# Etymology, nationalism, religion, ...



## Frank06

*Split off from **this thread** (**post #51*)* and inspired by **this thread**.*

Hi,


Spectre scolaire said:


> And why would you think of any _Turkish word_ in the first place? The _G__üneş Dil Teorisi_, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Language_Theory, has got no supporters any more, not even in Turkey.


Oh, if only... you can still find (derivations) of the Sun Language Theory on quite some Kemalistic and Pan Turkic websites and other quite dark corners of the WWW. I don't really have the impression that those gentlemen make jokes about it. The rest of this planet do. But Polat Kaya and his messenger boy are still flooding the internet with their inane interpretation of the SLT. . 

Quite often, etymology (and historical linguistics in general) is abused to create a kind of glorious past for the own language, culture, religion, people, nation. I think the Sun Language Theory is quite an excellent example. 
Hindutva 'doctors' (aka Hindu extremists) also flood the internet with their weird theories against PIE and in favour of Sanskrit, with their Harapan theories, and their billion years old [sic!] Indian civilisation and hence language etc.
Over here, Becanus (17/18th C) claimed that the oldest language (de oudste taal) was Dutch (duutsch = d'oudst).
Chinese characters aren't spared either: see here.
In some sort of way it reminds me of a whole bunch of crackpotters from the 70s and 80 who believed they were reincarnated Egyptian princes(ses), a sort of private glorious past [to such an extent that historians would have to come up with at least 162 new Egyptian dynasties to fit them all in, if only...].

Inventing a glorious past through linguistics... Does anybody have other examples?

Groetjes,

Frank


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## sokol

Well yes, I've got plenty :

*Albania:
*There's a much disputed theory tracing back the Albanian language to *Illyrian *and thus giving Albanian a tradition going back probably to the Copper Age. Needless to say that this theory is believed by Albanian nationalists and rejected by most linguists and historicians in the world.
(Even though there _might _still be _some _Illyric loans in modern Albanian: but that's beside the point.)
*
Romania:
*The *Dacian *theory tracing back Romanian to the Dacians is something similar and with just that little bit more foundation than the Illyrian/Albanian theory; there just might be quite a number of Dacian loans in the Romanian language, but again this is very much disputed because Romaninan nationalists overemphasise (in an unsientific way) the possible links, so that it is only natural that linguists all over the world have to oppose them (to give some balance, and to not let nationalism influence linguistic research).

*German:
*Yes, in German this too was (and from some extremists still is) practiced, especially in the Nazi era linguistics were used to overemphasize the greatness of the "Greater German Reich", one of the favored topics were (besides "Blut-und-Boden"-ideology involving rural culture - "Volkskunde") were the Germanic tribes of the Migration Period (which of course weren't "Germans" at all) and the Germanic script, the runes.

*All European cultures (historically):
*Well yes, in the *Middle Ages *it was kind of a "tradition" to trace back one's history to *Hebrew, the First Language *(as it was the language of the bible).
But this was just something mentioned in chronicles (these chronicles oftentimes wanted to start with the 'absolute' beginning which, languagewise, was considered being the Hebrew language, and from that one it went on to the modern languages); no scientific or pseudo-scientific research was attached here.

I think there are loads of other examples, but that's all that comes to my mind right now.


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## robbie_SWE

sokol said:


> Well yes, I've got plenty :
> ...
> *Romania:*
> The *Thracian *theory tracing back Romanian to the Tracians is something similar and with just that little bit more foundation than the Illyrian/Albanian theory; there just might be quite a number of Thracian loans in the Romanian language, but again this is very much disputed because Romaninan nationalists overemphasise (in an unsientific way) the possible links, so that it is only natural that linguists all over the world have to oppose them (to give some balance, and to not let nationalism influence linguistic research)...
> 
> I think there are loads of other examples, but that's all that comes to my mind right now.


 
I thought it was the Dacian theory that was emphasized?!

 robbie


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## sokol

robbie_SWE said:


> I thought it was the Dacian theory that was emphasized?!
> 
> robbie


Sorry, Robbie, thanks for correcting me - really, how could I have made this mistake? Shame on me.


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## Athaulf

A few months ago, we had a lively thread about the ethnic and linguistic origins of the *Bulgarians*. This topic unfortunately touched on the feelings of some Bulgarian nationalists who had some difficulty with confining their emotions to a level suitable for rational discussion.  At the end, the moderators had to close it because the passions had gone out of control.


In *Croatia*, during the surge of wartime and post-war nationalism in the 1990s, it was highly popular among "patriotic" intellectuals to concoct all sorts of silly theories in order to deny certain blatant, but highly politically incorrect linguistic facts. It was a taboo to mention that Croatia lies within the South Slavic dialect continuum, and that the Croatian dialects spoken close to the border smoothly blend into the neighboring Slovenian, Bosnian, and (gasp!) Serbian ones. Another taboo was to mention that the modern standard Croatian language, however beautiful and warmly embraced by Croats nowadays, is in fact an artificial standard designed as a joint project by Croatian and Serbian linguists in the 19th century with the goal of forming a unified South Slavic language, rather than a part of some primordial Croatian national heritage. (Croatia has a centuries old literary tradition, but before the second half of the 19th century, it had been done in drastically different local dialects, since no unified Croatian standard existed.) Needless to say, it was also extremely politically incorrect to mention that the differences between standard Croatian and Serbian are superficial and minor, since they're both offshoots of this 19th century joint project.

The principal "patriotic" theory at the time was that Croats come from Iran, and that our ancestors supposedly had a glorious history and culture there thousands of years ago (get it? -- unlike those pitiful Slavs who first appeared on the stage of history  only 1,200 years ago ). Supposedly Iran was full of inscriptions by ancient Persian emperors in which Croats are praised and lauded -- any ancient Persian laundry list that contained a name that had a consonant or two in common with "Hrvat" ("Croat") was happily interpreted as talking about us. At one point it went so far -- and I swear I'm not making this up! -- that claims were made on the national TV about a "discovery" that the Biblical Three Kings who visited Jesus were in fact Proto-Croats coming from Iran.  On the more sinister side, these theories also drew from the propaganda of the Croatian WW2 Nazi puppet regime, which tried to deny that Croats are Slavs in order to present them as worthy of a higher status according to the Nazi racial theories. 

It was of course a slight problem to explain how these glorious Croatian invaders with millenniums of their own history and culture suddenly became 100% Slavic, both linguistically and culturally, without preserving a single uncontroversial cultural or linguistic fragment that couldn't be traced to either Slavs or the indigenous population of the Balkans that they displaced or assimilated. (Ironically, modern standard Croatian is probably the purest Slavic language of all, in the sense of having probably the highest percentage of Slavic roots in its vocabulary.)  It was fashionable to use a few old Croatian words with unclear etymology as a proof of non-Slavic origins of the Croats, which of course produced all sorts of silliness. It was also fashionable to dissect borderline Croatian dialects to "prove" -- contrary to elementary logic and sanity -- that their similarities with what is spoken across the border are in fact superficial and accidental. 

The worst thing is that all this collective schizophrenia had disastrous consequences for the practical language policy, mostly by spreading the mentality that in language matters, having the politically correct "patriotic" stance trumps any practical and aesthetic concerns. As a result, the issues of language standardization are in total chaos, inane and disgusting bureaucratic newspeak is thriving, and the levels of functional semi-literacy are soaring even among university graduates.


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## dudasd

The most of the previous post (everything, in fact, except the Iranian origins) perfectly describes certain theories about Serbian language and supposed ancient culture. (So no need to repeat them.) OK, I guess all of us had to speak some kind of language, but... Another cute is the one about Proto-Macedonian language, the language also shared by Alexander the Great and modern inhabitants of Former Republic of Macedonia. On the other hand, there are Serbian linguists who claim that Alexander spoke Serbian...


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## sokol

Thanks for mentioning the Croato-Aryan theory, I know that one too (came across it when I did some research on the history of World War II), an excellent example for etymology being involved in nationalism.

Another nice one, this time the other way round: *Japanese *seems to be an 'almost standalone' language although there are _some _links especially to Korean and then also to ural-altaic languages.

However, because of negative attitutes towards each other the Japanese (and I think the Koreans, too) tend to describe their language as a 'standalone' language with no relations to other language(s).
This once was and probably still is a very sensible point, so I'd love if someone from the Japanese/Korean region - or otherwise with more insights than I have - could comment on that.

Well, and then an addition inspired by this thread on *Romanian:*
In the 19th century Romanian standard language was 'cleansed' of 'Balkanic' influence, Romance elements were emphasised: and even though undoubtedly Romanian *is *a Romance language the 'Romanisation' of Romanian in the epoch of national romanticism (well yes, pun intended, nevertheless this was what happened ...) was done to give the nation more greatness in their view and to bring them closer (metaphorically) to Western civilisation - and to set it apart from the Balkans.


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## robbie_SWE

sokol said:


> Thanks for mentioning the Croato-Aryan theory, I know that one too (came across it when I did some research on the history of World War II), an excellent example for etymology being involved in nationalism.
> 
> Another nice one, this time the other way round: *Japanese *seems to be an 'almost standalone' language although there are _some _links especially to Korean and then also to ural-altaic languages.
> 
> However, because of negative attitutes towards each other the Japanese (and I think the Koreans, too) tend to describe their language as a 'standalone' language with no relations to other language(s).
> This once was and probably still is a very sensible point, so I'd love if someone from the Japanese/Korean region - or otherwise with more insights than I have - could comment on that.
> 
> Well, and then an addition inspired by this thread on *Romanian:*
> In the 19th century Romanian standard language was 'cleansed' of 'Balkanic' influence, Romance elements were emphasised: and even though undoubtedly Romanian *is *a Romance language the 'Romanisation' of Romanian in the epoch of national romanticism (well yes, pun intended, nevertheless this was what happened ...) was done to give the nation more greatness in their view and to bring them closer (metaphorically) to Western civilisation - and to set it apart from the Balkans.


 
Even if I do agree with you that the nationalistic and Romantic "revolutions" which occurred in Romania during the 19th century were "brutal", I still emphasize the matter that there _*is*_ a difference of mentality in Romania. It sets it apart from its neighbours by incorporating cultural traits and traditions not common for the geographical region (believe me, I'm not nationalistic...I'm only speaking from my own experience). 

But I don't know if I should discuss it further in this thread (or the original thread) or if I should open a separate one.

 robbie


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## Flaminius

sokol said:


> Another nice one, this time the other way round: *Japanese *seems to be an 'almost standalone' language although there are _some _links especially to Korean and then also to ural-altaic languages.
> 
> However, because of negative attitutes towards each other the Japanese (and I think the Koreans, too) tend to describe their language as a 'standalone' language with no relations to other language(s).
> This once was and probably still is a very sensible point, so I'd love if someone from the Japanese/Korean region - or otherwise with more insights than I have - could comment on that.


Nationalism certainly manifests itself in many different odours, so ascertaining or exaggerating idiosyncrasies of Japanese is not uncommon in order to separate the Japanese language and the Japanese from neighbouring cultures and nations.  If one tries to discover a glorious past by unscientific etymologising, relating languages impossible to relate offers far more spacy grounds for discussions.

Korean is understandably a ready target for relationship manufacturing.  Some of crackpotters believe that they could understand ancient Japanese in relation to Korean.  Kēko Kobayashi has written several books that applied this method to Maňyōshū and found that many Yamato lords were native Koreans.  According to her favourite theory, Japanese royals in the 7th and the 8th century just loved to be assassinated and replaced by Korean royals who fled their homeland after political strife.


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## Spectre scolaire

Frank06 said:


> Oh, if only... you can still find (derivations) of the Sun Language Theory on quite some Kemalistic and Pan Turkic websites and other quite dark corners of the WWW. I don't really have the impression that those gentlemen make jokes about it. The rest of this planet do. But Polat Kaya and his messenger boy are still flooding the internet with their inane interpretation of the SLT. .


 Since this thread was initiated by my post, I should perhaps mention that my relation to Polat Kaya is such that I’d rather ignore his wild concoctions than take a stance on them. Here is my alibi  – just for the record. 

Somewhere else – I can’t find it – I also referred to a chapter in Sylvain Auroux (éd.): _La linguistique fantastique_, Paris 1985, which deals with the same subject. The book is a very serious one – being the proceedings of a scientific colloquium – but many chapters are outright hilarious. 

As a matter of fact, such extravagant theories are of great interest _in hindsight_. They give a glimpse into the heyday of national ideologies. But I can restrain my enthusiasm for latter-day adherents. Some people never know their limits. 

Polat Kaya is considered to be a weirdo by most sensible people in Turkey. Unfortunately, not everybody is as sensible as us.  
 ​


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## Toma

Just to throw in my two pence.
As fas as Japanese goes, it is related without any doubt with Korean and its grammatical structure has tons in common with Mongolian. You would be amazed by the similarities. 
Also there were some excavation being done at old imperial mounds, whcih were terminated and the mounds sealed after Korean artefacts starting popping out.
I do not know the Turkish guy you are all reffering to, but suffice is to read the history of this nation and to see that all 'cultural words' are of Persain origin.
I too am amazed at the endevours of respected linguists to raise claims about Albanian, a language that has been set in writing only in the late 17th century, saying that one can trace proto-Indo-European laryngals inside!!!!
Macedonian is a ammter I do not want to touch. For any person doing linguistics this together with other examples is the laughing stock of the world.
What about nationalistc French Academy and its sister Academy in Quebec, which try to purge the sacred French language (the Latin of the conquerors that the Gauls took over in excahnge for their own maternal one). In Quebec if your site contains too many anglicisms they have the right to shut it down??


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## Outsider

One thing I have noticed a few times (well, more "felt" than actually noticed), in popular and also certain academic etymologies, is tendency for elitist assumptions:

When seeking a foreign etymology for a word in a prestigious language, assume that its origin lies in another prestigious language. And (especially) in unprestigious languages assume that all loanwords originate in other unprestigious languages.


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## Spectre scolaire

Outsider said:


> One thing I have noticed a few times (well, more "felt" than actually noticed), in popular and also certain academic etymologies, is tendency for elitist assumptions:
> 
> When seeking a foreign etymology for a word in a prestigious language, assume that its origin lies in another prestigious language. And (especially) in unprestigious languages assume that all loanwords originate in other unprestigious languages.


 I am sorry, I don’t get your point here. 

Trying to understand what you actually mean, I’d say that this is _not_ the case. One example:

In the _Slavic language forum_ a forero once denied that Turkish (or Turkic) loanwords in Russian enjoy any lower status than loanwords from, say, French. In a volume (from about 20 years back) of _International Journal of the Sociology of Language_ dedicated to the standardization of Turkic languages in the Soviet Union, something like the following was stated – citing from memory:

Turkic loanwords in Russian are stigmatized as being inferior, whereas Russian loanwords in Turkic languages are considered to be cultural contributions to the standardization of these languages.

It is all a question of “culture”.  A recently standardized language does not possess a culture of any noticeable importance. Russian, on the other hand, is _par excellence_ a cultural language which happened to be a gift to the whole of the Soviet Union. 

Are we on the same wavelength or did you intend something else – in blue? 
 ​


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## Outsider

I was not referring to the different prestige that loanwords can have within a language depending on where they come from, although that also happens.

I was thinking more of when (especially foreign) philologists speculate on the origin of a given word in a language other than their own.


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## OldAvatar

sokol said:


> Well, and then an addition inspired by this thread on *Romanian:*
> In the 19th century Romanian standard language was 'cleansed' of 'Balkanic' influence, Romance elements were emphasised: and even though undoubtedly Romanian *is *a Romance language the 'Romanisation' of Romanian in the epoch of national romanticism (well yes, pun intended, nevertheless this was what happened ...) was done to give the nation more greatness in their view and to bring them closer (metaphorically) to Western civilisation - and to set it apart from the Balkans.



As I said in another thread, the modernisation of Romanian language was not directed to cleansing the Balkanic influence. There were, indeed, some Slavic words that were replaced, but not only. As an example, see the classic text below:

Modern Romanian:
Toate fiinţele umane se nasc libere şi egale în demnitate şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu raţiune şi conştiinţă şi trebuie să se comporte unele faţă de altele în spiritul fraternităţii.

„Archaic” Romanian (not that archaic, though, just 19th century):
Toate fiinţele *omeneşti *se nasc _slobode _şi _deopotrivă _în _destoinicie _şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu *înţelegere *şi *cuget *şi trebuie *să se poarte* unele faţă de altele în _duh _de *frăţietate*.

The words in bold from the second version are words of Latin origin that were replaced too. In fact, there are more of these words than the Slavic ones (Italic).


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## Cilquiestsuens

Speaking of etymology of the English language, I am surprised how most of the dictionaries you find on the internet and elsewhere are badly downplaying the French origin of many English words attributing them to Latin!!!!

This is the case of words which have been borrowed from Middle French and not from Old French (like the bulk of French loanwords in English) 

Example : *colony, success, quarantine* for instance, which are attributed to the Latin language... The English language would have borrowed these words around the 14th Century or later, from the Latin language, that too in their French form!

