No, Old Welsh Is Not Ancient Egyptian.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- I've had some comments on a short I released recently, telling me that Egyptian hieroglyphs are actually Old Welsh, and that Welsh is the hieroglyphic language of the Pharaohs. This is, to be blunt, not true. However, a theory has been developed that claims to be able to use Old Welsh to decipher the hieroglyphic writings of Ancient Egypt, and there's even a book on the subject.
Seeing as this has now appeared on my radar, I feel it my duty as your Friendly Neighbourhood Welshman to have a look at this, maybe do a bit of a debunk, and show you why good scholarship always allows for constructive criticism, uses critical source analysis to sift the wheat from the chaff from the Nile papyrus seed, doesn't simply make things up when the hypothesis doesn't fit the evidence, and certainly doesn't ignore three centuries of scholarship on Ancient Egyptian language and culture to try to prove that Geese are Wise and lions are abundant!
Confused? 'Rargoledig, you blooming well will be, hogia bach! Strap in and get yourselves a panad. And remember, keep the comments respectful: real people and real ideologies are involved here!
Big thanks to Lauren for all of the help on this video. You rock!
A couple of interesting Egyptology related bits and pieces:
www.britishmus...
en.wikipedia.o...
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I forgot the end credits music! Sorry everyone, consider me singing “Sospan Fach” by way of apology!
I sang it to myself instead 😆
Did you sing it in Egyptian?
@@patrickwilliams3108 My Egyptian isn't good enough to do that. What's the hieroglyph for saucepan?
@@31Blaize Maybe Jimmy sung it in Egyptian. Welsh is, after all, just Egyptian, right? (No, of course I do not believe that.)
@@patrickwilliams3108 😂😂
I despair that you've actually had to sit down and explain this.
Mate. Same. Mead.
@@TheWelshViking I've got Nidhogr's sour cherry. It's bloody nice.
@@TheWelshViking I'm thinking it should take something much stronger than mead to process this basket of bad fish.
Me too, and I haven’t even started the video yet. I know far more about ancient Egypt and hieroglyphs than I do Wales, but I utterly fail to see how anybody could confuse the two. I’m sure this video will hurt me to watch.
Update: it did, indeed, hurt my soul. Pass the bottle please.
Archaeologist from the US specializing in the cultures of California. I brought whiskey.
I actually hate this because it's basically just a weird insecurity about pre-roman cultures not being valid on their own. There are groups who do this with ancient Israel and I've seen some attempts at saying the Neolithic people's of Britain were actually Greeks...enraging
Geoffrey of Monmouth has a lot to answer for
@@NameRealperson It began long before him. And it's a lot more forgivable in people living before the development of linguistics, archaeology, etc. Modern folk have no excuse.
"You have triggered my trap card." This is one of the many reasons I follow you. I thought that was quite a respectful rant. I've never heard that theory, so I'm actually glad my introduction to it was a sound debunking.
I am thoroughly fascinated by things Welsh, and moderately fascinated by things Egyptian. I love your videos on the language about as much as I love your videos on garb/events/etc. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
just my random thought, if a group was traveling all the way from Egypt to Wales, I feel like there would be evidence along the way. Like a couple of "Set was here" inscriptions en route
Never thought this would need to be answered, yet it seems like we have people coming up with ridiculous conspiracy theories by the minute these days. Keep up the great work Jimmy
In scholarship, never marry your theories.
Shot-gun weddings in accademia are just bad.
🙌
Reminds me of that medieval "myth" (I can't find a better term, I am not a native english speaker) that said, in a nutshell, that Scotland was founded by Scota (I think that was the name), the daughter of a pharoh.
Whoever came up with that evidently had a stash of the bad stuff
Not gonna lie, it was *physically painful* for me to watch this even with just a bachelor's level understanding of linguistics.
Very interesting point that Welsh has Latinate loan words, I feel like I should have worked that out sooner.
I just wish fringe scholars would just *leave* *Egypt* *ALONE*. The Egyptian language is still alive and well in its *modern form* and the *actual* *Egyptians* should be the foremost experts and curators of their own history.
Jimmy I’ve been watching you for a couple of years and I absolutely love your content brother keep it up. Was curious if you’d make a reaction video to the new Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 trailer?. An idea may as well throw it out there, but fr you’re so underrated and the amount of work you do for your videos is amazing. Never stop posting we love you
It’s actually in the pipeline! Thank you!
@@TheWelshVikingAye lets go sounds good, thank you for taking time out of your day and replying much love
The clenched-teeth smile in "let's...take...this...apart" is just ::chef's kiss::
Cherry picking sources or 'evidence' in order to prove a theory--where do we see this, all the time?
