Wonder how The Orthodoxy in science are taking this?
I’m not quite a member of The Orthodoxy, but I am sympathetic in this case. I have studied Algonquian languages on an amateur level anyway, and I saw nothing on this person’s Web page that backed up his assertions.
Let’s run through the numbers. Old Norse:
1 einn
2 tveir
3 þrír
4 fjórir
5 fimm
6 sex
7 sjau
8 átta
9 níu
10 tíu
And now Lenape:
1. nkwëti
2. niša
3. naxa
4. newa
5. nalan
6. nkwëtaš
7. nišaš
8. xaš
9. pèškunk
10. tèlën
Not seeing much in common there. And numbers are very conservative linguistically—if two languages are related you can typically see it pretty easily in their number names.
Just to be clear, I’m not at all dissing the prospect that the Norse made it here. That they did is pretty well established at L’Anse Aux Meadows, and I actually believe that the Irish were here before them—because that’s what the Norse themselves said. But if we’re going to prove that kind of contact, let’s prove it with sound methodology.
Trying to make Algonquin a variation of Norse is as silly as trying to make Chinese a dialect of Latin.