--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fortuna11111" <fortuna11111@...> wrote:
> 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.
No disagreement here. Bulgarian and Macedonian are more closely
related than either of them is to any other extant Slavic language.
That's a linguistic _fact_. It should also be clear that the
_differences_ between Bulgarian and Macedonian, independently of how
one interprets them for extralinguistic purposes, may reveal
interesting things about the etymology of Bulgarian words. That's why
I used Macedonian evidence in my posting on <kUs^ta>.
> 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.
Eva, freedom of thought and speech is a wonderful thing, but in
science opinions are subject to public evaluation. You are entitled to
your own opinions, but if you aren't able to defend them in the course
of a fair debate, and if your critics point out flaws in your
arguments, invoking freedom of thought won't help you much. Lots of
Alex's "Thracian" etymologies have been refuted on this list for
completely valid reasons -- not because Thracian is exotic (it isn't
anyway, not in the Balkan context) but because the words in question
are easily accounted for as inherited Latin items, loans from Slavic, etc.
There are a number of Cybalist members who know sufficiently much
about the linguistic and cultural context of the Balkan area
(including some familiarity with Latin, Greek, OCS, Albanian, Romance,
Slavic and IE linguistics, the history of the region, etc.) to be able
to evaluate Alex's proposals in an entirely fair way (as you certainly
realise, some of the critics are native Romanians themselves).
Piotr