Do these people claim that all Celtic languages are descended from Egyptian, or are they just ignoring all of the similarities between Old Welsh and other Celtic languages? Like, Old Welsh /glas/ = blue, green, or grey. Old Irish /glas/= blue, green, or grey. Cornish /glas/= blue, green, or grey. Scots Gaelic /glas/= green or grey. Manx /glass/= green or grey. Breton /glas/= blue or green.
Idle hands do the devil's work, and idle synapses come up with crazy shizz 🙄
Very interesting and informative. 😊
Linguist here!
Ancient Egyptian is thoroughly established as an Afro-Asiatic language.
The process of establishing linguistic relationships is rigorous and methodical, like anything else in science. Ancient Egyptian's membership of Afro-Asiatic, and Welsh's membership of Indo-European, are as tested and accepted as the theory of gravitation.
Ancient Egyptian shares numerous phonemes, regular sound correspondences, cognate vocabulary, and grammar with other Afro-Asiatic languages (such as Somali, Oromo, Berber, Arabic, Amharic… you get the drift).
One of Egyptian's distinctive Afro-Asiatic grammatical features is its use of triconsonantal roots. This means that most words are built out of skeletal roots of three consonants (say, w-n-m for words relating to eating) which are then turned into words by adding vowels, prefixes, suffixes, and infixes.
This is entirely unique to Afro-Asiatic.
There are also clear cognates, like the word for "I": Egyptian yanak, Somali aniga, Akkadian anaku, Arabic anā. Or the wors for "bone": Egyptian qes, Hausa kashi, Berber igass.
It is impossible to understand the Ancient Egyptian language except as an Afro-Asiatic language.
It's concerning that these ideas dovetail fairly evenly with ethno-nationalist political ideologies. Scratch the surface of countless ahistorical bullshit and you'll find some unsavory individuals centered around the promotion of it.
When it comes to linking their heritage to the cradle of civilization or some other prestigious-sounding old culture no idea is too dumb. There are stupid myths on the left as well but I don’t think they’re as ideologically encouraged as they are for (ultra-)nationalists.
Historical linguist here. I just wanted to note, that these pseudo-historical theories always fail to provide is regular sound correspondences. That's because, as you have clearly shown, they bend the "evidence" to fit their theory. You can find similiar looking words with similar meanings in any language. But that does not prove they are related. These are almost always either by accident or due to language contact.
So in order to prove that two (or more) languages are related, you need regular (!) sound correspondences (e.g. Latin p always corresponds to Old English f at the beginning of a word: pater ~ fæder, piscium ~ fisc and so on). In order to avoid loan words only the basic lexicon is used (words like sun, moon, water, I, you, one, two, three, mother, father, etc.). On top of that, there should also be regular correspondences in the grammar. See for example English drink ~ drank ~ drunk and German trinken ~ trank ~ getrunken. Not only do they both mark tense in verbs with Ablaut, it is the same pattern. We can of course find more regular correspondences in these two languages, which proves that they are related.
So this is basically how the historical-comparative method works: 1. collecting word lists, 2. looking for similar sounding words with similar function/meaning, 3. Looking for regular sound correspondences, 4. checking, if these correspondences hold up (e.g. if words, that should fit the established sound correspondence, do not fit, check if another correspondence applies or if it is a loan word). If it doesn't hold up, your theory might be wrong.
Most of these pseudo-linguistic theories stop at step 2. I think that is because most of the time their motivation is more important to them than the actual evidence.
I'm a huge linguistics and etymology nerd, so this really annoyed me. Pseudohistorians should stick to something that doesn't require any major inquistion or falls apart at the slightest push-back. Also, the racism in pseudohistory often gets overlooked, so thanks as always for addressing bigotry when it comes up, Jimmy. Great work, as always. Love me a linguistics heavy video.
In Swedish we actually have the expression ”Dum som en gås” ( As stupid as a goose ).
…noooow let’s see if i can prove we got it from the Hittites. 😂
...can domestic geese be traced to a specific region? Like chickens to jungle fowl in Asia? Or domestic rabbits to western Europe?
It´s like the famous "dumme Gans" in German, we need to prove the hittite provenience!! Maybe it would taste better at Chrismas 😁🤣
It feels disrespectful to both cultures.
Batman is a town and province in Türkiye, proving Bruce Wayne is a Turk and/or that English=Turkish.
That *would* be an interesting twist to Bruce Wayne's family history, in all fairness, and maybe fuel for an "Elseworlds" story about a Middle Eastern Batman.
