The Macedonian language
Erland Sommarskog
Another one. In Svensk Uppslagsbok, a major Swedish encyclopedia
I find the following entry:
MACEDONIAN LANGAUGE - Extinct Indo-European language, which
were spoken in the old Macedonia. Of the names and the
glossary retained, one is rather inclined for the assumption
that is has been closer related to Greek.
The book is printed in 1951, so the modern Macedonian language was
a bit too modern to make it into the encyclopedia at the time. But
really what animal do they talk of above? The Macedonians that
Alexender the Great rules over were Greeks every one says, and
I can find nothing which would dispute it. But who spoke Macedonian?
And when? Or are the authors completely confused? (Certainly the
inaccurate langauge - "rather inclined for the assumption" - is
out of place in a encyclopedia.)
--
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - som...@enea.se
Steve Anderson
"Thraco-Phrygien" - a group otherwise composed of two languages
(Thracian and Phrygian, natch) that are known from ancient tradition
but not really from much textual evidence. Thracian seems to have been
known (in 1952) from one essentially uninterpretable short inscription
and some proper names; Phrygian from some short formulaic inscriptions
(8th to 5th century BC, 1st-2nd century AD, Western Central Anatolia
according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Linguistics) and some more
proper names. According to "the ancients" Phrygian was the ancestor of
Armenian (Meillet, Introduction).
In this context,
"Macedonian is no better known. The documents we possess (glosses and
proper names) do not make it possible to decide whether it must be
considered a separate group [within I-E] or as a member of one of the
existing groups. Some linguists are inclined to see in it a special
and rather aberrant form of Hellenic [Greek]." [Meillet & Cohen 1952,
p. 38, my translation]
The connection with "Thraco-Phrygian" seems to be mostly a matter of
lumping the unknowns together.
The Oxford Encyclopedia [1992; vol. 2, p. 86] says that "the status of
ancient Macedonian as a possible immediate sister to Greek is unclear
because of its limited attestation" so things don't seem to have
gotten much clearer since the 50's.
--Steve Anderson
Constantinos A. Caroutas
(Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Another one. In Svensk Uppslagsbok, a major Swedish encyclopedia
>I find the following entry:
> MACEDONIAN LANGAUGE - Extinct Indo-European language, which
> were spoken in the old Macedonia. Of the names and the
> glossary retained, one is rather inclined for the assumption
> that is has been closer related to Greek.
Makedonian was a dialect of Greek and not a separate language. Just
like Dorian. I've seen several dictionaries that list the Indo-
european languages (present and past and the relationship among them)
and none lists Makedonian.
>The book is printed in 1951
Try a newer edition.
>And when? Or are the authors completely confused? (Certainly the
>inaccurate langauge - "rather inclined for the assumption" - is
>out of place in a encyclopedia.)
Indeed, it is out of place in an encyclopedia, but it could happen.
Constantinos A. Caroutas
*******************************************************************************
* "Horny horns!! * from "Vibeology" *
* I'm in a funky way * Paula Abdul *
* A give me that vibe" * SPELLBOUND (1991) *
*******************************************************************************
89u...@csdvax.csd.unsw.edu.au
You are either liying or your encclopedia is false. It is of no dispute
that ancient macedonies are Greeks. Just vist Macedonia. There are arond 60000
artifacts found that are vsibly Greek. The Greek language is the only one
represented on them.
Try again.
George T.
Constantinos A. Caroutas
po...@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) writes:
>
>Sorry, but the Encyclopaedia is quite correct, and this outburst
>is unjustified. It is not clear whether the Macedonians were
>Greek and what their language was. It is clear that Macedonia
>came under strong Greek cultural influence, easily sufficient to
>account for lots of Greek artifacts being found there and for the
>Greek language being written on them.
But shouldn't there be anything to account for a previous language
if it existed?
>Greek nationalists get hot under the collar about this issue because
>they don't like the idea of Alexander, who become ruler of Greece
>and then of much of the world, being a barbarian, and because
The ancient olympics were open to Greeks only and Makedonians were
allowed to participate. So they were Greeks.
>of the territorial disputes about Macedonia, but if we ignore
>politics and look at the objective history, the fact is that we don't
>really know who the Macedonians were.
We do. They were a Greek tribe. Political reasons make some to
claim otherwise.
Christos Frouzakis
Oh yeah? Lets see:
1. Mythology.
a. Olympos was the mountain of the 12 gods the Greeks believed in.
Can you please explain (if you assume that Macedonians were
barbarians=not greeks, according to the belief of the greeks at that
time) how the greeks would accept a mountain in Macedonia
to be the home of their gods?
b. According to Hesiod, Makedon (the ancestor of Makedonians) and
Magnitas (ancestor of the people who lived in Thessaly) were sons of
Zeus and Pandora, and they lived in Olumpos.
2. Where did the kings of Makedonia came from?
there are two different opinions:
a. according to Herodotus, the first king of macedonia was Perdikas who
was from the family of the king of Argos Timenos who in turn came from
Hercules.
b. according to Theopompos, the first king was Karanos, brother of the
king of Argos, Pheidon. Karanos left Argos and went to Makedonia
where he became king the 9th century BC. He build the capital in
Aiges, where a flock of goats, that he was following according to the
advice of the oracle of Delphi, stopped (aiga (Gk) = goat). Coins of
the Makedonian dynasty show a goat on one side.
c. In the palace of the Makedonian kings in the area of Bergina (Aiges)
a piece of marble with the sign "IRAKLI PATRWO", i.e. "to our father
Hercules" and coins showing Hercules were found, verifying that
the Makedonians kings were descendants of Hercules.
To the same fact agree all the historians of the time (Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Isocrates).
3. History.
Homer in Iliad refers to different greek people that
lived in Makedonia and took part in the Trojan war .
Stravon also refers to the same, and also writes:
"estin men oun Ellas kai i Makedonia" which means:
"and of course Makedonia is Greece (Hellas)" (Stravon, VII Frg, 39)
Herodotus writes: "those that come from Perdikas are Greeks, as they
want to be, and as I know they are" (Herodotus, V 22,1). According to
Herodotus, part of the Macedonians moved to Doris, where they mixed
with other hellenic groups, and later moved to Peloponnisos, conquered
Argos and became known as Dorians (Herodotus, I, 56,3). Finally,
he also writes about the sea battle in Artemision:
" Part took the Lacedemonians with 16 ships, the Korinthians...
the Sicyonians,... the Epidavrians, ... the Trizinians and the
Ermionians, all of them were Dorians and Makedonians, who came
lately from Erineos and Pindos" (Herodotus, VIII, 43).
Alexander the first, when ambassadors from Persia came to
visit his father Amyntas, who was the king in Makedonia at the time,
told them:" tell your king that sent you, that a Greek, ruler of
Makedonia, treated you well" (Herodotus, V, 20,4).
I could go on with references from other historians/
geographers/biographers (Thucydides, Arrianos, Pausanias, Plutarch,
who cover a very extensive time period)
or to the part that Makedonians took in the religious and cultural
events of the rest of Greece (again, how could a non greek be allowed
to take part),
or to the thousands of findings that were found all over Makedonia,
and testify for the hellenism of Macedonians but i believe this
should be enough to convice you about that.
one more note: the last few days we have seen articles that doubt
the "greekness" and history of almost every part of Greece.
don't you guys have anything better to do? i, and i believe most
of the greek netters, are ...
so please, next time do your homework before posting - we had enough
doing it for you !!!!
-x.
Anestis Toptsis
Dear netters:
I received the following message and I post it here for those who
are interested. I translated the text from Greek, since it would
take too much pain to type Greek with English characters. If you
want, send me a note and I can fax the Greek text to you.
anestis toptsis
York U.
Toronto, Canada
mail: ane...@cs.yorku.ca
phone: (416) 736-5232
fax: (416) 736-5773
-------------------------------------------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENT
The General Assemply of the Faculty of Science of the Univ. of Ioannina
announces the opening of (2) two Professorships in the Dept. of Computer
Science. The sought specialization is in the area of "Information Systems"
with emphasis on the following: Computer architecture, parallel computers,
microcomputers, networks, systems programming, operating systems, databases,
systems analysis, management information systems.
The positions are: A) one for "kathigiti" (i.e. Full Professor )
and B) one for "epikouro kathigiti" (Assistant Professor ?).
The announcement has been posted in FEK # 40/23-12-1991 (t. parartima)
and the deadline for applications is 23-2-1992.
For more information: Mr. Vasiliou (Secratary of Faculty) -
phone: (0651) 38-855
IOANNINA, 13 January 1992
O Kosmitoras tis Sholis
Dionisios Metaxas (signature)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anestis A. Toptsis | Email: ane...@cs.yorku.ca
Dept. of Computer Science and Mathematics | Fax: (416) 736-5773
York University, Atkinson College | Phone: (416) 736-5232
Anestis Toptsis
Rich Alderson
>1. Mythology.
>2. Where did the kings of Makedonia came from?
All of this, while very interesting, has nothing to do with the question of the
*LANGUAGE* of the Macedonians. Their culture may have been heavily influenced
by the Greeks, they may even have had rulers whose ancestry was Greek (although
accepting descent from Herakles is shaky, IMO), but that does not mean that
they *spoke* a Greek dialect. We simply do not know enough about the language
to say.
I've directed followups to soc.culture.greek. I will ignore all non-language-
related mail on this topic, so don't bother to flame.
--
Rich Alderson 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take
such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
--J. R. R. Tolkien,
alde...@leland.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
Philip Santas
In article <1992Jan30.1...@leland.Stanford.EDU> alde...@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>
>All of this, while very interesting, has nothing to do with the question of the
>*LANGUAGE* of the Macedonians. Their culture may have been heavily influenced
>by the Greeks, they may even have had rulers whose ancestry was Greek (although
>accepting descent from Herakles is shaky, IMO), but that does not mean that
>they *spoke* a Greek dialect. We simply do not know enough about the language
>to say.
How do we know about the languages of the ancient civilizations, if
not by scripts? Except a small percentage of population (kings, philosophers,
teachers, officers, etc) all the rest had very few to do with writting.
What proof do you wish to have about the language of ancient Macedonians?
(by any chance, how do you know what language the Slavs were speaking?).
Among others you make an interesting statement: Macedonians were ruled by
Greeks while they were rulling Greeks! Actually Macedonians were Greeks,
in the sence that Spartians and Athenians were (something else: how do
you know what language they were speaking in Sparta? do you doubt also that
Spartians were Greek?)
Serious answers to this can give an end to all this dispute.
Filippos Santas
89u...@csdvax.csd.unsw.edu.au
>> You are either liying or your encclopedia is false. It is of no dispute
>>that ancient macedonies are Greeks. Just vist Macedonia. There are arond 60000
>>artifacts found that are vsibly Greek. The Greek language is the only one
>>represented on them.
>
> is unjustified. It is not clear whether the Macedonians were
> Greek and what their language was. It is clear that Macedonia
> came under strong Greek cultural influence, easily sufficient to
> account for lots of Greek artifacts being found there and for the
> Greek language being written on them.
That could be accepted if that was not the only language. But Greek is
the only language. Also from the recent findings we have found out a lot about
the everyday lives and it is quite obvious that they were Greek. Also for the
matter of Alexander the Great his campain to concer the (known) world was in
his words to liberate them from ignorance in the arts and science. What he
spread was the Greek language and way of thought. So how can you think, because
it is you alone that thinks so. The life of macedoniens is very evident what it
was like from there own soutces as well as others.
>
> Greek nationalists get hot under the collar about this issue because
> they don't like the idea of Alexander, who become ruler of Greece
> and then of much of the world, being a barbarian,
Well then Romans are Greeks and Turks are Greeks and even the Germans
in the 40's are Greeks. That is what Greeks should think with that logic.
and because
> of the territorial disputes about Macedonia,
The current people that state that they are macedonian had nothing to
do with ancient macedoniens. They have a double face. They sometimes state that
they are not decendents of ancient macedonia and othertimes ther propaganda
disputes them. They use the ancient symbols of macedonia as well as the modern
ones.
> but if we ignore
> politics and look at the objective history, the fact is that we don't
> really know who the Macedonians were.
