>
> > And the similarity in the case of az happens to appear ONLY in
> > Bulgarian.
>
> It was already <azU> in OCS, to be precise, and it may owe its survival
> Bulgarian to the conservative influence of Church Slavic.
OCS was based on the Slavic dialects spoken in the region of
Tessaloniki. It has major deviations from other Slavic languages
(e.g. definite article, desintegrating case system). All similarities
of OCS with Bulgarian put aside, the Tessaloniki dialects are listed
under Bulgarian dialects in university courses to the present day
(this has reference to language and not to territorial claims, to save
you the paranoia). Same about the "shtokashti" dialects in eastern
Serbia. The Bulgarian minorities in eastern Serbia are officially
recognized by the Serbian government. And this is also not connected
with territorial claims.
>
> > Just as many other things "happen to be so" in BG.
>
> Name any language, and I will show you things that "happen to be so"
> there and nowhere else. I can't see anything peculiar about Bulgarian.
How acquainted are you with Bulgarian? I am far from an attempt to
discredit you. Yet it is a frequent concern of mine. Most of what
you read on southern Slavic languages is based exclusively on
Serbo-Croatian, which deviates enormously from Bulgarian and
Macedonian. Bulgarian has an analytical grammar, a postponed definite
article, some unusual pronouns (not just AzU), unusual vocabulary,
deviations in phonetics, etc. This is also taught in university
courses on Bulgarian dialectology in the form of questions which in
spite of the explanations provided may need further attention (we are
actually expected to keep thinking while learning). Some better
explanations may be found in Protobulgarian influences. Others, as
George says, may be found in substrate influences. This is especially
important in the Balkans and not just my crazy idea.
> What evidence? The existence of a similar word in Iranian?
Archaeological evidence confirming the Protobulgarian migrations and
connections with Iranian peoples. I had given a link to one source.
That's no
> _evidence_ of borrowing.
I had not spoken about borrowing, but about some basic mixture of two
languages, whereby some features of the original languages are
preserved. As you may note, Slavic peoples, unrelated historically to
Bulgarians, did not seem to "borrow" those features. The Russian
grammar allows me to understand Polish. It will not help you so much
in Bulgarian, although in the vocabulary you will find many similarities.
It's just a conjecture, and not a plausible one
> at that, given that all the case forms of the 1.sg. pronoun are Slavic,
> and that no other pronoun was replaced beside the least likely one.
That was just one example that I shared. I want to go further
researching this. You don't really have to worry. If there is
nothing behind such a thesis, it will get disproven.
> But Bulgarian _is_ Slavic.
No one is arguing against its being basically a Slavic language. Yet
obviously the thought that being something may also mean being mixed
with something else and that not all should be explained through the
former is easier to understand for Balkan peoples. Probably for some
understandable historical reasons.
It isn't a "mixed" language, let alone a
> relexified Iranian dialect,
I am not arguing about that.
even if it contains Iranian loans (and I
> don't think there are more of them in Bulgarian than, say, in my native
> Polish).
That has to be checked. If you are right, you are right. Yet I have
a list of words that I checked with my roommate both ways - how
something is called in Polish and if she can think of a word in Polish
that sounds similar. Some of those words that I can say now, aus dem
Kopf, are:
omraza "hatred"
mrazja "hate"
hubav "good, nice"
obicham "love"
mrUsen "dirty"
chicho "uncle"
tUrsja "seek"
dreha "piece of clothing"
kolan "belt"
Just a chaotic list of what I can recall.
I also tried the words "karam" and "mUrdam". Serbs have both, but
they say mrdam. Both words have a very vulgar meaning in Serbian,
which I will not discuss now :-) Yet "karam" (do, move, drive) is a
very usual word in BG, just as mUrdam (move). My roommate said,
karati (sorry about the spelling) means "punish" in Polish? It is
clear that in the case of "karam", you could be dealing with the root
kr.-. It also lies in the basis of the English "car", but in the case
of English, as far as I remember, the word came in through Latin. How
did "karam" come into Bulgarian? Just wondering. The Serbian vulgar
versions are probably related, because they are also connected with,
hmm, movements :-) The example with "karam" probably proves nothing,
but it has given me some reasons for thought. E.g. how did those
words end up with those meanings in Serbian?
If you say "Bulgarians _and_ Slavs", it's clear that you resort
> to your private nomenclature, thus making discussion difficult.
I will say Protobulgarians from now on to make it clear.
> What languages? Slavic and Iranian? Even 2000 years ago the level of
> mutual intelligibility between them was zero.
Huh, now, Piotr, how do you know? In learning Indo-Iranian languages,
I find many similarities between Slavic and Iranian. Those groups of
languages are also long-standing neighbors. I cannot agree with the
zero, even if my comments were also kind of sloppy.
> > Many
> > people learn them by heart without any understanding. Yet one of the
> > worst things I could do is take those "things" and apply them
> > indiscriminately to other languages, sometimes in conflict with
> > actual evidence.
>
> What "other languages"? The methods of linguistics are not supposed to
> be language-specific.
So why do you call it linguistics at all if it is not based on
knowledge of languages? If you apply such generalizing abstract logic
to a computer program, it will probably give you very bad results, or
turn out extremely insensitive and say error every second minute.
Unfortunately, linguistics does not have those checking mechanisms.
And my general impression is many linguists are actually worse at
speaking living languages than many amateurs. I do not think this is
normal.
> You will know when it turns into an idée fixe: when it becomes so
> important to you that you dismiss more orthodox explanations
Orthodox seems to be a keyword here. By the way, I have not dismissed
anything. Not yet.
>without
> good reason
With or without is yet to find out.
Eva