Talk:Languages of the Caucasus

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(( Undid moves from Talk:Caucasian languages and Talk:Ibero-Caucasian languages )) attr. to [[User:Koryakov Yuri

Greenberg
From the article:
 * "South Caucasian and North Caucasian are two distinct, unrelated phyla even in Greenberg's classification."

Who is Greenburg? -- llywrch 03:38 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I've just come here to ask for a little disambiguation in the entry at the same point, and expansion of "even" Wetman 02:41, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

See Joseph H. Greenberg --Jerzy(t) 04:03, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)

Ibero-Caucasian languages
Please do not use "Iberian-Caucasian languages" as the page title if it were an established language family. There is no evidence that the North and South Caucasian languages form a clade (i.e. had a common origin before they branched off from other families). Until then it is just one among many other theories. Also attaching the name "Iberian" (a name closely identified with Georgia) to the whole group is unacceptable bias. Finally the name is misleading and defintely non-standard. Jorge Stolfi 03:18, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I have rewritten the Iberian-Caucasian languages page to make it clear that the proposed grouping of North and South Caucasian families is still only a conjecture with no linguitic evidence; and that the name "Iberian" has problematic political connotations. Jorge Stolfi 07:22, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * While the relationship between North and South Caucasian phyla is not widely accepted, or even certain, I think that saying there is "no evidence" is too strong. Some reconstructions of Proto-Kartvelian bear quite some resemblance to reconstructions of Proto-Northwest Caucasian. There is no proof; but saying there is no evidence is a different thing entirely. thefamouseccles 00:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

With all due respect, "Iberian-Caucasian languages" is not very good English. The appropriate form should be "Ibero-Caucasian languages" according to English word-formation rules. The article entitled "Iberian-Caucasian languages" should be renamed as (or moved to) "Ibero-Caucasian languages". The first reference in the article could read "The term Ibero-Caucasian (or Iberian-Caucasian)", but subsequent references in the same article should just read "Ibero-Caucasian". Furthermore, the reference to "Iberian-Caucasian languages" in the article "Languages of the Caucasus" should be changed to "Ibero-Caucasian languages". Also, I don't understand why there is so much strife over this term that the page has to be locked. The term refers only to a hypothetical grouping of languages, a "negative" grouping (i.e. based on the fact that its "member" languages are not members of any of the major language families around them), rather than a "positive" grouping. It is, in other words, simply a geographic notion. There is no substantive evidence supporting this grouping as a real language family, or superfamily, or even "phylum". Pasquale 19:52, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * The locking was due to repeated vandalism by a single user. I fully agree with your remarks, except there are some scholars who chaim to see a genetic relation, and this opinion has to be recorded. Jorge Stolfi 09:03, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

English zelkova = Russian &#1076;&#1079;&#1077;&#1083;&#1100;&#1082;&#1074;&#1072; = Georgian &#4331;&#4308;&#4314;&#4325;&#4309;&#4304; ?
I've been researching the English word zelkova which is said to derive from a Caucasian language. Dictionaries are very hard to find so could anybody here verfiy that I've tracked down the right word please? &mdash; Hippietrail 13:45, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * The name Zelkova derives from the native name of Z. carpinifolia in one of the Kartvelian languages, as shown by the Georgian name, ძელქვა (dzelkva). ძელ dzel meaning "bar", and ქვა kva meaning "rock". © Zelkova  :) By the way, I am a native speaker of that language and the etymology of that word really refers to ძელქვა. --მარგალონა (talk) 16:27, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Circassian and Cherkess
Circassian is a term which covers the languages of Adyghe and Kabardian, but also the term Circassian (or Cherkess/Cherkes) also refers to a dialect of Kabardian. So, I have changed the text to say "also the Cherkess dialect" because to say "Kabardian, also known as Cherkess" is confusing. It is best to leave Cherkess as the term for the one dialect of Kabardian. Imperial78


 * Cherkess is a Turkish name for all the non-Turkic northern Caucasian peoples, including the Ossetes. In the linguistic literature it is often used for the entire NWC family. Some people distinguish between Cherkess and its English form, Circassian, for these uses. kwami 11:14, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