Another way of downplaying the French influence over the English language is to call these borrowings Anglo-Norman or God knows what....

I've found many dictionaries incorrect and even chauvinistic in this matter....


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## Spectre scolaire

Interesting example, _OldAvatar_. Would you say that the change of alphabet in Romania – from Cyrillic to Latin – to some extent contributed to the purification of Slavic loanwords in Romanian?

I can’t see how Slavic loanwords in Romanian could be purified in the first place with any significant degree of success - there are simply too many of them, and they are partly distributed in central domains of the vocabulary. But together with the alphabet reform it is tempting to believe that a certain “Cyrillic OUT, Latin IN” euphoria might have had some repercussions precisely on the vocabulary. So, to the extent that Slavic loanwords were indeed “replaced” – when was the heyday of these efforts?

I am trying to see if there is some sort of parallel to the Turkish _harf inkılâbı_, “letter revolution” of 1928 – “Arabic OUT, Latin IN”, so to say. In fact, the alphabet reform in Turkey definitely favoured the replacement of words of Arabic origin with local words – again, to the extent that this was possible. There were simply too many Arabic words in Turkish, and new words of Turkish origin didn’t always catch on. 

I take a particular interest in the religious component contained in these alphabet changes. Alphabet can be said to follow religion – a statement that was once bluntly denied in another discussion in WR. I am not going to quote that thread in which strangely ill-informed opinions came to the fore. The Turkish alphabet change was a bit of an international _advertisement_, as it were, AWAY from Arabic religious influence and TOWARDS European secular thought. 

It is not very well known that in the wake of the Turkish alphabet reform, the Greeks also engaged in a fierce discussion (which lasted for several years) about a possible Latinization of the alphabet. In Greece it all ended up as a religious debate – no wonder because of the Constitution’s general lack of secular thinking, not to mention factors like alleged alienation to Classical Greek culture. It all boiled down to a principal unwillingness to reform the institutionalized language itself. How could you possibly write _katharevusa_ (the hybrid archaizing language) with Latin characters? It would – partly for orthographic reasons that I won’t elaborate on here – become _vernacular Greek_, and “worse”, it would be like _frangochi__ótika_, the Greek language written with Latin letters by _Jesuits_.  In the Greek debate on this subject – a debate which was published as a book some 50 years ago – religious arguments clearly prevailed. 

I am not familiar with the discussion in Romania, but I have seen books (in a magnificent little museum in Braşov) written in a mixed alphabet, Cyrillic and Latin. In Albania, all sorts of alphabets have been used - some of mixed characters, f.ex. Greek and Latin. I have got such a book in my own library. The reason for this standardization quagmire was obvious:

Albanians traditionally adhere to three different religions using three different alphabets! The Gordian knot was actually cut by a well-known Stalinist dictator... Atatürk was also a “dictator”, only of a rather more enlightened brand. In fact, I think Hoxha was enlightened enough when it came to standardization of the Albanian language. The national myth about ‘a sacred homeland on Illyrian soil’ was just a corollary. Such myths are only absurd in hindsight and from outside – not during the process of nation building, i.e. from inside! As long as such myths are not detrimental to other people in the region, I can’t see anything wrong with them. Who were the Illyrians anyway?... 

The use of a specific alphabet is part of _language planning_ in any country. Any language can be written with any type of script, but the choice of _alphabet_ – in most cases we are talking about an alphabetic script - is largely a cultural/ideological one constituting an important component, if not an “advertisement”, of what sort of national ideology and/or which religion is being singled out for nation building purposes. Next step has often been to purify the language according to precepts inherent in the chosen national ideology.  Basically, nothing wrong with that either – as long as it doesn’t create havoc in the educational system, f.ex. by failing to recognize a genuinely vernacular language as the national standard, a language that can be learned and functionally used by everybody.

I think every nation wants to be “glorious” in terms of language uniqueness. Whatever means are being used for that purpose are largely irrelevant _as long as they don’t focus negatively on neighbours or other people_. And yet, we have to accept the fact that most ethnic groups – and hence nations – do define themselves largely _according to how their neighbours define themselves_.

In such a framework it is part of national behaviour to make fun of them because they are not us – they are different.  Language is one of the most important parameters of national difference, but there is oral language and there is written language. Serbian and Croatian may be basically the same language – only not in script. For Hindi and Urdu the same similarity/dissimilarity obtains. The script reveals religious allegiance. It is inconceivable that Polish be written with the Cyrillic alphabet or, say, Greek with the Latin one. Any exception to this strong link between alphabet and religion can always be explained either by the choice of a religious minority or by a state ideology which favours secularism. In the latter case, the mentioned link is obliterated and any choice of alphabet which does not conform to the “rule” – Turkey is a good example! – will eventually be sanctioned by usage, especially through compulsory schooling.
 ​


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## sokol

Spectre scolaire said:


> I am not familiar with the discussion in Romania, but I have seen books (in a magnificent little museum in Braşov) written in a mixed alphabet, Cyrillic and Latin.


I am neither, but at least I know some facts about the choice of alphabet: when the Romance connection was made from Romanian nationalists (I guess this should have been around about mid 19th century, but I haven't found a source now) the Latin alphabet was adapted, and writing rules similar to Romance writing rules (a 'historical' writing in a way, with 't' + cedille for Latin 't' now pronounced /ts/ and so on), instead of developing a completely new and logical, strictly phonological writing system.

But I am not sure if Romanians in Hungary probably hadn't used Cyrillic but Latin script before, so it might just be that Latin script has a longer tradition with Romanians.

However, the modern Romanian script certainly was very much determined by etymology and nationalism (not by religion, in this case).


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## OldAvatar

I'll try to give an objective and short explanation, even though I guess that it's not going to be easy since I'm a Romanian native.
The modernisation of Romanian language has had strong bonds with the raising of Romanian nation. In order to identify Romanians as the same nation, no matter the region they were living in (mainly Moldova, Transylvania and Vallachia), a standardized language was necessary. The main responsable of this transformation was the so-called Transylvanian School (Şcoala Ardeleană) and it happened in times of arround 1848's European revolutions.
It was a complex process, which started when young scholars began to study in Western Universities and also the changing involved some exterior help, like the one from France or the one of the masonery. It was not especially directed to the Slavic world but to the Oriental one and it also took place in other domains, like fashion, habits, culture, social structures, food traditions etc. It was a revolution that tried to bring Romanians closer to the Occidental values, in the disadvantage of the Oriental ones.
Some scholars made some excesses. Some of those excesses were corrected over time, some were not.


PS: *ţ* and *ş* don't have cedillas but commas. Ironically, Turkish  uses similar if not identical *Ş* letter, for example. 
Best regards,
OA


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## Ottilie

sokol said:


> Well yes, I've got plenty :
> 
> 
> Romania:
> [/B]The *Dacian *theory tracing back Romanian to the Dacians is something similar and with just that little bit more foundation than the Illyrian/Albanian theory; there just might be quite a number of Dacian loans in the Romanian language, but again this is very much disputed because Romaninan nationalists overemphasise (in an unsientific way) the possible links, so that it is only natural that linguists all over the world have to oppose them (to give some balance, and to not let nationalism influence linguistic research).




 So what is the origin of Romanians and Moldavians then,if not Dacian,or mostly Dacian. We have to make first of all the distinction that there are two different nations using the same language - Romanians and Moldavians.
It would have been impossible for all the other peoples who passed through this region(Today's Romania,not Moldova)- Romans(some of whom left the country,some stayed ) and Slavs(some of whom left,many of whom stayed) to destroy the whole population,it's  normal for a nation to emphasize the roots that makes it unique,and in the case of Romanians ,those are the Dacian ones.
 This is where we make the distinction between Moldavians and Romanian : there are no traces of Roman presence in the Republic of Moldova,so Romans never occupied the region, Moldova was part of the so-called  ''Free Dacia'' ,while Transilvania,Oltenia,Muntenia were part of the Roman Dacia.Therefore,we can come to the conclusion that Moldavians,unlike Romanians,have nothing in common with the other Romance nations,except of course,the language



> I am not familiar with the discussion in Romania, but I have seen books (in a magnificent little museum in Braşov) written in a mixed alphabet, Cyrillic and Latin.


 

That's the so called the transition alphabet. In the 19th century,almost no one except for high-educated people was able to read the Latin alphabet in Romania and Moldova so when they took the decision to change the Cyrillic alphabet and introduce the Latin one,there was a transition period . Interesting- the Transilvanian Scholars-those who reformed the Romanian language were Catholic or Greco-Catholic.


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## berndf

Ottilie said:


> So what is the origin of Romanians and Moldavians then,if not Dacian,or mostly Dacian.


Sokol referred to theories claiming that the Romanian language were derived from Dacian and not from Latin and that the similarities to other Romance languages were incidental.
 
He made no statements concerning the fate of the Dacian people after the Romanization.


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## Ottilie

Not even today's Greek is linked to Ancient Greek. The Romanian language spoken in the 12'st century had more in common with the Dacian language than today's Romanian(which was re-Romanised in the 19th and 20th century). 
 Of course,modern Romanian language is derived from Latin,I haven't heard many opinions that it's derived from Dacian,although in schools(at least in Moldova) they teach that Romanian has 3 major components : Dacian,Latin and Slavic,Latin being the biggest,and Dacian (in terms of vocabulary ,the smallest).
  Romanian has preserved about 300 Dacian words,I believe number Turkish-origin words is bigger. But Romanian,unlike other Romance language has several unique features (the place of the definite article at the end of the word,like in Bulgarian),which might be due to the Dacian influence.
 Moreover, Romanian language was often called,before the Slavic Invasions (also by foreigners) Daco-Romanian (Dacian-Latin) . So at that time,Romanian had a very big Dacian component.

'' В румынском языке есть определенное количество слов, которые происходят из этого языка. *Это те слова, о которых ничего не известно, кроме того, что у них есть общее с албанским языком*,* который образовался от иллирийского, очень схожего с трако-дакийским*. Например, barză « лебедь », brad « ель », viezure « барсук », copil « ребенок ». '' - according to Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy

           ''This are the words we know nothing about except the fact that they are common with Albanian(formed from Irilyan language ),which was very similar to Thraco-Dacian''

 : barză and viezure were replaced by the Slavic words lebădă and bursuc,they are now synonyms (it seems Trubetskoy didn't notice it)
Therefore Romanian,before the Slavic invasions had a lot more in common with Dacian than it has today. Given the fact that Dacians didn't have a writing language ,there are no other evidences,but it's clear that Romanian was ,at its origins very influenced by Dacian language


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## sokol

I'm sorry, Ottilie, there was no offence meant when I mentioned all those theories - I did so to illustrate the point. Concerning Romanians and Moldavians:


Ottilie said:


> So what is the origin of Romanians and Moldavians then,if not Dacian,or mostly Dacian.


Well, obviously there _*was*_ a Dacian substrate, and a very few words (with really strong emphasis on 'few', mind ) even have been more or less safely been explained as being Dacian substrate.

However, nobody so far ever managed to offer real proof for much or most of Romanian being traceable to Dacian.

So while a Dacian substrate certainly can be attested this only has been proven for a very small percentage of modern Romanian language (the official language of Romania and Moldova).
It is perfectly possible that there's more Dacian substrate than linguists can prove - but as linguists we must remain on grounds of what can be attested scientifically.

Contrary to that, nationalists claim that most of Romanian is, linguistically, the successor of Dacian; and this is a claim which is rejected by scientists all over the world. Romanian is for its most part a Romance language, with plenty of other ingredients of which Dacian (that is, safely asserted ones) only is a small part.


Ottilie said:


> This is where we make the distinction between Moldavians and Romanian : there are no traces of Roman presence in the Republic of Moldova,so Romans never occupied the region, Moldova was part of the so-called  ''Free Dacia'' ,while Transilvania,Oltenia,Muntenia were part of the Roman Dacia.Therefore,we can come to the conclusion that Moldavians,unlike Romanians,have nothing in common with the other Romance nations,except of course,the language


Not really, no - as there has been a great deal of migration especially in this region (not only from east to west but also back and forth in all directions) it is almost impossible to ever verify a claim like that.
Also, Moldovan dialect really is all but identical to neighbouring dialects just across the border; the dialect borders in Romanina language do not follow political borders, as you surely know - but for those who don't, it's mainly a north-south-distinction, see this map here.

There's a great deal of discussion going on about the origin and original ethnic composition of Romanian; if you'd like to discuss this then I think we should do this in a separate thread - as this is such a controversial topic (see also the Wiki article, also the discussion page ).

Well, be that as it may: the distinction between Moldova and Romania rather is a political one, and would have been made on dialectal/ethnic grounds then possibly modern Moldova would include a good part of northwestern Romania.


Well anyway, this thread is about "inventing a glorious past through linguists" and those who claim that Romanian is _*the*_ successor of Dacian just are doing that because it is not based on scientific grounds, but just on guesses.

Historical records don't help a great deal as Roman historians claimed that the Dacians were completely and utterly destroyed (obviously, they were also glorifying - but from their reversed point of view ). It is very likely that those claims of Roman historians are plainly wrong (that is, they're most likely Anti-Dacian propaganda.)

Nevertheless, linguistic evidence shows that the impact of Dacian on Romanian doesn't seem to have been huge (as is claimed by some Romanian linguists).
This still could mean that ethnical continuity is much bigger; take Irish for example: Irish English only shows very little Gaelic influence (= the Celtic language of Ireland), and while a small number of Gaelic native speakers remains most Irish people speak an English version hardly traceable to Gaelic - even though we know for a fact that most of them still have Gaelic roots, ethnically.

It is perfectly possible that the same was the case with Romanians and Moldovans - however we have no way of establishing this scientifically, there just aren't enough sources (and hardly any contemporary witnesses, most if not all of them also being very one-sided as they were Romans or Greeks).

So the point here is _*not*_ disputing Dacian ancestry (which certainly existed, only we cannot really evaluate how strong it was).

The _*point*_ here is disputing theories motivated by nationalism, theories which are trying to re-construct a glorious past on unscientific grounds.

And while I will take your word for it that Romanian was 'more Dacian' in the 12th century I take it that Dacian influence still was low then, right? (Sorry but I never studied Romanian nor its history in much detail. But I know that some serious romanisation was going on in the 19th century; also, I shall remark, to remove much Slavic words. )
Also, there's another huge problem - of Dacian language we know very little; if we had a full record of Dacian language (its vocabulary, phonetics, morphology and grammar) it would be much easier to establish which is actually Dacian and which isn't.

Further, and again, this all still is _*not*_ the point here, see the Irish example mentioned in this post a few lines above. 
There might have been a considerable or even huge ethnical Dacian basis (and there might have been a considerable different ethnical base for modern Romanians and modern Moldovan or say "northernish" dialects); but linguistically it is all but impossible to find a sustainable theory.



Ottilie said:


> But Romanian,unlike other Romance language has several unique features (the place of the definite article at the end of the word,like in Bulgarian),which might be due to the Dacian influence.


Right, of those features there are plenty, and they're called Balkan sprachbund features.
They're also discussed controversially; or in more precise words, you hear often Romanians claim they're Dacian by origin, or Bulgarians claim that they're Bulgarian by origin, or Albanians claim that they're Albanian by origin ... to be continued ad infinitum. 

We've had some Balkan sprachbund discussions here already, see for example Balkan sprachbund (and many more where it wasn't the main topic).
Here at least one thing also is clear: no linguist ever managed to suggest a convincing theory of tracing most or even some (or even one!) feature directly back to Dacian.*)

*) Which obviously would be almost impossible to prove anyway, as so little is known about Dacian itself.


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## berndf

Ottilie said:


> Moreover, Romanian language was often called,before the Slavic Invasions (also by foreigners) Daco-Romanian (Dacian-Latin) . So at that time,Romanian had a very big Dacian component.


To my knowledge we don't have much evidence for that. To my knowledge, no evidence that could link the modern Romanian language to the inhabitans of Roman Dacia, Latinized or not. The language might well be brought to the region by Eastern Romance speaking migrants from South of the Dunube river after the Slavic invasion. We don't know. Daco-Romanian is little more than a working title to distinguish the dialects spoken in Romania and Moldavia from other "Romanian" (Eastern Romance) dialects.


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## sound shift

Not a theory, this, just an anecdote ...

I once had the dubious pleasure of knowing a young Little Englander who did not want to accept that the word "fletcher" had come into English from Norman French. He was adamant that it was an English word that had somehow got into Norman French, as if 1066 never happened  .


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## apmoy70

Ottilie said:


> Not even today's Greek is linked to Ancient Greek....


