Talk:Balkan sprachbund

This article is a Joke

--- nah, it's incomplete. Not a joke. It's mostly true. (Think that I've been a Romanian for so many years, learnt other languages including Romance (Latin-originated) languages and never thought about the Balkans being the reason why we don't use infinitive anymore (other than some official-sounding legalese texts copied from French) and that we have the definite article at the end. Or that Bulgarian sounds like an older Russian (at least for us and Russians, not sure how it sounds for Bulgarians) but the -ta at the end clearly diferentiates it (and guess what, it was the definite article all along). At least now we know another way of tapping into the inner ancestors (Thracians / Dacians / Ilyrs) who lived here before the invaders of the last 2000 years. 24.203.68.10 (talk) 03:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

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This article is joke.It may fool some Americans that never left US and have no idea of where the balkans are, but for everyone knowing the realities of the region it can be treated only as a joke.If such union exists, it goes as far as to the point that Serbian and Croat are essentially the same language as (Slavo)-Macedonian are more or less a dialect of Bulgarian. This is more of a propaganda article than anything else.Actually it must be noted that despite the fact that all these nations lived under a common ruler (Turks) they kept their native languages intact.

The syncretism examples are a joke, because anyone that knows the slightest of Greek knows that EVERYTHING goes into sycretism.

The loan words is another joke, because for example English, has much more greek words than any balkan language.The same word " sycretism" is a loan (συγκρητισμός!).

Τhe loss of the infinite in Greek is not complete.It's a lie.

Bare subjunctive constructions & Future tense formation- God, do your comparisons with other languages e.g scandinavian.Are they belonging to the Balkan Bund too?

Clitic pronouns - Again the example applied for Greek is wrong.

I wonder with the insistence of making something out of nothing.

Αργύρης Φωτόπουλος (Argyris Fotopoulos)

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Is there any reason why the table of contents is aligned to the right in this article? It seems incongruous with the rest of Wikipedia. -Alexanderj 18:52, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

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Why don't you include a section about phonetics, as well? I mean mostly the middle "schwa" vowel.

Thank you for the idea.

But I will need an example in Bulgarian where an unstressed /a/ (from Old Bulgarian or common Slavic) is transformed into the schwa. Bogdan | Talk 16:50, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What is "Serbian Torlak" in this article, by the way? Vassili Nikolaev 22:18, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's a Serbian dialect. See Serbo-Croatian dialects#Torlakian. Bogdan | Talk 09:02, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This dialect of Serbian is peculiar exactly because of its fitting into the Sprachbund. It should probably get its own page one of these days and be explained in more detail. --Joy [shallot] 09:03, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm not much of a linguistic buff (don't know what the different terms mean), but I added the sentences in Albanian. Some of them could have slightly different forms depending on the context in which you are using them, so if you want to make sure I'd have to know the version in language other than english (say italian or french). If you need any other sentences let me know. Dori | Talk 18:25, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

Hey Whoever translated the phrase: Vedo George, I see George, in Albanian "I shikoj Gjergjin" doesn't make sense, apo e kam gabim o Doro? Vedo is shoh, guardo is shikoj. And I shikoj is utterly wrong.

Xhamlliku 03:41, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

• ci ho dato il libro a Maria.
• e' il libro di Maria.
• voglio scrivere.
• vedo George.

Bogdan | Talk 19:19, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

in Bulgarian "къща" ъ is stressed and I doubt it should be called shwa. It is just specific bulgarian vowel, often stressed. Vassili Nikolaev 02:28, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Some comments on the Bulgarian examples. I'm not a specialist, just an user.

