Talk:Tocharian languages/Archive 1

message: There is an entry titled Tokharian, which reads, in its entirety:
Tokharian is an extinct Indo-European language known from manuscript fragments of the 6th to 8th centuries A.D., coming from East (or Chinese) Turkestan. 
Tokharian the extinct language has no relation to Iranian Tokharian (alt Tókharoi, Tukh?ra, Tuholo), which is a distinct language.
(HEADING:) References
* William R. Schmalstieg Tokharian and Baltic Lituanus (1974)
* Tokharian Pratimoksa  Fragment Sylvain Levi (1913)
:I have added these references to the current article and made Tokharian a redirect to this page.  I did not copy in the reference to a distinct "Iranian Tokharian", as I have seen no reference that was not compativle with these Tocharian languages.  If it is supported, feel free to add it in. Dpv 18:50, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Tokharian merge

message: What would Tocharian be called in Tocharian itself? Meursault2004 01:25, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! Meursault2004 14:37, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Name for selves

message: The page as it now stands states that Tocharian was the language of the Kushan empire.  But as far as I know:
* the Kushans used the Bactrian language on their coins and inscriptions.    Bactrian is an Iranian language, and thus not even in the same branch as Tocharian; the Bactrian language was also, apparently, in use till about the eighth century AD, thus contemporaneously with Tocharian;
::The Kushans first essentially used Greek on their coins (Vima Takto, Kujula Kadphises, Heraios) and progressively introduced language in the Kharoshthi script from the time of Vima Kadphises. PHG 22:58, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: True about the coins—the titles (though not the names, except perhaps Heraios) are clearly Greek: tyrranos, soter megas, etc.  But there are other inscriptions in Bactrian in a variant of the Greek alphabet, e.g. .  —Muke Tever 05:38, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: By the time of the first known artifacts (6th century), Tocharian had already split in 3 groups with rather strong differenciations. The divergence point is roughly estimated to be anterior by about 1000 years (cf "The Tarim mummies" Mallory).PHG 22:58, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: All right, but where's the evidence that any language of Kushan was one of these branches of Tocharian? —Muke Tever 05:38, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: Muke Tever presents very sensible points. --Wetman 21:23, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: definitely a mixup, good catch! It should be Kuchean, not Kushan. The two names may be related, and there may be an ethnic connection, but there is no evidence that would allow a link of the Kushan Empire with the Tocharian language, at all. dab (ᛏ) 22:11, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm sorry, are we talking about "Kushans" as an ethnic group, or the Kushan Empire? The latter is impossible to connect with the Tocharian language, but I readily believe that "Kushan" and "Kuchean" is ultimately the same word, referring to the same ethnicity, and Tocharian was, in fact the language of the kingdom of Kucha. dab (ᛏ) 06:36, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In this case, the statement about the Kushan empire on this page should be replaced with an equivalent statement about the Kuchean one.  If it later is shown that the Kushans, too, spoke Tocharian, it can be added additionally... —Muke Tever 02:42, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not know about the connection between Kushan and Kuchean, but Kushan or Kushan Empire are often connected with the Tocharian language (cf Narain A.K. "On the first Indo-Europeans: the Tokharian-Yuezhi and their Chinese homeland", also extensive discussion in "The Tarim mummies" by Mallory). Since most of these things are conjectures, maybe the phrase in the article could be more cautious, like "Tocharian may have been the language of the short-lived, yet influential Kushan empire."PHG 13:06, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: ah, wait a minute, there is another mixup. The Kushan empire corresponds indeed to the people that the Greeks called Tokharoi. These are, however, not identical with the speakers of what we now call the Tocharian languages. This was a misinterpretation a century ago, when these languages were discovered. We need to cleanly unravel the terminology involved. This is similar to the Hittites who did not call themselves, or their language, Hittite at all. dab (ᛏ) 06:41, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And in this case, perhaps the statements on the Kushan Empire that refer to "Tocharian languages" should be emended as well.  