From Notes on Amateur Linguistics

In modern publications, amateur reasoning about the origin of words has become noticeably widespread, based not on the science of historical linguistics, but on the naive assumption that such reasoning requires no special knowledge, just simple guesses. Often, based on... amateur conjectures about the origin of words, completely fantastical conclusions about the history of entire nations are drawn in such works. In A. A. Zaliznyak's work "From Notes on Amateur Linguistics," it is shown how such reasoning differs from professional linguistics and why they have no chance of uncovering the true history of words. Special attention is paid to the brightest example of the use of amateur linguistics to construct a fictitious history of many countries - the so-called "new chronology" of A. T. Fomenko. The second edition also includes the article "On the Veles Book"