Here is an excellent essay on Riplinger's "linguistic" theories. (The quotes there mean there is nothing at all linguistic about Gail R. 
)--
http://watch.pair.com/TR-1-textus-receptus.html
Note that I am not recommending the website as a whole, not knowing much else about it other than this article. But the author does a good job of exposing the secular thinkers behind Riplinger's theories.
So the Margaret Magnus that Riplinger thinks so much of is a weird unbeliever who thinks that letters have spirits in them. The other one she depends a lot on is Isaac Mozeson, who has come up with a weird theory he calls Edenics, which is the idea that all languages come from Hebrew, which he says was the language of Adam and Eve. He is a literature prof, not a linguist (though Riplinger calls him one), and all he and his cohorts do to prove their theory is find similar sounds in similar words in different languages. (I got a real kick out of the supposed Japanese parallels in Edenics. :laugh The Edenics "scholars," however, miss a minor point, which is that grammar is incredibly different in different languages! Guess what: God really did mix up the languages at Babel!
A few examples of how different grammar can be: Japanese has no articles; Chinese has no verb tenses; Japanese and Chinese both use particles to indicate possession, but English and Greek use word endings for possession, though in a very different way; Greek and English have infinitives, but Asian languages usually do not; Japanese word order always has the verb last--always, but Indo-European languages seldom do, except for Latin, which often does. So with all of these differences (and many more), it is about as likely that all languages came from the same source as that apples grow on banana trees! Riplinger resorts to some bizarre people for her theories!
)--http://watch.pair.com/TR-1-textus-receptus.html
Note that I am not recommending the website as a whole, not knowing much else about it other than this article. But the author does a good job of exposing the secular thinkers behind Riplinger's theories.
So the Margaret Magnus that Riplinger thinks so much of is a weird unbeliever who thinks that letters have spirits in them. The other one she depends a lot on is Isaac Mozeson, who has come up with a weird theory he calls Edenics, which is the idea that all languages come from Hebrew, which he says was the language of Adam and Eve. He is a literature prof, not a linguist (though Riplinger calls him one), and all he and his cohorts do to prove their theory is find similar sounds in similar words in different languages. (I got a real kick out of the supposed Japanese parallels in Edenics. :laugh
The Edenics "scholars," however, miss a minor point, which is that grammar is incredibly different in different languages! Guess what: God really did mix up the languages at Babel!A few examples of how different grammar can be: Japanese has no articles; Chinese has no verb tenses; Japanese and Chinese both use particles to indicate possession, but English and Greek use word endings for possession, though in a very different way; Greek and English have infinitives, but Asian languages usually do not; Japanese word order always has the verb last--always, but Indo-European languages seldom do, except for Latin, which often does. So with all of these differences (and many more), it is about as likely that all languages came from the same source as that apples grow on banana trees! Riplinger resorts to some bizarre people for her theories!
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