Re: [tied] Yers

----- Original Message -----
From: Vassil Karloukovski
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 12:34 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Yers


> you are probably right in general and there is a lot of rubbish there. The
author, P. Dobrev, did exclude references to Sumerian in his later works and
concentrated on Iranian and Caucasian words only, which is historically much
more justified. But he shouldn't be judged too harshly, as he is not a
linguist.

Dear Vassil, I've got nothing personal against Dobrev, and far be it from me
to judge HIM. Still, my opinion about the quality of his work published on
the Internet is very low. If he is not a linguist, he should leave matters
linguistic to people who know something about the subject. No conscientious
scientist would write about things he's so ignorant of. I wouldn't buy a
used car from Dobrev, figuratively speaking. The part of his work I'm
competent to judge is rubbish, so I don't trust the rest either.

> And he did com up with important insights in some cases, e.g. regarding
the name of
Avitokhol, the name of the progenitor in the Namelist of the Bulgarian
princes (the best the Turkic school had to offer was to equate it to
Attila). So there is a net gain, as I see it.

I don't care for terms like "the Turkic/Bulgarian/Ruritanian school". The
purpose of a scientist, as I understand it, is NOT to serve his or her
nation. Knowledge belongs to all. National pride only makes people lose
their objectivity and fall victim to wishful thinking. We've seen it too
often even on this list. There's no denying that there was some Iranian
influence on the Bulgars; George Knysh made the point too a few postings
back. Some of the names of their aristocracy were clearly Iranian
("Asparukh" undoubtedly so). Still, everybody knows how easily names are
borrowed. We are both Slavs with etymologically Greek names (George is
another, while Eva's name is Hebrew; are there any Slavs with Slavic names
here :-)?). Insight without solid knowledge isn't worth anything. You still
need an expert to judge whether someone's insight is sound or not.

> Still, nobody has shown why the Turkic ordinals are more relevant to the
treatment of the Bulgar ordinals from the Namelist than are the
Indo-Iranian.

I'd like to see a _serious_ treatment of the data first. What I have seen so
far has not convinced me that the Iranian interpretation makes any sense at
all. It looks amateurish and totally unreliable. George's questions deserve
to be addressed too:

"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?"

Piotr