>
Or we (you that is) don't want to know. There are so many facts that
would dispute what you say. The first that comes to mind is that in the
Olymbic games only Greeks were allowed to take part. Barbariens (At the time
the word used for foreiners) were excluded. MACEDONIENS took part allways.
> Bill
Goeorge.
PS. Check your sources if they are current then.
89u...@csdvax.csd.unsw.edu.au
> In article <1992Jan29.1...@Princeton.EDU>, cfrousak@arnold (Christos Frouzakis) writes:
>>1. Mythology.
>>2. Where did the kings of Makedonia came from?
>>3. History.
>
> All of this, while very interesting, has nothing to do with the question of the
> *LANGUAGE* of the Macedonians. Their culture may have been heavily influenced
> by the Greeks, they may even have had rulers whose ancestry was Greek (although
> accepting descent from Herakles is shaky, IMO), but that does not mean that
> they *spoke* a Greek dialect. We simply do not know enough about the language
> to say.
>
speeking. What we do have is inscriptions in Greek how they considered them
selves (ie. Greek) what they were refered to by foreiners ie Greek again. As to
the mention of Herales as a decendent that shows what they are. Herakles was a
Greek and therfor they were as well, thas all. Tha language has changed, Greek
dialects exiast and are vastly diffren today. There are Greeks from russia and
you cannot understand a word unless spoken slowly or written. Theie dialect and
words are extreemly close to ancient Greek. And another point about dialect, in
a theater play from ancient Greece (can't recall his name but I've seen one of
his plays and it was extreemly funny) he mentions that sheep would go bi ie
biiii sound if read now. Showing that the i sound was actualy e in ancient
Greek. Even colours have changed. Black was red ie. the blood would flow dark
balck.
> I've directed followups to soc.culture.greek. I will ignore all non-language-
> related mail on this topic, so don't bother to flame.
> --
Well this is about language although you mention herakles (Hercules).
> Rich Alderson 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take
> such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
> --J. R. R. Tolkien,
> alde...@leland.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
George T.
Rich Alderson
Santas) writes:
>In article <1992Jan30.1...@leland.Stanford.EDU>
>alde...@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>>All of this, while very interesting, has nothing to do with the question of
>>the *LANGUAGE* of the Macedonians. Their culture may have been heavily
>>influenced by the Greeks, they may even have had rulers whose ancestry was
>>Greek (although accepting descent from Herakles is shaky, IMO), but that does
>>not mean that they *spoke* a Greek dialect. We simply do not know enough
>>about the language to say.
>How do we know about the languages of the ancient civilizations, if not by
>scripts? Except a small percentage of population (kings, philosophers,
>teachers, officers, etc) all the rest had very few to do with writting.
Do not mistake "script" for language: The same script, for example, is used to
write English, German, Italian, and Swahili, but one would not want to say that
they are therefore the same language. The same is true for the inscriptions
usually identified as Macedonian: They are in Greek script, but they are
clearly not Greek in language.
>What proof do you wish to have about the language of ancient Macedonians?
At least one long bilingual inscription. Lacking that, a very large corpus of
long monolingual inscriptions with clear referents.
>(by any chance, how do you know what language the Slavs were speaking?).
At the time under discussion, Common Slavic if not Common Balto-Slavic.
I am a linguist. That means that I do not take into consideration issues such
as ethnicity when discussing language. Thus, Slavs of the period (if Common
Slavic had differentiated from Common Balto-Slavic by then) are identified by
the fact that they spoke that language, and not by what they looked like, what
they dressed like, what they ate, or anything else than their language.
And the same goes for any other group: Their culture is unimportant with
respect to what language they spoke.
>Among others you make an interesting statement: Macedonians were ruled by
>Greeks while they were rulling Greeks! Actually Macedonians were Greeks, in
>the sence that Spartians and Athenians were (something else: how do you know
>what language they were speaking in Sparta? do you doubt also that Spartians
>were Greek?)
Read what I said more carefully: That the rulers of the Macedonians may have
had Greek ancestors--although I do not take this as proven. In any case, the
rulers in question would have been no more Greek by the time of Alexander than
the Normans ruling England were Vikings, or even French, after a similar amount
of time.
We have clear inscriptions in Lakedaimonian Greek, and a good understanding of
the differences between the dialects of Sparta and Attica. We have a similar
understanding of the differences among the other Greek dialects, whether Doric,
Aeolian, Arcado-Cypriot, or Attic-Ionic, and can read all of them.
We do not have such an understanding of Macedonian.
>Serious answers to this can give an end to all this dispute.
These answers are serious, but I doubt that they will end the dispute, because
it is an emotional matter rather than a scientific one. But thank you for
asking questions about *language* on sci.lang.
Once again, I will ignore any flames regarding this discussion. If anyone
wishes to discuss the language issue further, please feel free to post to
sci.lang, but keep the non-language posts out of that newsgroup. Otherwise,
please note that followups are once again directed to soc.culture.greek.
Constantinos A. Caroutas
alde...@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>
>usually identified as Macedonian: They are in Greek script, but they are
>clearly not Greek in language.
>>What proof do you wish to have about the language of ancient Macedonians?
>
>At least one long bilingual inscription. Lacking that, a very large corpus of
>long monolingual inscriptions with clear referents.
If I'm not mistaken, several people said in their postings that a
large number of inscriptions in Greek were found.
Alex Gerbessiotis
From: som...@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
>The book is printed in 1951, so the modern Macedonian language was
>a bit too modern to make it into the encyclopedia at the time. But
>really what animal do they talk of above? The Macedonians that
>Alexender the Great rules over were Greeks every one says, and
>I can find nothing which would dispute it. But who spoke Macedonian?
>And when? Or are the authors completely confused? (Certainly the
>inaccurate langauge - "rather inclined for the assumption" - is
>out of place in a encyclopedia.)
Every greek tribe used to speak its own dialect till about the time of
Alexander the Great. He had the idea of using as a common means of
communication, say to distinguish between the attic "ymeis" - the
english "you"` in plural- from the doric "ymes", to the macedonian
"ymmes" (hm, it may be the other way around between "ymes" and "ymmes"),
he chose the one of the attic dialect (ie. "ymeis"). As a result of this
at the hellenistic times and later on the attic dialect
seemed to be the prevalent one and all the other dialects existed only in
dictionaries (that showed differences from the speaking , i.e. attic,
language) or spoken in small areas or
by scholars or as a second dialect. This is more or less preserved
till nowadays, where in various regions of greeks local dialects are
preserved along with the spoken language.
>Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - som...@enea.se
Alexandros Gerbessiotis
---
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself
Alex Gerbessiotis
From: po...@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser)
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
>Sorry, but the Encyclopaedia is quite correct, and this outburst
>is unjustified. It is not clear whether the Macedonians were
>Greek and what their language was. It is clear that Macedonia
>came under strong Greek cultural influence, easily sufficient to
>account for lots of Greek artifacts being found there and for the
>Greek language being written on them.
No your latter statement is not correct. Better check some
recent works such as
N. G. L. Hammond "The history that was Macedonia"
Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1991
or
R. M. Errington "History of MAcedonia"
Berkeley, Univ of Cal. Press, 1991
If you have read some previous posting of mine you may have seen
some evidence that can't justify "hellenisation" of any kind.
>Greek nationalists get hot under the collar about this issue because
>they don't like the idea of Alexander, who become ruler of Greece
>and then of much of the world, being a barbarian, and because
>of the territorial disputes about Macedonia, but if we ignore
>politics and look at the objective history, the fact is that we don't
>really know who the Macedonians were.
No, historical evidence say so (and recent 1977 and then) excavations
in Vergina, Dion etc attest this.
> Bill
Alex Gerbessiotis
From: alde...@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
>In article <1992Jan29.1...@Princeton.EDU>, cfrousak@arnold (Christos Frouzakis) writes:
>>1. Mythology.
>>2. Where did the kings of Makedonia came from?
>>3. History.
>
>All of this, while very interesting, has nothing to do with the question of the
>*LANGUAGE* of the Macedonians. Their culture may have been heavily influenced
>by the Greeks, they may even have had rulers whose ancestry was Greek (although
>accepting descent from Herakles is shaky, IMO), but that does not mean that
>they *spoke* a Greek dialect. We simply do not know enough about the language
>to say.
Historical evidence gives a definite answer.
Check the following two books:
N. G. L. Hammond "The history that was Macedonia"
Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1991
or
R. M. Errington "History of MAcedonia"
Berkeley, Univ of Cal. Press, 1991
(just read the first few pages)
For a discussion on the dialect of Greek spoken by the Macedonians
there is a chapter devoted to it in a book
with an approximate title
Macedonia: 4000 years of Greek history and civilisation.
edited by Prof. M. Sakellariou
No, historical evidence say so (and recent 1977 and then) excavations
in Vergina, Dion etc attest this.
The dialect spoken by the residents of the ancient Macedonia
(aka Macedonians) was a greek one. So are many names (and the names of
their fathers) on tombs of persons excavated by Prof. M. Andronikos,
among other ones, in Vergina (ancient Aegae). The tombs belong to
Macedonians (the real ones not the ones of the Skopjan type). These names
are of periods well before the
close contacts of Philippos with Southern Greece, and thus
one cannot claim (the way Skopjans do) that these tombs belong to
"hellenised" Macedonians.
The names of months used by the Macedonians were also greek (and had
nothing in common with the names used by the Athenians,
who were supposedly the ones who "hellenised" Macedonians).
Not very surpiringly to historians (who say that Macedonians were
Dorians, or better, the name Dorians were given to the Macedonians
who moved to Peloponnesos, as also mentioned by Herodotos) the month
names used by the Lacedaemonians
(aka Spartans, who were Dorians) have common names with those used
by the Macedonians and those found in Delphi (such as Apellaios,
Artemisios).
The artifacts simply support these pieces of evidence. Macedonia, as
an area and in population (since it, like Thessaly and Ipeiros,
was a kingdom rather than a city state) was much larger that Athens,
and at that time no such
city-state had the resources to "hellenise" Macedonia. Note also that
Euripides taught tragedies in Macedonia. It would be very interesting
one to explain how within a few years one can speak
greek fluently enough to understand tragedies.
>
>I've directed followups to soc.culture.greek. I will ignore all non-language-
>related mail on this topic, so don't bother to flame.
>--
>Rich Alderson 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take
> such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
> --J. R. R. Tolkien,
>alde...@leland.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
>
Alexandros Gerbessiotis
Rich Alderson
>If I'm not mistaken, several people said in their postings that a large number
>of inscriptions in Greek were found.
No one is disputing the existence of Greek inscriptions in Macedonia.
However, there are inscriptions in another language, written using Greek script
but clearly not Greek. Those inscriptions are given the name "Macedonian."
The question to be answered is, "How is *that* language related to Greek and
the other Indo-European languages?"
Michael Scordilis
>>What proof do you wish to have about the language of ancient Macedonians?
>
>At least one long bilingual inscription. Lacking that, a very large corpus of
>long monolingual inscriptions with clear referents.
By this statement, you are clearly supporting the thesis that the ancient
Macedonians spoke a langauge other that Greek. Can you substantiate your
claim?
It is futile to demand a "Rosetta" stone from ancient Macedonian to ancient
Attic because the language was basically the same. Isn't this plausible?
Many names and scripts with clear Greek compositions exist. The lack of
any extensive literary works is a natural result of the type of society of
ancient Macedonians. This is true with many other Greek city/territory
states.
Also, what period are we talking about? Pre-500 BC, very little exists
in most of Greece in terms of hard evidence of long literary works.
Aren't you overly demanding of the military-state of early Macedonia?
>Thus, Slavs of the period (if Common
>Slavic had differentiated from Common Balto-Slavic by then) are identified by
>the fact that they spoke that language, and not by what they looked like, what
How do we know what the Slavs spoke before they had any literary works?
>alde...@leland.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
Michael Scordilis
Michael Scordilis |internet mis...@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU
ee eng, uni of melbourne |uunet ..!uunet!munnari!mullian!miscord
parkville, vic 3052 |fax +[613] 344 6678
australia |phone +[613] 344 6800
George S Kardaras
>
>clearly not Greek in language.
>
Mr. Alderson,
I'm terribly sorry to inform you that you talk nonsense. Why?