Could you please elaborate on that? What do you mean, the pronunciation has changed, syntax, structure, grammar, vocabulary, all of the above? Because despite the obvious iotacization and the various sound shifts that have occured in the language, the simplification of grammar and the periphrastication, Greek remains stubborny Greek.
Thank you


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## sokol

apmoy70 said:


> Could you please elaborate on that? What do you mean, the pronunciation has changed, syntax, structure, grammar, vocabulary, all of the above? Because despite the obvious iotacization and the various sound shifts that have occured in the language, the simplification of grammar and the periphrastication, Greek remains stubborny Greek.
> Thank you



A great deal changed from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek (they should certainly be considered different languages, as well as should Latin and Italian of course), we know that, but there's still a great deal which links both, that we also know.  There's no reason being bothered really as facts, concerning Greek, are relatively clear (here we've got the advantage of knowing both classical and modern language).
(However, there was of course some heavy re-greci...fication or what's the term for that? - anyway, the introduction of the "more conservative" Katharevousa = Καθαρεύουσα standard language is what I'm talking about.)


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## Ottilie

berndf said:


> To my knowledge we don't have much evidence for that. To my knowledge, no evidence that could link the modern Romanian language to the inhabitans of Roman Dacia, Latinized or not. The language might well be brought to the region by Eastern Romance speaking migrants from South of the Dunube river after the Slavic invasion. We don't know. Daco-Romanian is little more than a working title to distinguish the dialects spoken in Romania and Moldavia from other "Romanian" (Eastern Romance) dialects.



 This is the version used by anti-Romanian elements - Hungarians who try to explain why Transylvania is their land. Romanian nation(not to mention Moldavian) was formed at the North of the Danube,and the presence of the so-called Vlachs in the Balcans is a consequence of the fact that they were as well Dacian-speaking,Romanised in another period,before the rest of Romanians. Therefore the version that Romanian nation emerged in the south of the Danube,is also a nationalistic one- Austro-Hungarian. There is no reason why they would migrate from their lands to the North of Danube. 
 During USSR, Moldavian language was considered to be a distinct Indo-European language,at least that's why people were told in Moldavian SSSR,a language in which the main element was the Dacian one.



> They're also discussed controversially; or in more precise words, you hear often Romanians claim they're Dacian by origin, or Bulgarians claim that they're Bulgarian by origin, or Albanians claim that they're Albanian by origin ... to be continued ad infinitum.


 There are Romanians who claim they're Romans by origins,there are Romanians who claim they're Dacian by origin, of course,I tend to believe the second group. I admit there is a certain pride being Dacian,at least(I am not nationalistic,but patriot) I perceive the notion of being Moldovan strictly related to the notion of being Dacian .


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## apmoy70

sokol said:


> A great deal changed from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek (they should certainly be considered different languages, as well as should Latin and Italian of course), we know that, but there's still a great deal which links both, that we also know.  There's no reason being bothered really as facts, concerning Greek, are relatively clear (here we've got the advantage of knowing both classical and modern language).
> (However, there was of course some heavy re-greci...fication or what's the term for that? - anyway, the introduction of the "more conservative" Katharevousa = Καθαρεύουσα standard language is what I'm talking about.)


Thank you, I agree 100%. I apologise for my knee-jerk reaction, it's just that in various fora I often come up with people who have hidden _agendas_ or carry "peculiar" baggage with them


sokol said:


> (However, there was of course some heavy re-greci...fication or what's  the term for that? - anyway, the introduction of the "more conservative"  Katharevousa = Καθαρεύουσα standard language is what I'm talking  about.)


How about, re-Hellenization? A neologism I know but I guess it sounds better


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## sokol

Ottilie said:


> This is the version used by anti-Romanian elements - Hungarians who try to explain why Transylvania is their land.


Oh, you're absolutely right - both sides (or all sides involved in the Region - Hungarian, Romanian/Moldovan, Russian/Ukrainian) argue nationalistically.

We're trying not to do so here.
And most importantly, whether or not Romanians and Moldavians have Dacian origin this should be completely and utterly irrelevant to the modern situation of both states.

I know that this isn't political fact on the Balkans and further east; history (recent as well as ancient history) still is used there to argue this or that political opinion (well, that's actually still done in the West but in no way to the same extent, fortunately - with EU integration - such nationalistic talk is beginning to dwindle away; and as both Hungary and Romania are now part of the EU this attitude hopefully will spread further east soon ).

Whether or not Romanian and Moldavian nations formed themselves north or south of the Danube actually too is disputed; by the way, in the 1970ies and 80ies hardly any Western linguist supported the Romanian point of view (that is, ethno-genesis north of the Danube) but this has changed - still, there's no conclusion about it in the scientific world.

Be that as it may, even if historians and linguists one day will all agree that ethno-genesis took place north of the Danube this still is an anecdote of history which really should have no relevance whatsoever to the situation in the modern nation-states of Romania and Moldova: they're independent states in their own right and even would be if we could prove through time travel (unlikely ever to happen but that's not the point ) that ethno-genesis did not happen north but solely south of the Danube river.*)

*) And no, this never was particularly an "Austro-Hungarian" theory: yes, it was supported there too, but so it was in England and France and many other countries.

The reason why the USSR promoted Moldovan language obviously was for ideological reasons - but nobody still denies Moldovans their right of having their own nation.

In fact, I'm from a nation which too has been disputed hugely in the 20th century - Austrians didn't consider themselves being a nation of their own, and only developed a sense of a nation of their own after World War II.
The point is that Moldovans don't need any wild theories to sustain their claim of being a separate nation of their own - being a nation is a matter of collective choice; Austrians chose over the centuries that they'd rather not be part of Germany (they were, under Hitler); and Moldovans chose to be separate from Romanian, and so be it: no reason to try and find any "historical" reasons for that.

Which of course does not mean that we shouldn't discuss the origins of Romanian language - quite the contrary, this would be an excellent topic. 
But the point is of keeping linguistic discussions and nationalistic discussions separate.
Which is not always easy, as I know myself. 


apmoy70 said:


> How about, re-Hellenization? A neologism I know but I guess it sounds better


Yep, that sounds good, I shall make a mental note of that one!


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## berndf

sokol said:


> Whether or not Romanian and Moldavian nations formed themselves north or south of the Danube actually too is disputed; by the way, in the 1970ies and 80ies hardly any Western linguist supported the Romanian point of view (that is, ethno-genesis north of the Danube) but this has changed - still, there's no conclusion about it in the scientific world.


And even if the ethno-genesis happened North of the Danube, the language might still have been re-intruduced by earlier waves of Migrants. We really don't know.

I totally agree with you Sokol, I cannot see what this should have to do with the present political and cultural status on Romania or Moldavia. You don't need 2000 years of uninterrupted history to be a proud nation (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Brazil, the USA, ...). And, as the old conflict with Hungary was mentioned: How long is the Hungarian language attested in Hungary? Correct me if I am wrong, I think  not much more than 1000years. If is completely pointless to make etymological questions a nationalistic battle ground --- which is actually the topic of this thread.


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## DenisBiH

sokol said:


> I know that this isn't political fact on the Balkans and further east; history (recent as well as ancient history) still is used there to argue this or that political opinion (well, that's actually still done in the West but in no way to the same extent, fortunately - with EU integration - such nationalistic talk is beginning to dwindle away; and as both Hungary and Romania are now part of the EU this attitude hopefully will spread further east soon ).




And yet Flemish nationalism seems to be gaining strength, as well as Catalan etc. I would like to believe that the EU has ushered Europe into a new age but in European terms its existence is still a very, very short experiment, and you have serious voices raising concerns over long-term sustainability of such a large and quite diverse conglomerate that EU is, some even comparing it to the former Soviet Union, only using less violent methods.

As late as 1988 you in Austria had a rather well known politician stating on TV that "Austrian nation is an ideological deformity".

People in the Balkans area probably are 'behind' in oh so many ways, but when it comes to having an instinct for what is stable and what is simply the most recent ideological hype their instinct can oftentimes be rather good. They have seen quite a few empires/ideologies/lifestyles crumble and some of those were far longer-lasting that the EU.

This in turn makes them/us not as willing to give up their old ways as one might wish.


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## Ottilie

sokol said:


> Oh, you're absolutely right - both sides (or all sides involved in the Region - Hungarian, Romanian/Moldovan, Russian/Ukrainian) argue nationalistically.
> 
> We're trying not to do so here.
> And most importantly, whether or not Romanians and Moldavians have Dacian origin this should be completely and utterly irrelevant to the modern situation of both states.


 
I agree with the fact that should be politically irrelevant ,but since on this forum we often talk about language and origins,I believe it's relevant just for the sake of argument. For example,I have no interest in Transylvania being a Romanian/Hungarian land,since I live in another country, it interests me up to the point when we talk about the origins of Moldavians,which is again,not for nationalistic purposes.





> Whether or not Romanian and Moldavian nations formed themselves north or south of the Danube actually too is disputed; by the way, in the 1970ies and 80ies hardly any Western linguist supported the Romanian point of view (that is, ethno-genesis north of the Danube) but this has changed - still, there's no conclusion about it in the scientific world.


  Because there's no single conclusion we have to deny it?



> Be that as it may, even if historians and linguists one day will all agree that ethno-genesis took place north of the Danube this still is an anecdote of history which really should have no relevance whatsoever to the situation in the modern nation-states of Romania and Moldova: they're independent states in their own right and even would be if we could prove through time travel (unlikely ever to happen but that's not the point ) that ethno-genesis did not happen north but solely south of the Danube river.*)



I perfectly understand your point of view and your option for this point of view. We have different points of view regarding the origin of Romanians and Moldavians ,for example I have my reasons to believe that the Moldavian nation was formed on this very territory . 





> The reason why the USSR promoted Moldovan language obviously was for ideological reasons - but nobody still denies Moldovans their right of having their own nation.


 And I have to add that not USSR or the Russian Empire(Moldova was as well part of that empire) makes us Moldavians, but the works of the Moldavian scholars Dimitrie Cantemir,Miron Costin  in their works like ''De neamul moldovenilor''(about the Moldavian nation) or Letopiseţului Ţării Moldovei ( the annals of Moldavia) ,written in the 17th century ,during the period when Moldova was independent,proves the idea of a separate nation



> In fact, I'm from a nation which too has been disputed hugely in the 20th century - Austrians didn't consider themselves being a nation of their own, and only developed a sense of a nation of their own after World War II.
> The point is that Moldovans don't need any wild theories to sustain their claim of being a separate nation of their own - being a nation is a matter of collective choice; Austrians chose over the centuries that they'd rather not be part of Germany (they were, under Hitler); and Moldovans chose to be separate from Romanian, and so be it: no reason to try and find any "historical" reasons for that.


 Indeed,whenever a Romanian calls me Romanian,I give the example of Austrians,but,apart from this there are many other arguments:Moldovans were never romanized , while Romania is more likely to be classified as a Balkanic country,Moldova is classified as ex-Soviet Union space,and so on.Of course,many can deny it,many can agree with it, as you said ,it's a matter of choice. But for the sake of argument I like to discuss about it.



> Which of course does not mean that we shouldn't discuss the origins of Romanian language - quite the contrary, this would be an excellent topic.
> But the point is of keeping linguistic discussions and nationalistic discussions separate.
> Which is not always easy, as I know myself.
> 
> Yep, that sounds good, I shall make a mental note of that one!



  Nationalists points of view can indeed give birth to all kind of pointless discussion , my point of view is purely linguistic, I don't want to prove anything related to politics considering myself Dacian


 The only ''nationalistic'' purpose of the Dacian theory in Moldova,might be the fact that while Romanians claim to be a Latin nation,we claim to be a Dacian one.


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## Frank06

DenisBiH said:


> And yet Flemish nationalism seems to be gaining strength, as well as Catalan etc. I would like to believe that the EU has ushered Europe into a new age but in European terms its existence is still a very, very short experiment, and you have serious voices raising concerns over long-term sustainability of such a large and quite diverse conglomerate that EU is, some even comparing it to the former Soviet Union, only using less violent methods. [snipped]


I'm sorry, but I am more interested in politically and  nationalistically inspired theories about the genesis of a language, as asked in the first post of this thread and as Ottilie was friendly enough to illustrate. 

Frank


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## DenisBiH

Frank06 said:


> I'm sorry, but I am more interested in politically and  nationalistically inspired theories about the genesis of a language, as asked in the first post of this thread and as Ottilie was friendly enough to illustrate.
> 
> Frank




No objection, but that post had to be made.


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## Caktus

sokol said:


> Contrary to that, nationalists claim that most of Romanian is,  linguistically, the successor of Dacian; and this is a claim which is  rejected by scientists all over the world. Romanian is for its most part  a Romance language, with plenty of other ingredients of which Dacian  (that is, safely asserted ones) only is a small part.
> 
> ................................
> 
> Nevertheless, linguistic evidence shows that the impact of Dacian on  Romanian doesn't seem to have been huge (as is claimed by some Romanian  linguists).



I am very curious to know the names of some of the linguists that claim that the impact of Dacian on Romanian was huge (or the names of some of nationalists that claim that most of Romanian is,  linguistically, the successor of Dacian).


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## sokol

Caktus said:


> I am very curious to know the names of some of the linguists that claim that the impact of Dacian on Romanian was huge (or the names of some of nationalists that claim that most of Romanian is,  linguistically, the successor of Dacian).


I'm sorry, you're right I should have posted some of those who claim that the impact was huge.
And I fear it will be difficult to find a serious linguist claiming this.

You can certainly find plenty on the www (like on dacii.ro; also it seems, as attested by Ottilie, that the USSR government strongly supported "Dacian theories" of some kind.

I couldn't find a quote of what one would call a serious linguist - so I'm very sorry but I should have chosen my words better in my post above. 



Ottilie said:


> Because there's no single conclusion we have to deny it?


No, wrong, we should not deny it - that's the wrong supposition behind it (when you say "we have to deny it" you're saying with this very same sentence implicitly that a "truth" were to be denied).
That's wrong because there is no "truth" behind - there's no "truth" whatsoever about a strong Dacian continuity, therefore we cannot deny it: you can't deny anything which isn't proven. 

So the point is, while it is clear that there was some continuity from Dacian to Romanian (nobody denies that!) it is also clear that at least linguistically there are very few traces of it which could be safely attested.
Ethnically, it is the job of archaeology and genetics to attest to what degree there has been an ethnic continuity from Dacian to Romanian and Moldovian: there was certainly some, but as of now we've got only a very vague idea how strong this link was.



Ottilie said:


> And I have to add that not USSR or the Russian Empire(Moldova was as well part of that empire) makes us Moldavians, but the works of the Moldavian scholars Dimitrie Cantemir,Miron Costin  in their works like ''De neamul moldovenilor''(about the Moldavian nation) or Letopiseţului Ţării Moldovei ( the annals of Moldavia) ,written in the 17th century ,during the period when Moldova was independent,proves the idea of a separate nation


Again, that's beside the point I tried to make.

Take Austria, the development of the Austrian nation possibly is somewhat comparable.
Of course we Austrians too are prouds of achievements of our ancestors in the 18th and 17th century (and before), why shouldn't we! (And we're ashamed - or so am I, and I hope my compatriots too - of the crimes they committed.)
But this is not the reason why there is an Austrian nation today, nor should it be the reason.
Actually Austrians decided in 1918, when they finally lost in World War I, that it wasn't worth sustaining an Austrian nation and state anymore - they were in favour for a union with Germany, which was denied to them by the winners of this war.
Only after World War II Austrians decided on their own, by the experience of the last couple of decades (which included also Hitler of course), that they'd rather be a nation of their own.

The Austrian nation was a decision on social-political grounds, taken by the society in a slow process of coming to the conclusion that it is better to be on your own rather than be part of a bigger German nation.
In 1945 this new notion of an Austrian nation still was very much shaky, and many, then, even only were in favour because it was just the antithesis to Hitler.
However, this changed still then, and today Austrians are not asking themselves "if" they are a nation - to them this has become a fact, and there's no need to search for "justification" of it (be it in history, or through language, or whatever).

In fact the very idea of having a need of _*justifying*_ one's own nation speaks for young nations which aren't so very sure about their national identity yet - which e. g. is the case for Montenegro, which I think is the youngest nation-state of Europe.

Possibly something similar applies to Moldova, and no offence meant, not at all.  Austrians too, as said, were very insecure about their national identity (even 10-20 years after the end of the war; only in the 1970ies came the "turnaround" when finally Austrian nation became accepted "normality" for all of us).

Your description of Romanians questioning Moldovan identity in fact speaks for this kind of situation where some Moldavians then, obviously, become under pressure of justifying their decision of rather being on one's own.

It was probably easier for us Austrians as the experience under Hitler made it easier for Austrians to _consciously_ decide against an union with Germany, while in your case there have been voices (even here in the west, mind!) that finally Moldova were "free to join Romania".
When I read such statements I thought to myself, well, why not ask Moldavians first what _*they*_ would prefer. 

Also, there's another thing - on the Balkans and in Eastern Europe there is a very strong association of language with nation, in a way that "a language" is considered "a nation".
Cases like English (England vs. America, but also Ireland as separate nation, even Scotland even though they're part of the UK, Australia and so on) or Spanish (Spain vs. several 'Spanish' American nations) etc. are really almost unthinkable in South-Eastern and Eastern Europe.
(Take just the example of Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. )

Well, to cut the long story short: if they argue with history or ancestry then Moldovians always will have a hard time "defending" their nation, because it will be almost impossible to prove anything on those grounds.