The closest Welsh and ancient Egyptian civilisations comes is drinking beer and eating leeks. I've not been aware of this "theory" before but by Thoth I'll be pointing them your way.
... not the Mari Lwyd as a remnant of theurgic practices of ancient egyptian religion
I wondered if he'd mention the racism in stuff like this, as it always riles me up. Yes, the Egyptians did in fact build the pyramids. No, they weren't responsible for literally everything in the world. People were brilliant separately all over the world for thousands of years
This has vibes of evangelical christians doing ''etymological studies'' using the Bible in ENGLISH lol
My background is in the biological sciences and I'm from the US where there is no shortage of....folks...who offer....alternative explanations....for biological phenomena. So, from that perspective, I appreciate how hard it can be to do a calm analysis and critique of pseudoscience. However, unlike your relationship to the Welsh language, biological sciences isn't my *culture*, it's not my heritage, and when I consider that aspect of it all, I wouldn't blame you for ranting. Like, burn the house down, take no prisoners, scorched earth, wholesale destruction of their "theory", their intellect, their morals, their everything. I mean the absolute gall of these people, I just, just... well. Hats off to you for your restraint. I hope you at least farted in their general direction.
As someone who studied Celtic languages from a mostly linguistic perspective, my first reaction was, "...what?!" Egyptian is not even in the same language family, let alone the same branch as Welsh.
Honestly the thing that annoys me most is, is Welsh not interesting enough of itself? Is its 2000 year old connection to the Gauls that Caesar conquered not interesting enough, that we have to make stuff up about it?
And yeah, I am doing the frustrated academic thing that might put people who come up with theories like this on the defensive, but, like... just because there are two things that you a) find very interesting and b) do not fully understand, does not mean they are directly connected.
I do want to end on a positive and give my educated guess about the similarities with Greek... since Greek and Welsh are both Indo-European languages, a lot of important names and common words come from the same root words, and linguistic changes don't just happen randomly, it's quite possible that the same root word develops in similar ways, even though they are spoken hundreds of kilometers apart! The difference between correlation or just dumb coincidence tends to be the amount of evidence we can drum up for it :p
Of course Ancient Welsh is connected to Ancient Egypt; we know from the documentary series Stargate that the pyramids are landing pads for space ships; Stone Henge is just the spaceship equivalent of those lift things the garage uses to look at the underside of your car.
😜
My initial thought was "Hold on. Hasn't historical linguistics already answered the question of the origin of Welsh and Ancient Egyptian?" until you said that they weren't using any research post-1600's. It really reminds me of the Great Tartaria/Mud Flood conspiracy. Misguided, dangerous and racist.
Oh, where to begin? I have read Ross Broadstock's book, and Wilson & Blackett's, the source of this theory. There is just so much I could say, but let's just start with how they "translated" into Welsh the names Alexandros, Ptolemaios, and Kleopatra when written in hieroglyphs. Why in the world would these mean anything whatsoever in hieroglyphs other than simply writing the Greek names phonetically?
The other thing that I just cannot understand is how the phonetic values from the Egyptian that Broadstock claims are (mostly) identical in Welsh are known ONLY because the actual Egyptian word is also found in Coptic, the last stage of Egyptian when it was written in the Greek alphabet. For example, the /r/ hieroglyph of a mouth is "translated" as rhoch (utter, proclaim according to him), but the only reason we know the mouth hieroglyph is /r/ in Egyptian is because the Coptic (i.e., very late Egyptian) word for "mouth" is ro; without that, the "Welsh" doesn't work -- it cannot be both Welsh and Coptic, and without the Coptic, there is no reason to assume a phonetic value of /r/ at all.
Another issue is that while you could (with imagination) string along some phrases in "Welsh" based on a symbolic understanding of the hieroglyphs, anything longer (such as, say, a temple wall or papyrus) is completely meaningless as it cannot be consistently applied; you get pure nonsense on that level. It only works in Egyptian because, you know, there is grammar and all that other stuff that makes it work *consistently* over 1000s of texts.
When he writes hieroglyphs, such as in Egyptian names like Ramesses, he often moves them around in to an order that suits him, or rotates them in bizarre ways, not actually what is written.
Finally, as other comments have pointed out, "shaduf" is not even Egyptian, it is Arabic -- Broadstock has loads of Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and other non-Egyptian words in his book and he evidently did not even realize this, thinking they must have been Egyptian. One of the funniest ones is when he claims "Tirhaka" is "Welsh" ti-rha-ka (with some nonsense meaning); the problem is that Tirhaka is the Hebrew spelling (from the Bible) of the Kushite name Taharqo; it's not Egyptian at all, though it is written (as Taharqo) in hieroglyphs. Other non-Egyptian words he thinks are Egyptian (and thus Welsh) include serdab (Arabic), Haeroeris (Greek, but from Egyptian Heru-wer), Anubis (Greek but from Egyptian Inpu); for the Greek forms of Egyptian divine names, he actually used the Greek form; I don't think he was aware of the underlaying Egyptian.
