>The Dardic languages aren't Iranian, to begin with; the fact that
they are Indo-Iranian is irrelevant if you want to support the
influence of _Iranian_ on Bulgarian.
Piotr, regardless of the thesis, I think in a translation you could
use the Indo-Iranian languages in general. You use Sanskrit to
translate from Old Persian.
As to Dardic, isn't it a part of the so-called Nuristani, showing
some very old form of Indo-Iranian?
>If they haven't, they are useless, unless you want to suggest that
the Proto-Bulgars came from the Hindukush and were Dardic rather
than Iranian.
Actually, coming from a particular region is not authomatically
connected with a certain language.
>
> They are useless anyway if one lists them without attempting a
linguistic and historical analysis.
There are, supposedly, sources pointing out at the Bulgars coming
from Pamir and Hindukush. Having in mind the quality of the other
evidence presented by Dobrev, one would have to look more carefully
at those as well. One of the souces quoted is the
Armenian "Ashharazujts" (no idea how this is correctly spelled in
English).
> To understand such relations, you must do some elementary reading
on the historical phonology of the Iranian languages first.
This phonology is not very clear on Nuristani, especially on the
development of the l-sonance in those languages.
> I have no Bulgarian etymological dictionary to hand, but I suspect
many of the would-be Iranianisms aren't all that mysterious and have
perfectly ordinary and generally accepted etymologies.
I think Dibrev did not use this dictionary from what I can conclude
from his work.
>For example, <kUs^ta> is certainly Slavic (< *ko~tja, cf. SCr.
kuc'a, Maced. kuk'a).
This could be a loan.
>It's sadly evident that Dobrev (or whoever is the culprit here) did
not control his "evidence" in any way, and that Vassil also failed
to verify it. This is not the way to do lingusitics professionally.
I owe an explanation about Vassil. He is not a linguist and it was
my precipitated reaction to give the link to his page. On the other
hand, I see at least one positive outcome - that a discussion
started and brought some results (and may bring others). Yet Vassil
never attempted to make a professional page on linguistics.
Eva