More, this isn't even necessary.
Why should you have to "prove" anything? If Moldovians want to be separate that's their right.


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## Ottilie

> You can certainly find plenty on the www (like on dacii.ro; also it seems, as attested by Ottilie, that the USSR government strongly supported "Dacian theories" of some kind.


 that site has some very idiotic theories ,including the one that Dacian and Latin had some similarities. The words of Dacian origin in today's Romanian have no Latin root,nor do they sound Latin.



> Your description of Romanians questioning Moldovan identity in fact speaks for this kind of situation where some Moldavians then, obviously, become under pressure of justifying their decision of rather being on one's own.


 Our decision is ,mostly,based on historical facts : we have been different states for a very long period of time. Of course there are several linguistic differences ,but they will never make Moldavian something more than a dialect  of Romanian.  However,the fact that Romans never conquered today's Moldavia's territory ,unlike the fact that they conquered a big part of today's Romania,makes me believe that we are ''more'' Dacians than Romanians. I don't want this to be considered nationalism or racism,but in Moldavia there are more blonds than in Romania,one can even say that some person ''looks Moldavian''. This might be due to the fact that Dacians were believed to have been somehow related to today's inhabitants of Lithuania and Latvia,a very old Indo-European nation.Of course,here there are no true arguments ,only suppositions.



> More, this isn't even necessary.
> Why should you have to "prove" anything? If Moldovians want to be separate that's their right.


 The discussion started with the fact that our ancestors are said to be the Dacians, of course this thread has nothing to do with the differences between Moldavians and Romanian

 And regarding the language,I think we came to the conclusion that Modern Romanian language isn't based on Dacian,but on Latin ,but I can suppose that the so called Dacian-Romanian,spoken in the 9th-10th centuries(which wasn't influenced by Slavic languages ,nor by the 19th century   relatinization) did have strong Dacian influences


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## DenisBiH

> However,the fact that Romans never conquered today's Moldavia's territory ,unlike the fact that they conquered a big part of today's Romania,makes me believe that we are ''more'' Dacians than Romanians. I don't want this to be considered nationalism or racism,but in Moldavian there are more blonds than in Romania,one can even say that some person ''looks Moldavian''. This might be due to the fact that Dacians were believed to have been somehow related to today's inhabitants of Lithuania and Latvia,a very old Indo-European nation.Of course,here there are no true arguments ,only suppositions.


But all of this can also be interpreted as you having a strong Slavic component, later Romanized, can't it? In fact, as far as I know, a Romanian-born historian/archaeologist Florin Curta claims that the Slavic identity was formed on the Danube limes (lower Danube). We all know where that is.


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## berndf

Ottilie said:


> However,the fact that Romans never conquered today's Moldavia's territory ,unlike the fact that they conquered a big part of today's Romania,makes me believe that we are ''more'' Dacians than Romanians.


Or Scytic, who knows; another one of these peoples we know so little about; or maybe Gothic. There were so many peoples who occupied the land of modern Moldavia during the Migration Period.


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## Ottilie

DenisBiH said:


> But all of this can also be interpreted as you having a strong Slavic component, later Romanized, can't it? In fact, as far as I know, a Romanian-born historian/archaeologist Florin Curta claims that the Slavic identity was formed on the Danube limes (lower Danube). We all know where that is.



 Of course,this can also be a theory,but the Slavs,I believe many people agree,came to this territory after the Roman invasions,and they had no reason to destroy the Dacian population,but they mixed with the Dacians . When Hungarians came to Transylvania ,in the Anonymous's book is written that Transylvania was inhabited by Vlachs(Daco-Romans) and Slavs,which later might have mixed . Not to mention that Romanian language is strongly influenced by Slavonic ,20% of the vocabulary and up to 35% of the Old Romanian vocabulary,that many Romanian names,names of rivers,cities have Slavic roots.
 I believe that Romanians are a combination of Dacians,Romans and Slavs . But the Dacian element is surely present,it would have been impossible to kill all the Dacians(and they were many) living in this territory.

 All I'm saying that Romanians are Dacians(and not Slavic or Romans) just like Bulgarians are Bulgarians(and not Slavic). The oldest component of their blood is Dacian, of course the Dacian element. It's hard to say what's the main component,but I still believe the Dacian one is pretty important


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## phosphore

Sokol, you are right in every point you made, but there still needs to be _something_ around what a nation could emerge. And in the Balkans, religion left aside, there's actually _nothing_ that sets us apart, except a few dialectal differences between the centres of new political assemblage. All our countries are in the best case half way to be failed. Cultural differences if any, considering what a poor cultural level we are at, are rather characteristic of geografic regions than of these national areas to be. Racial differences non-existant. The only way to identify oneself with one nation is by knowing that you don't belong to others. But that's not enough and all of those who give very much importance to being Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs or Montengrins feel a logical need to justify themselves. And that's where language politics and propaganda steps in.


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## DenisBiH

Ottilie said:


> Of course,this can also be a theory,but the Slavs,I believe many people agree,came to this territory after the Roman invasions,and they had no reason to destroy the Dacian population,but they mixed with the Dacians . When Hungarians came to Transylvania ,in the Anonymous's book is written that Transylvania was inhabited by Vlachs(Daco-Romans) and Slavs,which later might have mixed . Not to mention that Romanian language is strongly influenced by Slavonic ,20% of the vocabulary ,that many Romanian names,names of rivers,cities have Slavic roots.
> I believe that Romanians are a combination of Dacians,Romans and Slavs . But the Dacian element is surely present,it would have been impossible to kill all the Dacians(and they were many) living in this territory.
> 
> All I'm saying that Romanians are Dacians(and not Slavic or Romans) just like Bulgarians are Bulgarians(and not Slavic). The oldest component of their blood is Dacian, of course the Dacian element. It's hard to say what's the main component,but I still believe the Dacian one is pretty important




But whatever theory we find most convincing, can you really talk about this continuity and 'Dacian-ness' when there were at least two linguistic assimilations of the native Dacian population (Slavic and Romance) in the meantime?

I don't object to genetic continuity, or even cultural continuity on some level, though.


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## phosphore

Ottilie said:


> But the Dacian element is surely present,it would have been impossible to kill all the Dacians(and they were many) living in this territory.
> 
> All I'm saying that Romanians are Dacians(and not Slavic or Romans) just like Bulgarians are Bulgarians(and not Slavic). The oldest component of their blood is Dacian, of course the Dacian element. It's hard to say what's the main component,but I still believe the Dacian one is pretty important


 
Some genetic data I had the chance to have a look at claim there is much more Slavic blood in the veins of Hungarians than in the veins of Serbs, and that Montenegrins can actually be compared to Albanians in this respect, if I recall correctly. Of course the Dacians weren't exterminated and their genes as well as those of Tracians or Illyrians are still there, but there is not much sense in discussing that. Thanks to genetics we can now discuss that too, but I don't see what purposeful conclusion we could arrive at, so I think we should better concentrate on the language itself.


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## Frank06

Ottilie said:


> However,the fact that Romans never conquered today's Moldavia's territory ,unlike the fact that they conquered a big part of today's Romania,makes me believe that we are ''more'' Dacians than Romanians.


And conquering/not conquering makes you less or more a figment of the mind? I must say I do not grasp  this kind of Blut und Boden (und Sprache) nationalism, and frankly, I am relieved about that.

Anyway, back to the topic. Could you please point out which abundant written sources exist for Dacian (the language), just to give us an idea on what exactly you base your theories.

Can you also skip the parts about Dacians, the people.

Frank


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## DenisBiH

phosphore said:


> Sokol, you are right in every point you made, but there still needs to be _something_ around what a nation could emerge. And in the Balkans, religion left aside, there's actually _nothing_ that sets us apart, except a few dialectal differences between the centres of new political assemblage. All our countries are in the best case half way to be failed. Cultural differences if any, considering what a poor cultural level we are at, are rather characteristic of geografic regions than of these national areas to be. Racial differences non-existant. The only way to identify oneself with one nation is by knowing that you don't belong to others. But that's not enough and all of those who give very much importance to being Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs or Montengrins feel a logical need to justify themselves. And that's where language politics and propaganda steps in.




I don't agree with sokol in some aspects, mainly factual. I don't see how we could portray Montenegro as the newest nation-state in Europe given that the Kingdom of Montenegro was around in 1914 to declare war on Austria-Hungary, and the Principality of Montenegro was there as a Russian ally in 1904-1905 to declare war on Japan, and actually participate according to what I've read (can you imagine 2-meter tall đetići fighting the samurai?  ). Of course Montenegrins do have a statehood history they should be proud of and identify with, never mind how they identify ethnically now and if it is different to how they used to identify.

I think differences do exist and have for a long time, it's just that we are much more similar than we're different, and that's something some of us would like to deny and thus end up using nationalist rhetoric. But also those who would like to see all our differences gone use it as well. I think its similar with Romanians and Moldovans.

sokol wrote asking why the need to delineate differences so strongly? Can you imagine coming to an English music video on YT and finding 80%+ comments discussing just how much French and hybrid the English language is? And go to another and see the same discussion again, and another, and another, neverending...

I've found out this to be the case with Moldovan videos (I really love the Romanian language and am learning it), Macedonian videos, and I'm not even going to mention ours, phosphore. 

Moldova used to be a fully or partially independent state before there was the United States of America. No, I'm sorry, that's incorrect. Before America was discovered by the Europeans. There is every reason to be proud of that name no matter the ethnic disputes and whether the Dacian component is the strongest or the weakest.

How does this relate to the topic? I'm not sure. Do delete if inappropriate, but again I had to point out the factual inaccuracies.


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## phosphore

Well, those are technical details, and besides, historical states do not necessarily qualify for today's nations. France had two strong historical states on its ground, Spain had a couple, and when you look at the maps of Italy and Germany before the unification, Italy seems to have tens and Germany seems to have hundreds of them. But there's still one France, one Spain, one Italy and one Germany. There's much more to a nation than a historical state in the area. So there's nothing contradictory in saying Montegro is the youngest nation state of Europe with the fact that it has some kind of historical continuity with a historical state of Montengro. The question may be in fact whether Montegro is a nation state even today, knowing that Montenegrins make up less than 45% of its population.

What's true of Yugoslavia and what's probably true of Moldova is that there are specific political agendas that contribute to the separation of nations and their protagonists use everything they can to achieve their political goals. And that everything are in most cases some minor language differences. Hence the nationalism-language relation even in the year 2010.


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## DenisBiH

I don't think the 'nation' part in the English term nation-state has exactly the same meaning as our _nacija_. And Spain today has Catalan and Basque nationalism, France has Breton and Occitan (though I don't know how strong), Italy has the Lega Nord, and Germany, well, I assume it would be similar had there not been Hitler and aryanism. So old political entities do not just go and die after being absorbed into larger entities. Mutate and change, sure, but die - no.

So each of these (Italy, Spain etc.) is also more or less an 'artificial' construct. 



> There's much more to a nation than a historical state in the area.


This is one of the problems. Trying to find a single scientific definition of a nation that satisfies all is pretty much like walking into a minefield in my experience. Thus we go back to what somebody already said ('twas sokol methinks), it pretty much boils down to what the people think. And where people are concerned, a dialect with an army and a navy... (the last sentence as a means of going back on-topic  )


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## phosphore

Well, I won't be trying to provide a scientific definition for the term nation, I'll leave that to the political theorists and I'm sure they know and they actually have already dealt with it with success. What I'm only trying to say is that the central element needs to be something in the real life, and that's not a historical or a failed contemporary state, thus all the trying to find it in language differences, because language is one of the primary means of self-identification.

I completely agree that in the strict sense Spain is no less artificial construct than Montenegro is, but the difference is that Spain's statehood is in the direct interest of its citizens, while you and I, when you mention people, know that we live much worse now than before the split of Yugoslavia. And not that I'm nostalgic, that's just something that brings into question all the national projects in Yugoslavia that care much more about national than civil rights. If you have enough interest and ressources you can probably make a nation state out of any group of people, but the question is whether it would be on stable ground and whether it would really be in their best interest. The former is what I tried to discuss in the last posts and the latter is what I ask in this paragraph. But that's way out of the scope here, so I suggest we don't go into that any further.


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## DenisBiH

Ironija je da su danas Bošnjaci, a vjerujem i Crnogorci, u 'svojim' državama u sličnoj poziciji u kojoj su bili Srbi u bivšoj Jugi. Brojčano najveći, ali nedovoljno brojni, stalno u pokušaju da drugima dokažu kako je za prosperitet države najbolje držati se zajedno i pod vrlo sličnim optužbama da druge pokušavaju asimilirati. 

Al' da zapadnjaci ne pomisle da im stalno namećemo naše probleme, u pravu si, dovoljno smo off topic.

To other members: sorry for going BCS, done so as not to go further off topic here.


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## phosphore

Ta mi paralela, vidiš, nije upala pre u oči, a odlična je. Tu smo gde smo zato što smo kao ljudi neobrazovani, zaslepljeni i ispranih mozgova i zato svima od srca želim da zaborave svoje male ponose i male narode i da zaista vide da su svi oko njih isti ljudi kao i oni sami. I iako nemam nikakve nade da će se to ovde skoro desiti, jer među nama je suviše bede, beznađa i mržnje, ipak mislim da je važno da bez predrasuda pokušamo da sagledamo u šta smo upali i gde se nalazimo i da o tome iskreno razgovaramo. A moj stav je negde to što sam i rekao.


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## Ottilie

Frank06 said:


> Anyway, back to the topic. Could you please point out which abundant written sources exist for Dacian (the language), just to give us an idea on what exactly you base your theories.
> 
> Can you also skip the parts about Dacians, the people.
> 
> Frank



There are no written sources about Dacian language,the language is old,Dacians didn't have a writing system ,and most of them learnt Latin and Slavic after the Roman invasions.



> I've found out this to be the case with Moldovan videos (I really love the Romanian language and am learning it), Macedonian videos, and I'm not even going to mention ours, phosphore.


 Yes,I know it,on youtube any Moldavian video it's full of comments written by Romanian nationalists,regardless whether the video is about travel,music,little children or anything ,for example here ...

Mod note:
I'm sorry, Ottilie, but YouTube aren't allowed on WordReference*). Anyway, you've explained the situation in the text so there's no link necessary.

*) Rule 4: Audio and video files must be approved by a moderator before posting; however, YouTube links aren't allowed at all - we moderators never can and will authorise a YouTube link.


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## XiaoRoel

Es imposible un hecho de sustrato del dacio sobre el rumano, ya que la segunda guerra dacia del 106, fue una guerra de exterminio. Entre muertos y esclavos para la venta, la Dacia quedó vacía y fue repoblada por veteranos de las legiones romanas.
La raíz dacia del rumano no es más que una fantasía del romanticismo, como muchas otras de Europa en la época.

It is impossible Dacian's substrate acting on the Romanian, as the 106 Dacian War was a war of extermination. Killed and slaves for sale, Dacia was empty and was repopulated by veterans of the Roman legions.
The dacian root of the Romanian is but a fantasy of romanticism, like many others in Europe at the time.


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## DenisBiH

XiaoRoel said:


> Es imposible un hecho de sustrato del dacio sobre el rumano, ya que la segunda guerra dacia del 106, fue una guerra de exterminio. Entre muertos y esclavos para la venta, la Dacia quedó vacía y fue repoblada por veteranos de las legiones romanas.
> La raíz dacia del rumano no es más que una fantasía del romanticismo, como muchas otras de Europa en la época.





And yet, genetically speaking the present day territory of what was then Dacia does not seem to be significantly different from its neighboring lands. Going only by Y-chromosome (paternal line), haplogroup I, haplogroup E1b1b1a2 (V-13), haplogroup R1a, haplogroup R1b and haplogroup J2.  Unless you have other data?


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## berndf

XiaoRoel said:


> Es imposible un hecho de sustrato del dacio sobre el rumano, ya que la segunda guerra dacia del 106, fue una guerra de exterminio. Entre muertos y esclavos para la venta, la Dacia quedó vacía y fue repoblada por veteranos de las legiones romanas.
> La raíz dacia del rumano no es más que una fantasía del romanticismo, como muchas otras de Europa en la época.
> 
> It is impossible Dacian's substrate acting on the Romanian, as the 106 Dacian War was a war of extermination. Killed and slaves for sale, Dacia was empty and was repopulated by veterans of the Roman legions.
> The dacian root of the Romanian is but a fantasy of romanticism, like many others in Europe at the time.


These account are regarded as exaggerated by most historians today. In addition, only part of Dacia was conquered by Traian. A substantial part of the country remained free.


