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Archiver > GEN-ANCIENT > 2004-04 > 1082293452


From: "Carolyn Clark Campbell" <>
Subject: RE: [Gen-Ancient] Georgia & the Caucasus - Garden of Eden? [Was: Edessa, Judea, and Armenia]
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 18:04:12 +0500
In-Reply-To: <20040418113041.83062.qmail@web41705.mail.yahoo.com>


Thank you, Francisco.

My only "linguistic training" if you would call it that, is having
studied Latin, French, Korean and now Georgian (still a beginner). I
haven't studied Latin since 10th grade, so it's rather rusty. Although
Latin, Korean, and Georgian are presumably unrelated, it is interesting
to see that they all have noun case endings (nominative, genitive,
dative, etc.) that we don't have in English and French. Georgian and
Korean have no gender, even for pronouns. (Of course there are nouns
which denominate gender such as woman, daughter (female-child), etc.,
but in ordinary language they are used only if one wants to
intentionally make a gender distinction -- otherwise person, child, etc.
are the normal linguistic uses.

See the Georgian and Korean words below parallel to your Indo-European
examples. Neither appears to be Indo-European (of course we presume
Korean is not, but the Korean words for "mother" and "father" are closer
to i-e than the Georgian words).

One of the surprising things to me is the reversal in Georgian of the
terms for "mother" and "father". Father is "mama" and mother is "deda".
Even Korean (and Hebrew) have "omma" for mother and "abba" for father.

Carolyn :-)

Carolyn Clark Campbell


-----Original Message-----
From: Francisco Antonio Doria
[mailto:]
Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 4:16 PM
To:
Subject: RE: [Gen-Ancient] Georgia & the Caucasus - Garden of Eden?
[Was: Edessa, Judea, and Armenia]


One extra point: there are a few indo-european
markings which are quite well known and which appear
in all i.-e. languages; they provide a kind of litmus
test:

Numbers: sems, dwo, treis, quetwor, penkwe, swex,
septm, okto, nouem, dekm.

Georgian numbers: erti, ori, sami, otkhi, khuti, ekhvsi, shvidi,
rva, tskhra, ati

Korean: hana, dua, set, net, yasot, tasot, ilgop, yodol, ahop,
yol


Substantives: p'ter, m'ter, sunos, dhughater, woder
[water], etc.

Georgian equivalents: mama [means father], deda [means mother],
vazhi [son], kalishvili [daughter (female-child)], skhali [water]

Korean: abba = daddy (aboji = father), omma = mommy (omoni =
mother), [ouch! I'm temporarily blanking on son and daughter], mul =
water

The copula: -kwe (cf. senatus populusque romanus)

and so on.

Georgian "da" = and "-is" (of, possessive)

Korean "kwa" = and "-ui" (of, possessive)

Georgian human being = "adamiani" ["derived from Adam"]


