Re: question - Turco-Japanese (a thought experiment for the group here)

Andreas wrote:

(I 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? Did their languages have no effect on Turkish??Only the
> > Armenians seem to have survived.
>
> I've always wondered about this too. Why was Anatolia turkicized when Iran
> never
> was.
I don't know either. But wasn't Persia fairly powerful in those days?
Compared to that, the Byzantine homeland probably looked like easy pickins
(decadent infidels etc.); and perhaps the Turks had scruples about attacking
fellow Moslems? Wouldn't be kosh.... umm, halal :-)
(Even if they were *&%# Shiite heretics. Interesting too, IIRC, that Persian
was a prestige (literary) language during Ottoman times.)

Charlie and Rodlox have pointed out the survival of Greek and other
populations in the Ottoman period. Clearly the Georgians must have fled, and
Armenians lost much of their territory.  I was thinking more of the much
earlier groups-- the Phrygians, Lydians, Lycians-- some of whom did survive
at least into the early Christian Era, and whose languages _might_ have
survived in enclaves for a little longer. But it's probably true that they'd
been assimilated to Greek language by, say, 10-1100 C.E., and certainly by
1453.

Looking back even further, one might ask, Whatever became of the Hittites
(linguistically)?  AFAIK, there's great doubt about whether Phrygian, Lydian
et al. and/or Armenian, in any way represent descendants or relatives of
Hittite. Was Hittite a total dead-end?

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