Actually, if the timespans are any indication, it's just as likely that it was Kushans that went north and became Kucheans, not the other way around—the Kucha article says it may have been ruled by kings from India, no?  But I can't press this, as my studies are in linguistics, not ethnography.  —Muke Tever 02:42, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The Kushans originated from the Tarim Basin, where they were known to the Chinese as the Yuezhi (the name for the larger tribal group of which the Kushans were a part). They left the Tarim Basin in the 2nd century BCE as they were chased by the Xiongnu. After they built an empire in India in the 1st-3rd century, they expanded north again and occupied the western part of the Tarim Basin, including Kucha.PHG 13:06, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Kuchean refers to Kucha, the town in the Tarim Basin/Taklamakan. The Kushans may have been of the same ethnic stock as the Kucheans, they may be the Tokharoi of Greek sources, but they were not Tocharians in the linguistic sense, since the language of the Kushan Empire was the Bactrian language. The Kushan rulers (Kanishka) adopted the Bactrian language, and it is not impossible that their former language was Tocharian, but it is not attested, afaik. Kings before Kanishka seem to have used Greek, though (c.f. Sapadbizes). It is therefore misleading to say, "the Kushans were Tocharians" leading to the false statement that the language of the Kushan Empire was Tocharian. I think it would be correct to say that the Kushan rulers' were of Saka and Tocharian stock, ruling over an essentially Iranian kingdom. It would be interesting if the names of the rulers have Tocharian etymologies, but I no nothing to indicate that they do. dab (ᛏ) 14:20, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Dab. Do you have sources for "The Kushans adopted the Bactrian language"?. Professor Williams-Sims indeed says that "A crucial moment in the history of this language was the decision of the Kushan ruler Kanishka to adopt Bactrian as the language of his coinage. After the first issues of Kanishka, Greek disappears from the coinage once and for all, to be replaced by Bactrian." However, the reign of Kanishka is actually around 120 CE, a long time after the Kushans had moved their center of power to the Indian subcontinent (around 20 CE). Isn't hard to believe  that the Kushans, a succesfull conquering people, would abandon their own original "Yuezhi" language from the Tarim Basin (probably Tocharian), and adopt the Bactrian language, more than a century after they had essentially left their temporary settlement in Bactria to move to India? I would be interested if somebody has references to a study showing that the language on later Kushan coins is indeed equivalent to Bactrian, and if there are some proof that the Kushan abandoned their original tongue for the Bactrian language. PHG 22:51, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I do think the claim is based on the coins. They used Greek first and Bactrian later. I don't think anyone can say what language they spoke in their homes, privately. But my impression is that they were "foreign rulers" who had to adopt the local language for their everyday dealings. I  don't know of any texts of the time, but they would invariably have been either in Greek or in Bactrian, and the Tocharian language is not attested, not even in fragments, until centuries later. dab (ᛏ) 07:27, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: fr-Wiki has a pretty good summary, :fr:Tokhariens#Les_Tokhariens_s.27appelaient-ils_vraiment_ainsi_.3F, I think if we paraphrase that, we're good (or at least better off than now) dab (ᛏ) 08:09, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: What evidence for Tocharian-speaking Kushans?

