Who Is the "Idiot" Here?

 

Who Is the "Idiot" Here?

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Here is a tweet today (14-10-2022), with respect to my latest article on Pṛthu-Parśu in the Dāśarājña Hymn, by that goon who had made tall claims about having "shattered" my article on the Proto-Indo-European word for the Elephant, and only succeeded in making a fool of himself in the process:

Brazen and shameless as ever, and never averse to giving more and newer examples of his vacuous mind, he continues to use terms like "idiot" without in any way being able to substantiate his point. The above tweet shows who is the idiot. Taking a leaf out of his idol Michael Witzel's book, he uses the old and jaded Witzellian tactic of pointing out things I have "not mentioned" but which, in his self-appointed expert opinion, I should have "mentioned", and congratulates himself that in the process he has shown me to be wrong or illiterate in the subject!

I wish this idiot would explain to his admiring fans exactly what is there in the above "sub-patterns" that proves me wrong in what I wrote in my earlier article. By giving text-book quotations of this kind, utterly irrelevant to the exact point being discussed, he is only showing up his own utter stupidity and obtuseness.

To make matters worse, he tweets again on the same topic where he had earlier disgraced himself:

What "better etymologies"? This, remember, is the same idiot who had written: "words for “elephant; ivory” were getting borrowed around in the area in antiquity. The ultimate origin might be an Afroasiatic (or another African) language, or it might be India, or a mixture of both".

Instead of simply indulging in abuse under the impression that he is some kind of superior and super-knowledgeable scholar on this matter, I wish that he would take some trouble and think up "better might-be etymologies" for the various Indo-European words for elephant (ibha, lahpa, elephas and ebur) based on this unique and path-breaking concept of words derived from a "mixture of both African and Indian languages", or at least cite all the scholars who have produced lists of such amazing multi-geographic words in antiquity! He could even receive a Nobel Prize in Linguistics, a new category created only to honor him for this new discovery.

I should not have given any importance to the bluff ranting of this puffed up ignoramus who thinks he is an expert. But sometimes such overblown balloons require to be punctured.