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## Ottilie

XiaoRoel said:


> Es imposible un hecho de sustrato del dacio sobre el rumano, ya que la segunda guerra dacia del 106, fue una guerra de exterminio. Entre muertos y esclavos para la venta, la Dacia quedó vacía y fue repoblada por veteranos de las legiones romanas.
> La raíz dacia del rumano no es más que una fantasía del romanticismo, como muchas otras de Europa en la época.
> 
> 
> It is impossible Dacian's substrate acting on the Romanian, as the 106 Dacian War was a war of extermination. Killed and slaves for sale, Dacia was empty and was repopulated by veterans of the Roman legions.
> The dacian root of the Romanian is but a fantasy of romanticism, like many others in Europe at the time.



 Из-за своего окраинного положения, жизнь в Римской Дакии была далека от средиземноморской идиллии римских вилл Италии, Испании или Прованса. Постоянно вспыхивали восстания непокорeнных дакских племeн против римского владычества; позднее усиливается натиск мигрирующих групп скифского и германского происхождения. Приблизительно 100 лет из неполных 170 лет своего существования, Римская Дакия была охвачена восстаниями, которые римские войска могли подавлять.
 Значит римялне уничтожили жителей всех стран,которые они окупировали?K тому же они прожили в нынешней Румынии всего 120 лет ,это бред ,Даки не были убити или уничтожены,наверное некоторые мужчины погибли во время войны,конечно же не все,но дети и женщины безсомненно остались в живых
Кстати,если римляне туда отправили исключительно ветеранoв ,где нахрен были женщины? Kого они трахали вообще?


Because of its marginal position,the life in the Roman Dacia was far from the the Mediterranean calm of Italy or Provence. There were constantly revolts of the Dacian tribes against the Roman sovereignity; later the impact of the migrating groups -Germans and Scytian amplifies.
 About 100 years from 170 (incomplete)of its existence,the Roman Dacia was full of revolts,which the Romans could suppress
So the Romans exterminated all the nations they occupied?More than this,they lived in today's Romania 120 years This is nonsense,Dacians were not killed,some of their men died in battle,not all of course,but children,women for sure survived.
 By the way,if the Romans sent there only veterans,where the hell were the women,with whom they had sex?
 This theory is nonsens,it was used by the Transylvanian scholars in order to prove the Roman origin of Romanians,nowadays in Romania this theory is no longer trusted.


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## robbie_SWE

Ottilie said:


> Из-за своего окраинного положения, жизнь в Римской Дакии была далека от средиземноморской идиллии римских вилл Италии, Испании или Прованса. Постоянно вспыхивали восстания непокорeнных дакских племeн против римского владычества; позднее усиливается натиск мигрирующих групп скифского и германского происхождения. Приблизительно 100 лет из неполных 170 лет своего существования, Римская Дакия была охвачена восстаниями, которые римские войска могли подавлять.
> Значит римялне уничтожили жителей всех стран,которые они окупировали?K тому же они прожили в нынешней Румынии всего 120 лет ,это бред ,Даки не были убити или уничтожены,наверное некоторые мужчины погибли во время войны,конечно же не все,но дети и жемнщины безсомненно остались в живых
> Кстати,если римляне туда отправили исключительно ветеранoв ,где нахрен были женщины? Kого они трахали вообще?
> 
> 
> Because of its marginal position,the life in the Roman Dacia was far from the the Mediterranean calm of Italy or Provence. There were constantly revolts of the Dacian tribes against the Roman sovereignity; later the impact of the migrating groups -Germans and Scytian amplifies.
> About 100 years from 170 (incomplete)of its existence,the Roman Dacia was full of revolts,which the Romans could suppress
> So the Romans exterminated all the nations they occupied?More than this,they lived in today's Romania 120 years This is nonsense,Dacians were not killed,some of their men died in battle,not all of course,but children,women for sure survived.
> By the way,if the Romans sent there only veterans,where the hell were the women,with whom they had sex?
> This theory is nonsens,it was used by the Transylvanian scholars in order to prove the Roman origin of Romanians,nowadays in Romania this theory is no longer trusted.


 
Well, I'm not so sure about that Ottilie. People in Romania (especially Muntenia and Oltenia) consider themselves as being the ancestors of Romans and Dacians; two peoples who were believed to have lived in symbiosis in the conquered lands (N.B. this does not depict my personal belief though!). 

I just want to comment DenisBiH's post concerning the genetic compositions of the different European nations. Just from looking at it I'm led to believe that Romanians have more in common with Bulgarians and Albanians than with any other neighbouring country. This supports the so called "specialists" (or pseudospecialists ) who claim that this proves that the lands inhabited by Thracians (Bulgaria), Illyrians (Albania) and Dacians (Romania) to this day still share genetic similarities (I'm not completely convinced by these arguments). 

I've always been sceptical towards this kind of genetic analysis, because they always tend to be bias. I mean, basing a study on the y-chromosome doesn't make it completely reliable since more than half of any population consists of women (historically more stationary than men). Therefore any genetic analysis excluding more than half of any population should be considered as a quasi-study and not a substantial fact. The map I'm looking at right now makes me believe that Europe is a huge blob of mixed people (even though I like bio-diversity and encourage a more multicultural Europe), with little affinity with their so called brothers and sister. From what I see, Norwegians and Swedes are quite close but Danes are more German (??!!). Mio Dio! 

 robbie


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## Ottilie

Robbie_Swe you're not sure,but you agree that Romanians the ancestors of Dacians. 
 The ''Roman'' theory is highly political ,it appeared in order for Romania to be closer to the West,and in order for the West to be closer to Romania. Of course,as I said in my previous posts,Romanians are likely to be a Dacian-Romano-Slavic combination + a few other elements.
 În plus,cred că amîndoi vrem să susţinem moştenirea dacică a poporului român,despre asta se şi discută aici


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## Lars H

Frank06 said:


> Inventing a glorious past through linguistics... Does anybody have other examples?
> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Frank



Yes, we do!

A Swedish clergyman and historian from the 15th century, Ericus Olai de Upsalia, came up with a few interesting ideas based on a severly abused ethymology.

First, the ancient cities of Troy (Greek, today in Turkey) and Thebe (Egypt) were in fact Swedish. Troy comes from "Trögd" a "härad" (hundred) situated appr. 100 km west of Stockholm. And Thebe comes from "Täby", a Stockholm suburb. I bet you didn't know that. 
But them I live in Täby and I must admit that mummies, temples and pharaohs seem to be rather scarce in ny neighbourhood...

And (West) Rome fell to Swedes. All goths (east and west) came from Sweden, where we call them "götar". To this day, the second city of Sweden, Gothenburg, is named "Göteborg" in Swedish. One might consider whether destroying the Roman civilisation was an act of heroism or vandalism, but in those days it was something positive.

Ericus Olai's theories lost the last of their authority in the 1870-ies, we thought. But then in 1935, a major Swedish group of hard core Nazis (Manhem movement) built their particular Swedish version of the ideology on the works of Ericus Olai.


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## DenisBiH

robbie_SWE said:


> I've always been sceptical towards this kind of genetic analysis, because they always tend to be bias. I mean, basing a study on the y-chromosome doesn't make it completely reliable since more than half of any population consists of women (historically more stationary than men). Therefore any genetic analysis excluding more than half of any population should be considered as a quasi-study and not a substantial fact. The map I'm looking at right now makes me believe that Europe is a huge blob of mixed people (even though I like bio-diversity and encourage a more multicultural Europe), with little affinity with their so called brothers and sister. From what I see, Norwegians and Swedes are quite close but Danes are more German (??!!). Mio Dio!
> 
> robbie



Well, skepticism is of course usually a good thing.  I wouldn't call it a 'quasi-study', mtDNA studies do exist also, it's just that Y-chromosome seems to be discussed more as people usually assume it's like you said, that women are more stationary so that paternal line is more useful in tracing population movements etc. But in this case to challenge the assertion that Dacia was emptied and then repopulated by Roman legionaries and thus Dacian couldn't have influenced local Latin it suffices to show there are no significant discontinuities/oddities in the paternal line of the local population.

I'm not an expert but I have been following these studies for the last 7-8 years and while there are things to be concerned about (number and distribution of samples in the case of my country for example), they do seem to be conducted by professionals. Of course there will always be those who will try to misuse the findings for political purposes but then that's also the case with linguistics, history, archaeology etc. The important thing is that they're continuing studies using more samples (at least here, from what I've been told), and the haplogroup hierarchy seems to be showing it (they have changed the names of haplogroups several times, reclassifying them)


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## Frank06

Hi,


Lars H said:


> A Swedish clergyman and historian from the 15th century, Ericus Olai de Upsalia, came up with a few interesting ideas based on a severly abused ethymology.


Troy, that's a nice one! 
Troy was quite important in the founding myths of several nations, but it's the first time I learn about a Swedish example, one in which Toy is, erm, "Swedenised". Thanks!



> And (West) Rome fell to Swedes. All goths (east and west) came from Sweden, where we call them "götar". To this day, the second city of Sweden, Gothenburg, is named "Göteborg" in Swedish. One might consider whether destroying the Roman civilisation was an act of heroism or vandalism, but in those days it was something positive.


Ui. Goth, Gothic, Goths and Sweden... is that a can of worms we want to open in this thread ;-)? 
Isn't one of the three crowns in the Swedish coat of arms believed to refer to the kingdom of the Goths (even though there are other theories about it)? 

Groetjes,

Frank


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## sokol

DenisBiH said:


> I don't think the 'nation' part in the English term nation-state has exactly the same meaning as our _nacija_.
> ...
> This is one of the problems. Trying to find a single scientific definition of a nation that satisfies all is pretty much like walking into a minefield in my experience.


Worth commenting on that one too  - yes, you're of course right, English "nation" is just not the same thing as "nacija" or in general "nation" in South-East and Eastern Europe where usually nation is identified straightforward with language (in the sense that any English speaker would be considered being part of the "English" nation; of course peole in South-East and Eastern Europe know that Americans are not Englishmen but they apply this logic for their region, with minor facets of its application in individual states).

This is basically the nation-term Ottilie is faced with, for those who wondered so far what this is all about - it is about Romanians*) finding it difficult to accept that Moldovians are (and want to be) a separate nation of their own.

*) Be it some or many, this is not the point here - the point is that the attitude exists, about which there can be no doubt. 

And even Germany has not (!!) the same definition of nation as Austria - in Germany one with German speaking parents is considered being "German" by law (and for this reason many people with German roots migrated to Germany in the 1990ies - especially Russians - as they automatically received German citizenship: I think this law has been changed somewhat but the basis of German nation definition still stands).
In Austria, the definition of nation is territorial rather than defined through ancestry - and thus much closer to the English definition.


Lars H said:


> Yes, we do!
> 
> A Swedish clergyman and historian from the 15th century, Ericus Olai de Upsalia, came up with a few interesting ideas based on a severly abused ethymology.
> 
> First, the ancient cities of Troy (Greek, today in Turkey) and Thebe (Egypt) were in fact Swedish. Troy comes from "Trögd" a "härad" (hundred) situated appr. 100 km west of Stockholm. And Thebe comes from "Täby", a Stockholm suburb. I bet you didn't know that.


Well, virtually every state, then, claimed to go back to Troy originally, this was all the rage in the 15th century*); however, Sweden seems to be standing out still as it is probably the only one which even dared to locate Troy near its capital. 

*) It was, really!! Many a chronicle then began with the origins of a town which, of course, how could it not, would begin with the events as described in the Aeneis. With Aeneas of course being one of the founders of the town. How could he not be!!!


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## berndf

sokol said:


> And even Germany has not (!!) the same definition of nation as Austria - in Germany one with German speaking parents is considered being "German" by law (and for this reason many people with German roots migrated to Germany in the 1990ies - especially Russians - as they automatically received German citizenship: I think this law has been changed somewhat but the basis of German nation definition still stands).
> In Austria, the definition of nation is territorial rather than defined through ancestry - and thus much closer to the English definition.


This is not quite true. You entitled to Austrian citizenship by birth if at least one of your parent is Austrian. If you are born in Austria but none of your parents is Austrian you do not have automatic right to Austrian citizenship. The same is true in Germany. MBy daughter has both Passports because I am German and by wife is Austrian though she was born in Switzerland. The issue with German "Spätaussiedler" is a  bit special. It was to allow ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe who suffered persecution because of there German ethnicity to become Germans. It was never intended to be a permanent definition of what it takes to be a "German".

At least in the old Soviet Union the definition of nation was indeed very different from ours. Since the Soviet Union was be its definition not a nation state, the term nation was decoupled from that country of citizenship. I once worked with someone how was a "Spätaussiedler" and used the term nation in the Soviet sense of the word. She found it absolutely absurd that we in the West called a French Jew as having French nationality and a German Jew as having German nationality. In her use of the word, being French or German is citizenship but being Jewish is nationality and these terms, for her, had nothing to do with each other.


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## sokol

berndf said:


> This is not quite true. You entitled to Austrian citizenship by birth if at least one of your parent is Austrian. If you are born in Austria but none of your parents is Austrian you do not have automatic right to Austrian citizenship. The same is true in Germany. By daughter has both Passports because I am German and by wife is Austrian though she was born in Switzerland. The issue with German "Spätaussiedler" is a  bit special. It was to allow ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe who suffered persecution because of there German ethnicity to become Germans. It was never intended to be a permanent definition of what it takes to be a "German".


I know that the basics are similar to the situation in Austria.

I was referring to the term of "deutscher Volkszugehörigkeit" which is mentioned in the German "Grundgesetz" (I know, you know, I'm explaining for those who don't  - there's unfortunately only a German Wiki article explaining this, so in very short words, as it isn't the main topic here: there's an additional article in German constitution referring to "German ethnicity" which was both intended to integrate German refugees after World War II as well as - I assume - refugees from GDR (DDR).

People of "German ethnicity" were given a German passport relatively quickly (I think GDR = DDR refugees got it instantly, accompanied with some financial aid to start a new life in Western Germany = BRD = then FRG).

Such a passus is indeed unique, there's no parallel to that in Austrian constitution.


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## DenisBiH

sokol said:


> Worth commenting on that one too  - yes, you're of course right, English "nation" is just not the same thing as "nacija" or in general "nation" in South-East and Eastern Europe where usually nation is identified straightforward with language



This might interest you.  It seems the identification nation/people=language goes back at least to the 15th century in south-Slavic lands. I'm not saying there's an unbroken continuity of that idea, 19th century still did play a major role there probably, but it's worth noting.



> Najbolja potvrda o tome od kolike je važnosti jezična vezanost, u ranijem narodnosnom razvoju, nalazi se u činjenici da se u nekim južno-slavenskim starim spomenicima pojam "jezik" identificira s pojmom "narod" i "puk", Primjer za to pruža baš jedan bosanski spomenik, i to iz XV vijeka, u kojem stoji "a jer za ugre što nam piše vaša ljubav on v koi je vsemu tvoritel, *jer bismo veselili da je vsaki jezik koliko ih ima s rusagom bosanscim u vsakoj dobroj ljubav i miru*"


rusag = medieval Bosnian term for "state", possibly from Hungarian orszag; Ugri = medieval term for Hungarians. 
The rest of the quote should be understandable to you given your knowledge of BCS and Slovenian.  Just not to rob other potentially interested readers, the text in bold from the 15th century goes something like "for we would be happy that *every language* as many as there are is in every good love and peace with the Bosnian state".

Not to stray off-topic again, there's a whole article, with a few other examples in:
Muhamed Hadžijahić, "Die Anfänge der nationalen Entwicklung in Bosnien und in der Herzegowina", in: Südost-Forschungen 21, 1962, S. 168-193


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## sokol

DenisBiH said:


> rusag = medieval Bosnian term for "state", possibly from Hungarian orszag. The rest of the quote should be understandable to you given your knowledge of BCS and Slovenian.  Just not to rob other potentially interested readers, the text in bold from the 15th century goes something like "for we would be happy that *every language* as many as there are is in every good love and peace with the Bosnian state".


This is indeed a rare reference of relating language to a state for those ancient times (still of course this still wasn't a "modern" nation-state - nor was the French kingdom of the time - they were all feudal kingdoms).


Be that as it may, and as you say so yourself (to keep it on topic), I think that's just enough about the term of nation for going on with the specific topic of this thread, which is the invention of a glorious past.


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## berndf

sokol said:


> I was referring to the term of "deutscher  Volkszugehörigkeit" which is mentioned in the German "Grundgesetz" (I  know, you know, I'm explaining for those who don't  - there's unfortunately only a German Wiki  article explaining this, so in very short words, as it isn't the main  topic here: there's an additional article in German constitution  referring to "German ethnicity" which was both intended to integrate  German refugees after World War II as well as - I assume - refugees from GDR (DDR).
> 
> People of "German ethnicity" were given a German passport relatively  quickly (I think GDR = DDR refugees got it instantly, accompanied with  some financial aid to start a new life in Western Germany = BRD = then  FRG).
> 
> Such a passus is indeed unique, there's no parallel to that in Austrian constitution.