"HRAKLH PATRWW" [inscription found in the enormous palace of the Macedonian
kings that was uncovered in the area of Vergina (Aegea)]
"PAR HREAS ARGEIAIS EMI TON AETHLON" [inscription found on a tripod from the
Vergina excavations]
"ANTHESTIA... OPLIOY APELEYTHERA IOYKOYNDA AFRODEITHI YPOLYMPIDIA KAI KOLWSI"
[inscription on the base of a statue from
the temple of Artemis Isis]
"THEOTIMOS PARMENIWNOS" [inscription on a grave pillar]
These are some of the inscriptions I remember. I hope you won't disagree
that they are "clearly Greek in language".
BTW, there is a well-known person who will strongly disagree with what
you said. The President Francois Mitterand of France during his visit to
Macedonia while being in Greece said:"I did not know the wonderful results
of the Vergina excavations, nor that the stamps of GREECE appears here so
intensely" [Ellinikos Borras, Sept. 7, 1982].
>alde...@leland.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
Mr. Alderson, I'd advise you visit one of the libraries at Stanford and read
some textbooks on the subject. You'll immediately see what you stated above
is completely wrong and you will certainly get out of the lost road.
As a conclusion, I would like to repeat the wise words of the Macedonian
philosopher Aristotle:
"HDEIA ESTI TOY MEN PARONTOS H ENERGEIA
TOY DE MELLONTOS H ELPIS
TWN DE GEGENEMENWN H MNHMH"
George S Kardaras
PS> I'm looking forward to read the English translations of the above
inscriptions from all those "Macedonians" who state that the Macedonian
language is not Greek, but the one spoken around Skopje.
Erland Sommarskog
>Rich Alderson (alde...@elaine46.Stanford.EDU) writes:
>>All of this, while very interesting, has nothing to do with the question of
>>the *LANGUAGE* of the Macedonians. Their culture may have been heavily
>>influenced by the Greeks, they may even have had rulers whose ancestry was
>>Greek (although accepting descent from Herakles is shaky, IMO), but that
>>does not mean that they *spoke* a Greek dialect. We simply do not know
>>enough about the language to say.
>
>How do we know about the languages of the ancient civilizations, if
>not by scripts? Except a small percentage of population (kings, philosophers,
>teachers, officers, etc) all the rest had very few to do with writting.
You got it spot. If a only a minority were involved in writing, how
can we then know what the rest spoke? If you dig up writings of
monks in various places at various time, you may conclude that
Latin was the language of the area. We know it wasn't. But they
wrote in Latin of various reasons. And if some archeologist digs
up some late 20th centutry technical documentation in Sweden, Greece
or anywhere else, he could conclude that the language of the place
was English.
Assume for a moment that the Macedonians originally indeed spoke a
non-Greek language. They didn't have much of a written language, and
didn't have much need of a written language either. Now this people
comes in contact with the Greeks and their superior culture in one way
or another. They see the beneficial in a written language, so they
start to write in, guess what, Greek of course. As they find their
own language barbaric, they more and more prefer to use Greek - and
probably this also helped trade and other contacts with Greeks - the
educated class of Macedonia became more and more Greek with regards
to language. And by time this spread to the common people and Mace-
donian became more and more rare. Since this process had been going
on for a long time, it seems pefectly conceivable, that by the days
of Alexander, Macedonians were completely hellenized and the Macedonian
language was no more.
Now, please notice that the above paragraph is just a hypothetical
reasoning from my side. But it seems to me difficult to refute it -
just as difficult as it would be to confirm it. For a parallel, compare
the fate of the Gaul language. The Gauls never were exterminated, they
just by and by adopted Latin as their language.
--
Philip Santas
In article <1992Feb1.1...@enea.se> som...@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Philip Santas (san...@inf.ethz.ch) writes:
>>
>>How do we know about the languages of the ancient civilizations, if
>>not by scripts? Except a small percentage of population (kings, philosophers,
>>teachers, officers, etc) all the rest had very few to do with writting.
>
>You got it spot. If a only a minority were involved in writing, how
>can we then know what the rest spoke? If you dig up writings of
>monks in various places at various time, you may conclude that
>Latin was the language of the area. We know it wasn't. But they
>wrote in Latin of various reasons. And if some archeologist digs
>up some late 20th centutry technical documentation in Sweden, Greece
>or anywhere else, he could conclude that the language of the place
>was English.
For god's sake Erland, I can hardly imagine that Peter the Great
should have made wars in the name of France, simply because in the palaces
it was in fashion to speak french...
The archaeologist in your example could find also video-tapes, sweedish
best-sellers, maps etc. that prove that the language in Sweden was not
english but sweedish, and he could conclude that swedish engineers and
scientists were using the english language on technical matters, but they
were still sweedish.
Ancient Macedonias were Greeks, since they could for instance participate in
the Olympic Games, and if one finds out that the language which was
spoken in the palace was greek (this is already proven by recent excavations
in the area- by Prof. Andronikos), then it is more possible that the local
language was greek than anything else: It is obvious, that a Greek should
speak greek except if he is forced not to; but I see no reasons why
ancient Greeks should be forced not to speak greek.
The inscriptions found in Macedonia are NOT the ONLY proof, but
they belong to a series of findings (ancient historical texts, etc)
that prove the simple fact that ancient Macedonia was greek.
>Assume for a moment that the Macedonians originally indeed spoke a
>non-Greek language.
Well, I can hardly assume this, because of reasons stated above.
So, conclusions based on this assumtion tend to be wrong.
Filippos Santas
Constantinos A. Caroutas
(Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>
>can we then know what the rest spoke? If you dig up writings of
>monks in various places at various time, you may conclude that
>Latin was the language of the area. We know it wasn't. But they
Indeed, we know it wasn't because historians tell us so.
>wrote in Latin of various reasons. And if some archeologist digs
>up some late 20th centutry technical documentation in Sweden, Greece
>or anywhere else, he could conclude that the language of the place
>was English.
Historians of the future will prevent such conclusion.
>Assume for a moment that the Macedonians originally indeed spoke a
>non-Greek language. They didn't have much of a written language, and
Historians tell us that they spoke a Greek dialect.
Philip Santas
In article <1992Feb4.2...@news2.cis.umn.edu> co...@kilo.cs.umn.edu (Ahmet Cosar) writes:
>In article <1992Feb4.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
>>
>>Ancient Macedonias were Greeks, since they could for instance participate in
>>the Olympic Games, and if one finds out that the language which was
>>spoken in the palace was greek (this is already proven by recent excavations
>>in the area- by Prof. Andronikos), then it is more possible that the local
>>language was greek than anything else: It is obvious, that a Greek should
>
>The Ottomans used Arabic for official communication and Persian for
>literature. In daily life they used a mixture of Persian/Arabic/Turkish.
>
>Using your logic what do we get?
>
>What if Cretans/Minoans were to declare independence and 'protest' the
>Greeks' usage of their alphabet, mythology, culture, etc?
>
Coras, you do not know to read: when one writes a paragraph or a sentence
you do not cut it in the middle. Therefore I guess that you are a person
who just by accident makes studies in a university.
Here is the whole paragraph that Coras did not quote
In article <1992Feb4.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
>
>Ancient Macedonias were Greeks, since they could for instance participate in
>the Olympic Games, and if one finds out that the language which was
>spoken in the palace was greek (this is already proven by recent excavations
>in the area- by Prof. Andronikos), then it is more possible that the local
>language was greek than anything else: It is obvious, that a Greek should
>speak greek except if he is forced not to; but I see no reasons why
>ancient Greeks should be forced not to speak greek.
I hope that now you got the message
> A.Coras >________________________________________________________________________
>Disc space -- the final frontier! >________________________________________________________________________
Filippos Santas
PS. I sent this to soc.culture.turkish so that our turkish friends
can admire the objectivity and the willingness for clear conversation
of A. Coras...
Ahmet Cosar
>the Olympic Games, and if one finds out that the language which was
>spoken in the palace was greek (this is already proven by recent excavations
>in the area- by Prof. Andronikos), then it is more possible that the local
>language was greek than anything else: It is obvious, that a Greek should
The Ottomans used Arabic for official communication and Persian for
literature. In daily life they used a mixture of Persian/Arabic/Turkish.
Using your logic what do we get?
What if Cretans/Minoans were to declare independence and 'protest' the
Greeks' usage of their alphabet, mythology, culture, etc?
--
89u...@csdvax.csd.unsw.edu.au
> In article <1992Feb02.1...@yuma.acns.colostate.edu>, cc433336@LANCE (Constantinos A. Caroutas) writes:
>>If I'm not mistaken, several people said in their postings that a large number
>>of inscriptions in Greek were found.
>
> No one is disputing the existence of Greek inscriptions in Macedonia.
>
> However, there are inscriptions in another language, written using Greek script
> but clearly not Greek. Those inscriptions are given the name "Macedonian."
>
> The question to be answered is, "How is *that* language related to Greek and
> the other Indo-European languages?"
> --
Never ever have I seen or heard such a thing. Not even Skopja mentions
such things in it's propaganda. (I could be wrong I don't bother reading the
stuff). Such a statment should have it's sorces.
> Rich Alderson 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take
> such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
> --J. R. R. Tolkien,
> alde...@leland.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
George T.
Mr. John T Jensen
Hittite-like Indo-European language? Only speaking from vague recollections
so don't flame me, please! Enlighten me.
jj
John Thayer Jensen Internet: jt.j...@aukuni.ac.nz
Commerce Computing
University of Auckland
Private Bag
AUCKLAND
Logical Language Group
>santas@inf (Philip Santas) writes:
>>alde...@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>
>>>All of this, while very interesting, has nothing to do with the question of
>>>the *LANGUAGE* of the Macedonians. Their culture may have been heavily
>>>influenced by the Greeks, they may even have had rulers whose ancestry was
>>>Greek (although accepting descent from Herakles is shaky, IMO), but that does
>>>not mean that they *spoke* a Greek dialect. We simply do not know enough
>>>about the language to say.
>
>>scripts? Except a small percentage of population (kings, philosophers,
>>teachers, officers, etc) all the rest had very few to do with writting.
>
>write English, German, Italian, and Swahili, but one would not want to say that
>they are therefore the same language. The same is true for the inscriptions
>clearly not Greek in language.
...
>>(by any chance, how do you know what language the Slavs were speaking?).
>
>At the time under discussion, Common Slavic if not Common Balto-Slavic.
>
>I am a linguist. That means that I do not take into consideration issues such
>as ethnicity when discussing language. Thus, Slavs of the period (if Common
>Slavic had differentiated from Common Balto-Slavic by then) are identified by
>the fact that they spoke that language, and not by what they looked like, what
>they dressed like, what they ate, or anything else than their language.
>
>And the same goes for any other group: Their culture is unimportant with
>respect to what language they spoke.
...
>>Serious answers to this can give an end to all this dispute.
>
>These answers are serious, but I doubt that they will end the dispute, because
>it is an emotional matter rather than a scientific one. But thank you for
>asking questions about *language* on sci.lang.
A lot of text quoted, and I did so because I'm going to step out on a
limb and disagree with what appears to be Rich's main premise - that one
can ignore culture in deciding questions of language.
If I understand Rich, he would say that a linguist is not concerned with
cultural aspects of whether names for two speech/writing patterns refer
to different dialects, separate languages, or even different names for
the same language or dialect.
To John Q. Public, Rich's answer sounds like a copout, and in this case,
appearances may be correct. Linguists sometimes let linguistic criteria
override cultural ones in deciding the difference between a language and
a dialect, but I think far more often, the decisions by cultural
communities play principal weight. Linguistic criteria tend to take the
fore ONLY when it can be clearly identified that basing the decision on
cultural matters is controversial and leads to false dichotomies.
Otherwise linguistics abides by cultural norms in deciding language
boundary.
I also think that trying to pretend that culture is irrelevant is part
of what makes linguists and linguistics seem out-of-touch with the
public (my recent soapbox topic). The public has various definitions of
what constitutes a separate language, and those definitions include some
cultural associations. If linguists would have the public think
differently, then we need to come up with useful, practical definitions,
and explain/teach them to the public. Those definitions need to have
psychological reality - they have to be made understandable so that a
non-expert can have some idea what it means to say two languages are the
same or different. Explaining those definitions to John Q. Public is
necessary to improving public understanding of languages, and funding of
linguistics. But we cannot explain the difference between using
linguistic criteria and cultural criteria accurately unless we are aware
of when we use one or the other.
