Persian-looking Turks

Anthropologists say that 1/4 of Anatolian Turks are genetically the same as Iranians. This is even more true for Kurds and Azeris. It is said that both Seljuks and Ottomans were accompanied by Iranians in their initial "resettlement" of Anatolia. Look at these photos of a Turk from Erzurum:
http://www.globalear...um-maryann.html

Well, I bet that sweet little family are really Kurds,and if they went back in their family tree there is bound to be an Ermeni!Also, I started to bust up about his description about Erzurum, my God sounds like Puerto Vallarta or some other resort. But the reality is it is a cold, desolate backwater post with wolves roaming the streets at night. At least according to my dad who was there via the US military. Of course that was over 30 years ago!

Hakob, The Azeri's and Kurds are Medians, an Iranian people, many of the Turks are Turkified Kurds, also Frygians who lived in Central East Anatolia, according to some theories were Iranian people, later on they assimilated into the byzantine Greeks, who later on Turkified and made the socalled Turkish nation.

I thought the Phrygians were related to Armenians and the people in Thrace. And the Phrygian language was very similar to Armenian. In some Indo-European charts they clasify them in one branch.

You are right, some theories realte the frygians to the Armenians, I believe that it is possible, but not to the thracians. The problem is that we know not much about the Frygian, and the ancient Armenian (classical Armenian is not ancient Armenian).

There are theories that say that Armenian, Frygian and maybe some other distict languages (mittani for example) were a third branch of the Iranian languages, beside the east(ossetian, Scythian, soghdian) and west Iranian (Persian...) branch, but because we don't know much about these distinct ancient languages, no one can make a theory that is 100% reliable. But I think that it should have been very plausible that Armenian, frygian and other like mittani (in Eastern Anatolia) were related.

Armenian never was, is, and will be a branch of Iranian languages. Armenian is a brach by itself within Indo-European languages, and the misperception of some of the linguists of past that based their theories on SPOKEN Armenian and thought Armenians is a brunch of Iranian laguages, was dismised about 100 years ago.


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Source: Library of Cogress of the U.S. http://lcweb2.loc.go...d/cs/amtoc.html

Armenia

Language, Culture, and Religion

Through the centuries, Armenians have conscientiously retained the unique qualities of their language and art forms, incorporating influences from surrounding societies without sacrificing distinctive national characteristics. Religion also has been a strong unifying force and has played a political role as well.

Language
The Armenian language is a separate Indo-European tongue sharing some phonetic and grammatical features with other Caucasian languages, such as Georgian. The Iranian languages contributed many loanwords related to cultural subjects; the majority of the Armenian word stock shows no connection with other existing languages, however, and some experts believe it derives from extinct non-Indo-European languages. The distinct alphabet of thirty-eight letters, derived from the Greek alphabet, has existed since the early fifth century A.D. Classical Armenian (grabar) is used today only in the Armenian Apostolic Church as a liturgical language. Modern spoken Armenian is divided into a number of dialects, the most important of which are the eastern dialect (used in Armenia, the rest of Transcaucasia, and Iran) and the western dialect (used extensively in Turkey and among Western ÈmigrÈs). The two major dialects differ in some vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and orthography.

In the Soviet period, schools in Armenia taught in both Armenian and Russian; in a republic where over 95 percent of the people claimed Armenian as their native language, almost all of the urban population and much of the rural population knew at least some Russian. At the end of the Soviet period, 91.6 percent of Armenians throughout the Soviet Union considered Armenian to be their native language, and 47.1 percent of Armenians were fluent in Russian.