I could go on, but the "fact" that he claims to read, for example, the hieroglyphs of the name ra-ms-su as "Ruler of this place, order and untroubled supremacy" (what does this mean???) rather than Ramessu "Ra (is the one who) gives birth to him" following Egyptian grammatical conventions really says everything. Writing records more than just phonetic sounds, it records language (including the grammar) and does so consistently that can be applied to any text in that language, something which escaped Broadstock.
Oh, one other thing. If we assume this is correct and the ancient Egyptians were really Welsh, where did Coptic come from, and why are there no Coptic texts in Wales? Did it magically appear in Egypt when the locals converted to Christianity? Who knows!
Sadly, despite his theories being pure nonsense, he died in 2022, and he was not that old. I was legitimately sad to hear that.
Yeah, I was genuinely sad to hear it as well, but ho boy this was an amazingly well written comment. Thanks!
This is the rightful criticism that this topic needs, and what this video should have been, instead of pithy put downs and not addressing the source material.
Diolch yn fawr iawn am hyn!
This is a good explanation why Ross Broadstock's theory that Welsh language is the key to decipher Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs is rather far-fetch and pure nonsense. Welsh and Ancient Egyptian are unrelated as the former belongs to the Celtic branch of Indo-European family of languages while the latter belongs to the Egyptian branch of Afro-Asiatic family of languages. It seems that Broadstock based this theory on a number of Welsh words that have similar pronunciations and meanings with Ancient Egyptian ones or rather assumed to be one. This is a pseudohistory rather than historical facts.
And it doesn't need to be pointed out as well that any word derived from Latin "sacus" by definition can't be inherited from a language cognate with Ancient Eqyptian.
And they rely heavily on ignoring the historical evolution of Welsh sounds (including the fact that initial [h] in Welsh generally derives from Proto-Celtic [s], which is why "hiraeth" is cognate with Irish "síreacht", "hen" with "sean-" etc.). Or more fundamentally the fact that Welsh is an Indo-European language whose ancestor at the time of the Roman invasion had a very different form..
Kev, you’re a wonderful hero.
It always bewilders me that people keep trying to connect the Celts to EASTERN Afro-Asian languages instead of Western Afro-Asian languages - you know, people who actually interacted with one another like the Carthaginians and Northern Spanish Celtic groups.
Egyptomania and ideas of western exceptionalism often beat actual historical and cross-culture interest, unfortunately.
It's as if they don't know that welsh is a language that people speak in the current day.
I was academically butt hurt once, but it was in 8th grade and I went home to rewrite my paper.
Jimmy: "We should be respectful and polite"
Also Jimmy: "You come into MY house, that will trigger a response" *visibly seethes with barely controlled rage and murder in his eyes*
(Okay I fully respect your actual original point, and I'm not saying you meant to look as scary as you did then, but I am saying that you do an *excellent* villain face and I am *very* amused by it :D )
Well, that teaches me to watch the whole video before commenting
There's an entire religion built on the premise that Indigenous Turtle Islanders are from the Eastern Mediterranean involving supposed Egyptian hieroglyphs so yeah, this is a thing people do and it's disgustingly racist. Can't believe you held it together so well; if I had filmed something like this there would be so many editing cuts....
I'm only an amateur enthusiast, but I'd like to elaborate on the point about vowels in Egyptian. Typically, they were only written down in transcriptions of foreign names. We don't always know what vowels were in the written words, so what's known as the _Egyptological_ pronunciation was invented as a convenient way of reading out texts without having to leave gaps or make up guesses about missing vowels. Evidence about the *actual* pronunciations used by ancient Egyptian people comes from the Coptic language, which evolved out of Ancient Egyptian by way of some strong but regular (as in, patterned) transformations. For instance, the name of Egypt, spelled *kmt* , is often pronounced as "Kemet", but in period, it would mostly likely be pronounced "Kūmat". A "man of Egypt" was *rmṯ-kmt* pronounced "ramaṯ-kūmat"; "women of Egypt" would be *hjm.wt-kmṯ* "hijámwat-kūmat". I think the Egyptological pronunciations would be "remech-kemet" and "himut-kemet". All of which is to point out that these "theories" attempting to connect it with Old Welsh are using the wrong pronunciations anyway, making them even more worthless.