--- Carolyn Clark Campbell <>
escreveu: > Thanks, Francisco,
>
> Prominent Georgian linguists disagree on whether the
> Georgian language
> is Indo-European or not, as well as on whether the
> Georgian language
> family is related to any other language. The only
> two other languages
> even speculated on that I have heard about are
> Basque or Gaelic (not
> necessarily both being suggested by the same
> people), and not being a
> linguist myself I have no idea how far-fetched these speculations are.
> I know that there are non-Georgian linguists who,
> like you, dismiss
> these theories as unprofessional speculations, but
> so far as I can tell
> most of these people have not studied the Georgian
> language, so I don't
> know on what evidence they base their conclusions.
>
> There are perhaps 30 different languages spoken
> within the Caucasus area
> (only 5 of them belonging to the Georgian language
> group), and some are
> spoken by only a few remaining people (about 700
> still speak the Udi
> language, I believe, which was anciently called
> "Albanian" by the
> Romans). It certainly is possible that some of
> these languages could be
> related to Basque, Gaelic, or some other language
> that was taken across
> Europe or Asia by groups who migrated out from the
> Caucasus. If
> research is not done within the next few years, much
> of this will be
> lost to posterity.
>
> The Soros Foundation here just did a "women's oral
> history,"
> interviewing women from 30 distinct different ethnic
> groups living
> within Georgia. However, the interviews were all in
> Georgian (the
> national language) or Russian (spoken as a second
> language by most of
> the minorities who don't speak Georgian, as well as
> by most Georgians),
> so as far as I know no effort has been made to
> preserve the multitude of
> languages for posterity. More than 80% of the
> population within the
> boundaries of contemporary Georgia are ethnically
> Georgian and speak the
> Georgian language, and one expects that like the
> Cornish language in
> South West Britain which was overwhelmed by English
> and died out a
> century ago, these local languages will be
> overwhelmed by Georgian and
> will disappear within a generation or so.
>
> You are right that the word "Georgia," which is not
> the name the
> Georgians use for their country in their own
> language, was Greek for
> "farmer". The Greeks colonized the West Coast of
> Georgia, along the
> Black Sea, very early, and the region was indeed
> Colchis, where the
> legendary Argonauts, led by Jason, supposedly came.
> The Georgians call
> their country Sa-Kartvelo, from the regional name
> Kartli (the area
> surrounding Tbilisi in East Georgia), which legend
> has it is named after
> Kartlos, grandson of Noah. I have heard that the
> word "Caucasus"
> originally meant "Mountain of Languages" and came
> from the fact that so
> many languages were spoken here that languages were
> deemed to have all
> come from here originally. It's a charming legend.
>
> As for whether the Basques went to Spain before the
> Georgians came to
> Georgia, I have no information at all. I accept
> your assertion that the
> Basques have been in Spain for a very, very long
> time. Humanoid remains
> have been found in Georgia from approximately 1.7
> million years ago
> (together with remains of giraffes and rhinoceros),
> the oldest yet found
> outside of Africa. Obviously, if we all came from
> Africa originally,
> the ancestors of the Georgians likely came across
> the Middle East land
> mass and ultimately came up against the great
> barrier of the Caucasus
> mountain chain. The Basques could have come across
> the Straits of
> Gibraltar, I suppose, or across the European land
> mass. Either way,
> they got there some time, and in some way. Whether
> there is any
> connection in these migrations, I think we don't at
> this moment have
> enough evidence to know. The romantic in me likes
> to speculate that the
> various migrations across the European land mass
> came through and out of
> a Caucasian "Garden of Eden," but the trained
> lawyer/analyst other side
> of me says there is certainly little evidence to
> prove it and probably
> insufficient evidence to disprove it at this time.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Carolyn
>
> Carolyn Clark Campbell
> Tbilisi, Georgia
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Francisco Antonio Doria
> [mailto:]
> Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 5:13 AM
> To: ;
> Subject: RE: [Gen-Ancient] Georgia & the Caucasus -
> Garden of Eden?
> [Was: Edessa, Judea, and Armenia]
>
>
> Carolyn,
>
> Georgian is indo-european, as far as I can tell. It
> is
> beyond my reach, however, and even if I'm wrong
> here,
> it definitely isn't related to Basque. The name is
> derived from Greek, georgòs, he who tends the land,
> farmer.
>
> I'll check it anyway.
>
> For genes & languages see the two books by L.
> Cavalli-Sforza.
>
> fa
>
> --- Carolyn Clark Campbell <>
> escreveu: > I was responding to the prior message
> indicating a
> > possible genetic
> > connection between Basques and Celts. I am not a
> > linguist, but have
> > been told of theories that the Georgian language
> is
> > related to either
> > Basque or Gaelic. Some have argued that it is not
> > an Indo-European
> > language, while others have argued that it is. I
> > can do nothing more
> > than report what I have heard and read, since I am
> > no expert.
> >
> > I am aware of the information about the DNA
> > peculiarities of the
> > Basques. In one study I read, there was some
> > evidence of a possible DNA
> > connection between them and people of the North
> > Caucasus.
> >
> > I don't think that the DNA or linguistic
> connections
> > between people in
> > the Caucasus have been studied sufficiently to
> > include or exclude
> > connections between any of the subgroups of the
> > Caucasus and either the
> > Basque people or Celts. They wouldn't have to
> both
> > be true, or both be
> > false.
> >
> > At this point, anything is only interesting
> > speculation. Interesting
> > speculation sometimes leads to discoveries;
> > sometimes it leads to dead
> > ends. As when Schliemann followed an interesting speculation to
> > look for Troy, I find it useful to not dismiss such
> > speculations until they
> > are scientifically excluded. After all, at some
> > point we're all
> > connected, and if we're looking for ancient
>
=== message truncated ===

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