"Languages of the Caucasus" and "Caucasian languages"
Recently (27 jan 2006) an article "Caucasian languages", containing only the North and South Caucasian families, was split off from "Languages of the Caucasus". I have reverted the split for the following reasons: As for "Iberian-Caucasian languages", IMHO that article should be only a section in "Caucasian languages", since that theory does not seem to have any substance, and may have been proposed only for political reasons. But last year someone kept trying to replace "Caucasian languages" by the contents of that page, as if that theory was Absolute Truth, so we had to make it into a separate article. All the best, Jorge Stolfi 03:10, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) A priori, the phrases "Languages of the Caucasus" and "Caucasian languages" have the same meaning in English. An attempt to give distinct meanings to those two phrases will only create confusion among readers and editors.
 * 2) Moreover, defining "Caucasian languages" to have that specialized sense is an arbitrary choice, not an established convention. To many people, including many linguists, "Caucasian languages" mean "any Languages spoken in the Caucasus", not just those two specific families. Now, Wikipedia should not impose specific definitions for words, it should only record their current usage.
 * 3) There is no good linguistic reason to put the North and South Caucasian families together while excluding the other languages that are spoken in the area. While these may be related to families that are spoken outside the Caucasus area, several of them (like Ossetian) are spoken only in that area, and have been so for millenia.
 * 4) On the other hand, there is nothing in common between North and South Caucasian except the accidental fact that they have both been called "XXX Caucasian". If people had called them "South Central European" and "North Anatolian" instead, no one would have ever thought of putting them together in the same sack. Creating a separate article for the two would only suggest a connection that does not exist.
 * 5) Finally, the articles on Caucasian language families and sub-families are too chopped up already. The last thing we need is more sub-articles.

You wrote "the phrases 'Languages of the Caucasus' and 'Caucasian languages' have the same meaning in English". Not in America they don't. Non-linguists in North America are more familiar with the white people sense of Caucasian than with the sense "of or pertaining to the Caucasus". Do we really need a list of languages spoken by white people? --Damian Yerrick (☎) 21:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Do you really mean, that phrase 'Caucasian languages' could be meant as 'Languages spoken by white people'? In America, I mean. In that January split I actually proceeded from Russian usus where LofC & CL are distinguished. In fact, later I recognized that in English LoC is equivalent to CL but since I read several books and articles and normally LoC don't include all languages of Caucasus but only NWC+NEC+SC. --Koryakov Yuri 17:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, some Americans have IQ below 100. They don't know what a "Caucasus" is, and they know "Caucasian" from works by Eminem such as "The Way I Am". How much knowledge should we presuppose for readers coming into the article that "Caucasian languages" redirects to? --Damian Yerrick (☎) 03:10, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

"Basque" section
The claim that it is only ...the fact that Basque, an isolated language spoken in the Pyrenees, also has an ergative case system has led many scholars to propose it as a displaced member of some Caucasian family... is simply wrong.

I'd rewrite the section as (I'm not a native speaker of English, so you'd have to correct me):

"The impossibility to link Basque, an isolated language spoken in the Pyrenees, with its Indoeuropean neighbours has made many scholars to seek its relatives elsewhere. Lexical and morphological clues (ergativity among them) have been reminiscent of the languages spoken in the Caucasus. Comparisons have been made to all the three families (Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian and Kartvelian), yet the suggested evidence is generally considered as yet undecisive, and the question of the distant Basque's relatives thus remains open. Search the individual language families' articles for details of their higher-level relationship proposals." --Pet'usek 12:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Moreover, since there are more hypotheses concerning the distant relatives of Basque (Dene-Caucasian, Afro-Asiatic, Nostratic), I would not include this information here, of course, since this should (or could) be mentioned in the article on Basque itself.--Pet'usek 12:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