Edit: Almost forgot to put my source in. Antonio Loprieno's "Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction" is where I get most of my information. It's from 1995, so some of the details have been updated since it was published, but it's a great general guide to what we can and can't know about the language the ancient people of Egypt actually spoke.
I appreciate the crisply enunciated Ts in ‘butthurt’.
Anyone else want Jimmy to do a collab video with Milo at miniminuteman?
The combined rage would get them demonitised for too many naughty words.
Reminds me of the Ancient Astronaut theory of the pyramids that was popular in the early 1970s. "Hey look at those pyramids! They could never have been built by Africans, so it must have been aliens or magic or something." Pure racism.
The flail is agricultural tool for separating the grain from the stalks during harvest. The crook and flail represent the pharaoh being both the shepherd and farmer, being the reason for the lands fertility.
It just remind me of the scene in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" when the Greek father demonstrate to his daughter and her friends that, of course, all the words from all culture come from Greek. Including "kimono", coming from "cheimónas" (winter). Of course! 🤣
And everything can be cured with Windex!
@@chrish2277 Absolutely!
I think WilliamSRD said it best. Conspiracies are really just quirky worldbuilding. Rather than try to pretend it's real, just go write a neat fantasy novel.
I like the "we're not going to rant" and your teeth are bared before the opening credits. :D :D But really you're very calm and pleasant. :)
All hail Geb the Welsh goose, lord of all wisdom ❤
I may be too tired to properly understand this video 😂
And the earth is flat as well..... Why don't you know this Jimmy..... 😀😃😄😃😁
goose to me is in two contexts: 'silly goose' and 'oh shit that thing has teeth'
So silly and waddly and ARGH
And does not take prisoners!
Having lived next to a park where Canada geese bred , wisdom is not something I associate with the "cobra chicken " as we like to call them. Terror is a better association.
If this is alternate history then "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away" is also alternate history.
Star Wars is canon :p
As is the original Silmarillion/Lord of the Rings! 🤭😇
Is it weird that this theory smacks of some of the same energy as ancient aliens? Like heaven forbid an ancient people be able to do something distinct and cool on their own
Many years ago in my impressionable young adulthood I read a "historical" fiction novel based on the premise that the first European settlers in America were a group of Welsh colonists led by a prince Owen or Madoc or somebody in the 12th century. I went down a rabbit hole after learning this was an actual thing with many adherents in the 18th century and apparently a significant number in our current day. According to the theory, the group suffered major hardships and ultimately "went native." Story goes that when Lewis and Clark came upon the Mandan tribe during the expedition up the Missouri River, they were astounded to find these people to have fair skin, green eyes, and speaking a corrupted form of Welsh. As one would expect, there are myriad permutations of this theory, but a common element of "proof" is a list of cherry-picked language cognates. Unfortunately, the Mandan were pretty much exterminated by smallpox, which makes genetic analysis of descendants difficult. However, I seem to remember reading something about adherents to the theory being butthurt that recent genetic analysis did not validate the Welsh connection. There's plenty out there on the subject in the googlewebs.
The Mandan still exist. LoL They are in North Dakota. Their membership is small but they joined with two other tribal Nations (the Arikara and Hidatsa) and form The Three Affiliated Tribes. Some people have family in all three Nations and some are only Mandan, Arikara or Hidatsa. One of my ancestors was captured in battle with the Arikara prior to colonization and when he returned after another battle, he brought an Arikara wife home with him to the Hunkpapa Lakota.
Yes. The Mandan tribe does indeed still exist. My dad was born and raised in the town of Mandan ND. We went to the historical village many times for something to do when visiting my grandparents. The tribe was wiped out. The few remaining survivors were assimilated into other native american tribes and mixed with white European settlers. Genetics are complicated. (I'm a molecular geneticist)
Hiya Jimmy, just a quick point on the flail. I think it is more to do with provision of food. The flail isn't that great a weapon. It's just as dangerous to the wielder, especially to those who aren't proficient in its going use. Imagine Nunchuk but with your body weight behind it.I did a bit of research a while ago on Ancient Egyptian murals ( amongst other ethnographic groups). Mainly because although stylised they are a great social commentary. One of these murals depicted the harvest of corn. Flails were used for threshing corn before it was milled with stone. The Egyptians would centralise the harvest then redistributed it. Egyptian weapons were bronze kopesh, axes and spears.
In norwegian we have a saying that is “dum som ei gås” - in english that would translate to “stupid as a goose”
Quite fitting perhaps…
"And yet, the bafflement is another tool of pseudohistory"
Brilliant observation that. Absolutely.
