny. I'm reminded of the Bangani enigma. Van Driem claimed that the words recorded by Zoller are spurious as he was unable to verify them, Zoller wrote a rebuttal, and the matter was never discussed again publicly, it appears, so the uninvolved reader is left wondering. The words in question just happen to look like a layer of loanwords from an unidentified kentum type (presumably European Western) Indo-European language, quite possibly (a modern continuation of) a Paleo-Balkan language (apparently not Phrygian, though). (Bangani is clearly Indo-Aryan; the words in question would seem to form a register, presumably a lexical substratum left after shifting to Indo-Aryan.) Either the Balkan-Pamir(/Himalayas) connection is bunk, or no Indo-Europeanist of any status takes it seriously (or is ready to waste time, or even risk their career investigating it), because they trust van Driem more than Zoller (and other renowned scholars, who have ignored or explicitly rejected Casule's claims, more than Casule, or have themselves investigated his arguments and found them wanting, or simply think both Zoller's and Casule's claims are too unlikely), or everyone is missing a great opportunity by failing to investigate Bangani or Burushaski (or both) more thoroughly under this aspect (of course, the traces could still turn out to lead nowhere). Perhaps ideas of Alexander's soldiers bringing Ancient Macedonian into the region, and popular speculations surrounding the Burusho, the Himalayas, and Tibet make serious scholars additionally wary of this subject; they might fear association with crackpots and ridicule coming from their colleagues for taking up the leads. That although the idea of a separate or originally remote (previously unknown and undocumented) branch of Indo-European somehow ending up on the Roof of the World and influencing local languages, while unlikely, is not crazy in itself. I just don't know what to think about all of this. It's a bit strange. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:21, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yawn. When a scientist makes a claim, any claim in any scientific field, it must be repeatable.  In the Bangani case, other scientists could not replicate the findings.  The Bangani issue is the linguistic equivalent of cold fusion and the Burushaski/Indo-European connection that Casule postulated is looking like that as well.  --Taivo (talk) 16:31, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * From Hock's statement here, Anvita Abbi was indeed able to replicate Zoller's results, so I fail to see your point. As Hock notes, either an incredibly clever informant made the words up on the spot to please Zoller (and Abbi), miraculously despite a lack of literacy, to say nothing of training in historical Indo-European linguistics, or Zoller made up the words himself (and managed to convince Abbi to conspire with him in order to buttress his fraud), which would have been incredibly stupid and is even less credible than that the words are genuine. Moreover, Hock and Zoller give various reasons why van Driem's attempted disconfirmation cannot be taken very seriously. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:53, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Burusho?
On what basis did this article get moved from Burushaski, which is far and away the most common English name? --Taivo (talk) 04:17, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Ruhlen
Saying that Vajda confirmed Ruhlen's hypothesis is a very easily verified and a very specific claim. The word 'unprecedented', for example, does not appear. Ruhlen's own 1998 paper specifically claiming that Yeniseian and Na Dene are each other's closest relatives is available in PDF form and Vajda's own paper specifically credits Ruhlen as publishing the hypothesis and providing the crucial cognate for birch bark. Of course Trombetti and others have made broader prior claims - feel free to add them with my thanks - but that does not mean that Ruhlen's hypothesis was not his own or that it is "false" to say that Vajda' provided conclusive evidence confirming the two families as each other's closest relatives. This is a matter of three words ("Merritt Ruhlen's hypothesis") and a verifiable reference to a peer-reviewed journal, not our own opinions on Ruhlen or his wider claims. Rather than removing this legitimate source, please add any other referenced claims you find relevant. Readers deserve the full context if they want to judge scholars' intuitions about Burushaski.μηδείς (talk) 01:37, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

"conative" mood
Could you please write some description what kind of meaning the "conative" mood bears? I'm asking this because it doesn't seem to be a widely used linguistic terminology, so it would be useful for most readers of the article if this term is clarified, at least to some extent.--Imz (talk) 16:03, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

New Indo-European language
I only came here when I read this [] in the news. I wanted to learn more but this article looks old (or maybe it's an unconfirmed theory?), doesn't even mention that it's IE. 69.136.155.232 (talk) 03:48, 28 August 2012 (UTC)


 * It's not. See 'relationships' above. — kwami (talk) 05:07, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It is still an unconfirmed theory and given the skepticism of Phyrgian experts, it's probably just smoke and mirrors. --Taivo (talk) 05:42, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

