This article is still entirely too kind to Paul J.J. Payack who talks more twaddle about language than I can keep up with. Where other people publish papers, he publishes press releases. Where other people explain their methodology, he waves his hands. Where other people have a point, he has nothing. Bollocks. Rubbish. Squat. Sweet F.A. Jack.
It’s not even a David-vs.-Goliath issue, as he tries to make it out and as the reporter has positioned it. It’s not even an amateur vs. the professionals. Amateurs have always been welcomed in the American language trades and professions. Hell, that’s how I started. That’s how a lot of people I know started: they began as dilettantes and enthusiasts, made tentative contributions and developed bona fides, and the next thing you know, they’re editing a dictionary, teaching a linguistics class, writing up their theories for a journal, or writing a book on cool words (and not a book they paid to have published).
But this guy? He’s got little but claptrap.
Here’s what I had to say about some of his bunk before.