   The provisions of the West German constitution for "Statusdeutsche" are by there very nature temporary to cope with the special situation, similar to the Austria "Optionsgesetz" of 1954 which gave "Sudentendeute" in Austria the right to opt for Austrian citizenship.


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## Lars H

Frank06 said:


> Ui. Goth, Gothic, Goths and Sweden... is that a can of worms we want to open in this thread ;-)?
> Isn't one of the three crowns in the Swedish coat of arms believed to refer to the kingdom of the Goths (even though there are other theories about it)?
> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Frank



Three crowns isn't completely unique. For example, the flag of East Anglia combines the English red and white with three golden crowns om a blue shield. But to contradict myself, that is interesting enough since archeologists have found connections/similiarities between Dark Age grave manners in East Anglia (Sutton Hoo) and Uppsala, Sweden.

Until 1973/4, our king's formal title was actually "Sveas, Götas och Wendes Konung" but was then simplified to "Sveriges Kung". Thus an attempt to put a lid on this can of worms


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## berndf

Lars H said:


> Three crowns isn't completely unique. For example, the flag of East Anglia combines the English red and white with three golden crowns om a blue shield. But to contradict myself, that is interesting enough since archeologists have found connections/similiarities between Dark Age grave manners in East Anglia (Sutton Hoo) and Uppsala, Sweden.


That shouldn't come as a complete surprise as East Anglia was one of these English Kingdoms which repeatedly came under Danish rule during the Viking era.

PS: Though, not really in the seventh century.


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## Lars H

berndf said:


> That shouldn't come as a complete surprise as East Anglia was one of these English Kingdoms which repeatedly came under Danish rule during the Viking era.
> 
> PS: Though, not really in the seventh century.



Exactly. The are some archeological finds from Sutton Hoo, in particular helmets, that are very similar to finds from burial sites in Vendel and Valsgärde outside Uppsala. And they are dated between AD 600 and 700, at least a century before Lindisfarne AD 793.

This is of course not etymological, but archeological, but nevertheless a good example of stuff that could be used to weave a "glorious past". And such attempts have been made in Sweden...

But then the English finds are examples of better craftmanship and there are numbers of ways to explain the similarities, including both direct and indirect connections. A bit off topic, I'm sorry.


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## DenisBiH

And now really on topic, regarding the original question.

Athaulf gave a great overview, so just adding to it

One version of local (ex-YU) theories centers around proving how 'our' language or a particular dialect is 'so much more similar than normally stated and recognized' to some ancient or otherwise prestigious language. Languages I've personally seen mentioned and discussed include: Sanskrit, Basque, Welsh, Etruscan, Venetic, ancient Egyptian, Mittani and paleo-Balkan languages some of which have been mentioned by sokol. These 'comparisons' are usually done in form of extensive word lists, and sometimes 'theories' 'explaining' the relationship are laid out in more 'detail'. 

Another version revolves around 'proving' a particular language is actually a corrupted and debased version of 'our' language. I've seen German (not proto-Germanic, mind you) and, I think, Latin mentioned in that type of discussion. An example, German word for bread, Brot, is actually 'evo brate' (here, brother), depicting a native of these parts giving bread to a German who misunderstood 'brate' to mean 'bread' and continued using a corrupted version of that word. I've seen texts with tens if not hundreds of such explanations of German words.

Yet another version revolves around indiscriminate pseudo-analysis of toponyms, hydronyms, personal and family names, either ancient or modern, proving that they either originate from the name of 'our' people or a word of 'our language'. Along the lines of the Swedish examples Lars gave. Geographically the area covered reaches from Spain to China, also including Native American names.

Usually these theories are accompanied by not so subtle allusions to a sinister enemy which has worked for centuries to 'hide the truth' and deny 'our' people their glory. A very 'popular' enemy is something called 'Vienna-Berlin school', though the 'usual' suspects are also there (masons etc)


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## phosphore

"Evo, brate." Hilarious. 

But truth be told, theories connecting Serbian with Sanskrit and Venetic and those about Serbian toponyms and hydronyms all over the world excepted, I haven't had contact with all of them.


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## DenisBiH

phosphore said:


> "Evo, brate." Hilarious.
> 
> But truth be told, theories connecting Serbian with Sanskrit and Venetic and those about Serbian toponyms and hydronyms all over the world excepted, I haven't had contact with all of them.




Here's the complete list (crackpot link warning). 

I was actually one of those crackpots once upon a time.  The naive kind, and then I got thoroughly and utterly humiliated by some Croat linguists in a discussion some 10 years ago. World hasn't been the same since. I didn't know there were Serbian theories for Venetic, I know only of Slovenian ones.


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## Lars H

DenisBiH said:


> An example, German word for bread, Brot, is actually 'evo brate' (here, brother), depicting a native of these parts giving bread to a German who misunderstood 'brate' to mean 'bread' and continued using a corrupted version of that word.



I've got a "pro" and a "con" on this matter. The "con" first:
The Swedish explanation of "bröd" is that it derives from i.e. "_bhru_" meaning "ferment, stew". As we all know, both bread and beer - a.k.a "brew"  - comes from a process involving yeast. 
But on the other hand there is another Germanic word, "lev" in Swedish (a bit archaic today), "loaf" in English, "Laib"? in German and variations of "chleb" in most Slavic languages, except for Croatian (but I have experienced myself that "chleb" is perfectly understood in Croatia).
And whenever there are synonyms one should ask why...


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## phosphore

> Here's the complete list (crackpot link warning).


 
This is a treasure. 

Lars, I think "hleb" is a Germanic loan.


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## DenisBiH

Lars H said:


> I've got a "pro" and a "con" on this matter. The "con" first:
> The Swedish explanation of "bröd" is that it derives from i.e. "_bhru_" meaning "ferment, stew". As we all know, both bread and beer - a.k.a "brew"  - comes from a process involving yeast.
> But on the other hand there is another Germanic word, "lev" in Swedish (a bit archaic today), "loaf" in English, "Laib"? in German and variations of "chleb" in most Slavic languages, except for Croatian (but I have experienced myself that "chleb" is perfectly understood in Croatia).
> And whenever there are synonyms one should ask why...




As for hljeb etc, HJP claims it entered Proto-Slavic from Gothic, so those forms are related in a fashion, via borrowing.

But regarding your last sentence, the appeal of those fanciful theories is that, due to general lack of historical data for some periods and areas, you just wonder - could there really be something there, in some of those claims.

'Ancient Serbs' on the Chinese border for example (note the reconstructed form of Hsien-pei, alternatively Xian-bei). That one always had me wondering.


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## Lars H

DenisBiH said:


> Here's the complete list (crackpot link warning). .



I wish I could understand Serbian, but I do not. However, I know enough to say that no. 13 (Arbeit) and 115 (Gast) are perhaps not entirely inaccurate. 

With "Arbeit" there could be a possible link between Germ. "arb-", related to Anc. Slavic *orbho-" and "rabŭ", meaning "slave" which has given us "rabota", 

And there should be an ancient Slavic "gosti" for "guest"/"Gast".

Even a blind hen...


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## DenisBiH

Oh I believe the author of the list in question is a member of this very board and has posted on EHL, so we may yet get to read his views on the issues discussed in this thread, who knows.


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## sokol

phosphore said:


> This is a treasure.
> 
> Lars, I think "hleb" is a Germanic loan.



Most certainly, it must be, it's "Brot" converted.
And it is so easy: there was a /b/ metathesis which put /b/ from the beginning of the word to its end, the Slavic /l/ is nothing but an /r/ transformed, which ended up before instead of after /e/ due to liquida metathesis, /h/ of course is the survival of once aspirated German /th/, and every baby knows that Germanic /e/ changed to /o/ in Slavic. 

So far for the crackpot theory. 

But in all earnest:
For "loaf" and "Leib" see etymonline - indeed, they do go back to the same root, and indeed the Slavic word (in Old Church Slavonic) "chlebu" might be a Germanic loan. ("Brot" has a different root. ) So yes, phosphore, you were right - that is, well, it's only a theory, or so etymonline says (but not one of the crackpot kind).


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## DenisBiH

sokol, you would have made such a wonderful crackpot. Can't wait for the next April 1. 

Not to be solely chatting, another one, a bit closer to home.

It's 'known to all' that Bosniaks (aka Bosnian Muslims) are really descended from some obscure Illyrian tribe called Poseni or Basani and have unbroken ethnic and national continuity from before Romans set foot on Bosnian soil, let alone Serbs and Croats. Only Albanians and Greeks are as old. 

I kid you not.



> Istraživanja su pokazala da su naši preci Iliri koji se na ovom prostoru arheološki mogu pratiti od II milenija stare ere pa sve do VII stoljeća n.e., odnosno do dolaska Slavena na Balkanski poluotok. Slaveni su ovamo došli tek u VII stoljeću iz euroazijskih stepa i pustara, i oni su nas ovdje zatekli. Uz Bošnjake stari balkanski narod su još samo Albanci i Grci. Malo je poznata činjenica da je postojalo jedno ilirsko pleme koje je nosilo isti naziv kako se mi danas nazivamo. Bili su to Basani (Poseni), od kojeg je nastala slavenska varijanta Bosani, to jest Bošnjani, a od ovoga Bošnjaci ili Bosanci.


I haven't had the patience to continue reading to see if Illyrian Bosniaks were also Muslims and if they were builders of the fabled Bosnian pyramids.

To support this, it has recently been 'proven' that the old Bosnian ruler's title, _ban_, was used here in ancient times, by local Illyrians and Celts, and that the practice of giving children Illyrian and Celtic names survived in Bosnia even into the middle ages.


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## Lars H

DenisBiH said:


> It's 'known to all' that Bosniaks (aka Bosnian Muslims) are really descended from some obscure Illyrian tribe called Poseni or Basani and have unbroken ethnic and national continuity from before Romans set foot on Bosnian soil, let alone Serbs and Croats. Only Albanians and Greeks are as old.



Eventually I managed to read the text, by Googlelating it from Croatian to Swedish. Both amusing and a bit scary. But, I have always thought that Banja Luka had something to do with "bath" but now I know better.
On a Swedish forum I read a neat answer to the obvious question; "If bosniaks are Illyrian and not Slavic, how come they speak a slavic language?"
The answer: "The Illyrian bosniaks invited Slavic tribes to help them chase away Goths (a.k.a. Swedes ) and Hunns. And afterwards the bosniaks decided to adapt the Slavic tongue as a way to show gratitude for the help given...
I'd love to see the evidence backing up this theory. 

By the way, it appears that you and I aren't relatives. I also read that while Albanians are 4% "vikings" and Serbs/Macedonians top with 6%, the indigenous peoples of BiH are 0% vikings 

A more serious question; the term "bosniak"; did or did it not exist before the 16th century?


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## OldAvatar

Ottilie said:


> We have to make first of all the distinction that there are two different nations using the same language - Romanians and Moldavians.



That's not a statement! That's a point of view. Yours!
Apart of that, I agree with Sokol!


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## sokol

Lars H said:


> A more serious question; the term "bosniak"; did or did it not exist before the 16th century?


There was a medieval kingdom of "Bosna" (as it is called in the native tongue), previously the name wasn't mentioned anywhere (to my knowledge), and I'm also not sure if there exists a broadly accepted etymology of the name.

So any term for inhabitant of this kingdom surely existed then, in Slavic "Bošnjak", or some construction with the adjective "bosanski".

Bosnians arrived there along with the other Slavs sometime in the 7th century (possibly some very early arrivals in the late 6th) and were christianised some time in the 10th century (probably only on a "shallow" basis, we don't know much about this - imagine it like in Scandinavia where Christianity didn't reach too deep in the first years after Christianisation).

They only turned Muslim during the Ottoman rule of course. But there were people believed to be the direct ancestors of "Muslim" Bosnians, the so-called Bogomils, a Christian split-off group. While it is likely that this split-off group was more open to Islamisation than Catholic and Orthodox Christians I don't think that there's exactly proof for this relation; however, I think the Bogomils indeed play a role in Bosnian national myths.*)

*) EDIT: I stand corrected, see Denis' post below: it was "Bošnjani" which was used then. 

(And we have all our myths, don't we? We Austrians too for that matter. )


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## DenisBiH

Lars H said:


> Eventually I managed to read the text, by Googlelating it from Croatian to Swedish. Both amusing and a bit scary. But, I have always thought that Banja Luka had something to do with "bath" but now I know better.
> On a Swedish forum I read a neat answer to the obvious question; "If bosniaks are Illyrian and not Slavic, how come they speak a slavic language?"
> The answer: "The Illyrian bosniaks invited Slavic tribes to help them chase away Goths (a.k.a. Swedes ) and Hunns. And afterwards the bosniaks decided to adapt the Slavic tongue as a way to show gratitude for the help given...




Well, we've had our Gothic (or Swedish ) theory as well. Supposedly 3 Muslim Bosnians gathered in some restaurant in Sarajevo with a German officer during WWII to draft a "Dear Adolf" letter explaining to the Fuhrer how Bosnian Muslims are really Goths and thus should not be in the same state as those Croats. I think the letter was never sent, but you can find it in some places on the net. I don't think it contained any 'linguistic' attempts at proving those claims, so it's slightly off topic.

On a sidenote, we do have what is probably one of rare futhark examples from southern Europe in Breza, Bosnia. It's funny in a way, someone writing 'Geordie was here' or whatever becomes a first-class piece of evidence for nationalists 1500 years later.




> By the way, it appears that you and I aren't relatives. I also read that while Albanians are 4% "vikings" and Serbs/Macedonians top with 6%, the indigenous peoples of BiH are 0% vikings


Nah, everyone knows you Vikings came from around here *1, and those low percentages you mention are only those that returned from Scandinavia to their ancestral homes near the Bosnian pyramids.  

*1 On a more serious note, it seems you did, but again not really linguistic.



> A more serious question; the term "bosniak"; did or did it not exist before the 16th century?


If it did, I haven't seen it. The medieval Bosnian term was Bošnjani (Bošnane), not Bošnjaci, with the usual controversy over what it actually meant. Both seem to show Slavic suffixes, and it's an interesting question why the change, but if there is an explanation, I haven't seen it (not one that makes sense anyway)


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## Lars H

DenisBiH said:


> On a sidenote, we do have what is probably one of rare futhark examples from southern Europe in Breza, Bosnia. It's funny in a way, someone writing 'Geordie was here' or whatever becomes a first-class piece of evidence for nationalists 1500 years later.



In some Norse sagas there are texts that could be interpreted into that one or two Norse tribes actually did return to their old homeland, from the Balkans to Scandinavia. (And the old Germanic futhark, the one that can be found in Breza, did show up in Scandinavia for perhaps 1500 years ago). This exodus should the have been a consequence of the arrival of Attila the Hun (Atle in our sagas) which made the Balkans a bit too crowded.

This might - or might not - have happened, but we know too little to say for sure. Yet, some ten years ago there was an really ambitious art exhibition in the Sw. town of Värnamo, where a large number of Vandal objects of arts (yes, such things do exist), borrowed from all over the world, were on display. The theme was the return of the Vandals to their old country, the land surrounding Värnamo.
For obvious reasons, it is not entirely PC to claim kinship with the Vandals (of all ancient tribes) so the exhibition also carried the message that the Vandals actually were nice, humble and cultivated, but unfortunately badmouthed by medieval priest historicians.



DenisBiH said:


> If it did, I haven't seen it. The medieval Bosnian term was Bošnjani (Bošnane), not Bošnjaci, with the usual controversy over what it actually meant. Both seem to show Slavic suffixes, and it's an interesting question why the change, but if there is an explanation, I haven't seen it (not one that makes sense anyway)


That is what I guessed.


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## DenisBiH

Lars, do you happen to know the names of those sagas?

sokol, I'd really like to here of those Austrian myths. Are they linguistics based or is it something else?


----------



## sokol

DenisBiH said:


> sokol, I'd really like to here of those Austrian myths. Are they linguistics based or is it something else?



There are plenty, some going back to ancient times and some modern, urban myths.

For example there's the one about Austria being a multi-ethnic nation by definition, a multi-cultural one: while this is true (with so much ethnical mixing going on especially during the times of the Habsburg monarchy; there was a great deal of ethnical mixing, not only in Vienna which once was, ethnically, predominantly Czech, but of course especially in the capital) - so while this isn't exactly a lie it is over-emphasised beyond reason oftentimes.
Because in all earnest the majority of Austrians does not see itself as "multi-ethnical" by everyday culture - which is just Austrian - but if anything then by origin, and even that is not appreciated by all Austrians: so in reality we do not define ourselves by our multi-ethnical roots.

Then there are of course all kinds of *Habsburg* family related myths, beginning with Friedrich II., Duke of Austria (if I remember correctly it is attributed to him having won a battle in a white suit, and he supposedly was so full of blood that when he took of his belt the colours red-white-red of our flag showed, which supposedly gave birth to our flag), going on to glorified Maximilian (the last knight) and further to Maria Theresia and then, and especially (she's the darling of monarchy reminiscence) Sissi, the melancholic wife of our last-but-one Kaiser Franz Josef I.