As a single modern example, I point to the isogloss analysis of the
boundary between high German, Plattdeutsch, and Dutch. In the area near
the German-Netherlands border, there apparently is a smooth continuum
between the local German dialect and the local Dutch dialect. The
isoglosses don't seem to parallel the national borders, either. But the
boundary between 'German' and 'Dutch', other than for students of these
specific dialects, is almost certainly based on the cultural/national
boundary. Researchers studying the attitudes and grammatical judgements
of German speakers, or of Dutch speakers will stop at the border.
But let's turn to the historical language question, which I think is
more interesting. Because only in rare cases is there a controversy,
here I can argue more clearly that linguists define the bounds of a
language based primarily on cultural associations.
In a separate post, I argue based on among other things the perceptions
of other Greeks of the time, that Macedonian was a separate and distinct
language.
I assert that such perceptions affect the reality of such a difference.
I also claim that the definition of what a distinct language is, is
inextricably tied up in questions of culture.
I don't know the answers, here; I just have hunches. So let me ask some
leading questions.
The typical linguist definition of language vs. dialect has to do with
mutual intelligibility. But this definition only works in a synchronic
environment. In diachronic situations, there must be some other
definition used, even by linguists, to define the bounds between
languages.
1. English - Let's start easy. Are Modern English, Middle English, and
Anglo-Saxon considered to be one language, or separate languages? What
is the boundary or definition line between these?
2. Russian/Old Church Slavonic. I don't know if there are other
evolutionary steps involved here, but Old Church Slavonic is presumed to
be the ancestor of several Slavic languages. When did Old Church
Slavonic cease to be spoken i.e. when did it 'die'? Is there a clear
boundary between the parent language and the daughter languages? Is the
boundary the same (in point of time or in features) for each of the
daughter languages? Is the boundary clearly determined by linguistic
criteria, or by cultural ones?
I've been told that to a considerable extent, the various Slavic
languages are mutually intelligible, as well as that within the language
called 'Russian', there is enough dialectical variation to more than
encompass the difference between Russian and Ukrainian and Polish. Is
this true?
3. Latin and the Romance languages. Now we turn to a language that has
a 2000 year history. Is modern Latin the same 'language' as that of the
Roman Empire? Is the term dialect appropriate here? Or are they two
separate languages with a common history?
As I understand it, the Latin of 400BC, 0AD, and 500AD were drastically
different. In addition, there was Vulgar Latin that from comments that
get made here on sci.lang had some truly drastic differences from the
scholarly language. Are these merely dialectical differences? Were
these versions even hypothetically 'mutually intelligible'? Was the
Latin spoken just before the Romance languages were born closer to the
Romance languages, or to the Latin of the Roman Empire? Again, I ask
what are the bounds that make Latin identifiable as Latin, and not as
Old French or its Spanish counterpart?
4. Greek. Here we have an at-least 3000 year language history, all
called one language. My readings on the Macedonian question imply that
Attic Greek became Koine Greek with relatively small change other than
some simplifications. Were they then two separate languages? Is Modern
Greek the same language (i.e. is the difference from Koine on the par
with dialectical differences?). I've been told that most educated
Greeks today can read Koine without too much trouble. Nick Nicholas
tells me that he starts having a little trouble when he gets back to the
language of Plato. But perhaps even there it is still 'the same
language'. But if he cannot read Homeric Greek, is it fair to say that
Homeric Greek and Modern Greek are the same language?
5. I won't even try to pose the appropriate/equivalent questions for
Chinese and the various dialects/sublanguages, etc. that are recognized.
Scott can take this one and run with it, if he cares. (What can you
tell me about Hakka, Scott?)
The obvious answer seems to me that linguists, as much as everyone else,
identify diachronic 'languages' based on cultural continuity rather than
purely linguistic criteria, and on the people and the countries that are
associated with the language. Changes that show up as language name
changes almost always can be clearly associated with a significant
cultural change, and possibly a significant change in the
extent/speaker-base of the language.
The question of whether ancient Macedonian was "Greek" depends on the
answers to these questions. If it was 'based on' Greek, it was a
descendant of some version of the Greek language as much as Modern Greek
is, and can reasonably be called 'Greek'. But if it was not mutually
intelligible with other synchronic Greeks, it was not Greek. How do we
decide?
Linguists do care about questions of language vs. dialect. There are
certain topics that people want exiled from sci.lang to
alt.english.usage essentially because they are considered dialectal in
nature. Apparently to some, examining dialectal variation is not
linguistics.
----
lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA
703-385-0273
loj...@grebyn.com
For information about Lojban, please provide a snail-post address to me
via mail or phone. We are funded solely by contributions, which are
encouraged for the purpose of defraying our costs, but are not mandatory.
Logical Language Group
argument over 'Macedonian language' is. I checked several dictionaries,
a couple of encyclopedias, and a couple of linguistics references. I
found that the referent of "Macedonian language" universally is the
South-Slavic language currently spoken by about 2 million people, most
of whom live in a semi-autonomous region of Bulgaria. Only one
reference to the term refers to a language spoken in ancient Macedonia.
What I did find on ancient Macedonia led me down an interesting path of
cross-reference, eventually leading to the following quote from the
Encyclopedia Brittanica 3 Macropedia entry for 'Greek Civilization,
Ancient': _The Rise of Macedonia_ : Early Macedonia:
"United or otherwise, the Greek cities were a mere shadow, alongside
which a new state had been gradually taking shape since the beginning of
the 4th century - Macedonia, a backward country of hunters, drinkers,
fighters, and peasants, whom the Greeks regarded as barbarians. The
language of the country was basically Greek but so mixed with Illyrian
and Thraco-Phrygian that it was incomprehensible to Athenians. Because
of their violence and appeal to madness, Dionysiac rites were much
celebrated. ... With each generation, the kings of Macedonia tried to
introduce more and more Greek civilization into their wild land."
Illyrian is described elsewhere as the language spoken by the people who
then inhabited what is now Yugoslavia. References say that this was an
Indo-European language, and that present-say Albanian may be descended from
Illyrian, but that this isn't certain.
Thracian is described as a dialect of Phrygian. Phrygian is also an
Indo-European tongue, a satem language (which I gather Greek is not) of
which little is known about. It may be related to Armenian, another
branch of the IE family. Phrygia later was placed in central Anatolia,
and apparently there are some ties to other Anatolian IE languages, too.
One theory of the Balkan Sprachsbund presumes that it is based on
Illyrian and Thraco-Phrygian influences that affected all languages in
the region. The wide geographical range from Yugoslavia to Thrace to
Anatolia makes this seem plausible.
Now what does all this tell us? That Macedonia went from being less
like the Greeks to more so during that century, that prior to Phillip,
the language was sufficiently different from Attic Greek so as to be
unintelligible, and to earn the label "barbarians" for the Macedonians,
a label that etymologically indicates the unintelligibility of the
language. The language was akin to Greek, but had elements of at least
two or three other IE >families<. This suggests at least as much
difference from Greek as another language resulting from interaction of
3 IE language families - English - has from German. The EB describes
the Greek language prior to the Hellenistic period as "numerous Greek
dialects, which differed in phonetic and morphological details, but were
mutually intelligible. The features shared by the local speech of
different regions allow the delineation of dialect groups, of which the
Greeks themselves were aware." Thus, if the Greeks did not consider
'Macedonian' to be mututally intelligible, then to THEM, it was not
Greek.
The standard definition of 'separate language' that seems most accepted
is that of mutual intelligibility. We have the term 'barbarian' and the
explicit mention of unintelligibility as evidence that the language of
Macedonia was a 'different language' than Attic Greek, which was the
cultural standard of the time. The question of whether 'Macedonian'
was, or was not 'Greek' is thus dependent on the definition of 'Greek'
as either a single language of the time, or of a family of related
languages. Usage tends to the former.
The EB reference does suggest why 'Greek' inscriptions would be found.
If the language was 'basically Greek', then many of the roots would be
recognizably Greek. The influence of other families would be shown in
major pronunciation differences, in a heavy accumulation of borrowings,
and possibly some grammatical simplification - but not too much or the
language might have been recognizable to the Athenians as a pidgin. A
tradition of admiration for Greek culture would tend to make 'educated'
Macedonian, and the language as written, rather more Hellenized than the
dialect actually spoken by most Macedonians.
Thus, even if no one can produce an inscription that isn't translatable
as 'Greek', we have the definition of language, the testimony of the
Athenians, and the known effects of preferred cultures on upper class
and written dialects to suggest that 'Macedonian' was indeed a language
in its own right.
David M Tate
>>Philip Santas (san...@inf.ethz.ch) writes:
>>>
>>>How do we know about the languages of the ancient civilizations, if
>>>not by scripts? Except a small percentage of population (kings, philosophers,
>>>teachers, officers, etc) all the rest had very few to do with writting.
>>
>>You got it spot. If a only a minority were involved in writing, how
>>can we then know what the rest spoke? If you dig up writings of
>>monks in various places at various time, you may conclude that
>>Latin was the language of the area. We know it wasn't. But they
>>wrote in Latin of various reasons. And if some archeologist digs
>>up some late 20th centutry technical documentation in Sweden, Greece
>>or anywhere else, he could conclude that the language of the place
>>was English.
>
>best-sellers, maps etc. that prove that the language in Sweden was not
>english but sweedish, and he could conclude that swedish engineers and
>scientists were using the english language on technical matters, but they
>were still sweedish.
Yep. He'd be lucky, because the modern residents of Sweden are literate in
several languages, and are leaving lots of evidence to that effect.
But, as you insist on ignoring, THIS IS NOT ALWAYS TRUE.
Consider Cornwall, in SW England. What do its natives speak today? English.
If you go read the inscriptions there, what language are they in? English.
If you dig up old sites, and read the inscriptions *there*, what languages
are they in? English (of various periods), Latin, Irish, etc.
So, clearly (by analogy with your argument about Macedonian), there was never
any language "Cornish", and the residents of Cornwall are (and always were)
English, and spoke English. Right?
Wrong. Cornish survived as a spoken language until about 200 years ago.
There are even some attempts going on to revive it, and give it a written
form (which it never had, which is why there are no inscriptions), and make
it popular again.
>[...] if one finds out that the language which was
>spoken in the palace was greek (this is already proven by recent excavations
>in the area- by Prof. Andronikos),
No, it is NOT proven. What has been proved is that Greek was *a* language
(not necessarily *the* language) that was *written* (not necessarily spoken)
in the palace. This makes it *likely* (though not certain) that it was also
spoken locally, but it does not in any way make it *unlikely* that there were
other local languages that were not written or carved or inscribed or otherwise
left lying around for archaeologists to stumble across centuries later.
>then it is more possible that the local
>language was greek than anything else:
You keep saying "_the_ language", as if there can never be more than one.
Surely a local example like the Balkan nations shows how naive this assumption
is...
>It is obvious, that a Greek should
>speak greek except if he is forced not to;
Why is this obvious? Is it equally obvious that the Norman conquerors of
England should speak Norman French, unless forced not to? Then why did they
end up speaking English within a very few centuries?
>The inscriptions found in Macedonia are NOT the ONLY proof, but
>they belong to a series of findings (ancient historical texts, etc)
>that prove the simple fact that ancient Macedonia was greek.
If you're going to talk about the inscriptions found in Macedonia, you have
to talk about *all* of them, including the ones alluded to by Rich Alderson,
which are clearly *not* in Greek, although they use the Greek script. What
is your learned explanation for these?
(And, if you can stop talking and listen for a moment, please note that
neither the badly-used Mr. Alderson, nor anyone else from sci.lang, has
made any claims whatever about *who* was speaking this unknown language.
The name "Macedonian" was given to it because of where the inscriptions
were found; that's all.)
>>Assume for a moment that the Macedonians originally indeed spoke a
>>non-Greek language.
>
>Well, I can hardly assume this, because of reasons stated above.
Your own inabilities are not our fault.
