CHAT Greeks & Armenians (was: question - Turco-Japanese)

On Tuesday, November 23, 2004, at 05:36 , Roger Mills wrote:

> Something that has always intrigued me about Anatolia-- what happened to
> all
> the Greek- (and perhaps other-)speaking people who were there before the
> Turks came?
There were Greek substantial speaking cmmunities in Turkey until the 19th
century. The largest was in Cappadocia - but there were others in pontus,
Bithynia ans all down the Aegean coast. But with Greek wars of
independence feelings hardened & life became more and more unpleasant for
Greeks, and this was coupled with growing Turkish intolerance for
non-Turkish minorities (see below). They tended to leave for Greece. IIRC
the last remaining Greek enclave was around Smyrna (now Izmir) whence the
Greeks were expelled in 1922.

> Did their languages have no effect on Turkish??
No effect on turkish other than some borrowing of vocabulary. One
interesting example is _effendi_ from Greek αυθέντης /af'Tendis/
(traditional transliteration |authentes|). But there seems to have been
more borrowing in the other direction.

However, Turkish did have an effect on Greek spoken there. The dialects of
Cappadocia and Silli developed vowel harmony on the Turkish pattern. This
lead to the creation, for example, of two sets of endings for the present
tense of verbs:
-eu, -as, -a, -umi, -ati, -uši
-o, -es, -e, -ümi, -ete, -üši.

There was also Turkish influence on syntax as well as morphology. It is
sad that these dialects have now vanished for ever.

> Only the Armenians seem to have survived.
Well, till the 19th century, just like the Greeks. 1894 saw the first of
the Turkish massacres of Armenians, and these massacres were to continue
for the next twenty five years ('ethnic cleansing' was not a 20th century
invention). There are AFAIK now no Armenians in Anatolia. Armenians
survive today in Armenia (a small remnant of their former territory) and
the world-wide Armenian diaspora.

Ray
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