From: george knysh
Message: 22986
Date: 2003-06-10
>*****GK: Old Bulgarian (Slavic) is quite popular among
>
> > GK: Has there been any attempt to inform the
> > international scholarly community of this esp. via
> > conferences? What has been the reaction? Are all
> > Bulgarian scholars convinced by the new knowledge?
> Are
> > there serious non-Bulgarian scholars who are? It's
> > been ten years you say. Any progress?
>
> The problem is, as you may imagine, the fact that my
> country or
> language are not particularly popular.
> consider this to be*****GK: The thesis that the Proto-Bulgars were a
> a tragedy, but the problem is there are few scholars
> in the west
> who would engage in in-depth studies of the
> inscriptions. No
> one seems to be crazy about Bulgaria right now, so
> many
> scientists would prefer looking at what has already
> been written
> (and you know what has been written). Or they copy
> from others,
> as it usually happens. Yet most of what you already
> have as
> literature on the subject has been written during
> the Communist
> regime. You should at the very least take those
> texts with a grain
> of salt.
>******GK: Come now, don't be disingenuous. The notion
> It will be a difficult process to try to make
> scholars interested in
> the new findings. Do I need to explain how slowly
> the wheels of
> science sometimes turn? 10 years are not a lot of
> time, but they
> were enough for the Bulgarian scholarly community to
> be
> convinced to its large part. You may see attempts
> be directed
> outside of Bulgaria in the future. Publishing also
> costs money.
> My country is extremely poor, so everything we have
> to do in any
> direction is connected with enormous restrictions in
> this sense.
>*****GK: I am doing no such thing. There's plenty of
>
> >
> > Anyone claiming something
> > > different should
> > > manage to translate the inscriptions using
> Turkic -
> > > I may then be
> > > convinced of the opposite.
> >
> > GK: It's not a question of whether you as an
> > amateur and enthusiast are convinced, but whether
> > serious scholars are. I'm not trying to put you
> down,
> > just pointing out that the opinion of solid
> > professionals matters a great deal on such
> > issues.
>
> Are you assuming Bulgarian scholars are no serious
> scholars?
> So where do you think is the best place to learn
> about Bulgaria?
>*****GK: Don't worry about it. Just produce the
> I understand your point about getting supposedly
> unbiased
> comments from outside. Yet all comments are biased,
> since
> every scientist tends to hold on to what he thinks
> he knows and
> understands from his field. A dogma is always hard
> to overturn,
> especially if backed by so much past ideology.
> There will be
> bias on all sides.
>******GK: You mentioned in another post that there is
> So while I get your point, I think you are showing a
> little too much
> optimism. And hence my comment about the Turkish
> theory still
> appearing in encyclopaedias 100 years from now. I
> meant, it
> may take so much to correct 100 years of creative
> writing on the
> history and language of Bulgarians. I as a
> Bulgarian am
> concerned - and will do the best I can to correct
> the mistakes.
> That's about all I can do, the rest is your
> judgement.