--
David M. Tate | "My son was dating a *demon*?"
dt...@unix.cis.pitt.edu | "Let's not be prejudiced. He'd done a
I was of three minds / Like a tree | lot worse his freshman year."
in which there are three blackbirds| --Roger Zelazny
89u...@csdvax.csd.unsw.edu.au
> In article <1992Jan28.1...@Csli.Stanford.EDU> po...@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) writes:
>>In article <1992Jan28....@csdvax.csd.unsw.edu.au> 89u...@csdvax.csd.unsw.edu.au writes:
>>> You are either liying or your encclopedia is false. It is of no dispute
>>>that ancient macedonies are Greeks. Just vist Macedonia. There are arond 60000
>>>artifacts found that are vsibly Greek. The Greek language is the only one
>>>represented on them.
>>
>>is unjustified. It is not clear whether the Macedonians were
>>Greek and what their language was. It is clear that Macedonia
>>came under strong Greek cultural influence, easily sufficient to
>>account for lots of Greek artifacts being found there and for the
>>Greek language being written on them.
>>
>>they don't like the idea of Alexander, who become ruler of Greece
>>and then of much of the world, being a barbarian, and because
>>of the territorial disputes about Macedonia, but if we ignore
>>politics and look at the objective history, the fact is that we don't
>>really know who the Macedonians were.
>>
>
> It seems likely to me, based on my readings of the history
> of the period, that only the ruling elite in Macedonia were
> Hellenized, and then only superficially;
I am oh so happy for you. you seem to be so educated.
Could you share some of the sources.
just look at all
> that business with Philip's wife Olympia sleeping a snake.
This is nothing. Absolutely nothing compared to whatelse you can get in
greek history and mythology. if you base your arguments on this Sheeeesh ...
> This was a pretty wild place, a long ways from the agora and
> stoa. I assume that the common people spoke not some flavor of
^^^^^^^^
> Greek, as did their rulers, but another language or languages,
> now called Macedonian for lack of more detailed information.
>
Your asumptions don't intrest us. Please try sources. What you say is
Bull. It is even stupid to argue with such points.
> Certainly, this cultural split is not uncommon. Elites in
> England and Russia preferred French to the "uncouth"
> languages of the peasantry. It would also explain the lack
> of relicts of Macedonian, to say nothing of the Greek art
> and architecture found in those mountains.
>
> (The Macedonian wars are being fought on soc.culture.europe
> right now. This thread is an spill-over, and I apologize for
> any contribution I am making to it by writing the above.)
>
> --
> Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
George T.
Greg Lee
}...
}Linguists do care about questions of language vs. dialect. There are
}certain topics that people want exiled from sci.lang to
}alt.english.usage essentially because they are considered dialectal in
}nature. Apparently to some, examining dialectal variation is not
}linguistics.
Examining dialectal variation is very important in linguistics, provided
the dialectal facts have some sort of significance. Discovering what is
universal to human languages requires comparing language systems, and
to see what can change, the comparison is easiest when the systems are
closely related.
--
Greg Lee <l...@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Philip Santas
In article <920206165...@unix.cis.pitt.edu> dt...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes:
[DT]
>(In case you can't tell, the whole idea of calling one language "better than"
>another is infinitely silly to most linguists, in the same way that calling one
>number "better than" another number would be to a mathematician.)
For digital logic the only numbers that have meaning are 0 and 1.
All the rest are useless numbers...
Performing mathematical calculations with roman numbers is quite
troublesome. On the contrary arabic format is more adequate for douing
these calculations with paper and pen.
It is easier to express complex ideas in a language that supports them.
There has been a lot of literature in Greek, French, English, German, etc.
therefore it is preferable to use these languages for specific reasons;
and if you can do it in your every day life why not?
Why do non-english engineers use mostly english terms, and sometimes prefer
to write a whole study in english?
Try to translate Sartre to any primitive langugage, say the one spoken by
some tribes in Bali. You get a PhD and maybe a professorship.
B. Russell states that many of the limitations of the western thinking
derive from the structure of the western languages. In this case
there is a qualitative ranking among languages...
What more examples do you want?
[DT]
>Or, in other words, the language that ARISTOTELES spoke is irrelevant to
>whether or not there was a non-Greek Macedonian language at some point in
>time.
It is sure that there were other languages spoken in Macedonia.
English, german, etc are spoken by some people in Greece.
The same happens with russian (Greeks from the eastern block) etc.
You speak about commonalities which are put in such a way rthat confuse
people. If you say that Macedonians were speaking differnt languages
in a debate where the nationality of Macedonians is the issue,
you do nothing else but putting mud. Say for instance that:
"Macedonians were greek but they were also speaking other languages"
or:
"Macedonians were not Greeks but they were speaking Greek as well"
Just make clear statements and PROVE them. I am NOT a linguist,
but do not confuse me with commonalities such us:
"we assume that many other languages were spoken" or
"Alexander could also speak Greek" etc.
The first sentence is like saying "people can speak different languages
when they live in the same area" (everybody knows this)
and the second is like: "Look, he is Greek and guess what: he can speak
Greek!"
Do not take these as a personal accusation, but come to my position
when I have to read such banalities on subjects that matter me.
We ask you for an opinion, and try to show it as more objectively
as possible (according to the context).
[me]
>>This is again a WRONG analogy. Macedonians did not start speaking Greek
>>centuries after Alexander's time just because they conquered the rest of Greece.
>>They were speaking Greek (too?) from before: even you have admitted this.
[DT]
>Of course. As usual, you missed the point of my comment, which was that
>Greek could have replaced some indigenous Macedonian tongue *before* the
>Greeks became politically dominant in Macedonia. There have even been cases
>where one ethnic group adopted the language of a neighboring group, without
>any political or military or cultural domination occuring.
This is again common sence and possibilities that none is in position
to object. I did not miss the point of your comment, but when you make
analogies, try to use correct examples, not ones that have nothing to
do with our case.
[me]
>>Why do you use irrelevant analogies? Were the Normans speaking english
>>before they went to England?
[DT]
>No, they were speaking French, despite being Danes. In other words, you
>can't tell in advance what language will prevail when two cultures meet, even
>if you know who won the battles and made the laws.
You still insist on this analogy. Danes went to France, so they got
a french way of leaving. After they went to England, so they got an
english way of living. There is nothing strange with this.
The strange is that you say that Macedonians were speaking Greek
because some time in the future they dominated Greece.
If they were also dominated by Greeks and they got the greek culture,
language religion etc then why are they not Greeks? And before you rush
to answer, just think that Olympous is in Macedonia, and VERY CLOSE
to the palace of the dynasty of the Macedonian kings. Think also that
Greeks came from the north to south Balcan, so the first place for
them to settle in was Macedonia.
Can you make any comments on this?
[me]
>>Some other netter has pointed out that macedonian is supposed to be
>>a slavic language, and appeared many centuries after Alexander's time.
>>Who is right?
[DT]
>My name is David. There's a guy down the hall from me named David. Who
>is right?
We speak about a language. It is something Unique.
The third planet is Mars but the fourth planet is also Mars. Who is right?
I really have no intention to continue with such silly examples...
[DT]
>Obviously, the name "Macedonian" has been applied to two different languages,
>which are not necessarily related. This wouldn't be the first time that this
>has happened. There is almost certainly no relationship between the
>"Macedonian" language we know of from a few Greek-script inscriptions, and
>any modern language of the region.
Again you are not clear. The are spoken in the same region, but this does not
mean that they are Macedonian. If some Germans live in Athens and speaks german
YOU WILL NEVER EVER THINK THAT GERMAN IS AN ATHENIAN LANGUAGE. Why are you
doing this with the so called Macedonian languages?
[DT]
>I am vastly amused to have the word "fanatic" projected on me by someone in
>this matter. I really couldn't care less what language(s) the Macedonians
>spoke before, during, or after Alexander's time, except for a mild curiosity.
>I simply object to the way Rich Alderson and Erland had their reasonable,
>factual postings attacked by slavering factionalists with no regard to what
>they had actually said.
Try to be more specific then and do not present so easily refutable
examples, analogies, opinions etc.
[DT]
>Odd as it may seem, none of the people posting from sci.lang have any kind of
>political agenda here. We're just trying to provide a little information on
>the history of languages.
I have no political agenda either. But I get very irritated when I see
things like greek literature, greek philosophy, greek civilization and
culture, to be doubted in a so VULGAR way (this is not directed personally
to you, it is a general comment)
> David M. Tate
Filippos Santas
Ilya R Lapshin
loj...@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group) writes:
|> 2. Russian/Old Church Slavonic. I don't know if there are other
|> evolutionary steps involved here, but Old Church Slavonic is presumed to
|> be the ancestor of several Slavic languages. When did Old Church
|> Slavonic cease to be spoken i.e. when did it 'die'? Is there a clear
|> boundary between the parent language and the daughter languages? Is the
|> boundary the same (in point of time or in features) for each of the
|> daughter languages? Is the boundary clearly determined by linguistic
|> criteria, or by cultural ones?
|>
|> I've been told that to a considerable extent, the various Slavic
|> languages are mutually intelligible, as well as that within the language
|> called 'Russian', there is enough dialectical variation to more than
|> encompass the difference between Russian and Ukrainian and Polish. Is
|> this true?
|>
No, it is completely wrong. The dialectal variations within Russian
are, IMHO, smaller than between New England, New York, South USA,
BBC British and Australian English. I would say that in the present time
there are no dialects in Russian, just regional pronunciations,
like Moscow vs. St. Petersburg vs. North vs. Volga-Vyatka vs.
South vs. Odessa :-) (no, I'm not from there)
Even if cosidering areas where Russian and Ukrainian coexist and intermix,
again understanding of Russian as often spoken in these areas,
with some Ukrainian pronunciation and some number of Ukrainian words,
is easy. Unforgettable L. I. Brezhnev provided all Soviets with
much needed training in his South Russian with Ukrainian
h and w (the bottom jaw falling out is essential). M. S. Gorbachev has
clear Southern w (for v in certain positions), but almost no h (for g).
B. N. Yeltsin speaks what appears to be more or less standard Russian.
On central TV they speak with moderate to heavy Moscow pronunciation.
Again practically no variations in words or grammar.
Understanding Ukranian in its written form,
i. e. when you have time to think about possible meanings of the words
is quite possible for a native Russian speaker, but it is not too trivial.
Fluent spoken Ukrainian by a speaker from West Ukraine (i. e. less Russified)
can be almost completely incomprehensible.
IMHO, there is no clear point in time when Old Russian became
Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian. But these three languages in the present
time are definitely different linguistically, not only culturally
(like Ukrainian and Ruthenian). When someone speaks his or her native
language one can unambiguosly identify whether it is Russian, Ukrainian, or
Byelorussian.
For a native speaker of Russian spoken Polish is practically impossible to
understand (like Dutch for an English speaker). When it is written it still
presents a challenge.
Old Church Slavonic is not an ancestor of Russian. Old Russian (East Slavic)
borrowed heavily from Church Slavonic (South Slavic) in words and
grammatical forms, because the latter was the primary written language.
Ancestors of Bulgarian and Macedonian (not Greek-or-not-Greek one) languages
were probably fairly close to Old Church Slavonic, which died and
left no children :-). My guess is that OCS still was a living language in
tenth century, again, coexisting with Old Russian.
R o d Johnson
>In article <920206165...@unix.cis.pitt.edu> dt...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes:
>>(In case you can't tell, the whole idea of calling one language "better than"
>>another is infinitely silly to most linguists, in the same way that calling one
>>number "better than" another number would be to a mathematician.)
>For digital logic the only numbers that have meaning are 0 and 1.
>All the rest are useless numbers...
Is there supposed to be a point here?
>Performing mathematical calculations with roman numbers is quite
>troublesome. On the contrary arabic format is more adequate for douing
>these calculations with paper and pen.
Those aren't numbers, they're numerals. The point David is making
appears to be too subtle for you, alas.
>It is easier to express complex ideas in a language that supports them.
>There has been a lot of literature in Greek, French, English, German, etc.
>therefore it is preferable to use these languages for specific reasons;
>and if you can do it in your every day life why not?
What languages don't "support" "complex ideas"? What makes an idea
complex? What does it mean for a language to "support" an idea?
