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Post by hjernespiser on Dec 16, 2010 8:04:46 GMT 3
merlkir, After awhile you may discover yourself finding that the paper just ain't worth devoting your time to it.
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Post by sharshuvuu on Dec 17, 2010 11:39:51 GMT 3
About "Great Asia" and "Asia Minor": it was often the case that a name was first applied to some defined territory, and then, often because of cultural and/or political expansion of the people of that territory, came to be applied to a larger area. Then XXX Minor is the original heartland, and XXX Major, or Magna XXX, or whatever, is the expansion area. Thus Magna Graecia refers to coastal southern Italy and Sicily because it was the expansion area of Greek civilization. In the case of Asia Minor, it was probably just a linguistic phenonmenon; the original "Asia" was what we think of as Asia Minor, and later the name came to be applied to everything east of there as well.
Of course there are other ways such names arise: the Greater Antilles include all the really big islands of the Caribbean (and plenty of little ones too); the Lesser Antilles are an archipelago of smaller islands. But in the case of Asia I think it's pretty clear that "Asia Minor" just means the smaller territory that originally bore the name.
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Post by Ardavarz on Dec 18, 2010 2:16:20 GMT 3
About "Great Asia" and "Asia Minor": it was often the case that a name was first applied to some defined territory, and then, often because of cultural and/or political expansion of the people of that territory, came to be applied to a larger area. Then XXX Minor is the original heartland, and XXX Major, or Magna XXX, or whatever, is the expansion area. Thus Magna Graecia refers to coastal southern Italy and Sicily because it was the expansion area of Greek civilization. In the case of Asia Minor, it was probably just a linguistic phenonmenon; the original "Asia" was what we think of as Asia Minor, and later the name came to be applied to everything east of there as well. Of course there are other ways such names arise: the Greater Antilles include all the really big islands of the Caribbean (and plenty of little ones too); the Lesser Antilles are an archipelago of smaller islands. But in the case of Asia I think it's pretty clear that "Asia Minor" just means the smaller territory that originally bore the name. Yes, this is possible too. But in many cases the "Great XXX" shows the point of origin of some people. Like for instance Bretons have migrated from Great Britain to Brittany (Bretagne) or "Little Britain", Scots - from Scotia Magna ("Great Scotia" = Ireland) to Scotland. The Asian homeland of Odin is called "Great Sweden" (Svíþjóð hin mikla). There is also "Great Bulgaria" (hē megalē Boulgaria) around the Sea of Azov from where Bulgars have migrated to Balkans and Volga, and "Great Hungary" (Hungaria Magna) - the presumable homeland of Majars around today's Bashkortostan (Bashkiria).
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Post by ancalimon on Dec 18, 2010 8:03:24 GMT 3
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Post by merlkir on Dec 18, 2010 15:28:17 GMT 3
Subtle. How do you know that Uruk means "civilization" ? It's a name of a city. Weren't Sumerians Turkic too, according to you? They called the city Unug. Pity that wouldn't fit that wonderful hypothesis. ("unu" means "settlement" in Sumerian. ''ba" means either "share/portion", "house" or "liver")
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Post by jamyangnorbu on Dec 18, 2010 17:25:26 GMT 3
Hi Merlkir,
Sumerian was an agglutinative language and there have been many attempts by nationalist speakers of various modern agglutinative languages to claim 'they are the descendants of the Sumerians'. This appears to be a Turkish version of that.
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Post by hjernespiser on Dec 18, 2010 20:36:24 GMT 3
What's interesting about Sumerian is that it also had verbal prefixing and was an ergative language.
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Post by jamyangnorbu on Dec 18, 2010 23:39:23 GMT 3
What's interesting about Sumerian is that it also had verbal prefixing and was an ergative language. Off topic, but there is an interesting article on possible Sumerian loan words (often via India and Persia) into Tibetan. tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2010/11/bricks-brilliance-baking.htmlBut wait! Tibetan is an ergative language... and it has some simple agglutinative features... they must be the real descendants of Sumeria!!!
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Post by merlkir on Dec 19, 2010 0:18:52 GMT 3
See, Ancalimon, that's how you do it. Funny, witty read, cites sources, links seem plausible. And no conspiracy to be found anywhere.
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Post by Ardavarz on Dec 19, 2010 2:56:03 GMT 3
In fact the actual pronunciation of Sumerian is not known. It most likely had tones (like in Sino-Tibetan and Australo-Asian families).
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Post by hjernespiser on Dec 19, 2010 8:15:17 GMT 3
No, but a lot of pronunciation is inferable via Akkadian usage of Sumerian.
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