message: From Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Thames and Hudson, 1989, p. 56 (the paperback edition):
:The language was named Tocharian after the historical Tokharoi who were known to the Greeks to have migrated from Turkestan to Bactria in the second century BC. The full arguments for the validity of this designation and other ethnic labels that have been pinned on the creators of the manuscripts has been hotly debated for decades and comprise a remarkably large percentage of Tocharian scholarship. This will not concern us here other than to conclude that there is not a shred of linguistic evidence to indicate the people of historical Tokharistan spoke the same language found in the manuscripts of the Tarim Basin well over 1,000 kilometres to the east. Today, few if any would accept that the proper designation for these people is Tocharian but as no other alternative has ever achieved sufficiently wide approval, the earlier name, misnomer if you will, is still applied and will be used throughout this work. 
--FourthAve 10:08, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The name "Tocharian"

message: :On the southern edge of the [Tarim] basin, across uninhabitable desert from the areas where Tocharian A and B are found, in the Loulan (natively Kroraina) area, we find traces of another small kingdom whose administrative language was a variety of Middle Indic (Karoshthi Prakrit) but whose native language, attested in the form of a few loanwords in the Middle Indic administrative language, looks to have been a third Tocharian language, "Tocharian C" if you will.
--JP Mallory, DQ Adams, EIEC, "Tocharian Languages", p. 591.
--FourthAve 07:03, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Tocharian C

message: See Lop Nur. The wall paintings and other archaeological remains indicate the Tocharian speakers dwelt at the lake edge. This lake largely dried up by the 1st millennium AD. Need better source. --FourthAve 07:21, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Tarim Lake

message: I guess this request sounds silly among the indo-europeaninsts among us, but could someone please indicate the sounds of ñ, ś and ä. I'd normally assume that the first is a palatalized n, and that the second is a sibilant and that the third is the æ sound, but I know that such standards vary.--Wiglaf 13:39, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "ä" is . The transcription "ä" comes not from the usual value of "ä" in the Latin alphabet, but rather from the fact that in the Tocharian abugida, a consonant letter by itself had the inherent vowel "a", while a consonant letter with two dots over it had the vowel . User:Angr 10:22, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Pronunciation guide

message: I assume it is a rather controversial thing (how they were pronounced), so I'd like to see explicit citation supporting the point of view that is presented in the article.--Imz 19:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My guess is that the tablets would have contained Sanskrit loanwords, and since Sanskrit pronunciation is relatively certain among scholars, a likely pronunciation could be derived from the Tocharian spellings of these words. This was the technique used for defining a lot of Gothic pronunciation (compaing Greek loanwords), and I don't see it unlikely that similar methods would have been used in this case. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 13:06, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Also, there are probably probable guesses that could be derived from comparision with Indo-European cognates and related ortographies of other Brahmi abugidas. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 13:15, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowels reconstruction 

message: Why isn't the Persian language included in the chart "Comparison to other Indo-European languages"? Badagnani 01:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, we have Sanskrit as an Indo-Iranian language, already. I don't see the point in adding that much more cognates to the table, although it isn't such a big point for me, currently. Anyway, older Persian would be preferable to modern. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 09:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparison to other Indo-European languages 

message: Hi. Should mention of Tocharian C be included? Mallory and Mair's book on the Tarim Mummies discusses the languages of the Tarim Basin, and notes that some scholars have identified certain Tocharian words in Prakrit texts from Lop Nor right down to Niya. They cite several examples (like a word for fruit and a case ending) which hint at a third Tocharian language in the southern Tarim. They also suggest that the name of the Kunlun mountains, which is not a Sino-Tibetan or Turkic name, derives from a Tocharian-language word relating to the heavens (Cognate: Kunlun -> Celestial). 144.32.126.14 (talk) 16:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tocharian C? 

message: Is it really necessary to write an article about "Tocharian script" when Tocharian was written in at least two scripts Brahmic and Manichean scripts Daniels (1996), p. 531 Campbell (2000), p. 1666 . Only mentioning the Brahmic script implies that Tocharian was only written in Brahmic. Although I think I read it was also written in Sogdian script also I can not produce citations for this feeble allegation. I suggest we merge the Tocharian script article into the Tocharian language article. Tocharian information relating to this noble language is hard to come by  and such a small article can be easily incorporated into The Tocharian language article. I suggest we merge them. This should be easy because most of the information on the Tocharian script article is on the Tocharian language article .If we don’t merge then I suggest we at least change the name of the article to Tocharian scripts. Thank you I look forward to every ones suggestions. --Zaharous (talk) 04:08, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The point is that we have separate articles on the Manichaean script (used for whatever languages it was used for, including but not restricted to Tocharian) and the Brahmic script used for Tocharian, called here the Tocharian script. I don't know whether the Tocharian Brahmic script was ever used to write any other language besides Tocharian. If the title "Tocharian script" is ambiguous, we could move the article to Tocharian Brahmic script, but only if there's evidence that published sources use that name for it. +Angr 06:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding Tocharian in Manichean script 

message: I see no reason for the recent addition of Hindustani to the language comparison chart, as that language is younger than the extinction of Tocharian, and we already have two Indo-Aryan languages. Wouldn't Proto-Germanic be more relevant? Devanatha (talk) 17:44, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why Hindustani? 