>Why do non-english engineers use mostly english terms, and sometimes prefer
>to write a whole study in english?
Because the language is somehow inherently better? No.
>Try to translate Sartre to any primitive langugage, say the one spoken by
>some tribes in Bali. You get a PhD and maybe a professorship.
First of all, there's no such thing as a "prinitve" language, and if
there were, Bali is among the last places I'd look. It's one of the
most cultured places on earth, surely.
>B. Russell states that many of the limitations of the western thinking
>derive from the structure of the western languages. In this case
>there is a qualitative ranking among languages...
*Russell* says this? Where? And why should we believe him anyway?
>What more examples do you want?
If you mean, do we want more of *this* drivel. well, no. Please.
>I am NOT a linguist,
No! ;)
>>Of course. As usual, you missed the point of my comment, which was that
>>Greek could have replaced some indigenous Macedonian tongue *before* the
>>Greeks became politically dominant in Macedonia. There have even been cases
>>where one ethnic group adopted the language of a neighboring group, without
>>any political or military or cultural domination occuring.
>This is again common sence and possibilities that none is in position
>to object.
But of course you have objected, repeatedly. The original claim here
was that there was a non-Hellenic language spoken in Macedonia. This
language, insofar as we know it at all, was probably Illyrian, and is
known as "Macedonian"; it is not to be confused with modern
Macedonian, which is Slavic. Nowhere in this is there a claim that
Macedonians weren't ethnically or culturally Greek or greek-dominated
at some stage of their history, or that Greek wasn't spoken in
Macedonia. These imaginary claims were passionately refuted by the
zealots, but as far as I can tell, no one has actually argued *for*
them, and every time someone (like David) has attempted to restate the
original issue, he is met with the "attack" that this is common sense!
Exactly! Think about it.
>You still insist on this analogy. Danes went to France, so they got
>a french way of leaving.
You mean, kisses on the cheeks and a Gallic shrug of goodbye? How
piquant.
>After they went to England, so they got an
>english way of living. There is nothing strange with this.
Again, consider the possibility that the same "nothing strange"
applies to the claim about Macedonian.
>The strange is that you say that Macedonians were speaking Greek
>because some time in the future they dominated Greece.
That would indeed be strange, but no one has said it.
>If they were also dominated by Greeks and they got the greek culture,
>language religion etc then why are they not Greeks?
Who says they were not Greeks? The question is, were they always
Greeks? Was there ever a non-Greek-speaking population?
>And before you rush
>to answer, just think that Olympous is in Macedonia,
There are several mountains named "Olympos". The original is thought
by scholars to be the one in Thessaly, not Macedonia.
>>>Some other netter has pointed out that macedonian is supposed to be
>>>a slavic language, and appeared many centuries after Alexander's time.
>>>Who is right?
>>My name is David. There's a guy down the hall from me named David. Who
>>is right?
>We speak about a language. It is something Unique.
>The third planet is Mars but the fourth planet is also Mars. Who is right?
Christ on a crutch. Like it or not, there are two languages that have
been called Macedonian. This is unfortunate and confusing (it seems
to have sent soc.culture.greek into a mortal tizzy, in fact), but it
is they way things are. One is South Slavonic, closely related to
Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian; the other is Illyrian or
Thraco-Phrygian, two language families that we know very little about.
The fact that the two languages share a name does not imply that they
are the same, or even closely related, nor does it imply anything
about whether the Macedonian nation was Greek in any sense. The name
is simply a name.
>>Odd as it may seem, none of the people posting from sci.lang have any kind of
>>political agenda here. We're just trying to provide a little information on
>>the history of languages.
>
>I have no political agenda either. But I get very irritated when I see
>things like greek literature, greek philosophy, greek civilization and
>culture, to be doubted in a so VULGAR way (this is not directed personally
>to you, it is a general comment)
Nobody is doubting anything, you bonehead (this is directed personally
at you, and is a specific comment)! The claim that there was a
language called Macedonian which is not Greek has NOTHING to do with
the very real achievements of the Greeks, both ancient and modern. It
is no different than noting that both native American language and
modern American English have been called "American". It is a
terminological confusion, no more. Stop being so damned sensitive and
take a moment to reflect.
Then, for god's sake, shut up.
--
Rod Johnson * r...@caen.engin.umich.edu * (313) 764-3103
"The spaceship looked utterly like itself" --Robert Sheckley
Philip Santas
In article <=wF+d-#@engin.umich.edu> r...@caen.engin.umich.edu (R o d Johnson) writes:
>In article <1992Feb6.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
>
>>It is easier to express complex ideas in a language that supports them.
>>There has been a lot of literature in Greek, French, English, German, etc.
>>therefore it is preferable to use these languages for specific reasons;
>>and if you can do it in your every day life why not?
>
>What languages don't "support" "complex ideas"? What makes an idea
>complex? What does it mean for a language to "support" an idea?
>
>>Try to translate Sartre to any primitive langugage, say the one spoken by
>>some tribes in Bali. You get a PhD and maybe a professorship.
>
>First of all, there's no such thing as a "prinitve" language, and if
>there were, Bali is among the last places I'd look. It's one of the
>most cultured places on earth, surely.
In these languages you need to define new words or use whole paragraphs
in order to explain certain meanings which in our western languages
they have the form of a single understandable word.
>>B. Russell states that many of the limitations of the western thinking
>>derive from the structure of the western languages. In this case
>>there is a qualitative ranking among languages...
>
>*Russell* says this? Where? And why should we believe him anyway?
>
In 'Analysis of the Human Mind'. Of course you can doubt anyone you want,
even personalities which are superior than yours, and people that have
done more studying and research than you... This is how science is promoted,
right? But you exaggerate...
>>If they were also dominated by Greeks and they got the greek culture,
>>language religion etc then why are they not Greeks?
>
>Who says they were not Greeks? The question is, were they always
>Greeks? Was there ever a non-Greek-speaking population?
>
I am glad that we agree at least to this. Several netters have said that they
were NOT Greeks.
>>And before you rush
>>to answer, just think that Olympous is in Macedonia,
>
>There are several mountains named "Olympos". The original is thought
>by scholars to be the one in Thessaly, not Macedonia.
>
Well, Dion is found in the Macedonian Olympos (it is the first time
I hear that Olympos could have been in Thessaly -:)
>>I have no political agenda either. But I get very irritated when I see
>>things like greek literature, greek philosophy, greek civilization and
>>culture, to be doubted in a so VULGAR way (this is not directed personally
>>to you, it is a general comment)
>
>Nobody is doubting anything, you bonehead (this is directed personally
>at you, and is a specific comment)! The claim that there was a
>language called Macedonian which is not Greek has NOTHING to do with
>the very real achievements of the Greeks, both ancient and modern. It
>is no different than noting that both native American language and
>modern American English have been called "American". It is a
>terminological confusion, no more. Stop being so damned sensitive and
>take a moment to reflect.
>
Good that you agree. Why do you get so angry?
For your flames just one comment: Deeply thought scientific opinions ... -:)
Go and educate yourself: you can start by Geography, you can continue
with Philosophy, and after some time really try to translate Sartre to any
Indonesian language (Bali has really a high level culture, with wonderful music,
but there are certain things that you can not do with _this_ language or music etc.
(try to play Mahler with Indonesian music instruments -:)
For the rest of your questions David has already some answers. I will not argue
any more about topics on which there has been an extensive bibliography in the last
100 years, simply because some want to 'doubt' them, in order to pretend the
'clever guy' to the rest of us.
Filippos Santas
David M Tate
>
>In article <=wF+d-#@engin.umich.edu> r...@caen.engin.umich.edu (R o d Johnson) writes:
>>In article <1992Feb6.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
>
>>>B. Russell states that many of the limitations of the western thinking
>>>derive from the structure of the western languages. In this case
>>>there is a qualitative ranking among languages...
>>
>>*Russell* says this? Where? And why should we believe him anyway?
>>
>
>In 'Analysis of the Human Mind'. Of course you can doubt anyone you want,
>even personalities which are superior than yours, and people that have
>done more studying and research than you...
Philip, how come you sound so reasonable by Email, then revert to this sort
of drivel in public?
If you think that Bertrand Russell did "more studying" of language than Rod
Johnson, you're out of your mind (and out of your element, but we already
knew that). Russell may have had a "superior personality" to mine, too, but
I know a hell of a lot more about calligraphy, baseball, computer programming,
and even some areas of mathematics, than he did. Rod is a linguist; Russell
was not. Rod's opinions carry more weight here.
R o d Johnson
>>In article <1992Feb6.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
>>First of all, there's no such thing as a ["primitive"] language, and if
>>there were, Bali is among the last places I'd look. It's one of the
>>most cultured places on earth, surely.
>In these languages you need to define new words or use whole paragraphs
>in order to explain certain meanings which in our western languages
>they have the form of a single understandable word.
And there are likewise Balinese concepts that take whole paragraphs to
relate in English. So what? The fact that there are difficulties in
translation is not an argument for any sort of rank ordering of
languages. Relative number of words in a definition is a poor measure
of cognitive or cultural complexity. Whole dissertations have been
written on the Burmese concept of _anade_; I doubt that means Burmese
is unequivocally a more complex language than English.
>>>B. Russell states that many of the limitations of the western thinking
>>>derive from the structure of the western languages. In this case
>>>there is a qualitative ranking among languages...
>>*Russell* says this? Where? And why should we believe him anyway?
>In 'Analysis of the Human Mind'.
That's "Analysis of Mind", I assume.
>Of course you can doubt anyone you
>want,
You bet. Anyone who says otherwise is simply arguing from authority,
as you are attempting to do here. Russell, venerable though you may
find hime to be, surely made mistakes. He *asserts* this; he adduces
no proof, this this is lucky for him, given the vast amounts of effort
expended trying to establish the truth or falshood of this very point,
from Leibniz through von Humboldt, Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Emile
Benveniste, Joshua Fishman, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, Eleanor Rosch,
to recent work by Michael Silverstein and by Peter Muhlhauser and Rom
Harre. You must be ignorant of this work to suppose that glibly
waving a quote of Russell's at us can suffice to establish the facts
in a notoriously difficult dispute.
Impressed that I could reel off all those names? No? Good. Naming
names does not an argument make, even if it's a famous philosopher.
Most linguistics graduate students should be able to reel off most of
those names after their first Language and Culture class. Just like
any buffoon can wave Russell at someone. This isn't inquiry, it's
gossip.
In fact I'm personally somewhat in agreement with Russell here.
That's not the issue; your appeal to an ex cathedra pronouncement by
Russell hardly counts as an argument for your thesis, both because
Russell could be wrong and because qualitative *difference* does not
imply a ranking of any sort.
>even personalities which are superior than yours, and people that have
>done more studying and research than you...
Now how might you know this? I could very well be a researcher on
this very thing (in fact I'm not, except insofar as anyone who works
on a language very different from his own must be). The point is that
it's a heavily debated issue in linguistics, and I daresay more
empirical attention has been paid to it here than Russell managed from
his armchair. The question of who has "done more studying" is
something you really have no knowledge of.
>This is how science is promoted,
>right? But you exaggerate...
This is gibberish.
>>>If they were also dominated by Greeks and they got the greek culture,
>>>language religion etc then why are they not Greeks?
>>
>>Who says they were not Greeks? The question is, were they always
>>Greeks? Was there ever a non-Greek-speaking population?
>
>I am glad that we agree at least to this. Several netters have said that they
>were NOT Greeks.
Again you distort your opponents' arguments (or simply don't
understand them). What "several netters" have suggested was that
there was a non-Greek population, not that there was not a Greek
population. The two are not equivalent.
>>>And before you rush
>>>to answer, just think that Olympous is in Macedonia,
>>
>>There are several mountains named "Olympos". The original is thought
>>by scholars to be the one in Thessaly, not Macedonia.
>
>Well, Dion is found in the Macedonian Olympos (it is the first time
>I hear that Olympos could have been in Thessaly -:)
I'll concede a tie on this. It's on the Thessaly-Macedonia border.
>Good that you agree. Why do you get so angry?