• the merging of genitive and dative is not really important in Bulgarian since all cases are almost extinct
• I really don't know how to form future tense with "to want"/"to wish" in Bulgarian

--Nk 16:19, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nk, Bulgarian sample shows that the same preposition is used in genitive and dative constructions, which is merging of genitive and dative in sense of surface structure, not morphological cases. Compare to English prepositions: Dadoh knigata na Mariya - I gave a book to Maria. Knigata e na Mariya - The book is of Maria. Vassili Nikolaev 19:26, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Latin Table

The Classical Latin word for "table" (Romanian masǎ) was mensa, not "mesa": the form given here is incorrect. Though such a form would probably be found in Vulgar Latin . Alexander 007 10:25, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Greek

The Greek examples are wrong, and honestly, I believe that this 'Language Union' is more of a political idea than scientific. There are very few things linking Greek to any of the Slavic languages, linguistically speaking. Thanks, -=vyruss=- 14:10, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If the Greek examples are wrong, could you correct them or at least tell us what is wrong with them ? The idea of a Balkan sprachbund is supported by a consensus among the linguists: I never saw any article that would claim it does not exist. If you want to see some scientific works on the Balkan linguistic union, please look at the reference section. Bogdan | Talk 16:42, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think the correction shows what is wrong (replacement of ancient Greek dative with accusative and not genitive - from τη, Μαρία (ti Maria with dative ti (eta (η) with cedille), to εις τη Μαρία (eis ti Maria), to στη Μαρία (sti Maria)). And besides, the article you refer to says specifically that Greek is quite peripheral to the Balkan "sprachbund" and is not really part of it. -=vyruss=- 20:35, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

It is not true that the greek is not part of this union. There are many similar features in both slavic (macedonian, bulgarian) and greek language. You need to be smart and have a basic knowledge og linguistics to understand and see them. They're all around..

I'm reviving this section after a long hiatus;no doubt or objection from me about the balkan sprachbund but of these examples
Έδωσα το βιβλίο στην Μαρία.[édhosa to vivlío stin María] or Έδωσα το βιβλίο της Μαρίας. [édhosa to vivlío tis Marías]
only the first is correct or at least commonly used;this is a very bad example -at least as far as I know and about present day common Greek dialects- of the dative/genitive merge.If there are or were dialects with this feauture please source it otherwise delete it...Verbs with indirect objects don't ,as far as I know and I can think of, use the genitive for the indirect object in such a case(I guess because it would lead to a huge ambiguity);they only use it in the second case, when a personal pronoun is used for the indirect object and only in the "Southern" (e.g. Athenian) dialects;in "Northern" dialects (e.g. Thessalonikian) the accusative is used both for the direct and indirect object.See here (though this states that genitive is used with indirect object nouns also;will be commenting there shortly to see what others might have to add to this)...Thanatos|talk 15:26, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Just for the record, my response is at Talk:Modern Greek grammar ([1]). Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:06, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

References...

Batzarov, Zdravko, Lindstedt, J., Du Nay, André, Grey Thomason, Joseph, Brian D., Kopitar, Jernej K., Rosetti, Alexandru, Russu, Ion, Tomić, Olga Mišeska, Winford, Donald

You call that a Neutral POV? Ancient greek have nothing in common with the slavic languages. Slavs came in the region later. Where are the greek references? I also agree that this 'Union' is more of a political idea than scientific, as it comes in the end, from the article. Have funm making up the history :) Kassianos

Torlakian

By the way, about serbocroattian-torlak, I know that dialect well, and I am not sure they use any article at all?? Never heard a word with an article in this dialect, but in contrary, they use one "general" case, which corresponds to all 7 "normal" cases in serbocroatian language.. Thanks;

AFAIK it's not universal in all subdialects but it exists ([2]):

Balkanizmi nisu svagdje podjednako uobičajeni; timočko-lužnički dijalekt najbalkaniziraniji je, pa ima i postpozitivni član, dok su prizrensko-južnomoravski i karaševsko-svinjički dijalekt najmanje balkanizirani.