message: The language comparison table (until my last edit) contained three contemporary languages - English, Farsi, and Hindustani.  In general when one wishes to show languages as belonging to the Indo-European family one compares them to the most ancient attested members of the various groups.  In this case the Indo-Iranian group is represented by Vedic Sanskrit, and there is no reason for the contemporary members of the group which are Farsi and Hindustani (one could perhaps include a word from Avestan if for some reason the word was missing from Vedic Sanskrit).  In a similar vein we have Latin, and there would be no reason to include French or Spanish.  English shouldn't be considered as being there to establish that the Tocharian languages are Indo-European, but is simply a convenient way of showing the meaning of the roots.  The proper representative of the Germanic languages is Gothic.  Please do not restore the table with Farsi or Hindustani again.  Ekwos (talk) 21:39, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language Comparison Table 

message: Agree with above...Is it too early to begin citing the sources and content of the Tocharian C that is said to have been evidenced along the South of the Tarim basin? I also read that Toch C is the earliest of the two languages from which the others are derived.
:Where have you read that? Mallory & Adams (in the EIEC, which is where I recall reading about that) at least state no such thing, if I remember correctly. Tocharian C is simply presumed to be a third Tocharian language independently descended from Proto-Tocharian; it seems too young (3rd/4th centuries?) and quite possibly in the wrong place, too (in the south, not the north), to be identified with Proto-Tocharian. Isn't it said to have been spoken in the Loulan region?
:It's never too early to begin citing the sources! By all means, add Tocharian C if you have sources. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:08, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Tocharian C

message: I couldn't help noticing a few stroking resemblances between Tocharian A and danish: "cow" is "ko" in both languages. "To milk" is "malk" in Tocharian A and "malke" in danish. I wonder if there are more? JoaCHIP (talk) 01:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably; after all, these similarities you noticed are no coincidences. In both cases, the Danish and Tocharian words are descended from the same Proto-Indo-European root. +Angr 06:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The points of resemblance specifically with Danish, however, are necessarily coincidental. It is true that Tocharian has sometimes been said to be particularly close to Germanic, but such comparisons have been made with just about every other group except Indo-Iranian (which is clearly dissimilar), and in any case Modern Danish has diverged very far from Proto-Germanic. Proto-Tocharian has completely different sound changes and morphology than Germanic, and a fortiori Danish, has. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:13, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Resemblance 

message: I've removed the following sentence, which had been commented out almost 3 years ago for lack of sources:
:The one Indo-European language that seems to hold the most similarity to Tocharian is the ancient Hittite language, which ceased to be spoken around 1000 BC.
As far as I know, Tocharian and Hittite (or more generally, Anatolian) are not particularly closely related. They do share some common properties that few or no other IE languages have, but these are thought to be retained archaisms from the protolanguage, not shared innovations, and therefore not indicative of a close relationship. (1) Hittite and Tocharian both have mediopassive forms in -r. Before the discovery of these two branches, it was thought that mediopassive -r was innovation of Italo-Celtic, but once they were discovered in H & T, it was realized that it's a retention from the protolanguage (as a result, the best argument in favor of the Italo-Celtic hypothesis disappeared, and the two are no longer considered closely related). The other thing Hittite and Tocharian have in common is the retention of -tk- (etc.) clusters unchanged in words like like *h2rtko- "bear" and *dhghem- "earth". All other languages have changed these clusters in some way, and before H & T were discovered, they were reconstructed as *kþ/gð/ghðh despite the fact that *þ/ð/ðh didn't occur in any other environments. But again, this is an archaic retention in both languages, not a shared innovation. —Angr 19:59, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Some ad-hoc examples prove nothing. Nearly ALL lexicostatistical studies including my own agree regarding Hittite being the closest neighbor of Tocharian. Thus please leave that sentence where it was. HJJHolm (talk) 16:38, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Lexicostatistical studies are not a great argument, however. Especially when they fail to respect the distinction between Hittite and Anatolian. It's like saying Gothic for Germanic – an outdated usage, and not only imprecise but nonsensical when taken literally. That said, I would like to know how lexicostatistical studies identify common retentions and differentiate them from common innovations or other sources of agreement. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:18, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tocharian and Hittite 