I'm angry because you've been vituperative and sarcastic with several
people who don't deserve it, who have expressed their positions mildly
and patiently, and you have repeatedly attacked them for positions
they have not in fact held. If it takes a less mild response to get
your attention, well, I'm at your service.
>For your flames just one comment: Deeply thought scientific opinions ... -:)
More gibberish.
>Go and educate yourself:
Gee, wanna compare educations?
>you can start by Geography, you can continue
>with Philosophy, and after some time really try to translate Sartre to any
>Indonesian language (Bali has really a high level culture, with wonderful music,
>but there are certain things that you can not do with _this_ language or music etc.
>(try to play Mahler with Indonesian music instruments -:)
This sad attempt at oneupmanship is contemptible, not to mention
misguided. By the way, you might enjoy Lou Harrison's pieces for
cello, violin and gamelan, or be interested to note that I've heard
Mozart played by a gamelan. No Mahler, though. Would "Urlicht" sound
better in _slendro_ or _pelog_, I wonder?
>For the rest of your questions David has already some answers.
He surely does. I would venture that David and I are in almost total
agreement on his answers so far, whereas you have been arguing
fecklessly with the shadows of your imagination.
>I will not argue
>any more about topics on which there has been an extensive bibliography in the last
>100 years, simply because some want to 'doubt' them, in order to pretend the
>'clever guy' to the rest of us.
Philip's tactic here is to cast himself as the guardian of consensus,
the consummate insider, and to depict any objections to his fatuities
as simpleminded skepticism on the part of disgruntled outsiders; it
doesn't seem to occur to him that his opponents may actually be
arguing from the facts as known, and that his vaunted "extensive
bibliography" may indeed fail to support him.
I say: that's fine. He's promised not to argue anymore, and that's
enough for me.
89u...@csdvax.csd.unsw.edu.au
>
>>>And before you rush
>>>to answer, just think that Olympous is in Macedonia,
>>
>>There are several mountains named "Olympos". The original is thought
>>by scholars to be the one in Thessaly, not Macedonia.
>>
>
> Well, Dion is found in the Macedonian Olympos (it is the first time
> I hear that Olympos could have been in Thessaly -:)
>
times. Remember the fight of the titans. They faught from the nearby mountain
Kissavos which is also an ancient mountain and the pair only apear there.
Ancient mountain I mean apears in ancient literature. Olymbus is vivid in so
many ancient scripts and there is no doubt where it is. I cannot see where he
got such info about an Olymbos in Thessaly. I can nly assume that he is not
Objective.
George T.
Ivan A Derzhanski
<
<
<In article <1992Feb4.2...@news2.cis.umn.edu> co...@kilo.cs.umn.edu (Ahmet Cosar) writes:
<>In article <1992Feb4.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
<>>
<>>Ancient Macedonias were Greeks, since they could for instance participate in
<>>the Olympic Games, and if one finds out that the language which was
<>>spoken in the palace was greek (this is already proven by recent excavations
<>>in the area- by Prof. Andronikos), then it is more possible that the local
<>>language was greek than anything else: It is obvious, that a Greek should
<>
<>The Ottomans used Arabic for official communication and Persian for
<>literature. In daily life they used a mixture of Persian/Arabic/Turkish.
<...>
<Coras, you do not know to read: when one writes a paragraph or a sentence
<you do not cut it in the middle. Therefore I guess that you are a person
<who just by accident makes studies in a university.
<
<Here is the whole paragraph that Coras did not quote
<
<In article <1992Feb4.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
<>
<...>
<>speak greek except if he is forced not to; but I see no reasons why
<>ancient Greeks should be forced not to speak greek.
He was probably wrong to cut the paragraph/sentence in the middle, but
the point he was making is still valid: That the language spoken in
the royal court in country C at time T was L doesn't prove that the
language spoken in the street in country C at time T was L too. (Of
course it doesn't prove the opposite either.)
Languages like French and Persian have served many an imperial palace
in countries where they wouldn't have been commonly understood in the
street. I think Chinese, German, and Greek belong to the same list.
--
---- --- -- - Long Live the Rose and the Heather! - -- --- ----
Ivan A Derzhanski (i...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk; i...@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science, 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
Paul Foley
and I can't figure out how to get it back :-( Sorry!)
>Ancient Macedonias were Greeks, since they could for instance participate in
>the Olympic Games, and if one finds out that the language which was
>spoken in the palace was greek (this is already proven by recent excavations
>in the area- by Prof. Andronikos), then it is more possible that the local
>language was greek than anything else: It is obvious, that a Greek should
>speak greek except if he is forced not to; but I see no reasons why
>ancient Greeks should be forced not to speak greek.
Really? All old writings in England were done in Latin. Latin was the
language of the court, but the common people spoke (Old) English.
It seems to me quite possible that the writings could all be in greek,
and that greek was, in fact, spoken by the upper classes, but this doesn't
tell us anything about how common it was among the lower (illiterate) classes.
--
ـــ ــ ـ ـــــ ³ Paul Foley ³ This space intentionally
ـ ـكك غكغك ـ ³ email : pfo...@cavebbs.gen.nz ³ not left blank.
كـ غ كــ كك ³ ³
ــغ ـ غغ ـغغــ ³ This is an understatement :-) ³ Standard disclaimer applies
R o d Johnson
the Macedonian question.
In article <1992Feb09.1...@cavebbs.gen.nz> pfo...@cavebbs.gen.nz (Paul Foley) writes:
>Really? All old writings in England were done in Latin. Latin was the
>language of the court, but the common people spoke (Old) English.
>It seems to me quite possible that the writings could all be in greek,
>and that greek was, in fact, spoken by the upper classes, but this doesn't
>tell us anything about how common it was among the lower (illiterate) classes.
I agree with the point you're making, but I'm not sure your evidence
is correct here. English wasn't spoken in the British Isles until
about 450AD, and Latin wasn't significant within that time until after
600 (with the introduction of Christianity). After 1066, French was
spoken, and for parts of the intervening time Danish/Old Norse was
spoken. In the meantime, various dialects of Old English definitely
*were* written (we have records starting from 700), and I'm unaware of
any time in which Latin was the language of the court. It certainly
was the language of the liturgy and of scholarship, though, but I'm
skeptical that the king(s) did business in Latin with the members of
the court(s). (In fact, I'm not sure if such a thing as a "court"
existed until late, but that's another question.) Anyway, can you be
more specific about the time period you mean?
89u...@csdvax.csd.unsw.edu.au
another language spoken. If you say that it is possible that that can happen
and no evidence to prove it then given the model you present it is useless.
There is a lot of evidence that they considered themselves as Greeks as wall as
that other Greeks thought of them the same way. None to the contrary. So your
final point has no base.
> Ivan A Derzhanski
George T.
Philip Santas
In article <H-G...@engin.umich.edu> r...@caen.engin.umich.edu (R o d Johnson) writes:
>In article <1992Feb7.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
[PS]
>>In these languages you need to define new words or use whole paragraphs
>>in order to explain certain meanings which in our western languages
>>they have the form of a single understandable word.
[RD]
>And there are likewise Balinese concepts that take whole paragraphs to
>relate in English. So what? The fact that there are difficulties in
>translation is not an argument for any sort of rank ordering of
>languages. Relative number of words in a definition is a poor measure
>of cognitive or cultural complexity. Whole dissertations have been
>written on the Burmese concept of _anade_; I doubt that means Burmese
>is unequivocally a more complex language than English.
I have never spoken about complexity, I have spoken about limits:
Letter from Martin Heidegger to Jean Beaufret:
(note that I do not neccessarily agree with their philosophical opinions,
I just quote their comments concerning "language")
..."Mais si l' allemand a ses ressources, le francais a ses limites".
... an ability for the one language to teach the other with creative
thinking...
Notice that these words have been expressed by people who use the
language till its limits.
[RD]
>You bet. Anyone who says otherwise is simply arguing from authority,
>as you are attempting to do here. Russell, venerable though you may
>find hime to be, surely made mistakes. He *asserts* this; he adduces
>no proof, this this is lucky for him, given the vast amounts of effort
>expended trying to establish the truth or falshood of this very point,
>from Leibniz through von Humboldt, Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Emile
>Benveniste, Joshua Fishman, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, Eleanor Rosch,
>to recent work by Michael Silverstein and by Peter Muhlhauser and Rom
>Harre. You must be ignorant of this work to suppose that glibly
>waving a quote of Russell's at us can suffice to establish the facts
>in a notoriously difficult dispute.
>
No, I do not argue from authority. Russell makes a direct comparison between
Chinese and wstern languages and he says why he does this, and what he wants
to accomplish. This is why I gave you the title of the book ("Analysis
of the Mind" as you corrected it), so that you can see by yourself
under what circumstances he made this statement.
On the other hand, I know that in science one has to doubt, but as I said
you exaggerate, since you do not bring any evidence that shows that
there is no such distinctions among languages.
I bring you evidence from people who know what language is all about.
[RD]
>Impressed that I could reel off all those names? No? Good. Naming
>names does not an argument make, even if it's a famous philosopher.
>Most linguistics graduate students should be able to reel off most of
>those names after their first Language and Culture class. Just like
>any buffoon can wave Russell at someone. This isn't inquiry, it's
>gossip.
This paragraph is at least unfair, and is created by your missunderstanding
my postings.
>In fact I'm personally somewhat in agreement with Russell here.
Meaning?
>That's not the issue; your appeal to an ex cathedra pronouncement by
>Russell hardly counts as an argument for your thesis, both because
>Russell could be wrong and because qualitative *difference* does not
>imply a ranking of any sort.
I can bring you numbers of examples from people who use the
language in a level that we cannot reach in these postings. These
examples show that THERE IS A PROBLEM with your position.
[PS]
>>even personalities which are superior than yours, and people that have
>>done more studying and research than you...
OK, I take it back.
[RD]
>Again you distort your opponents' arguments (or simply don't
>understand them). What "several netters" have suggested was that
>there was a non-Greek population, not that there was not a Greek
>population. The two are not equivalent.
Note that the dispute about Macedonia started in soc.culture.SOME,
and I was reffering to some of these postings as well.
[RD]
>>>There are several mountains named "Olympos". The original is thought
>>>by scholars to be the one in Thessaly, not Macedonia.
>>
[PS]
>>Well, Dion is found in the Macedonian Olympos (it is the first time
>>I hear that Olympos could have been in Thessaly -:)
>
[RD]
>I'll concede a tie on this. It's on the Thessaly-Macedonia border.
Since the ancient times it is WELL KNOWN that Olympos is in Macedonia.
Accept this, it is a fact.
[RD]
>I'm angry because you've been vituperative and sarcastic with several
>people who don't deserve it, who have expressed their positions mildly
>and patiently, and you have repeatedly attacked them for positions
>they have not in fact held. If it takes a less mild response to get
>your attention, well, I'm at your service.
May I inform you that you are the one who started the aggressive
postings not me.
[RD]
>Gee, wanna compare educations?
Is here any ranking possible? -:)
[PS]
>>you can start by Geography, you can continue
>>with Philosophy, and after some time really try to translate Sartre to any
>>Indonesian language (Bali has really a high level culture, with wonderful music,
>>but there are certain things that you can not do with _this_ language or music etc.
>>(try to play Mahler with Indonesian music instruments -:)
[RD]
>This sad attempt at oneupmanship is contemptible, not to mention
>misguided. By the way, you might enjoy Lou Harrison's pieces for
>cello, violin and gamelan, or be interested to note that I've heard
>Mozart played by a gamelan. No Mahler, though. Would "Urlicht" sound
>better in _slendro_ or _pelog_, I wonder?
Well, Kronos also have tried with success to play B. Evans, J. Hendrix...
but:
You see, it was not by accident that I put Mahler here, since I know
how difficult (impossible?) he can be for such arrangements... (but this
is a topic for another news-group)
[RD]
...some deleted flames...
> Rod Johnson * r...@caen.engin.umich.edu * (313) 764-3103
Conclusion? What about Sartre in Balinese? This means that you have to translate
sme paragraphs from Husserl, Heidegger, etc, just for us to stay in this century...