I invite you to ammend Torlakian dialect if you're more familiar with it than I am; accidentally, I wrote a large part of that article although I belong to ones who needed subtitles in Zona Zamfirova :-). Duja 09:23, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Cao Dujo; Hvala za poziv da napisem nesto o torlackom dijalektu. Ja sam poreklom iz Makedonije i sreo sam mnogo ljudi (na faksu) iz Juzne Srbije, koji su govorili taj dijalekat. Mozda bih i mogao napisati nesto. Anyway, interesiraju me jezici i volim citati o tim temama. Cheers;

Conlang

Has anyone attempted a kind of Balkanto, a conlang mixing features from the Balkan languages?

Balkansprachbund

Can anyone explain why the term "Balkansprachbund" is used in the intro? Is this a common term for the BLU? If so, why? Nothing in the article explains its significance. --Bletch 18:20, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Balkan linguistic union is the exact English translation of German "Balkansprachbund", which is commonly used because many of the earliest reports on this subject were in German and the term stuck. bogdan 18:45, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I think I'll add that to the article, because that is an interesting tidbit. --Bletch 21:33, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Is "Balkan linguistic union" actually used very commonly? I've always heard it referred to as the "Balkan Sprachbund" in English. User:Angr 15:54, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I actually was going to ask the same question as Angr. Sprachbund is the only term I've encountered in English. When I first saw "linguistic union", I thought this was a formal organization like the Latin Union or La Francophonie. I tend to feel that this translation pushes the Use English principle a bit too far. Q·L·1968 ☿ 14:29, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

WP policy says we use the most common name used in English. This is not necessarily an English-language name, for example, we have croissant, not "crescent roll"; calque, not "loan-translation"; dachshund, not "badger-dog"; and so on. So I did a few Google tests -- as usual, not definitive, but certainly suggestive:

	Google	.edu	G Scholar	G Books	Google %	.edu %	G Scholar %	G Books %
Balkan sprachbund	1030	97	117	85	69%	66%	59%	43%
Balkanisms	268	30	43	51	18%	20%	22%	26%
Balkan linguistic league	32	8	12	5	2%	5%	6%	3%
Balkan linguistic area	29	4	10	23	2%	3%	5%	12%
Balkansprachbund	25	2	11	27	2%	1%	6%	14%
Balkan linguistic union	103	0	5	5	7%	0%	3%	3%
Balkan linguistic convergence	4	2	1	2	0%	1%	1%	1%
Balkan linguistic alliance	4	4	1	1	0%	3%	1%	1%

Sorted by descending median percentage.

For plain and .edu Google search, I restricted to English-language pages not containing the word "wikipedia"; for other searches, Google doesn't offer limitation by language -- most of the hits for Balkansprachbund (one word) were in German. I considered excluding some common German words which don't exist in English (und, der, das), but that would exclude English-language articles with German titles in the footnotes/references.

So it seems that the conclusion is pretty clear. The article should be renamed to "Balkan sprachbund". Discussion? --Macrakis 17:44, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Moving to Balkan Sprachbund or Balkan sprachbund would certainly seem the correct thing to do. - Francis Tyers · 18:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Bare subjunctive in Serbian

Millosh, I think that "Serbian (mainly Torlak)" more accurately reflects the usage; it doesn't say that it's incorrect in standard language, but that it's more frequent in Torlak dialect. You will seldom hear bare subjunctive in the north and west; imperative (yes, I'm aware of the difference) is more often used in similar contexts. On the other hand, it is true that the construct exceeds the borders of Torlakian dialects. For example:

1. da dođeš pa da popijemo (bare subjunctive + bare subjunctive)
2. dođi pa da popijemo (imperative + bare subjunctive)
3. dođi pa ćemo popiti (imperative + future)

while semantics of the three are not identical, I'd estimate that #1 will be heard further south, while #2 will be preferred in north; #3 might be heard as well, but it more resembles western (Croatian/Bosnian) usage in my ears. Duja 12:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Admirative mood