message: I always get confused between the two languages because of their significance in scientific vocabulary but I always thought that 1 was uni in one language and mono in the other, the same goes for 2.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.127.0 (talk) 18:41, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, Old Latin /dw/ (spelled du/DV) has changed to b in Classical Latin completely regularly. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:20, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  I thought "Bi" was greek or latin for two not "Duo" 

message: This article should be split into articles for the Turfanian and Kuchean languages. Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty | Averted crashes 19:14, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: If it's split, the articles should be called Tocharian A and Tocharian B, though, as those names are much more common than "Turfanian" and "Kuchean". Angr (talk) 13:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: We need some arguments to split. Tirgil34 (talk) 16:49, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split 

message: "In contrast, the verb verbal conjugation system is quite conservative." Okay, if you say so and cite Beekes... Nonetheless, I'm deadly curious about what Tocharian verbs look like. Can someone add a table please? Steinbach (talk) 10:56, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tocharian verbs 

message: it is true that Tocharian and Anatolian are often called "centum". But it is very important to point out that they do not meet the narrow definition of centum. There is a distinction between "phonological centum" and "phonetic centum":
*phonological: has two rows of tectals, one from (plain velars + palatals) and the other from labiovelars
*phonetic: the reflexes of the palato-velars are tectal [k] and have not been fronted to [ɕ]/[tʃ]/[ʃ]. 
Tocharian is "centum" in the weaker, purely phonetic, sense, but it isn't any more "centum" than "satem" in the phonological sense, as all three tectal rows have been collapsed into a single one. --dab (𒁳) 14:37, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I propose to remove that centum-satem chart, which represents neither a dispersion nor is it a diachronic map. These views are simply outdated for years. HJJHolm (talk) 16:47, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, dab is incorrect here.  Proto-Tocharian clearly had separate k and kʷ sounds, i.e. exactly the "phonological centum" term you use.  Later, both A and B mostly merged the labiovelar into the velar, but in the meantime the labiovelar sound influenced nearby vowels leaving numerous traces, and in fact did so in a way that's different between Toch A and Toch B, which clearly indicates that the loss postdates Proto-Tocharian.  Furthermore, Ringe has shown that when Proto-Tocharian had a kʷ directly preceding a voiceless consonant, it was preserved unchanged in western Tocharian B dialects. Benwing (talk) 18:07, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Centum