Thanks for attempting to share your migraine with this video, but no thank you. Hope your head is feeling better though. If a theory were true, or even on the path to truth, it wouldn't require mental gymnastics; this was painful. Thank you, to you and Lauren, for taking one for the team. Have a lovely week
You too Gigi and thank you!
As a Welshman, I've never actually heard of this theory about our ancient Welsh ancestors, I went WHAT! That's a crock of excrement. My Uni Professor once said to me… “A little knowledge in the hands of someone who doesn't understand what they are talking about can be dangerous” or somewhere along those lines, it was 15 years ago and he was right. I've never heard so much crap about the Welsh in my entire life and as somebody fluent in Welsh and I can speak old Welsh which isn't easy it took me a long time, about 2 years to fully understand and speak old Welsh it isn't easy it's bloody hard to understand and know the history of Wales and of my Welsh ancestors what these people are saying is to put it politely utter b*****s.
Same kind of person who takes the phrase "Bread and Circuses" as 'PROOF!' that the entire Roman empire and all its related history only existed as a theme park franchise
Can we get a video about the Ancient Greek connections? You can't just drop something like that in the outro lol
These language hypotheses (x language is related to y language) also rely on the idea that similar sounds "can't possibly be a coincidence" when it's a LOT more likely than many of us would think.
Nevermind that they also mismatch cultures, time periods, etc. to *maybe* make it sound like it works.
Human brains love a pattern. We love it so much we make them up when they aren't there.
It's like AI delusions.
This sounds so in line with the idea that the Mandan people were also Welsh. The reasoning is basically, "These people are too pale, civilized, and talented to not be white."
Isn't it a bit too generous to call these white supremacy delusions "ideas" 🤔
Sidestepping the main topic to address a minor detail (oh so small) that is very much beside the point of the video, but: I believe the flail held by the pharaohs is for threshing, whacking grains loose from harvested grasses. The shepherd's crook and grain flail are symbols of the pharaoh husbanding fauna and flora, since the pharaoh is ultimately responsible for the fertility of the land, good harvests, the growth of Egypt, etc.
I would have thought DNA testing & genetics would slap down most of these claims about Atlanteans, Ancient Egyptions, Phoenicians etc being the founders of diff cultures.
Most of these people would rather deny that those are even close to valid methods than simply contemplate their worldview for five minutes.
No, those ancient Egyptians didn't flee to Wales.
They rocked over to Eastern Australia and left heiroglyphics on a natural rockwall somewhere.
LoL
Was that before or after the Vikings left "runes" in the middle of the Arizona desert?
Bwa-ha-ha!
First of all: how dare you
@@TheWelshViking tee hee
I've never heard this theory before but goodness gracious people are really into their pseudohistory 😂 I'm so sorry you had to make this video to correct the ignorance, but I still found it super interesting!
Pausing to add an immense Thank You to Lauren!👍🎉👑🌟
I imagine many of us viewers are very glad of/for your help!😀🌻
Egyptologist here. I had no idea that this theory even existed! Coincidentally, when I first started studying hieroglyphs I had just done some months volunteering in Wales. I remember noticing some grammatical similarities, like the use of the dualis. I thought it was cool and moved on. I guess other people didn't...
PS: for anyone confused, the script (not a language) is called hieroglyphs, while hieroglyphic is the adjective. There is no such thing as "hieroglyphics"
I feel like this entire theory hinges on the fact that very few people have learned both Old Welsh and Old/Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs. And anyone who does is just a Member Of Academia and can be dismissed by an audience that has been trained to ignore or attack actual science.
Sudden realisation that Clipped Jimmy is someone I do NOT want to annoy
I'm so sorry you had to explain this. I don't think these people have ever met a goose.
....at least Lord of the rings is finally getting translated into Welsh? Does that make you feel better? (I hope it does)
Your anger is understandable and totally justified, imo. This pseudo-history stuff IS dangerous. Völkisch movement, anyone?!
omg thankyou for making this video, this crops up so often, especiially on Pagan forrum. it's ridiculous.
Really? Ugh, I’m so sorry
@@TheWelshViking not all pagans ofcoruse, but on the larger boards non-Welsh speakers with Welsh heritage or weird notions about 'Celtic magic' like to conflate. and Afro-centrists ofcoruse are very interested in localizing everything in Africa. Leylines and Stonehenge and Glastonbury and ancient Egyptian magic etc,. etc,.
Why do I get the suspicion that a lot of the mythological appropriation and perversion initiated by the neo-gothic (national romantic) and nazi movements in the late 1890ies to 1945 has diffused into the current neo-pagan and spiritualist communities?😬
Nice one taking these pseudo archeologists to task Jimmy. I'm an Welshman and armchair Egyptologist myself (don't have a degree, just love the subject) when I look at something like this it's unfortunately one of a plethora of pseudo science and pseudo archeology tales that completely miss interpret, miss understand or simply are uninformed about the four thousand year history of ancient Egypt.
