> As a linguists, I don't give a damn whether A and B are
_classified_ as
> separate languages or not according to arbitrary criteria. A
dialect is
> as good as a language.
Depends what you are doing with it and to what arguments you
are applying it. As I have said, to me calling Macedonian
Macedonian is no problem as far as it is clear it has a very close
historical kinship with Bulgarian and this is taken into
consideration in case of comparison.
>
> > > The more variety, the longer we'll be paid for doing
linguistics
> > :-).
> >
> > This sounds encouraging :-)
>
> OK, so here's to diversity!
I guess you got me wrong. I have nothing against diversity.
> The central and eastern part of Serbo-Crotian territory (the
criterion
> is the form of the pronoun 'what': <s^to> as opposed to <c^a>
or <kaj>).
> But the cluster /s^t/ is found everywhere in Serbo-Croatian and
there's
> nothing foreign or unfamiliar about it.
Okay, you are right now that I think about it (I even met some
Serbs today and thought about what you said, believe it or not).
My thought was more that the sht does not seem to be so typical
of Serbian as it is of Bulgarian. I could have been wrong since
the measure I am applying is quite subjective here.
> Extraordinary claims require terribly good evidence. I hope
Miguel and I
> have between us given you a sufficient explanation of why the
regular
> derivation of <kUs^ta> from *ko~tja is preferable to any "exotic"
> solution. Any competing etymology had better be well-
substantiated.
Yes, that's clear. Therefore, I have not tried to argue further on
this particular word. If I have something else to say later, I will
say it.
>
> >
> > You know that Alex likes to reject Romance
> > > etymologies of lots of perfectly Romance-looking words in
> > Romanian, and
> > > he smells Thracian and Dacian influence all about the
place.
> > Is he right
> > > :-)?
> >
> > What do you think?
>
> Don't tell anybody, but I think he's COMPLETELY wrong.
Piotr, the whole big things is, you are free to think and he is free
as well. I would not rule his words out simply because they
sound exotic, while I find your comments also very useful.
My personal opinion is, many things concerning the Balkans will
need a redefinition, since much of our history has been seen
through the lens of the old "us vs them" philosophy, which, btw,
does not belong to the Balkans, or so I think. In an area where
you have such an enormous mixture of cultures, you cannot
speak of any single influence that has played a role in forming
those cultures (as we all tend to say now - we are Da best, the
rest got it from us). Yet you can speak about many different
influences - some of them probably unexplored.
My other personal conviction is, the most interesting cultures in
history were born out of a mixture, not out of some exceptionally
pure genes, or whatever nonsense we have read in the 20th
century. Purity is sterile - brings nothing to life. And as I have
previously said - only through the understanding of our being
mixed can we get to the right vision on our being different. I may
not agree with everything that Alex said, but generally I agree with
his digging in other directions. We need to explore those other
directions, especially in the Balkans, because the history of our
region is more than complex.
Call me an idealist, I think this is the future.
Eva