Talk:Caucasian Albanian script

Lemma
I understand the need to disambiguate from the (Balkan) Albanian alphabet, but "Albania alphabet" (as opposed to "Albanian alphabet") sounds wrong to me. How about moving this to Aluan alphabet, Caucasian Albanian alphabet, Alphabet of Caucasian Albania(-ns) or Albanian alphabet of Caucasia? Wikipeditor 23:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * We need to merge these two articles into one. Caucasian Albanian alphabet or Alphabet of Caucasian Albania are better titles. Grandmaster 08:10, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I suggest merging this article into Armenian alphabet, because I fluently speak Armenian, and I know the Armenian alphabet very well, every single letter was identical to an Armenian letter and so was the pronounciation. "The Caucasian ALbanian alphabet was created by Mesrob Mashdotz" that is historically inaccurate and is bullshit, because Mesrob Mashdotz created Armenian and Georgian alphabets and the Albanians are Armenians, if not then the people who inhabited their lands were Armenian and they used the Armenian alphabet and inscribed them onto the historical artifacts we now find. That is why Azerbaijani's are trying to create a seperate section for Caucasian Albanians and there language to set the "Azerbaijani History" aside from Armenian history. If you disagree please TRY to prove me wrong go ahead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.174.192.171 (talk) 04:31, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The article says that an ancient document compared several alphabets, including the Albanian and the Armenian ones. So they logically cannot be the same, as no one would compare a thing with itself. Q.E.D. — N-true 12:21, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I have moved this to Old Udi script. That is the language it was used to write. This name avoids the confusion of Albanian associations. I discussed this name with Prof. Jost Gippert, who will soon publish his edition of the text. -- Evertype·✆ 00:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well done. Thanks. — N-true (talk) 03:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * In other words, the article's title has been changed from one that is widely recognised and is used in just about every credible academic source to one used by almost nobody, and which is mentioned in none of the sources cited in the article, including (somewhat ironically) one by the above mentioned Jost Gippert. The article title should return to Caucasian Albanian alphabet, with "Old Udi" as a redirect. Meowy 12:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I disagree entirely with you. "Albanian" is perpetually confusing, and this is used for one language and one language only: Old Udi. That is the correct name for this script now that it has been deciphered. -- Evertype·✆ 11:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Just because it is perpetually confusing to you is not a reason to remame it! Saying it is the "correct name" is a POV argument that is entirely unsupported by evidence. "Albanian Alphabet" is the term most commonly used in sources. Meowy  20:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This is only because it was only identified fairly recently. There used to be a writing system called popularly in the literature Hittite hieroglyphs but the more accurate name is nowadays used. (There are other analogies.) I did not say that "Caucasian Albanian" is confusing to me. It is to the users of the Wikipedia. This article should be moved back to Old Udi script. -- Evertype·✆ 08:50, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised you got away with that "Anatolian hieroglyphs" rename, since it should obviously have been "Luwian hieroglyphs". Meowy 18:20, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * "Obviously"? The script used to be called Hittite. We have learned that it is used for a variety of languages in Anatolia. Linguists now use the term "Anatolian". -- Evertype·✆ 10:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Zaza Alexidze is questionable scholar and his project has failed. Please have this in mind. Homered (talk) 00:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC) Azerbaijani school of historical science has tainted itself by nationalism, plagiarism and forgeries. Displaying various artifacts on Caucasian Albanians allegedly "found" by Azerbaijani "scholars" are POV. Homered (talk) 16:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Who is questioning it? These objects were found before the development of the extremist nationalist agenda that today's Azerbaijani "scholars" are required to follow, so I think some credible source will need to be found that questions the discovery and its interpretation before "alleged" and similar words can be used in the article. Just becasuse some of the objects are now being misused by Azerbaijan for political reasons doesn't mean their original discovery was faked or that their identification is wrong. Meowy 21:53, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I removed North Caucasian because C.A. were described as a collection of tribes whose exact identity is obscure. Homered (talk) 16:40, 6 February 2010 (UTC) I also removed indigenous because Movses Kaghank. said they wee not indigenous. Homered (talk) 16:42, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

This is what Shultze says:

"Udi is famous for the assumption that it represents the youngest reflex of the language of the ancient kingdom of Albania (rather Alwan) that existed as a more or less independent mode in what now is Northern Azerbaijan from the 3rd to the 9thcentury AD. This Christian kingdom was temporarily subjected to the rule of the Armenian kingdom which also represented the major cultural superstrat of Alwan. According to the Armenian ‘History of Alwan’ by Movses Daskhurantsi, the famous inventor of the Armenian script Mesrob Mashtots (362-440) is thought to have developed a script for one of the languages of Alwan. This script seems to be used in the inscription of Mingechaur as well as in some other minor inscriptions. Some palimpsests recently discovered at Mt. Sinai (also see Aleksidze& Mahé 1997) show this ‘Albanian’ script, too, which is often related to the Udi language (see Schulze 1982 and W. Schulze [2001a]: The Language of the Caucasian Albanian palympsest). However, it should be noted that up to now we have not arrived at a safe interpretation of even a single of these documents, be it on the basis of Udi or another Lezgian language. Also see Manana Tandashvili's contribution for examples of the Alvan script. All we know for sure is that some officials in the kingdom of Alvan have used a language different from Armenian and Georgian which - according to the sources- shared some phonetic features with those languages that are generally described as 'Southeast Caucasian'. There are some look-alikes between e.g. some names of the months as documented in a medieval manuscript (see Gippert,Jost: Old Armenian and Caucasian Calendar Systems [III.]: The Albanian Month Names- Annual of Armenian Linguistics 9 1988, 35-46) and certain Udi terms, but this evidence is not sufficient to finely declare the Alvan inscriptions as 'Udi' [the language of the palympsests seem to be more Udi-like than that of the inscriptions]."

The above does not contradict the opinion that Udi was one of 26 languages spoken in Albania. This is what the majority of sources says. Whether the surviving Albanian writings were in Udi or another dialect of Albanian is another question. There's no proof so far that the Albanian writings were close to Udi. They could be either Udi, or Gargarian, Mythian, etc. They were all related languages, dialects of the same language. But Udi is the only one that survived. Grand master  08:38, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "There's no proof so far that the Albanian writings were close to Udi" - if that is so, and it seems to be so, then the wording you want used in the article makes the whole Udi section seem off-topic. The article is about the alphabet known as "Caucasian Albanian", not about the languages once spoken in Albania and what mightb e their last living survivor. The only reason the Udi language should be mentioned at all is because some writers have explicitly identified it as the only living descendant of the actual language the alphabet was invented to to serve. And other writers have said that that identification is still unproven. Those two opinions need to be expressed in the article. I've fact tagged the "sometimes called Old Udi script" - I'd like to see a source that uses it - it seems to be a bit of OR by Evertype. Meowy 21:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Why don't you hold off on accusing people of OR when you don't have the facts. Jost Gippert, who has published the text and translations in a large and expensive volume which is on its way to me, has said that the language is without doubt "Old Udi" and not any other language. Accordingly the term "Old Udi script" is quite reasonable, as it is accurate and unambiguous. I'll wager you that when the script is encoded it will be called Old Udi, too. :-) What I see here is a lot of needless POV argument. -- Evertype·✆ 10:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds exactly like OR to me. Give a published source for the "Old Udi" term or it will be removed. Meowy 02:10, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I really don't think that you ought to be making demands. I have seen your Talk page. You get a lot of bans. Try being less arrogant. Jost Gippert has written to me and says that the language is Old Udi and that Old Udi script is an acceptable name for the script. I am very certain that when this gets encoded in Unicode that will be its name. You can see it roadmapped here http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/ -- Jost's edition of the texts is in J. Gippert, W. Schulze, Z. Aleksidze, J.-P. Mahé (eds.) The Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests of Mount Sinai Monumenta Palaeographica Medii Aevi : Series Ibero-Caucasica SIBE 2 XXIV+530 p., 144 b/w ill.+37 colour ill., 305 x 440 mm, 2009, Hardback, Brepols ISBN 978-2-503-53116-8, EUR 475.00 -- Evertype·✆ 13:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems clear from your above reply that you are not going to be able to produce references that use the term "Old Udi". Your uncivil reply to me seems like an ill-disguised attempt at hiding that reality. Writing content on the basis of what someone has said or written personally to you is original research. I've removed the term "Old Udi" from the article - and it should remain removed until a published source that uses it can be cited. Meowy 21:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