This approach to a Wikipedia article is odd. By these standards, Hitler's eugenics programme would not be mentioned by dint of its not being "widely accepted" as a valid theory. News is news - the point of a real-time encyclopaedia is to show what's happening, not hide what's happening. It doesn't matter if Casule's theory turns out to be wrong - it's the biggest news in Burushaski linguistics in decades. An encyclopaedia doesn't judge; an encylopaedia reports. No currently accepted theory in linguistics has been arrived at by taking into account only research that proved to be right, but just as much research that didn't. That's the way science works - theorizing, and counter-theorizing. Fringe? "Fringe" would be a guy sitting in his underwear watching a Packers game and muttering "Indo-European" -- not a 66 page JIES article. For a public encyclopaedia's purposes, ostensibly one which claims fewer corporate influences and more public responsibility, it doesn't matter whose theory on Burushaski turns out to be right 50 years from now - it only matters that we reported, accurately, the full picture. I confess to not knowing exactly how Wikipedia works - only that I expect it to be a source of information. If linguistics students today, who are hearing their professors address Casule's theory--and seeing Casule's theory on major news outlets, as it has appeared there steadily since this summer--see that it's not really touched on in Wikipedia, it will simply serve to diminish their reliance on Wikipedia as a source of information. That's the bummer of the trade - to be a respected reporter, one has to report even on stories one doesn't personally believe in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.90.42.159 (talk) 02:56, 18 October 2012 (UTC)


 * No, it's not the 'biggest news in decades'. It's yet another unsubstantiated fringe theory placing a language that is overwhelmingly agreed not to be IE into IE. Postulations that [isolate X] is in [family X] based on incidental and often strained similarities, or probable loans, or severe misunderstandings of comparative linguistics, are a dime a dozen and they need to meet serious notability criteria for inclusion. It very much matters and it's a good thing the standards here are as they are and not what you're proposing. Harsimaja (talk) 16:29, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Intelligibility of the dialects
It is claimed, without a citation and only in the lead, that the three dialects are mutually intelligible. However, Ethnologue claims that the lexical similarity is "91%–94% between Nagar and Hunza dialects, 67%–72% between Yasin and Hunza, 66%–71% between Yasin and Nagar". The percentages for Yasin are a far cry from mutual intelligibility, in fact somewhat less than that of Romanian with other, distant, Romance languages. Moreover, whereas low lexical similarity guarantees a lack of mutual intelligibility, high lexical similarity does not guarantee existence of mutual intelligibility. --JorisvS (talk) 09:00, 3 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Unless the lex differences are due to code switching or bilingualism. Could be there are regional differences in reporting but everyone understands most of the words.
 * But the phon. divergence between burush and werch makes MI seem doubtful. Nagar & Hunza are supposedly only minimally different. — kwami (talk) 00:54, 1 July 2015 (UTC)


 * JorisvS: Good point; Linguasphere also treats them as effectively two different languages ("Burushaski", i. e. Hunza-Nagar, and "Wershikwar", i. e., Yasin). Of course, that would effectively mean that Burushaski is not an isolate but a tiny language family, but apparently no linguist has ever stated that explicitly.
 * I notice David Marjanović added the claim in question in this edit; I don't really buy it in light of the reasons given above, so I've removed it, as it sounds like a rather extraordinary claim to make now (mutual intelligibility is frequently overstated).
 * Kwamikagami: True, but we can only engage in armchair speculation about the reasons here; if a claim is in doubt, I think the burden is on David to provide a concrete citation and it's better to leave it out to be on the safe side. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:59, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Fascinating, I wasn't aware these are supposed to be etymologically identical. In that case, the divergence looks really quite massive. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:07, 1 July 2015 (UTC)


 * The notification function is buggy, so another attempt where I make sure to do everything correctly. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:17, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I got the notification, but simply haven't logged in in months. I'll try to find the source I used on the weekend; of course it's quite possible that the source was wrong. What is supposed to be etymologically identical? The word Burushaski and Werchikwār? Certainly not. David Marjanović (talk) 10:23, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the % can tell you much. It would strongly depend on WHICH words differ, most communication in any language is done with a very small proportion of the words, and it's a non-random subset. e.g. In English most of the most frequently used words are Germanic while a lot of legal and scientific language is Latin, French, or even Greek. Irtapil (talk) 14:54, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Burusho language?
I cannot find any indication that "Burusho language" is actually in use as an alternative name for the language. The term seems to me about as odd and ungrammatical as "Spaniard language" or "Finn language"; according to what I have been taught, there is a clear distinction between Burusho, the name of the ethnic group, and Burushaski, the name of their language. If there is no actual ambiguity, I wonder why Burusho people is not at Burusho, where it used to be. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 08:46, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Burushaski. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090526221250/http://www.uaf.edu:80/anlc/dy2008.html to http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/dy2008.html

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Language name and script
The term listed as "native name" is just a direct transliteration from Latin to the Persian/Urdu alphabet, a transliteration doesn't make sense as a "native name" for a predominantly spoken language. I think the spelling in Persian/Urdu is relevant, but should be called something else? possibly "local name" or "Persian spelling"? Irtapil (talk) 15:13, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Why is the name in the intro text in the Nastaliq script? That is common in the region, but the default en.Wikipedia font for Perso-Arabic would show the exact same letters but be legible to a far greater proportion of readers. I've not changed it in case there's some reason for it that i've not noticed. Irtapil (talk) 15:13, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Possible relationship with Hattic
Burushaski is mentioned in. I wonder if the claim of possible connection is notable enough to be included in ? Daask (talk) 13:21, 12 June 2023 (UTC)