They wrap it up in a half baked theory, mostly so that it looks evidence based to people who haven't studied the subject and then tie it in to anything from hyper diffusion myths about Atlantis to Ancient Aliens to, unfortunately, our own countries language and history.
The basis of this one seams to be not a lot of people know much about Old Welsh or Ancient Egyptian, lets find find words that "look like" they are related, smash them together and peddle it to the uninformed😠. I'm just glad people like you get the word out that this is a pile of old balls before it gets disseminated unchallenged, Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Oh and a name for non editing jimmy "Jimmy on the spot" sounds America but a lot of people in here are American so it would be appropriate.
Making things *look* evidence based is a very good way of putting it!
Diolch i ti am dy eiriau mor garedig :)
I feel like the idiom "silly goose" should have been taken into consideration by the person positing the theory.
As an academic who studies historical linguistics and philology that works backward from Modern English (not the band, but also kinda the band, when you really think about it), I find myself often facepalming when I see theories like this because they almost always fall into the same trap: the math of language is only valid until you try to negate the art of language.
Dead languages were alive once, and too many people seem to forget to consider that fact.
"Give me one word, any word and I'll show you how that word is Greek"....Mr. Portcullis from My Big Fat Greek Wedding (and I think I spelled his name wrong). What is fascinating to me and my brief-really brief-foray into etymology is that just because something may SOUND the same doesn't mean it has the same origin. In most cases they are vastly different. I'm curious though, how many Proto Indo roots are in ancient Welsh?
Never heard of this. Makes me feel better that I don't hear stuff like this in my part of the internet
"So.. Let's take this apart. Shall we?" *Pauses video to make tea*
Impressed at your ability to not rant here. I hear some pretty stupid pseudo history stuff, but this is easily top 5.
Languages sounding similar, or words sounding similar, does not mean they are related. Humans can only make a limited number of sounds, there will be overlaps. Etymology is important. And Welsh is just ONE example. Semitic, European, African.... Christian, Pagan.... Psudo-history and Psudo-Etymology are lies.
Half way through the video, and I remembered from years ago when our then 8yo was studying hieroglyphs and Ancient Egypt, that we found out, if I remember well, that scribes and priests (the people who could write and read) would not write using hieroglyphs but rather a sort of short hand version called hieratic. Hieroglyphs were sort of 'official writing' for stela, monuments, statues, tombs, etc.
So, with that in mind, why would old Welsh have anything to do with hieroglyphs which were only available to artists and a few 'special' people? Surely, if old Welsh had any connection to anything from Ancient Egypt, would it not be to hieratic, a much more common and accessible written language? Alternative history is just ridiculous. It is difficult enough to find out what actual history is once it has been written, interpreted, re-written, etc with all the human interference and bias - same stories can be very different in history books of different countries, for instance.
The auto-generated subs said "This is all falling apart at the scams" when you said "seams". Funny that
So the concept of peer review and the development of scientific theories apparently passed these people by? I'm as fond of fanciful legend and myth as the next person, but I prefer my 'facts' to be supported by evidence. Thank you for delving (diving?) into this particular pool of murky water. Now you're making me pull my own undergraduate notes off the shelf, and actually open some of the text books that might not have been used enough when I bought them. Also, thank you for validating my hoarder tendencies in keeping said notes and textbooks. :p
You say "peer review", they say "cabal of entrenched elites suppressing research that would undermine their lucrative linguistics teaching jobs"
Please please do a collab with Miniminuteman !!! Thanks for doing this work!
Came here to say the same thing!
🤦♀🤦♀🤦♀ Why people forcefully want to impose their pseudoscience theories on scientific communities?, without doing any type of training 😅. And the worst thing, without any type of solid evidence, is it possible to do good research without having a degree? of course, but you have to use at least a good methodology, if you have solid arguments, the scientific community will verify them, because that is what they do, and voila, new knowledge for that area. But no, they believe that "methodology" is guesswork and Google search 😂😂😂....
Trying to force connect ancient Egypt to other cultures should be illegal.
Unless they were contemporary cultures that actually were in contact with each other. You don't want to get into Graham Hancock territory where he questions how Maltese sailors could possibly have adopted the eye of Horus on their ships without an advanced lost civilization introducing it to both.
Dr Kirsten Dzwiza has a wonderful channel on TH-cam on Egyptian archeology. Actual archeology with no aliens or alternative history.