message: Everyone seems to use "Tocharian" for these languages, while acknowledging it is something of a misnomer.  Is there any English-language literature calling them Agni-Kuchi/Kuči?  Kanguole 18:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Not that I can see from a Google Books search.  The closest I can find is "Tokharic, or Arshi-Kuchi ... as Sergent appropriately calls it" (Koenraad Elst, 1999).  It would seem to be a term devised by Sergent, but not yet current in English language sources. BabelStone (talk) 22:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the fact that Tocharian is the most frequent term. Nobody wants to remove Tocharian in this article. The point is that, among certain specialists, Agni-Kuchi is preferred. So there is no serious reason to refuse the mention of Agni-Kuchi. Sergent's book is one of the most recognized syntheses about Indo-Europeans (even if it is written in French). Sergent's term was Arśi-Kuči in the first edition of 1995; it was replaced by the more accurate term Agni-Kuči (č = ch) in the second edition of 2005.--Nil Blau (talk) 20:46, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I take it we agree that Sergent's term is not used in English-language works on the subject.  I have not suggested that it not be mentioned, just that it be presented as what it is, a proposal by Sergent that has not achieved wide acceptance.  To present it in the lead as an alternative name is to mislead readers by suggesting that the name is in use in English, the language of this encyclopedia.  It is our function to describe the situation as it is, not to promote a "better" usage.  Kanguole 22:57, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Agni-Kuchi is in use in English, see: there and there (in the gray table called 'The major branches', 4th line); the term is also used in Portuguese, see there (second paragraph). And of course, it's used in French. It's mainly a question of specialized terminology, accepted in various languages. I'm OK with Tocharian, but it would be objective and encyclopedic to mention that Agni-Kuchi also exists as an alternative term.--Nil Blau (talk) 07:26, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Those examples are extremely weak.  The first is an anonymous translation of a Chinese abstract, and does not use the term anyway (just Agni and Kuci as place-names).  The second website appears to be a machine translation of the French WP article fr:Langues indo-européennes.  We need something a bit more reliable.  Mentioning Agni-Kuči in the Names section as a term proposed by Bernard is fine, but presenting it as an alternative name in the lead is undue weight and misleading.  Kanguole 12:33, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Weak examples, but real examples. Never mind! Its isn't misleading to give in the introduction a specialized term, since it is used by one of the most reputed bibles of Indo-Europeanistics (i.e. Sergent's book). Well, I propose the following compromise. What about the following introduction? "Tocharian or Tokharian (/təˈkɛəriən/ or /təˈkɑriən/) —or more rarely Agni-Kuči—[1] is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family,..."--Nil Blau (talk) 19:14, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I've demonstrated that these are simply not examples of usage of the term.  It's not that this term is "more rarely" used; we've seen no evidence of any use at all in English-language works on the subject.  A mention in the "Names" section is the appropriate place for it.  Kanguole 19:43, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

text: I began by moving Sergent's term from the lead to the Names section, and that is where it belongs.  We have seen no evidence that this name is used in English-language works on the subject, even "more rarely".  Kanguole 22:30, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You didn't "move" Sergent's term, you simply deleted it . That is: you supressed additional and objective information I added about naming issues. Your behavior isn't encyclopedic. Once again: I don't refuse the term Tocharian, I don't want to move the term Tocharian in a secondary position, I only want to inform readers about an objective fact concerning an alternative naming proposal, coming from one of the most reputed books in Indo-Europeanistics. You have no right to delete such information. I've suggested a compromise, you haven't. I'm OK to write that Sergent's term is rare or anecdotic in English use, no problem. But I won't accept any anti-encyclopedic deletion.--Nil Blau (talk) 12:08, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I did move it—read the whole diff you're pointing at.  That is the compromise I began with.  It is not "rare or anecdotic": you have yet to produce any evidence that it is used in English-language works on the subject.  Kanguole 12:23, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

text: Nil Blau, please Assume Good Faith. Thank you. CodeCat (talk) 00:56, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agni-Kuchi or Agni-Kuči 

message: it should be noted that the nature of the greek influence, which includes words for king and queen, is more easily explained by the presence of greek aristocrats in the area after the expansion of alexander than the difficult constructions that seem standard. as the source is very late, much later than the greek invasions, greek loan words into tocharian are not to be discounted - as they seem to be, currently.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.48.181.24 (talk) 13:55, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  greek influence 

message: Might it be appropriate to add Hittite to the table of comparison with other IE languages, given that immediately below it states that Tocharian is lexically most similar to Anatolian (by virtue of retained archaisms)?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.129.60.202 (talk) 01:55, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hittite 

message: It's not true that the Greeks called the speakers of these languages Tocharians.  These manuscripts in the Tarim Basin oasis cities date from the 6th to 8th centuries AD, well after the Greeks were writing.  It was Friedrich W. K. Müller who first called them "Tocharian" in 1907 after the manuscripts were found, because he identified their authors with the people Ptolemy described as conquering the Greco-Bactrian kingdom (1000km to the west) in the 2nd century BC.  Most scholars now consider it a misnomer.  The minority still arguing that the Bactrian people were originally Tocharian-speaking say they switched to Bactrian when they arrived in the area (i.e. before the Greeks encountered them).  Kanguole 03:01, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Tocharians as the Greeks called them"? 

message: Tocharische Sprachreste (1921)
https://archive.org/details/tocharischesprac01sieg
Rajmaan (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tocharische Sprachreste (1921)