Re: The language of Schytians

Thanks David. He was booted, as you probably saw. It's definately
wise to avoid heated arguments of these types. I think the point of
debate shouldn't be to "win" but to learn from each other.

Thanks for the info, that was helpful,
Michael

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson"
<liberty@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Smith"
> <mytoyneighborhood@...> wrote:
> >
> > Thoughts?:
> >
> > --- In scythia@yahoogroups.com, Tonyukuk Kagan
> <tonyukuk_kagan@...>
> > wrote:
> >
> > The most politically and convincing hyphotesis put forward
> > regarding the language of Schytians up to this day is that
> > the one that is of the opinion that They spoke a Proto-
> > Bulgaric (Turkic) dialect.
>
> I'm a member of the scythia group too, and read Kagan's
> post a few days ago. I almost set about writing a reply,
> but in the end decided not to, as I get embroiled in such
> nonsense far too often for my own good as it is already.
> Moreover, even if you are to "win" such an argument, you
> never truly win, because Mr. Kagan, or at least Miziev,
> whom Kagan follows in all of this, is motivated by other
> than a search for the truth by rational means. The less I
> publicly write about Miziev's true motivations the better
> it is for the peace of the list, as several bitter past
> experiences have taught.
>
> I will, to this list, and toward the information of yourself,
> however, point out the following:
>
> (1) A people known as the Jász settled in Hungary in the
> 12th century and were identified by the Hungarians among
> whom they settled as Jazygians, the name of a well known
> Sarmatian tribe. The Jász have by now been assimilated by
> the Magyars, but a record of their original language has
> surived in the form of a brief word list. The language of
> the list is clearly a dialect of Ossetic, which is a North-
> Eastern Iranic language.
>
> (2) A very large body written in the language of the Khotan
> Saka has survived, and that language too is a member of the
> North-Eastern Iranic branch.
>
> (3) The Byzantine Empire had diplomatic relations with the
> old kingdom of Alania in the Caucasus, and the Byzantine
> writer John Tzetzes (c. 1110 - c. 1180) recorded an example
> of the Alanic language, about half of the words in which
> clearly belong to a dialect of Ossetic. However Tzetzes also
> records "Salamalek alti, salamalek altugep" as a Scythian
> greeting, with the meaning "Good day, my lady, good day, my
> lord". The latter certainly doesn't appear to be Iranic,
> and I don't know for sure but it appears to me as if it might
> be Turkic. Now Tzetzes may well have been using 'Scythian'
> as an archaism and in fact have been referring to Turks, but
> just try to convince Kagan of that, especially as the same
> has been suggested about the Hungarians' reference to the Jász
> as "Jazygians"!
>
> David