I want to know why reading Welsh as if it were Polish works so well.
My question is always just, where do these theories come from, and what sort of stubbornness makes people insist upon them when they clearly don't care enough to make sure theyre verifiable or stand! Whats the theory in pursuit of!
Excellent video as always, thank you!
Surprisingly often, white supremacism and racism :/
I love how Editing Jimmy has Filming Jimmy's back!
@1:44 the jaw clinch is legendary! @1:50, the set up so great even the mighty Y Ddraig Goch took a smart step back.
So, there is a language based on saying words involved in phrases using alternate meanings of words with related meanings in a different (related) language. Cockney Rhyming Slang. This whole theory sounds like the cockney rhyming slang idea trying desperately to link unrelated languages.
The Flail almost certainly signifies wheat threshing, what flails were originally used for before some war gamers thought they made cool weapons.
My favourite etymology for "shadoof" is that it's onomatopœic, based on the sound the sack makes when plunging into the water.
Overall, it seems to be that the author(s) of this theory simply imagined a complex series of lame, Egypto-Welsh puns and mistook it for a theory. This mistake may be, alas, because attempts to tie the Brythonic languages to either far-flung countries or to the classical world have a long and embarrassing history, to say nothing of racist efforts to place Euro-Caucasian people (if I may coin such a term) as the founders of all civilization, around the world:
- Someone here, for example, might recall the contrived theory that connected the real figure of Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd to a bogus, pre-Columbian discovery of America, and even tried to connect him to the Mandan tribe owing to little more than a few false language clues and a shared boat design! 😆
- Also, I remember that as late as 1910, The Sherlock Holmes story "The Devil's Foot" had the great detective pursuing an amateur theory linking Cornish to "Chaldean" (i.e. Armaic) by way of Phoenician traders. 🙄
In summary, this kind of pseudo-history seems to have been genuinely mainstream thinking at one point, long ago, and this particular farce you're describing seems to be a kind of unhappy holdover.
Jimmy: "The Pharaos!"
My mind: "The Faroes!"
Me: wait, what??
Hey, at least they didn't also try to claim that both Welsh and Egyptian originally come from aliens?
...right?
(Also, oh no, does that mean Welsh has cases)
Very well done sir. It's about time more academics stopped ignoring and start ignoring junk science; as you point out, it's downright dangerous. It's also time for TV channels to shape up on this question and accept that broadcasting historical and archaeological conspiracy theory is irresponsible. Programmes debunking that sort of content should be commissioned instead.
People make history up and write about it to make money, pure and simple they have no other thought but their pockets.
I disagree. They also have their egos and their political agendas.
@@brooke_reiverrose2949 Ego and political agendas make money mongering as well... This is about a historical culture that the author is trying to appropriate for another culture, just like the "documentary" on Cleopatra, who has actual statues to this day in museums depicting her as a Macedonian in the Grecian style.
Wait, what?
How... Why... They are not even in the same family! Egyptian is Afro-Asiatic and Welsh is Indo-European!
I am even surprised someone came up with this idea...
But wait, if the Welsh are Egyptian, then the Vikings (intentional word usage here) are Egyptian too because runes are stone carvings meant to convey meaning also... right? (I'll close the door quietly on my way out and bring you chocolate next time I stop by)
They'd probably say they're Turks because Turks use similar runes.
I'm pretty sure the notion of Egyptians coming to Wales is *literally* from Pat Mills Slaine stories? Like.... Pat made it all up and it looks really cool but its explicitly so they could have cool looking stuff in Clint Langleys art in the books of invasions. They bring flame thrower pistols as well. Its really cool.
I just assumed the flail and crook were a reference to agriculture and domesticating animals. one is used for grains, and probably linen and paper making, the other tending livestock which provide food, hide, horn and glues. and along with earth materials make up concepts of animal, vegetable and mineral being the big catagories of existence.
Along similar lines, you could interpret the crook as a tool of coercion or chastisement (keeping your sheep on the path, by force if necessary). The combination of the grain flail and crook could symbolically represent the pharaoh's power to reward and punish in equal measure. That's just my idle speculation, though.
In my opinion, if a hypothesis does not consider a broad range of evidence, rather than one source, it should be dismissed as dishonest or conspiracy theory. It need not explain everything perfectly - and it would be suspicious if it did - but it should get a lot right. Claims on such narrow evidence is deliberately ignoring how other hypotheses are better explanations just so they can feel smart. That's dishonesty and you have a right to dismiss such advocates as liars or lunatics.
I think this might make a helluva lot more sense if i drink a bottle of mead bf I watch it again... which I most certainly will bc what?
Highly recommend