"Dené-Caucasian" section
Again, the paragraph dealing with the Dené-Caucasian hypothesis is, mildly speaking, not very good. Let me cite it here: "...Recently, linguists such as Sergei Starostin have proposed a Dene-Caucasian superfamily which would include, among others, the North Caucasian languages and Na-Dené. In Sarostin's version, Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian are related only at a higher level of this family called Sino-Caucasian..." My criticism is based on several points: My suggestion: Since the information on Hattic, Basque and Dené-Caucasian belong to the basic pillars of the North Caucasian (NEC+NWC) and Dené-Caucasian belong to a single theory in fact, why don't we merge them? The Dené-Caucasian part needs rewriting anyway. Wouldn't a brief mention of it suffice??? --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 18:57, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 1: "Recently" is very vague - even incorrect. How recent is the beginning of the 1980's? It is relative.
 * 2: S. A. Starostin proposed "Sino-Caucasian" (=North Caucasian, Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian, Burushaski) in the early 1980's, J. D. Bengtson proposed Macro-Caucasian around that time (Vasconic, Burushic, Northeast & Northwest Caucasian), and later Dené-Caucasian, based on works of other linguists, including Sapir, Shafer (Sino-Dené), Nikolayev (Na-Dené, NC, etc.), Diakonoff etc. Though the theory is called Dené-Caucasian, Starostin never stopped calling it Sino-Caucasian. Today, an opinion prevails among the proponents, that there were three main branches - Macro-Caucasian (Burushic, Vasconic, NEC, NWC), Sino-Dené (Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian, Na-Dené) and, possibly, Sumerian.
 * 3: Hurro-Urartian is considered more NEC-like, Hattic is considered more NWC-like.
 * 4: WHY SHOULD NA-DENÉ BE MENTIONED HERE AT ALL?

Map
The map shown here has always left something to desire imo, there is a map which is more accurate in some respects on this website: http://www.hunmagyar.org/turan/caucasus/caucasus.html You will see that amongst other things it includes the division between the various languages withing the Kartvelian family. I think we should see whether we can use that map, or, if that proves impossible, we should include a link to it in the article. Sephia karta 17:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Btw, on their copyright page they state that all ethnolinguistic maps stem from National Geographic. Sephia karta 17:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Errors on Map
Where are the Tats who live in Azerbaijan? They are not included on the map. How can we fix this? Here is the map of Azerbaijan from the Ethnologue: http://www.ethnologue.com/maps/AZE-ETH.jpg as a source. Azalea pomp (talk) 22:36, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Merge with Caucasian languages
''I propose to merge this article with Caucasian languages. A discussion about it started there; i am copying it here, because i think that Languages of the Caucasus should be the target article.''

"Caucasian languages" sounds like a name of a language family, but there is no agreement among linguists that such a family exists, and even the relationship between Northeast and Northwest is a matter of debate. I see no reason not to merge this with Languages of the Caucasus. It can have a list of all languages spoken there, including Slavic, Iranian, Armenian and Turkic, and information about the proposed Caucasian super-families. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 15:21, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with you, Amire80, and support the merge. Maybe instead of giving some information on every Caucasian language in this article, one could summarize the most typical features of each of the three families and link to the individual pages for them. — N-true (talk) 15:55, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem is there is a distinction between languages spoken in the Caucasus and languages indigenous to the Caucasus, whether or not those families are related to each other (indeed, it is unlikely that they are). The old article didn't make this distinction clear enough, and it's worth nothing that Britannica does use the term "Caucasian languages" to refer to the indigenous families, while at the same time acknowledging that it is unlikely that these are related. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 16:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The proposer proposes one thing, then a sentence later proposes a completely different thing. Does he want the Languages of the Caucasus article to be removed and its content joined with the Caucasian languages article, or does he want the Caucasian languages article removed and its content joined with the Languages of the Caucasus article? Armenian and Russian are languages spoken in the Caucasus, so they are Languages of the Caucasus, but they are not Caucasian languages. I think a more reasonable scenario would be to question the need for a Languages of the Caucasus article, with the answer probably being yes. Looking at a different area of the World, there is a Languages of North America article and an Indigenous languages of the Americas article - they seem to coexist happily. Meowy 22:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * "Caucasian languages" is like "Papuan languages"--regardless of whether they're related or not, the terms do not cover Armenian and Ossete on the one hand or Austronesian and Australian on the other.


