--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> W dniu 2012-06-14 11:54, Alx pisze:
>
> > Well, there are stories as you said but in this case we speak about
> > someone as Strabon and I doubt his mentions is to be compared with
> > some stories of some basques soldiers, don't you think ?
>
> Alex, appealing to the authority of the Ancients is not a valid
> argument. The study of the languages of the _barbaroi_ was precisely
> what the Greeks were no good at. For example, Herodotus made amazingly
> ignorant commnents about Old Persian -- the sort of stuff that is
> totally at odds with what we know today. Who shall we believe? The
> Father of History, who was
born in a city controlled by the Achaemenid
> Empire and personally visited many places where Old Persian was spoken,
> or modern linguists who can "only" study the fossils of the language?
>
> Piotr
>
Piotr, I did not invoqued the authority of the ancients as the definitive
argument. I am pretty aware that there are troubles with these
mentions as well. To me it is clear that there are differences
and I invoqued the list of C. Pogirc which shows that there are
more similiarities between Dacian and Ilirian space regarding
the names but these in Thracia appears to have more differences.
More, since the region between Rhodope and Danube was pretty
inhabited by dacians/ moesians, yet the region has been considered
to e stil Thrace, I don't wonder about Strabon mention a such thing.
Yet, he did mentioned that they speak the same language and I think
that a such matter should not be
thrown away too easy :))
*****GK: I agree with this. It all depends on the context.
And Herodotus was hardly always wrong. After all he did (correctly)note the similarity of the languages of Scythians and Sarmatians in his time even if his characterization of this was a bit dubious (I suspect a Scythian source :=))*****