The point here is that most of the Habsburg royalty never really had an "Austrian" nation in mind - some had, mind, but those that did of course promoted a multi-national nation (they had to, how else could they hold their Empire together if they were to promote a German-Austrian nation only?), and as we all know through history, the multi-ethnic Austrian nation failed catastrophically, demonstrated by the events during and after World War I.

Oh, and then there's also the first mentioning of *"Ostarrîchi",* the medieval name of Austria. While this certainly was the very beginning of the Austrian nation in a historical sense it still had little to do with what Austria is today - very little in fact. Also, it only contained part of today's _Bundesländer_ Niederösterreich, Wien and Oberösterreich.

I would say that modern myths have played a much greater role.

For example the victory over Germany (football World Championship 1978, Argentina, Córdoba). This still is mentioned continually; we were already out of the competition by the time we played the Germans - we didn't gain anything by our victory _*except*_ self-confidence; which certainly gave our self-esteem a huge boost.

For the Germans this was just a very embarrassing loss, for us it was (and still is) much more.


----------



## DenisBiH

Ah, thanks. I've read a few stories of even ex-Yu people self-identifying as Austrians in the early 20th century, so the multi-ethnic 'myth' is quite understandable even from here.

As for the last part, what I've noticed here in the Balkans is that many people, including myself, still view Austria not as a prosperous but small country but rather in a way as if Austria-Hungary the superpower was still around, its image not really being inferior to Germany in any meaningful way. It's almost subconscious, I'd say, but it may be personal though and may not apply to all. But to give a few examples: Otto von Habsburg celebrating his 95th birthday in Banja Luka with his family and local dignitaries, Otto von Habsburg being made an honorary citizen of Sarajevo by the mayor.


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## ilocas2

sokol said:


> There are plenty, some going back to ancient times and some modern, urban myths.
> 
> For example there's the one about Austria being a multi-ethnic nation by definition, a multi-cultural one: while this is true (with so much ethnical mixing going on especially during the times of the Habsburg monarchy; there was a great deal of ethnical mixing, not only in Vienna which once was, ethnically, predominantly Czech, but of course especially in the capital) - so while this isn't exactly a lie it is over-emphasised beyond reason oftentimes.
> Because in all earnest the majority of Austrians does not see itself as "multi-ethnical" by everyday culture - which is just Austrian - but if anything then by origin, and even that is not appreciated by all Austrians: so in reality we do not define ourselves by our multi-ethnical roots.
> 
> Then there are of course all kinds of *Habsburg* family related myths, beginning with Friedrich II., Duke of Austria (if I remember correctly it is attributed to him having won a battle in a white suit, and he supposedly was so full of blood that when he took of his belt the colours red-white-red of our flag showed, which supposedly gave birth to our flag), going on to glorified Maximilian (the last knight) and further to Maria Theresia and then, and especially (she's the darling of monarchy reminiscence) Sissi, the melancholic wife of our last-but-one Kaiser Franz Josef I.
> 
> The point here is that most of the Habsburg royalty never really had an "Austrian" nation in mind - some had, mind, but those that did of course promoted a multi-national nation (they had to, how else could they hold their Empire together if they were to promote a German-Austrian nation only?), and as we all know through history, the multi-ethnic Austrian nation failed catastrophically, demonstrated by the events during and after World War I.
> 
> Oh, and then there's also the first mentioning of *"Ostarrîchi",* the medieval name of Austria. While this certainly was the very beginning of the Austrian nation in a historical sense it still had little to do with what Austria is today - very little in fact. Also, it only contained part of today's _Bundesländer_ Niederösterreich, Wien and Oberösterreich.
> 
> I would say that modern myths have played a much greater role.
> 
> For example the victory over Germany (football World Championship 1978, Argentina, Córdoba). This still is mentioned continually; we were already out of the competition by the time we played the Germans - we didn't gain anything by our victory _*except*_ self-confidence; which certainly gave our self-esteem a huge boost.
> 
> For the Germans this was just a very embarrassing loss, for us it was (and still is) much more.



Hi, when I was in Vienna I was shocked with high numbers of Czech surnames on shops. It's clearly seen from one image posted above in a DenisBiH's post. We are genetically the same and both very different from Germans. So the Austrian nation has obvious genetic justification. Even Vienna resembles with its atmosphere more some Eastern-European city than f.e. Dresden, which is the only big German city, where I have been.


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## berndf

ilocas2 said:


> Hi, when I was in Vienna I was shocked with high numbers of Czech surnames on shops. It's clearly seen from one image posted above in a DenisBiH's post. We are genetically the same and both very different from Germans. So the Austrian nation has obvious genetic justification. Even Vienna resembles with its atmosphere more some Eastern-European city than f.e. Dresden, which is the only big German city, where I have been.


Sokol refered to multi-ethnic and not to multi-genetic roots of Austrians (mainly Viennese). Trying to define Central European ethnicities by genetic criteria seems absurd to me.


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## ilocas2

berndf said:


> Sokol refered to multi-ethnic and not to multi-genetic roots of Austrians (mainly Viennese). Trying to define Central European ethnicities by genetic criteria seems absurd to me.



Yes, we all are extremely mixed. But culturally Czech Republic is closest to Austria of all neihbouring countries. More closer than to Slovakia or Germany, let aside Poland (least similar). Cuisine, traditions, architecture are very similar. Genes only confirm this, but this can be only coincidence, so I'll not longer talk about it.


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## berndf

ilocas2 said:


> Yes, we all are extremely mixed. But culturally Czech Republic is closest to Austria of all neihbouring countries. More closer than to Slovakia or Germany, let aside Poland. Cuisine, traditions, architecture are very similar. Genes only confirm this, but this can be only coincidence, so I'll not longer talk about it.


Eastern Austria, as Sokoll explained. If you look at traditional houses in Lower Austrian villages, you might think you are in the Czech republic or Hungary. But Western Austrian village houses look much like those in Bavaria.


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## DenisBiH

ilocas2 said:


> Yes, we all are extremely mixed. But culturally Czech Republic is closest to Austria of all neihbouring countries. More closer than to Slovakia or Germany, let aside Poland. Cuisine, traditions, architecture are very similar. Genes only confirm this, but this can be only coincidence, so I'll not longer talk about it.




Well, architecture is understandable. A Czech architect by the name Karlo Paržik built what I can only call half the Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo. Well, not half, 'only' 160 buildings (National Theater, National Museum etc). Incidentally, to get back to what sokol was saying, his great-granddaughter now lives in Vienna.


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## ilocas2

berndf said:


> Eastern Austria, as Sokoll explained. If you look at traditional houses in Lower Austrian villages, you might think you are in the Czech republic or Hungary. But Western Austrian village houses look much like those in Bavaria.



It's rather a difference between lowlands and mountains. Western Austria is mountainous and Lower Austria is predominantly a lowland region. The same differences are in Czech Republic, although they are not so marked and yes it's true, a typical Czech village is somehow behind (less-developed) a typical German or Austrian village. I live in a village and the difference is observed.

Of course Vorarlberg, Tyrol and Salzburg are very close to Bavaria. It can't be questioned.


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## ilocas2

DenisBiH said:


> Well, architecture is understandable. A Czech architect by the name Karlo Paržik built what I can only call half the Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo. Well, not half, 'only' 160 buildings (National Theater, National Museum etc). Incidentally, to get back to what sokol was saying, his great-granddaughter now lives in Vienna.



His original name was Karel Pařík. He changed his name for better pronounciation probably. He was born in "Veliš u Jičína" in 1857 in ethnically Czech region. Interesting, I didn't know anything about him till today.


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## Lars H

DenisBiH said:


> Lars, do you happen to know the names of those sagas?



Actually it is just as much based on non Norse sources. 

The Gothic historian of Jordanes (sixth century, the name with Scandinavian spelling) wrote that the tribe Herules were thrown out of their land by the Danes.

Then Prokopius, an East Roman scribe (died AD 551) wrote that the Herules had lived north of the Black Sea but moved west to the Balkans as the Huns pressed on westwards. Somewhere around 534 AD a group of Herules - severely beaten - wanders north, passes through "the Danes land" - without being hindered or disturbed by the Danes - and then moved east to live besides "the Goths", which could be the south of Sweden. 

Then I think (not sure, though) that in "Rolf Krakes saga", "the saga of Rohdulf Kraki" (that would be the original Icelandic saga, not the one written by Poul Anderson in 1973) the remaining Herules on the Balkans accidently killed their own king and decided to send a delegation to their kins in Scandinavia to find a new king - of royal blood - to crown.

Finally, The Herule tribe were placed north of the Black Sea, in the same area that Snorre Sturlasson in Heimskringla places Woden, before he marches off to become king and god in Scandinavia. Perhaps the saga in some way reflects what Prokopios tells.

As for the Vandals, the indications are almost none. A number of existing and older typonymes in today's north Poland/Germany carries/d various forms of "Wend-. This could indicate that they moved north again, after a century or two enjoying the Iberian peninsula, North Africa and the Balkans. But it could of course also mean that this is where they came from... There are also a few placenames on Scandinavian soil as Vendsyssel (DK) or Vendel (SW), but these might stem from "water-".


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## Lars H

sokol said:


> The point here is that most of the Habsburg royalty never really had an "Austrian" nation in mind - some had, mind, but those that did of course promoted a multi-national nation (they had to, how else could they hold their Empire together if they were to promote a German-Austrian nation only?), and as we all know through history, the multi-ethnic Austrian nation failed catastrophically, demonstrated by the events during and after World War I.



I read once in a book of a Swedish writer that the later murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand had plans to develop the double monarchy to a triple one, by creating also a slavic monarchy and thus granting the Slavic population (including the areas annected in 1908) more authonomy. But these plans were not very popular among neither Astrogermans nor Hungarians (who likes to share power with others..). Are there any facts to back this up?


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## ilocas2

Lars H said:


> I read once in a book of a Swedish writer that the later murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand had plans to develop the double monarchy to a triple one, by creating also a slavic monarchy and thus granting the Slavic population (including the areas annected in 1908) more authonomy. But these plans were not very popular among neither Astrogermans nor Hungarians (who likes to share power with others..). Are there any facts to back this up?



I have found this on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria

This proposal comes from 1906


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## Lars H

ilocas2 said:


> I have found this on Wikipedia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria
> 
> This proposal comes from 1906



Thank you very much! Very interesting article. One must admit that is was an unexpectedly bald plan...


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## DenisBiH

And yet, a more modern plan that also works around uniting various nations of Europe in a joint entity is all the rage around Europe these years (the one called EU). After two world wars, tens of millions of lives lost, the Holocaust, Nazism, Communism, massive destruction, massive ethnic cleansing and redrawing of ethnic borders...sometimes I wonder if all of that really had to happen. But I guess national liberation movements and the general political situation in Europe those days were not exactly conducive to EU type of thinking.

Still, it's interesting to note that Austrian nobility were among the first proponents of actual united Europe (not just 'greater Austria') right after the first world war.

This has really grown into a "Cultural Discussions" type of thread, and I can't say I'm sorry (crackpots and their theories aren't that interesting after you've seen a few), but still moderators may be a bit displeased. Do forgive us.


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## phosphore

DenisBiH said:


> And yet, a more modern plan that also works around uniting various nations of Europe in a joint entity is all the rage around Europe these years (the one called EU). After two world wars, tens of millions of lives lost, the Holocaust, Nazism, Communism, massive destruction, massive ethnic cleansing and redrawing of ethnic borders...sometimes I wonder if all of that really had to happen. But I guess national liberation movements and the general political situation in Europe those days were not exactly conducive to EU type of thinking.


 
The irony is that it's not over yet. I too feel sometimes that it's all behind us and wonder how could it possibly happen, and then I realise that in Serbia alone "redrawings of ething borders" and "national liberation movements" are not done yet. Just look at Kosovo and Sanjak. And then I ask myself whether we are just as stupid as our ancestors. Maybe we are just not able to see our own myths as clearly as we see those from the past?


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## DenisBiH

phosphore said:


> The irony is that it's not over yet. I too feel sometimes that it's all behind us and wonder how could it possibly happen, and then I realise that in Serbia alone "redrawings of ething borders" and "national liberation movements" are not done yet. Just look at Kosovo and Sanjak. And then I ask myself whether we are just as stupid as our ancestors. Maybe we are just not able to see our own myths as clearly as we see those from the past?




And yet, among all those still existing strains, these days it seems Yuga is coming back, in a way.  Perhaps even Kosovo, who knows (read the part about Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian products still being preferred among Albanians in Kosovo). I don't think anyone is serious about Sandžak, except perhaps a few extremists. 

So there is at least some counter-balance to the 'Balkanization' movement in the Balkans itself.


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## seyif

Lars H said:


> On a Swedish forum I read a neat answer to the obvious question; "If bosniaks are Illyrian and not Slavic, how come they speak a slavic language?"
> The answer: "The Illyrian bosniaks invited Slavic tribes to help them chase away Goths (a.k.a. Swedes ) and Hunns. And afterwards the bosniaks decided to adapt the Slavic tongue as a way to show gratitude for the help given...
> I'd love to see the evidence backing up this theory.



I really wonder why Bosnians are called with a name of river:bosna. Can that naming support something for diffrent roots out of slav tribes? 




Lars H said:


> A more serious question; the term "bosniak"; did or did it not exist before the 16th century?




I have read this in a source: "In current usage the terms Bòšnjak and Bо̀šnjakinja refer specifically to members of the Muslim community, while the terms Bosànac and Bòsanka refer to any resident of Bosnia and Herzegovina." Is Bosniak same with Bòšnjak?


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## DenisBiH

> I really wonder why Bosnians are called with a name of river:bosna. Can that naming support something for diffrent roots out of slav tribes?


The name itself has somewhat unclear etymology, as sokol said, but the usually found theory is that it is a pre-Slavic name for the river, possibly Illyrian. There is also the newer 'find' of some obscure Illyrian tribe Poseni, which I've seen only mentioned by one legit historian, and I don't know what to make of it (dr. Enver Imamović, referring to Appian, possibly this). And oh yes, there was a theory by a well known local historian/archaeologist Marko Vego that it was actually a Slavic name brought from the homeland, which Vego (based mostly on not-extremely-convincing analysis of personal and place names) placed somewhere around Nitra in modern day Slovakia. Vego's theory, his otherwise good reputation as a scholar notwithstanding, doesn't seem to have been well accepted.

Usually it is assumed that since the local political entity developed around the river Bosna (that political entity was first attested as "Bosona" in the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus' "De administrando imperio" from 950's), it took that name, and later demonyms/ethnonyms developed from the name of the political entity. The first attested use of the name derived from Bosnia denoting a group of people that I know of is in some Byzantine text from the 12th century, as "Bosnaios" (Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol 1, p. 312). The local Bosnian name, attested in 14th and 15th century documents (charters and such) prior to the arrival of the Ottomans, was Bošnjani (modern spelling, actual transcribed name is something like Bošnane), and as I've said there is no real agreement on what it actually represented and when: a geographical term, a political term or an ethnic term.

As for different roots, all of us, Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats etc. seem to have mixed origins according to recent genetic studies (combined with what we know from history, archaeology etc.), probably being partly descended from those Slavs that invaded the Balkans in the 5-7th century, and partly from pre-Slavic inhabitants (with also a small part descended from later arrivals: Turks and Arabs, Hungarians etc.). Actually, a study conducted here showed the Croats in western Herzegovina (Herzegovina is the southern part of the country) might have significantly more pre-Slavic ancestry, although it's a major factor in the makeup of other groups as well.




> I have read this in a source: "In current usage the terms Bòšnjak and Bо̀šnjakinja refer specifically to members of the Muslim community, while the terms Bosànac and Bòsanka refer to any resident of Bosnia and Herzegovina.


Yes this is correct. The term Bosniak (Bošnjak, female Bošnjakinja) was brought back into everyday usage in 1993, as a replacement for the name of a Yugoslav constituent nation formerly (from 1968 officially in constitution) known in Serbo-Croatian as "Muslimani" (Muslims, but with a capital "M" to distinguish it from "muslimani" which is the local term for Muslims as members of a religion). Many Bosniaks in the 1990's leadership, academic circles and the general public thought the name was poorly chosen in 1968, equating a nation with a religious group, and brought back the older term "Bošnjak" back into official and other everyday use.

This has caused no small controversy among Serbs and Croats. One of the reasons is that Austria-Hungary, in the early years after the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878 actively pursued what is considered a policy of creating a Bosniak nation that was to encompass everybody in B-H (i.e. also Bosnian Serbs and Croats; or otherwise Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics) - and thus that name carries some historical baggage, for some Serbs and Croats at least. The name Bošnjak itself was however used, among Muslim Bosnians, but also others, prior to the occupation, i.e. also in Ottoman times. In my opinion the meaning varied depending on who used it, for some it was a geographic term, for others it was what I think was an ethnic term. This policy was later reversed by Austro-Hungarian authorities, I believe it must have been around 1908 when also the term "Bosnian language" was legally replaced by "Serbo-Croatian language" in official correspondence, though Muslim Bosnians seem to have been given the option to continue using the name "Bosnian" in official correspondence of Muslim based organizations etc. Thus, thanks to this Austro-Hungarian policy, the Bosnian language, only fully standardized (there are dictionaries from as 'early' as the 17th century, but not amounting to a standard) under that name in the late 20th century, has a grammar from the late 19th century, among other things. Just one of local curiosities. 