 * I support merging this article into "Caucasian languages" as the established linguistic name. (Also, historically many Caucasian languages were not located in the Caucasus.) There is practically no information on non-Caucasian languages here anyway, and the little there is could be added to an "other languages of the Caucasus" section. —kwami (talk) 22:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
 * That wouldn't make sense. It'd be like having an article "Indo-European languages" and then a subsection "other languages in Europe and India". If the article is about Caucasian languages, then it can only be about Caucasian languages, not anything languages that happen to be spoken in the same region. Geography becomes irrelevent. If any merging is going to take place, it should be merged into this article. Or better yet kept as two seperate ones. --86.135.221.95 (talk) 19:35, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * But unlike IE, "Caucasian" isn't a language family, so it is anything that happens to be spoken in the same region, at least as some people use the term. kwami (talk) 20:25, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You're right in saying that it isn't, strictly speaking, a language family. However it is a known term in comparative linguistics that refers to a collection of languages that excludes Indo-European and Turkic languages. This is distinct from simply "languages spoken in the Caucasus".


 * As mentioned above, it's a category akin to Papuan languages. The terms are used to refer to a number of different families and isolates defined by regional origin rather than known relatedness; but that explicitly exclude languages that are spoken in the region but that orginate outside of it/are part of a larger grouping most of which is outside of that region, e.g. Austronesian languages. --86.135.221.95 (talk) 21:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Theoretically, I agree with you, but I just didn't see these as viable articles as they currently stood. The Caucasian languages article was nothing but a summary of a few proposed external links. It didn't actually discuss the Caucasian languages at all! This article barely said anything about outside language families in the Caucasus other than merely listing them. If someone wants to develop either of these into a full article, I could certainly see splitting them up again, but it seemed silly to keep them separate when neither had much content. kwami (talk) 22:56, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Fair enough :) The only real problem would have been if the merge had been the other way as you had originally suggested. --86.135.221.95 (talk) 01:44, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Caucasian=white?
er...forgive me for being an idiot, but I always thought "Caucasian" referred to whites in general? Could someone explain? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.167.106 (talk) 01:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * There was once a European racial myth that white people originated in the Caucasus, thus the name "Caucasian". But the original meaning of that word is anyone from the Caucasus region. kwami (talk) 09:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Map
The map used in this article has recently been changed. The changes can be summarized as being to the area where Georgian is spoken and where Abkhaz is spoken. Could anyone please check both maps and keep/put in the more accurate one? (Though in both many languages are clearly missing, like the different Kartvelian languages or many of the Northeast Caucasian languages.)

These are the maps: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Caucasus-ethnic_en.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/62/Ethnic_Groups_In_Caucasus_Region_2009.jpg

--JorisvS (talk) 17:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The lower map is more accurate, Armenians and Georgians do form a local majority in those areas. FYI, there exists a better, more detailed ethnolinguistic map of the Caucasus, but it is copyrighted. I want to try and redraw it one day. sephia karta  |  di mi  17:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Edit: here sephia karta  |  di mi  17:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Certainly a nice map! But according to that map the new map here (the second) is not so accurate in its depiction of Abkhaz(ia). --JorisvS (talk) 19:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, the two maps differ in the exact shapes of the population pockets in Abkhazia, but I don't know which one is better. These maps of Abkhazia/Georgiato my knowledge seem very accurate. (Have a close look at the last one, it basically gives the ethnic composition of every settlement.) sephia karta  |  di mi  09:02, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Mingrelian, Laz, Svan Languages
I see that on the map, there is not given Mingrelian, Laz and Svan Languages. Can you correct the mistake please?--მარგალონა (talk) 16:32, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Names in Ruhlen 1987
Redirects have been made for all the spellings found in the Ruhlen appendix. — kwami (talk) 04:34, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Removed external links
The link to the Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics didn't work. The institute still exists, but its website is rather useless as an external link – I haven't found so much as a publication list.

The link to the webcites version of the "graphic model and maps of Urheimat" Geocities page did work, but it's... borderline crackpottery, as far as I can tell; its conclusions are based on very little evidence, if any, and it's not helpful.

David Marjanović (talk) 15:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Map Nov 2020
You have heard the news, the map needs an update AleksiB 1945 (talk) 03:56, 30 November 2020 (UTC)