Talk:Carian language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Languages, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, and easy-to-use resource about languages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. | |
| Start | This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. |
 |
This article falls within the scope of the ancient Near East WikiProject. Please participate by editing this article, and help us improve articles to good article standards, or visit the project page. |
[edit] Uocila suggestions
There is an interesting Russian book by Yuriy Otkupschikov (Юрий Откупщиков), the professor of Classical philology at the St. Petersburg State University, entitled "Pre-Greek substrate" (Догреческий субстрат), Leningrad, 1988, 263 p, where the author summarizes his 25 years research on the Carian and palaeobalcanic problem. As readers probably know, he suggested in the late 60's his own interpretation of the Carian alphabet and got a language quite close to Greek and other Palaeobalcanic dialects (Thracian, Phrygian, and Macedonian). This got little support at that time (and apparently later), so that the book was an attempt to justify this point of view from two sides: from the analysis of Carian names and onomastics as well as other linguistic evidence preserved in Greek texts on one hand, and from an attempt to read newly discovered Carian inscriptions in Egypt, on the other. In both cases Otkupschikov came to the conclusion that the Carian was a Palaeobalcanic dialect with quite transparent onomastical links especially to the Thracian and Phrygian. The book is very well written, it's a seldom pleasure to read, and I have found there no linguistic mistakes except for the original assumption: while the linguistic evidence seems very solid, it remains unclear whether it belongs to the genuine Carian element in that language or to an adstrate brought by Palaeobalcanic infiltrations. The deciphering of Carian inscriptions is beyond my competence. Examples of the latter are: (Masson 20, right to left): Μακυθω υη Σκινυκωχε Νεγοκωχε (Masson 34, right to left): ΑϜξονω υη Νεμαιω χε Νεγοκω χε ΙλϜεγλτω χε (Masson 26, right to left): Νησω Μονκηω ΙσχαιαϜω (Masson 7, right to left): ΑϜδερω ΥϜμχδηω Υετιμεω (Friedrich 29 = Shevoroshkin 46, right to left): Υωοζ Νεχω Θυτιμεω etc. When I met Otkupschikov in September 2005 and asked about the fate of his interpretation, he said he did not develop that topic as he was focused on the Balto-Slavic research, and since he was about 80 years old, he had no plans to do further investigations. He did not know about newer attempts to decipher the Carian language, as well as about the bilingue. I have not seen so far the newer works mentioned in this Wikipedia article, but taking into consideration 100 years of Carian interpretations I can assume these are not the final ones ;-) In any case, Otkupschikov's material deserves a thorough analysis since the Palaeobalcanic links of the Carian, whatever origin they could have had, seem to be underestimated in the Carian interpretations. --Uocila 08:15, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Removed para
I removed this questioned statement as verification appears impossible:
"The language was heavily influenced by older aboriginal languages of Anatolia, such as the pre-Indo-European tongue of the Leleges[citation needed] who also dwelt in Caria (and with whom the Carians were sometimes confounded)."
The fragments of Carian are few enough and progress had been made only in the last decade. Lelegian fragments amount to zero so how can any statement possibly be made about its influence on Carian? The Leleges in Anatolia are semi-legendary anyway and their relationship to the Carians unknown. The Leleges article indicates that the name was not a self-name anyway, so the Leleges could be anyone and are probably not the same as all the other Leleges elsewhere. So, the statement is just a guess and can't be verified. As such it is non-encyclopedic.Dave (talk) 17:38, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Egypt?
The sensible-sounding text a small corpus of inscriptions, from which some Carian words have been identified was changed by User:Thrasykles at 10:27, 27 April 2007 to read a small corpus of inscriptions, most of which are found in Egypt. If this were true it would still profit by some explaining how and why. --Wetman (talk) 22:42, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