Filippos Santas
Philip Santas
In article <1992Feb09.1...@cavebbs.gen.nz> pfo...@cavebbs.gen.nz (Paul Foley) writes:
>>
>>Ancient Macedonias were Greeks, since they could for instance participate in
>>the Olympic Games, and if one finds out that the language which was
>>spoken in the palace was greek (this is already proven by recent excavations
>>in the area- by Prof. Andronikos), then it is more possible that the local
>>language was greek than anything else: It is obvious, that a Greek should
>>speak greek except if he is forced not to; but I see no reasons why
>>ancient Greeks should be forced not to speak greek.
>
>Really? All old writings in England were done in Latin. Latin was the
>language of the court, but the common people spoke (Old) English.
>It seems to me quite possible that the writings could all be in greek,
>and that greek was, in fact, spoken by the upper classes, but this doesn't
>tell us anything about how common it was among the lower (illiterate) classes.
>
Were all old writings in England done in Latin? I am pretty surprised.
What do you mean by ALL and by OLD?
But the point is not this: here we have the case of a group of people
(ancient <acedonians) who were reffered by ancient Greeks as Greeks,
and (it seems) that they were speaking greek (as well). What has your
analogy got to do with this?
Nobody said that old English were Latin...
Filippos Santas
Alex Gerbessiotis
From: fra...@microsoft.com (Advenient Whimwham)
Subject: Re: The Macedonian language
>Well said.
>
>It seems likely to me, based on my readings of the history
>of the period, that only the ruling elite in Macedonia were
>Hellenized, and then only superficially; just look at all
>that business with Philip's wife Olympia sleeping a snake.
>This was a pretty wild place, a long ways from the agora and
I don't want to impose on your reading, but I would recommend
you the book
N. G. L. Hammond "The history that was Macedonia"
Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1991
You need only read the first few pages to convince yourself
that the language spoken by the Macedonians was a dialect of
Greek (some other evidence presented here seem to eliminate
the possibility that "hellenisation" may have occurred) and at
times that no "hellenisation" claims could have been valid.
It was a wild place (to you), because people were living a different
kind of life.
While in southern greece the Greeks there were involved in trade,
arts etc, the Greeks in macedonia lived a bucolic, pastoral life
moving from high places to low places in winter-summer.
They also had to spend plenty of their time defending themselves
against enemies from the north. The mountains in the border
between Thessaly and Macedonia offered a relatively safe heaven to
the Greeks in the south, where they spent most of the time
fighting themselves:-)
Why do the existence of snakes surprise you? Don't you remember Hercules
when he was a child? Or Cleopatra later on? Come on, not everyone,
like Indiana Jones :-), is allergic to snakes.
What surprised me (that i din't know) was that macedonians didn't have
slaves. The Athenians did. So according to our
standards which of the two seems to be more "savage,wild, etc" the
Athenians or the Macedonians?
The difference in tastes is a way of life.
Say country "A" supports the death penalty (i don't want to start a flame
war, but...) and "B" does not. Is is correct to assume that citizens of
"A" are wild, savage (from the point of view of "B"),
and thus need to be civilised?
(I'm going to repeat some arguments of mine previously posted)
The fact that the Macedonian dialect was a greek dialect is also
supported by many other sources. Such as numerous names (and the names of
their fathers) revealed on tombs excavated by Prof. M. Andronikos, among
other ones, in Vergina (ancient Aegae). The tombs belong to Macedonians
These names are of periods well before the
close contacts of Philippos with Southern Greece, and thus
one cannot claim (the way Skopjans do) that these tombs belong to
"hellenised" Macedonians.
The names of months used by the Macedonians were also greek (and had
nothing in common with the names used by the Athenians, you know, those
who were supposedly the ones who "hellenised" Macedonians).
Not very surpiringly to historians (who say that Macedonians were
Dorians, or better, the name Dorians were given to the Macedonians
who moved to Peloponnesos, as also attested by Herodotos) the month
names used by the Lacedaemonians
(aka Spartans, who were Dorians) have common names with those used
by the Macedonians and those found in Delphi (such as Apellaios,
Artemisios).
Herodotos, when he counted the losses in ships of the
Greek cities after the naval battle of Salamina, mentioned that
Lacedaemonians, and the residents of other cities in peloponnesos
belonged to the dorian and macedonian tribe ("dorikon kai makednon ethnos").
For a discussion on the dialect of Greek spoken by the Macedonians
there is a chapter devoted to it in a book
with an approximate title
Macedonia: 4000 years of Greek history and civilisation.
edited by Prof. M. Sakellariou
>stoa. I assume that the common people spoke not some flavor of
>Greek, as did their rulers, but another language or languages,
>now called Macedonian for lack of more detailed information.
>
And how can you explain that Greek tragedies, if you ignore all
my previous arguments, were played there in greek? or
the description of the Macedonians by the Persians (when they occupied
the area during their conquests in Europe c. 510-480)
"The greeks wearing the shield-like hat" who were the MAcedonians.
Or the names Olympos, Pieria (yes Olympos is in Macedonia).
It is believed that the worship of the 12 Gods
started in Macedonia since, as it is claimed, Mount Olympos looks
magnificent, if seen from areas north of it (in Macedonia) while
its sight from the south is hindered by other mountains.
The languages spoken by the residents of the so called "macedonia" around
Skopje is a Bulgarian dialect with Turkish Albanian and Greek words,
and has nothing to do with the Greek dialect spoken by the ancient
Macedonians (the real ones).
>
>--
>Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
> "Only the mediocre can always be at their best." -- Mencken
>For an average time write uunet!microsoft!frankm
>For an even more mediocre time try fra...@microsoft.com
>
>
Regards,
Alexandros Gerbessiotis
---
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself
Alex Gerbessiotis
From: fra...@microsoft.com (Advenient Whimwham)
Subject: Re: The Macedonian language
>Well said.
>
>It seems likely to me, based on my readings of the history
>of the period, that only the ruling elite in Macedonia were
>Hellenized, and then only superficially; just look at all
>that business with Philip's wife Olympia sleeping a snake.
>This was a pretty wild place, a long ways from the agora and
I don't want to impose on your reading, but I would recommend
you the book
N. G. L. Hammond "The history that was Macedonia"
Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1991
You need only read the first few pages to convince yourself
that the language spoken by the Macedonians was a dialect of
Greek (some other evidence presented here seem to eliminate
the possibility that "hellenisation" may have occurred).
It was a wild place (to you), because people were living a different life.
While in southern greece the Greeks there were involved in trade,
arts etc, the Greeks in macedonia lived a bucolic, pastoral life
moving from high places to low places in winter-summer.
They also had to spend plenty of their time defending themselves
against enemies from the north. The mountains in the border
between Thessaly and Macedonia offered a relatively safe heaven to
the Greeks in the south, where they spent most of the time
fighting themselves:-)
Why do snakes surprise you? Remember Hercules when he was a child.
Or Cleopatra.
What surprised me (that i din't know) was that macedonians didn't have
slaves. Athenians did. So according to our
standards, which of the two seems to be more "savage,wild, etc" the
Athenians or the Macedonians?
Herodotos, when he counts the losses in ships of the
Greek cities after the naval battle of Salamina, mentions that
Lacedaemonians, and the residents of other cities in peloponnesos
belonged to the dorian and macedonian tribe ("dorikon kai makednon ethnos").
For a discussion on the dialect of Greek spoken by the Macedonians
there is a chapter devoted to it in a book
with an approximate title
Macedonia: 4000 years of Greek history and civilisation.
edited by Prof. M. Sakellariou
>stoa. I assume that the common people spoke not some flavor of
>Greek, as did their rulers, but another language or languages,
>now called Macedonian for lack of more detailed information.
>
And how can you explain that Greek tragedies, if you ignore all
my previous arguments, were played there in greek? or
the description of the Macedonians by the Persians (when they occupied
the area during their conquests in Europe c. 510-480)
"The greeks wearing the shield-like hat", who were the Macedonians
(and this was at time long before the era of alleged
"hellenisation").
Or the names Olympos, Pieria.
Alex Gerbessiotis
From: loj...@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group)
Subject: Re: The Macedonian language
>
>
>Now what does all this tell us? That Macedonia went from being less
>like the Greeks to more so during that century, that prior to Phillip,
>the language was sufficiently different from Attic Greek so as to be
>unintelligible, and to earn the label "barbarians" for the Macedonians,
The only reference of "barbarian" was against Philippos by Demosthenes
in one of his political speeches against him (but if he was
serious then he himself could have been accused of being
barbarian since his mother was Skythian).
The dialect of Greek spoken by the Macedonians was indeed different
from the Attic one but had many similarities with the Aeolic
and Doric ones. For example if you read the names of the 12 months
used in Macedonia, found in Delphi, used by the Dorians(say Spartans),
and the Athenians (attic) you will realise the names used by
the Athenians were probably unintelligible to the other ones
while there is a common interesection among the other ones.
According to your argument, the athenians should be considered
barbarian by the other groups.
This reminded me of a CBS(?) News broadcast from Kuwait
around Aug/Sept 1990, which showed US armor troops
cooperating with British ones (desert rats i think), and a
british soldier was asked what the main problem in their cooperation
was. He answered that it was the language one:-)
>a label that etymologically indicates the unintelligibility of the
>language. The language was akin to Greek, but had elements of at least
>two or three other IE >families<. This suggests at least as much
>difference from Greek as another language resulting from interaction of
>3 IE language families - English - has from German. The EB describes
>the Greek language prior to the Hellenistic period as "numerous Greek
>dialects, which differed in phonetic and morphological details, but were
>
You start from an accusation made by Demosthenes against Philippos
and you draw general conclusions. Aeschines, i think, who visited
Macedonia, said that their language was Greek (i may have confused him
with Hellanikos).
The language was Greek. There's a chapter on it in
Macedonia: 4000 years of Greek history and civilisation.
edited by Prof. M. Sakellariou
>in its own right.
>----
>lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
> 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA
> 703-385-0273
> loj...@grebyn.com
>
>
George Paris Katsoufis
Macedonian or the Athenian)......ALL human civilizations were savage and
barbarian in their own ways because of circumstance and environment. So
the matter here is not which civilization was savage, but which
civilization was more brutal to its own kind. And in this case it
doesn't really matter, because we are all brutal and savage in each
others minds because of the fact that we don't know how that other
person thinks and lives. It has always been the case in each
civilization in any part of the world, in any point in time.
George P. Katsoufis
gk...@andrew.cmu.edu
Ivan A Derzhanski
<In article <83...@scott.ed.ac.uk>, i...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
<> In article <1992Feb5.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
<> <
<> <In article <1992Feb4.2...@news2.cis.umn.edu> co...@kilo.cs.umn.edu (Ahmet Cosar) writes:
<> <>In article <1992Feb4.1...@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> san...@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
<> <>>
<> <>> if one finds out that the language which was
<> <>>the local language was greek than anything else: <...>
<> <>
<> <>The Ottomans used Arabic for official communication and Persian for
<> <>literature. In daily life they used a mixture of Persian/Arabic/Turkish.
<>
<> the royal court in country C at time T was L doesn't prove that the
<> language spoken in the street in country C at time T was L too. (Of
<> course it doesn't prove the opposite either.)
<>
<> Languages like French and Persian have served many an imperial palace
<> in countries where they wouldn't have been commonly understood in the
<> street. I think Chinese, German, and Greek belong to the same list.
<>
<another language spoken.
Of course.
<If you say that it is possible that that can happen
<and no evidence to prove it then given the model you present it is useless.
What I am saying is indeed that it is possible for the palace and the
marketplace in a country to have different languages. I don't know
whether this was or was not the case in ancient Macedonia. But from
the article I was replying to it followed that this was impossible or
at least highly unlikely in principle, and with this Ahmet Coras and I
disagree. So my model, as you called it, is not exactly useless.
Ian Heavens
>
>What I am saying is indeed that it is possible for the palace and the
>marketplace in a country to have different languages. I don't know
>whether this was or was not the case in ancient Macedonia. But from
Indeed. A nice example is the that of the Moghul emperors of India, who spoke
a Turkic language, being descended from Timur Leng. Babur's splendid
autobiography, the Babur-Nama, is written in this.
ian
---
Ian Heavens i...@spider.co.uk
Spider Systems Ltd
Spider Park, Stanwell Street
Edinburgh, EH6 5NG, Scotland +44 31 554 9424 (Ext 4166)
--