From: macrakis@osf.org (Stavros Macrakis)
Subject: Re: Europeans Stunk
Organization: OSF Research Institute
	<1992Jul29.080026.20184@leland.Stanford.EDU>
	<kutluk.712442725@ccl.umist.ac.uk>
	<1992Jul30.054139.9457@leland.Stanford.EDU>
	<kutluk.712517386@ccl.umist.ac.uk>
	<1992Jul31.024547.21485@leland.Stanford.EDU> 	<ku
	<kutluk.713459274@ccl.umist.ac.uk>
Date: 12 Aug 92 13:41:06

I said: 
   >There are many Turkish words in common use in modern Greek.  There are
   >also many Arabic words in Persian, many Chinese words in Japanese,
   >many Italian words in Albanian, etc.  So what?  Persian, Japanese, and
   >Albanian still retain their specific structure and basic vocabulary,
   >just as Modern Greek is clearly a continuation of Ancient Greek, with
   >of course many borrowings, not only from Turkish, but also from
   >Italian, South Slavic, French, and English.

In article <kutluk.713459274@ccl.umist.ac.uk> kutluk@ccl.umist.ac.uk (Kutluk Ozguven) replies:

   Modern Greek language and modern Greek script are both continuation
   of the ancient. Nobody disputed that.

Oh?  There was a posting claiming that the Koine (from which Modern
Greek is derived) was a bizarre dialect with Turkish influence (or
Turkish derivation?!) (a weird and bizarre theory, but it was actually
posted to soc.culture.greek).

   Modern Greek values and characteristics are not.

Quite true.  For instance, unlike the ancient Athenians, modern Greeks
do not have slaves mining silver.  Modern Greeks do not sentence
people to death for their ideas (cf. Socrates).  Modern Greeks do not
have wars between Sparta and Athens.  Modern Greeks do not sacrifice
bulls to gods, and consult oracles in temples.  So I am happy that
many things have changed in the past 2000+ years in Greece, as they
have in the rest of the world.

   Modern Greek ethnic roots are not.

If by `ethnic roots', you mean `genetic inheritance', of course Modern
Greeks are not 100% descended from ancient Greeks.  There is surely an
admixture of Slavs, Albanians, Turks, Arabs, Italians, etc. (who in
turn are all `impure' mixtures).  But then, there are very few modern
groups which can claim any sort of `racial purity'.  The Japanese are
perhaps the closest modern state to that, but even they have a large
Korean and Chinese genetic inheritance.  Certainly none of the
European countries has anything like `racial purity'.  And
fortunately, no one cares.

   Modern Greek state is not.

Of course it is not.  After all, since the ancient city-states, we've
had Alexander's empire (which probably counts as a Greek empire,
whether the Macedonians spoke Greek or not), the Roman empire and its
successors (including the Eastern Roman or Byzantine empire, which
presumably counts as a Greek empire), various Frankish states, some
Arab invasion, and the Ottoman empire.

What states CAN one count as continuations of the ancient?  I guess it
depends on your definition.  Surely no state has had a continuous FORM
of government since ancient times (in fact, most have changed several
times this century by reform, revolution, coup, or conquest).  Most
states have been conquered, colonized, or decolonized at some point or
other (England, 1066; China, 1644; Spain, 700's then 1400's; Mexico,
1500's; most of Africa, 1960's; India, Pakistan, 1949; etc.).  Many
modern states are the merger or division of previous states (Germany
and Italy, 1870; Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, 1918; Poland,
various times; India, 1800's; Russia, 1700's, etc.).

   The question can be: does linguistic and geographic link itself
   constitute a unity for two nations of completely different two
   periods of time ?

You have left out one point, probably the most important, namely the
cultural link.  The Greek pagan and Christian writers have been valued
over a long period of time.  Of course, the average peasant in his
village doesn't write commentaries on Homer or Euripides or
Constantine Porphyrogenitos.  Moreover, the literate class in Ottoman
Greece (1492-1830) was relatively small, much of it in fact in the
diaspora (the first Greek printing press was set up in Venice, for
instance).

Anyway, no one is claiming a `unity' of ancient and modern Greece,
only the cultural, linguistic, and geographic links you mention.

I also said:

   >On the other hand, isolated resemblances between Turkish words and
   >Sumerian words are really not very convincing....

Kutluk responded:

   The comparative analysis is certainly the way to judge about the links.
   I think the people who make the analysis do know what you have emphasized.

As I say, I have not read the book, nor any reviews of the book, so I
can't judge.  All I know is that I will be skeptical until I see some
good evidence.

   Here the common words were strong enough in resembalance not
   to require a sound phonetic transformation. Perhaps a complete set of
   transformations would generate wider comparative analysis results.

Perhaps, perhaps not.

   Although Turkish and other languages of the world do not have
   immediate similarities, the deviations from "proto-Turkish" would
   provide enough comparative material.

Turkish does have pretty-well established relationships to the Mongol
and Manchu-Tungus language families.  So either Sumerian should be
compared to all three languages (if it is a sister language) or to
Proto-Altaic (if it is a cousin).  Proto-Turkic alone is not very
useful.  This is just the same situation as in Indo-European, where to
establish an etymology, multiple branches of the family are compared.

   Furthermore, in Indo-European languages (which are very near to
   each other than any "linguistic family")

This is not true.  The Semitic languages are quite close.
(Hamito-Semitic are less close among themselves).  Various other
language families have close `relatives'.

					    the concern is mainly on
   comparing the words, where in Sumerian and Turkish it is important
   to check the morpho-semantic structuring.

The structure in itself is not very convincing.  Many languages have
structure similar to Turkish, e.g. Japanese.  This may or may not
indicate a genetic link.

   The analysis should be done with novel non-Indo-centric methods.

There are certainly methods other than the classic one of comparative
reconstruction.  The Nostratic crowd and J. Greenberg use `mass
comparison'.  An interesting technique, but very controversial.  One
theory, by the way, is that Sumerian is Nostratic.  In that case, the
genetic link to Turkish may be real, but no stronger than the genetic
link to German, Berber, Georgian, or Telugu.

   Your dissatisfaction with the evidence, or any possible evidence, for the 
   Turko-Sumerian connection is on the other hand quite understandable.

I'm glad we agree.

	-s
Xref: sparky soc.culture.turkish:8967 talk.politics.mideast:18702 talk.politics.soviet:7048 soc.culture.greek:7620 soc.culture.europe:7401 soc.history:7426