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"Armenian Language," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000. © 1993-1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Armenian Language, Indo-European language; because of the presence of many words borrowed in ancient times from Iranian, it was long believed to be an Iranian dialect. Armenian is spoken by Armenians in Turkey and the Republic of Armenia, and in Armenian settlements elsewhere in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Modern scholarship has firmly established it as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family, although it diverged in striking ways from the presumed parent language; see Indo European Languages.
Armenian is known to have replaced the earlier languages of the historical Armenian region (see Armenia) by at least the 7th century BC, and it may have been influenced by the languages it replaced. In 410AD, according to tradition, Armenian acquired an alphabet invented by St. Mesrob, a monk and scholar. A literature appeared by the 5th century, and the written language of that era, called Grabar or Classical Armenian, with various changes remained the literary language until the 19th century. Meanwhile, the spoken language developed independently; many dialects appeared, not all mutually intelligible. A nationalist movement in the 19th century led to the creation of two slightly different modern literary dialects that are closer to the spoken language: Eastern or Yerevan Armenian (the official language of the Armenian republic) and Western or Turkish Armenian.
Armenian has many harsh combinations of consonants and is particularly rich in affricative sounds (such as f, h, th). Both Classical Armenian and the modern spoken and literary dialects have a complicated system of noun declension, with six or seven cases (but no grammatical gender). The old verb inflections in general have been replaced by modern forms that require auxiliary verbs (comparable to English "he will go"), and negative verbs are conjugated differently than positive ones are. Grammatically, early forms of Armenian had much in common with Greek, but Modern Armenian appears, after centuries of geographical proximity, to have absorbed some grammatical influences from Turkish (for instance, postpositions instead of prepositions).



[This message has been edited by surorus (edited December 22, 2000).]

Why are you so persistent in rejecting the possibility that Armenian can be a member of the Indo Iranian languages? I think it is on the fringes of the language group, much like French is on the fringe of the Romance Languages. I hate to harp on the same cognates, but there are too many between Armenian and Persian that can not be borrowings one way or another. I have listed these , and you do not seem to address these. I do not claim to be a linguist, but they can be wrong, and politically motivated. If it really bothers you, lets say it this way instead, Farsi is a member of the Armenian language group!

Farsi,
1.The group of languages Armenian and Iranian belong to is called Indo-European, not Indo-Iranian. Major sub-groups of the initial archaic indo-european language (some say it's the Sanscirt) are Romanic, Slavic, German, Iranian. Armenian language is a member of Indo-European branch, but it's not subject to the Iranian group on the basis of some major linguistic differences, which if discussed will take a whole year of hard working from us. To give you the summary of these differences: it's in grammer, as well as in phonems, morphems and all that stuff. One of the most important differences is the construction of the setences.

2.The Romance languages formed after the collapse of the Roman Empire on the southern and western parts of the Europe the German tribes (Ost and Vest Goths, Burgunds, Alemans, Vandals, Francs, Lombards) moved to from the territories of the present Germany, Austria. Ost Goths moved to the Spain, Burgunds and Francs formed the French nation together with the Galls. Vandals, Lombards, Ost Goths moved to the Italy and mixed with the population of the Rome and its provinces within the territory of present Italy. Because the Latin dominated the life of aristocracy in the Roman provinces (Spain, Gallia-France, Dakia-Romania), it laid the basis for the formation of Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian. England (after the arrival of Angles-Saxons-Jutes-Vikings-Normans), Germany, North Netherlands, as well as Danemark, Sweden, Norway were not subject to Roman rule, so they kept their original Germanic languages, though they differ.

Now, Armenian language developed separately from the Iranian, and at the time when the Achemenian Persia conquered Armenia (520 BC) the Armenian language was practically formed. A Greek historian Ksenophone wrote about this in his "Annabasis". The end of the formation of Armenian language dates to 200 BC. And the introduction of the Armenian alphabet was the last stone in the wall of the formation of Armenian language.

3.Not only that Farsi, Iranians could use our alphabet, as it will reproduce the sounds of Persian language in graphical sence better than those Arabic macaronies.



[This message has been edited by Berj (edited December 23, 2000).]

Without even seeing who posted this, I knew it was Berj. I guess I can now spot your sense of humor. Funny stuff


Do all of you type posts like the ones in this thread strictly based on knowledge and memory? Or are you using reference books? I am absolutely floored at the stuff some of you seem to effortlessly spew.

Well, Mike in my case:
My major was World History once. I can recall almost every date and name, as you can recall all those integral problems, algebra charts and everything.

Start discussing Armenian issues in the framework of math analysis, though, I think Armenian issues are against any logic.

All I understood while studying history is that every nations history is a soap-bubble, until you have a strong state to prove and inforce it. Guns prove your history. Almost every fact in history can be explained at least from 2 points of views. So, do not envy those with backgroud in humanities. Maths rule the world.