Re: [tied] Re: Oltak

On Mon, 07 Apr 2003 08:47:50 +0000, tgpedersen
<tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>Correct me if I'm wrong; I believe there are now three "Caucasian"
>language groups: NW Caucasian, NE Caucasian and Kartvelian (of which
>Georgian is a member). Kartvelian languages used to be spoken much
>further north, along the Black Sea coast, I seem to recall

I don't think so.

>(and it has the 'dan' "water" word).

The Georgian-Zan word for water is given by Klimov as *c.q.a- (it
might be *c.q.al- or *c.q.ar-: Geo. c.q.al-, Megr. c.q.ar, Laz
c.k.a(r), c.ar).

Are you perhaps referring to *dn-: Geo. dn- "to melt, thaw", OGeo. "to
vanish"; Megr. din-, d&n-, Laz din-, dun- "to disappear, get lost",
Svan n- "to melt, thaw"

>The thing that worry me most is the
>ancient reports of Greeks (?) needing one hundred interpreters to
>travel in the Caucasus; several languages (the last one was Ubykh)
>and whole language groups might have died out without a trace.

You still need a lot of interpreters. Besides the 40 or so
"Caucasian" languages (NW, NE and Kartvelian), Indo-European
(Armenian, Kurdish, Ossetic and several other Iranian lgs.), Semitic
(various flavors of Neo-Aramaic) and Altaic (Mongolian Kalmyk, Turkic
Azeri and several minor Turkic lgs.) are also spoken in the area.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...