[evilfred]

who at Rutgers and Cambridge? did he just email some random linguistics profs? why not classics? and did they respond out of genuine interest or just trying to let an enthusiastic amateur down gently?

i am sorry but "crank" is the correct term for the many amateurs who routinely email mathematicians, physicists, and apparently linguists with their special theories without having any academic experience in the field. for every anecdote where it panned out there are thousands of cases where it did not.