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

On Friday, November 26, 2004, at 02:19 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:
[snip]
>
>> as the Turks in Anatolia.
>
> The Turks did have great numbers, but Greek didn't cease to be spoken
> in Anatolia in large numbers until Ataturk expelled all the Greek
> speakers in the 20th century.
Yep - and some forms of Greek vernacular were very interesting - but all
gone now.

>> 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??
>
> At the beginning of the 20th century, Greece and Turkey both had
> large numbers of Turkish/Greek minorities in their respective
> countries.  Under Ataturk, they agreed on a mutual exchange of
> population, which effectively eliminated Greek in Turkey and
> Turkish in Greece.
Yes, that's what I have been saying - but I didn't mention Atatürk   :)

>> Only the Armenians seem to have survived.
>
> Not so:  Kurdish, Laz (related to Georgian), and many others
> are still around:
Oh yes - some of my students were Kurds.
> <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Turkey+%28Asia%29>
>
> ==================================================
>
> Date:    Tue, 23 Nov 2004 19:37:57 +0100
> From:    Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
> Subject: Re: question - Turco-Japanese  (a thought experiment for the
>          group              here)
>
>> I've always wondered about this too. Why was Anatolia turkicized when
>> Iran never was. One should note, tho, that there were alot of
>> graecophones in Anatolia up to that little population exchange project
>> after WWI.
>
> Well, Iran partly *was* Turkicized.  We just call that part of Persia
> "Azerbaijan".  (Azeri is so close to Turkish that it is mostly mutually
> intelligible.)
There's also of course an independent Azerbaijan republic (having been a
former Soviet republic). The Azeri's are one of those peoples through whom
competing empires drove a political boundary at some former time - in this
case the competing empire's were those of Tsar and Shah.

There's also a Turcoman population in Iran. One of my Iranian colleagues
has Turcoman as his L1 & Farsi as his L2; his wife is a L1 Farsi speaker.
I understand Turcoman is also so close to Turkish that it is mostly
mutually intelligible.

[snip]
> =================================================================
[snip]
>> 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?
>
> These languages were certainly not descendents of Hittite,
Some think Lydian is ultimately of Hittite descend - but this is far from
certain.

> and
> in the case of Armenian, not even Anatolian.
Nope - nor apparently is Phrygian. Many think Phrygian & Armenian are
related.

> (Armenian has long been associated with Caucasian languages,
I think there can be no real doubt that Armenian is of IE origin - but it
has clearly been influenced and indeed appears to have been subject to
Iranian influence in early times.

> although Herodotus says the Armenians originated in the Balkans.)
The language is thought to be connected with the Thraco-Phrygian IE
languages. The Georgian name for the Armenians is 'Samekhi' where _Sa-_ is
a prefix; it is thought by some that -mekhi is derived from the name which
appears in cuneiform records as 'Muski' - a people who reached the upper
Euphrates at the beginning of 12th cent BCE.

It is likely however that the Armenians are not direct descendants of the
Muski. These IE imigrants seem to have imposed their language on the
non-IE Hirrians & Urartians and this may explain some of the peculiar and
unexplained features of Armenian.

Interestingly the the Armenians call themselves _Hayk'_ which is the
plural of _Hay_. Some people think that _Hay_ is ultimately derived from
_hatti-_ "Hittite" - not meaning that Armenian is descended from Hittite,
which as Thomas says is certainly not so, but that the ancestors of the
Armenians at some time presumably considered themselves heirs of the
Hittite heritage. (A bit like the way the modern inhabitants of my island
consider themselves British, tho in most cases their language is not
derived from ancient British) Personally I am a little skeptical about the
connexion of _Hay_ with _hatii-_.

Ray
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