> Philip Newton wrote:
> > On 2/13/06, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
> >
> >>"Vorderasien" includes Asia Minor, AFAIK -- in particular, the area
> >>currently covered by (Anatolian) Turkey.
> >
> >
> > See also
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorderasien , which gives a list
> > of countries considered to lie in that region. (According to the last
> > vandal to deface that page.)
>
> A rather large list - it extends further eastward than I had thought it
> would, which makes me wonder how accurate the last 'vandal' was :)
>
> It covers both what we Brits use to call the 'Near East' and 'Middle
> East' fifty years back when I was a youngster. But the whole lot
> nowadays is generally just called the 'Mid(dle) East' - American usage,
> I guess (presumably I live in what is 'near east' to them :)
>
> Maybe 'Vorderasien' has come to denote the same area of 'Mid(dle) east'
> in contemporary anglophone usage. But, in any case, it is clear it does
> include modern Turkey (aka Asia Minor, Kleinasien) where, as I have
> previously written, we know non-IE & non-semitic langs were spoken well
> into historic times.