Anyway, when the term was brought back into use in 1993 Serbs and Croats started arguing it was a way of either assimilating Bosnian Serbs and Croats into Bosniaks or of making it appear as if Bosnia-Herzegovina was a national land of only Bosniaks (i.e. Bosnian Muslims) and that Serbs and Croats are only minorities. While some Bosniaks do argue along those lines, they are a minority, and by most Bosniaks it is seen as simply a name of one of three equal nations (again, our use of the term nation is not quite the same as in English) having equal historical and every other claim to Bosnia-Herzegovina, as it is today in our legal documents. Note that, those arguments notwithstanding, the name Bošnjak is what is normally used today for Bosniaks in official context, television, newspaper articles etc. by Serbs and Croats, and it seems to have started spreading in everyday use of those two groups, though phosphore could probably tell you more about that.

The term Bosanac (female Bosanka) was a quite common term during the times of former Yugoslavia and referred to any inhabitant of Bosnia (and sometimes also Herzegovina), and so it has remained mostly (there are exceptions but I won't go into them here). Note that there is also a separate name for inhabitants of Herzegovina: Hercegovac/Hercegovka, also applicable to all.




> " Is bosniak same with bòšnjak?


Yes, except both are usually written using the capital first letter.


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## Lars H

DenisBiH said:


> The name itself has somewhat unclear etymology, as sokol said, but the usually found theory is that it is a pre-Slavic name for the river, possibly Illyrian.



When it comes to typonymes, in many cases the names of mountains, rivers, lakes and islands are often (but far from always) the oldest.
Sometimes these are also very hard to interpret, but if I am correctly informed, many old river names basically means "river" or "water" in one way or another. No coincidence we have different river names that sounds similar, like Donau/Don, Djnestr/Djnepr.
In Sweden for example, the origin of the names for our two largest lakes Vänern and Vättern are utterly unclear, although - of course - there are different theories. And this in an area where the genealogical history is less complicated than in many other areas.




DenisBiH said:


> As for different roots, all of us, Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats etc. seem to have mixed origins according to recent genetic studies (combined with what we know from history, archaeology etc.), probably being partly descended from those Slavs that invaded the Balkans in the 5-7th century, and partly from pre-Slavic inhabitants (with also a small part descended from later arrivals: Turks and Arabs, Hungarians etc.). Actually, a study conducted here showed the Croats in western Herzegovina (Herzegovina is the southern part of the country) might have significantly more pre-Slavic ancestry, although it's a major factor in the makeup of other groups as well.



I think we all have seen wall posters in school, where neatly coloured arrows have shown us which tribes went from where to where, and when. In reality, the vast migrations of Europe during the first centuries AD (and during other periods) were very fragmented. Not all followed the migration waves (many remained in the "old country"), in most cases the migrants more or less assimilated with the original population, the migrants most likely created "clusters" meaning that they did not blend perfectly to the same degree everywhere and some migrants were bad mannered enough not to move according to our school poster arrows. 

So regardless of what sort of "glorious past" people try to prove, there will always be evidence to support them, and there always be evidence to prove them wrong. It's a futile quest.

Also Scandinavia has it's share of "glory seekers". People who rarely are high achievers themselves but instead are quite happy to take a piggy back ride on their "glorious" ancestors...


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## seyif

DenisBiH said:


> Yes, except both are usually written using the capital first letter.



You are right! Sorry...


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## sokol

DenisBiH said:


> But to give a few examples: Otto von Habsburg celebrating his 95th birthday in Banja Luka with his family and local dignitaries, Otto von Habsburg being made an honorary citizen of Sarajevo by the mayor.


Interesting - things like that don't make news here in Austria. 
The Habsburg family is forbidden the right of present themselves as candidates for political posts (higher posts - don't ask me how high but any politically significant one).
For this reason they try to raise power elsewhere, or wherever they can (e. g. European Parliament, for which Austrian constitution does not apply).


ilocas2 said:


> So the Austrian nation has obvious genetic justification.


We Austrians never would identify ourselves "genetic", but berndf already said that. 
Rather, it's the cultural multi-ethnic background which is, for a significant part of the population (could be 50%, or 70%, or only 30% - nobody really knows ), an important identification marker - but mainly for the centre-left and left-wing spectrum of society. Centre-right are definitely ambivalent about it, and no need to mention that right wing certainly are against multiculturalism.


ilocas2 said:


> Yes, we all are extremely mixed. But culturally Czech Republic is closest to Austria of all neihbouring countries.


Czech Republic and Austria indeed _are_ quite close culturally - less so after decades of Socialist rule, but there are still plenty of survivals of this cultural link.
Cuisine certainly, as you mentioned - and this is true for entire Austria (not only the Eastern part where Czech influence was biggest). Cuisine indeed is also an important factor of identification - another Austrian myth really because who ever heard of self-identification through cuisine? 

Austria never applied for an "Austrian language" (note, we could have of course, same as Croatia does now) before EU authorities - but Austria insisted on a limited number of Austrian words being accepted for official use in Austria, most of which have something to do with cuisine. (Here's a list of some, I'm sure this list is not complete - but I couldn't find the list right now; those in this list all have to do with eating, somehow. )


ilocas2 said:


> I have found this on Wikipedia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria
> 
> This proposal comes from 1906


Indeed, and it might have worked had this proposal been put into use shortly after the victory over Napoleon - in 1815 the Austrian government still was strong enough to possibly force equal treatment of all nations onto all nations.

Instead, Austria suppressed all opposition till 1848 when it all exploded, after which everything was suppressed again - and the result of that was the so-called "Ausgleich" in 1866 when the Dualism was "invented".

After that Hungary of course was not at all interested in loosing any of its newly acquired territory.
Trialism/Pluralism only had a chance long before the revolution of 1848 - by then it was already to late - or so I would say. But that's history, not mythology. 


DenisBiH said:


> This has really grown into a "Cultural Discussions" type of thread, and I can't say I'm sorry (crackpots and their theories aren't that interesting after you've seen a few), but still moderators may be a bit displeased. Do forgive us.


Indeed it has, and I certainly was one of them who is responsible for going off-topic. We should probably focus on topic again now.


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## seyif

Lars H said:


> But, I have always thought that Banja Luka had something to do with "bath" but now I know better.


I read in an article that it means  "the Baths of St. Luke". Naming is from remaining of an old Roman bath.


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## ilocas2

I just wanted to say that European countries, which I have visited, only two of them were sufficiently similar to Czech republic, that I can imagine to stay there to the end of my life. It's Austria and Hungary. All others were just too alien. But I must also say that I have never been in Poland and in Slovakia.

And about that genes: It mostly works, but of course, to some extent, it has its borders. The language is always decisive.


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## Lars H

seyif said:


> I read in an article that it means  "the Baths of St. Luke". Naming is from remaining of an old Roman bath.



seyif, you may be right. I have associated it with baths due to the hot baths that are said to be found in the city, and the fact that it dates back to Roman days. But I just learned an alternative explanation; "the meadow of the ban". 

We will probably never know which explanation is the right one. I guess this a good example why nationalism in many cases can be tricky to build on interpreting placenames.

Lars


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## DenisBiH

I haven't thought about the etymology of Banja Luka before, but according to a quick search it does seem to have to do with ban (the title) rather than banja (bath),  and two of the sources offer the same meaning as Lars - "arable land/meadow (by the river) of the ban". One of the sources relating it to ban is HJP (Croatian Language Portal), which I tend to trust. Here is their entry for Banja Luka referring to ban, and the entry for luka does list "meadow by the river" as the third possible meaning (along with the modern meaning 'harbor')


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## ilocas2

DenisBiH said:


> I haven't thought about the etymology of Banja Luka before, but according to a quick search it does seem to have to do with ban (the title) rather than banja (bath),  and two of the sources offer the same meaning as Lars - "arable land/meadow (by the river) of the ban". One of the sources relating it to ban is HJP (Croatian Language Portal), which I tend to trust. Here is their entry for Banja Luka referring to ban, and the entry for luka does list "meadow by the river" as the third possible meaning (along with the modern meaning 'harbor')



In Slovak *baňa* means "mine" and *lúka* means just any "meadow" (correct me someone if I'm wrong). Maybe it fits in the Marko Vego's theory. Who knows? It's buried in history for ever.


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## sokol

Mod note:

It would be difficult to split off discussions about individual etymologies of words; let's treat the ones above as side-notes, but please, if you've got _serious_ questions about the etymology of a particular word*) which arises from the posts here then open a new thread. 

*) That is, not about national myths but about what is _*really*_ behind a word - as the former would be on-topic here while the latter isn't. 

Thank you!
Cheers
sokol


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## iobyo

I don't think it's been mentioned, but there's also the theory of Bulgarian being descended from the Bulgar (Turkic) language.


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## Wikislav

Athaulf said:


> In *Croatia*, during the surge of wartime and post-war nationalism in the 1990s, it was highly popular among "patriotic" intellectuals to concoct all sorts of silly theories in order to deny certain blatant, but highly politically incorrect linguistic facts....  It was of course a slight problem to explain how these glorious Croatian invaders with millenniums of their own history and culture suddenly became 100% Slavic, both linguistically and culturally, without preserving a single uncontroversial cultural or linguistic fragment that couldn't be traced to either Slavs or the indigenous population of the Balkans that they displaced or assimilated. (Ironically, modern standard Croatian is probably the purest Slavic language of all, in the sense of having probably the highest percentage of Slavic roots in its vocabulary.)  It was fashionable to use a few old Croatian words with unclear etymology as a proof of non-Slavic origins of the Croats, which of course produced all sorts of silliness. It was also fashionable to dissect borderline Croatian dialects to "prove" -- contrary to elementary logic and sanity -- that their similarities with what is spoken across the border are in fact superficial and accidental.


The above oversimplified discussion on Slavic/Iranic Croats do not reflect the total diversity of many Croatian ethnogeneses, being the richest ones among all European ethnics: To be complete, early Croats so far were covered by even dozen divergent 'theories' of origins, each one reflecting the coexistent ideology and pretending to elucidate nearly 100% descendence; so all ones together cover even 1,200% 'surely' Croat origins. These pretended descendances were proposed by chronological order firstly from the _Illyrians_, but also _Goths, Slavs, Avars, Sarmatians, Iranians, _anew _Goths_ (in WW2), then Slavs, and recently _Indo-Aryans, Armenians, Hebrews _(13th tribe),_ Irish/Celts, Turks, Chinese_ (!), and lastly anew Illyrians. So far in Croatian ancestry was included the subentire Eurasia, and as not included left only Japanese, Australian aborigines, nor red Americans (but in future may be ?). The most amusing and exotic "theories" on early Croat ancestors are the newest 3 ones:

1. _'*Irish*' Pre-Croats_ were discovered recently by the emeritus priest Stjepan Pantelić in 1980ies, insisting that their Celtic ancestors came from Ireland or a near area in northwest Europe, then being slavicized. Due to that joint origins, subsequent unhappy fate of both Catholic nations was similar. The mutually unintelligible languages may be not decisive, because in Croat-Ikavish and in Old-Irish yet occur few similar words as _bel_ (white), _dervo_ (tree), _mori_ (sea), _paiz/pays_ (county), _snig/snigid_ (snow), etc. 

2. '_*Turkish'* Pre-Croats_ are detected from 1990ies by the medievalist Osman Karatay, a kemalist from Ankara. He elucidated that abundant turkisms in Balkan Slavs are not recent loanwords, but inherited archaisms from their initial ancient laguage then slavicized. So, Bulgarians were early Turks par excellence; Serbs descend from early Turkish tribe Black-Ogurs, and Croats from White-Ogurs (the richest turkisms in Bosnia and Macedonia were not treated). Thus these Balkan Slavs were not occupied by Turks, but they were deliberated from Slavs and unified with Turkish motherland. Very divergent genoms of Turks and Balkan Slavs are irrelevant, because genetics is wrong. 

3. _'*Chinese*' Croats_ are now detected in few last years by the retired chaptain Gavin Menzies from English navy, insisting the coastal _Chakavians_ and their _Glagolitic_ script are both of Chinese origin. So, once in medieval times, a Chinese emperor ordered to the huge navy of big junks to sail westwards through 2 oceans up to Adriatic, where they colonized Dalmatian coast and islands then being slavicized and mixed with indigene females. That resulted by peculiar Chakavian dialect, by Glagolitic script imitating Chinese one, by terraced gardens with stony walls, by colored simbols of world sides, etc.

4. _*Illyric* Pre-Croats_ are resurrected recently in last ten years, chiefly due to modern genomic analyses. That indicated Y-chromosomes in 2/3 Croats and mitochondria in 3/4 females are divergent from most other Slavs (this case is also in Serbs and Bulgarians), being unchanged during some millennia and related to ancient Illyrians and prehistoric Paleo-Balkanites. Thus Illyrian origin is now 'stealed' from discredited Albanians; the first Croatian state may be ancient Illyrian kingdom, and the related _Teutides_ kings must be also the earliest Croatian dynasty.


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## Abu Rashid

Interesting to discover there's a word for this too:

*goropism* (_plural not attested_)


A theory that some modern or attested language, such as Dutch, Turkish, or Hebrew, was the original language of mankind.
An absurd etymology proposed as part of such a theory.
       Retrieved from "http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/goropism"


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## Claudiopolis

Ottilie said:


> And I have to add that not USSR or the Russian Empire(Moldova was as well part of that empire) makes us Moldavians, but the works of the Moldavian scholars Dimitrie Cantemir,Miron Costin  in their works like ''De neamul moldovenilor''(about the Moldavian nation) or Letopiseţului Ţării Moldovei ( the annals of Moldavia) ,written in the 17th century ,during the period when Moldova was independent,proves the idea of a separate nation



All those mentioned historians/writers sustain the exact opposite. Cantemir even wrote the first history of all three Romanian principalities  "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChronicleChronicle of the durability of Romans-Moldavians-Wallachians" (1719–1722).  

Regarding the Roman occupation you should know that they built forts even in Crimea and the influence of roman life extended further than their nominal borders.


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## ancalimon

"Kazım Mirşan" claims to have created a Proto-Turkish Language dictionary by reading undecipherable writings around the world. I think his theory connects the Proto-Language with Proto-Turks. He is strongly disputed by most Turkologists in Turkey. The surprising thing is that even right wing nationalists are outraged by his arguments, because he claims things that really angers Turkish nationalists. (for example he claims "Turk" was not a nation but some kind of coalition of different races working towards a similar goal, they were not connected by blood, there was no place named Ötügen Yış (Ötüken Forest) (the central theme of Turkic PanTurkists) He claims that Ötüken Yış actually meant "valid constitution" etc..) 

Here is an example section of his dictionary:
http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt286/ancalimonungol/resim098.jpg
http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt286/ancalimonungol/resim099.jpg
http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt286/ancalimonungol/resim100y.jpg
http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt286/ancalimonungol/resim101.jpg
http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt286/ancalimonungol/resim102n.jpg
http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt286/ancalimonungol/resim103df.jpg
http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt286/ancalimonungol/resim104k.jpg

I think Sun Language Theory was defended in an extremely poor way. (even Polat Kaya defends his extreme unorthodox ideas better than they defended Sun Language Theory "I agree that his methods are wrong")  It deserved more attention and research. The arguments were:

1) The homeland of Europeans was not Mesopotamia but Central Asia just like Turks. 
2) There was a great sea on Asia.
3) There was an advanced civilization in Asia.
4) Every language in the world has a common source and the closest one to that source is Turkic.

I think the second one is proven by Kazakh geologists (there still is an inner sea but underground), but couldn't find the papers on Internet. Prof. Dr. Ahmet Taşağıl told this on TV.

And the first one led to Europeans calling many things in Central Asia related to Europeans.


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## Frank06

ancalimon said:


> I think Sun Language Theory was defended in an extremely poor way. (even Polat Kaya defends his extreme unorthodox ideas better than they defended Sun Language Theory "I agree that his methods are wrong")  It deserved more attention and research. The arguments were:


The SLT is to linguistics what Flat Earthism is to geology. How can one possibly state that it was poorly defended and that it deserved more attention and research?

Polat Kay doesn't defend his inane theories well: he's utterly, completely, ridiculously ignorant what even the most basic linguistic concepts are concerned. And that's not a minor detail when talking about a language theory.

In short: both are a shame to Turkish/Turkic linguistics, which deserve serious research, not the ponderings of mentally other-abled nitwits.


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## berndf

*Moderator note: I think, we've run a full circle now. Time to close this thread. Thank you for the discussion.
*


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