My reply was not "uncivil". http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/ is a source, and Jost is cited in the article. -- Evertype·✆ 02:59, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think you understand (or you don't want to understand) what editing articles involves. You cannot do OR, and if a contentious statement is tagged as requiring a reference and if an acceptable time limit has passed and no reference is forthcoming, then that contentious statement can be removed. Provide a source that says the term "Old Udi" is an alternative to "Caucasian Albanian" or I will remove it again. If you break editing rules and reinsert it again, I will take the matter up with administrators. Your "three days is too short" explanation is unconvincing - you actually wanted this article called "Old Udi" and yet are unable to come up with a single source for the term.- but I'll leave it for 7 days in total. Meowy  02:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Please do not lecture on what an encyclopaedia is. I have been editing the Wikipedia for a long time and am quite well aware of what constitutes good editing practice. Do not accuse me of "breaking the editing rules". That is not civil. The term "Old Udi" exists whether you like it or not. The Unicode Roadmap is an external source, which I have mentioned three times now. You can also find the term in use at http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1333 . As I have said, I have not yet received Jost's large and expensive book to be able to cite a page number; I have a pre-publication PDF file he sent me in which modern Udi words are used in the reconstruction of the character names—I do not have permission to re-distribute the text of the PDF at this time. At the end of this, I do not agree with your deletion of "Old Udi" from this article, and I do not agree that you should be permitted to unilaterally decree a seven-day limit. You do not have consensus to delete the term from the first sentence of this article. The tagged phrase does no harm to you or your agenda, and does not mislead anyone who reads the article. Please accept that the term is there in good faith, and do not delete it in bad faith because it suits your own argument. -- Evertype·✆ 11:12, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Your webpage "source" says nothing about the term "Old Udi" being an alternative to "Caucasian Albanian" - it is a suggested name for a proposed character set that does not yet exist. The validity of the term has been challenged. Get a source for the term or it will be removed. It's that simple. Meowy 21:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Do calm down, and do cease from making threats. The character set does exist. It is the alphabet in question. It is not any other alphabet. You are posturing. The formal encoding does not yet exist. YOU have "challenged" the "validity" of the term. I do not challenge it, because, evidently, I have more knowledge about this than you do. Relax. Leave the text alone. Leave the tag there to remind us to supply more information. But do not try to do what you are trying to do—which is to suppress something because You Don't Like It. -- Evertype·✆ 23:55, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Georgian a Caucasian language?
"It was one of only two indigenous alphabets ever developed for speakers of indigenous Caucasian languages (i.e., Caucasian languages that are not a part of larger groupings like the Turkic and Indo-European languages families) to represent any of their languages, the other being the Georgian alphabet." First of all there is no genetic link that i know of between Kartvelian(aka Georgian) and Caucasian languages. And if Caucasian is used erroneously as a geographic term, the indigenous of Kartvelians will raise another question as the earliest records of those lands never mention any peoples that can be interpreted as Mingrelian-Kartvelian in the region, only further south of Armenia there is a mention of Kardus people. On the other hand, Hatti, Kaska (NW Caucasians used to be called since 8th century), Ari(a NE caucasian people, aka Urartu) are well recorded throughout history. Inseting Georgian into a fictitious history only serves the state propaganda of Georgians as Turks try the same in Turkey and rednecks abuse Clovis culture in the US. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.180.11.92 (talk) 12:37, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

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History Falsification at it’s Finest
Nice try Azeri’s. After ethnically cleansing Armenians from Artsakh, now Azerbaijan tries to also claim their language so they can say that those ancient Armenian churches are somehow Azerbaijani. This propaganda and falsification is getting out of hand. To the readers of this article, know that this is just another move by the Azerbaijani Government to falsify the history. Search “Armenian alphabet” on wikipedia and get a much detailed history of the script.Vache Megerdichi (talk) 09:53, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 November 2020
There is no Caucasian Albanian. This is Armenian. Azeri aggression is trying to wipe out the Armenian race and their edits on Wikipedia allows them to do so. 173.200.84.186 (talk) 22:41, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Please read the cited sources – Thjarkur (talk) 10:24, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Edition rejected on Ghazar Parpetsi
I edited a line on Ghazar Parpetsi, Mesrop's contemporary historian who gives us information, that Mesrop created an alphabet only for the Armenian people. Why would such important information get rejected? --Sydbeqabarrett (talk) 21:15, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey again! Which page(s) in the source that you provided described the information that you added? AntonSamuel (talk) 11:13, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Possible improvements
I have two suggestions for the article:

1) Finding pronunciations of Caucasian Albanian letters

2) providing SVG images for the letters, as Caucasian Albanian is not displayed on some device

Not being an expert on this subject, I don't think I can do much. But I hope someone else can :D VideōEtCorrigō (talk) 19:58, 8 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Where could any Unicode-compliant fonts for the Caucasian Albanian script be found? --Apisite (talk) 21:24, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Look at Help:Multilingual_support. I've added a link to the article. DRMcCreedy (talk) 23:58, 10 September 2022 (UTC)