There's a fine section in Grammatical mood#Admirative mood article which suggests that this, originally Turkish, mood has influenced Albanian, Macedonian and/or Bulgarian. It looks like a Balkansprachbund issue, and if so, it should be mentioned in this article as well. (I'm not sure whether renarrative mood is the same thing, so I put the merge tag). Duja 15:13, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Loanwords

I corrected γομάρι < γομάριον and λ(ε)ιβάδι < λιβάδιον < λιβάς < *λιψ < λείβω. Now from the table it looks like greek words are from ancient greek only but ofcourse this is not true. greek have many words from other languages, mainly from turkish, venetian, italian, french, albanian and latin (english words are very recent in the vocabulary). I tried for more than an hour to find a slavic word but I failed (I dont say there are no slavic words, I say I cant find any. (the only I found is πούτσος and even that disputed) --Lucinos 02:43, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Loanwords aren't really directly relevant to the Balkan sprachbund, and the vast majority of words which are common among the Balkan languages are common loans from Turkish (with a few from Italian and more recently French and English), but here are a few loanwords from Slavic into Greek (found in Ανδριώτης, Ετυμολογικό Λεξικό της Κοινής Νεοελληνικής): by far the most common I can find is ρούχο/α 'clothes'; the others are very obscure: τσάσκα 'cup', μπάρα 'swamp', οβορός 'court'. --Macrakis 18:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Reference

Hi, in trying to look up this reference I've had some difficulty... Is the reference to a paper in the book described by ISBN 9042013222 ? If so, it should be noted that the editors are: Dicky Gilbers, John Nerbonne, Jos Schaeken.

1. ↑ Lindstedt, J. et al. (2000) Languages in Contact; Rodopi ISBN 9042013222

should probably be something like:

1. Lindstedt, J. et al. (2000) "<name of the paper>" in Gilbers, D. et al. (eds.) Languages in Contact; (Amsterdam : Rodopi) ISBN 9042013222

I'm really trying to find the paper and am having some difficulty.... - FrancisTyers 14:39, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, here is the real reference:

1. Lindstedt, J. (2000) Linguistic Balkanization: Contact-induced change by mutual reinforcement. Pp. 231–246 in D. G. Gilbers & al. (eds.), Languages in Contact. Amsterdam & Atlanta, GA, 2000: Rodopi. (Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics, 28.)

magar and mesa

the Latin word mensa, mesa should be removed. it is inherited in Romanian, which would make its appearance in Bulgarian and Macedonian a borrowing from Romanian.

the word magar in the brief vocabulary chart should be removed as well. it does not come from Thracian/Illyrian (which are most certainly not related languages!). instead, the word is borrowed in all the languages ultimately from Albanian magar "ass, donkey", with many dialectal variants including margaç, magjar, gomar, gumar. this word is believed to come from an earlier hypothetical *margar, from *margë, borrowed from Germanic marh "horse" (cf. E mare, OHG marh "horse", marha "mare", etc.).

Flibjib8 23:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Vowel harmony does not, as far as I know, exist in Balkan Greek (it has been reported in strongly turcified Greek dialects of pre-1922 Anatolia, but that is beside the point).

Bulgarian infinitive

Source - "Съвременен български език, Задачи и текстове за упражнения" издателство "Наука и изкуство", Петър Пашов, Венче Попова, Христо Първев, pages 182 and 183. The examples in this book are from Bulgarian authors, there are many examples I will cite only a few:

1. Имало в градът Ви някоя госпожица, която била свършила английска школа. Можетели ми да някои сведения за нея, ако Ви е възможно да ги получите там? (Ив. Вазов).
2. Той хлаба не може я от клисавина и ризите не може позна от синкавина (Ив. Богоров).
3. Да бъде тъй неделя още,
   неделя пек и мирно време,
   олекна-ще и тежко бреме,
   на мъките ни края до-ще. (П. К. Яворов)
4. Додето сили има,
   селяк без отдих труд се труди...
   Почивка - ей я, би-ще зима... (П. К. Яворов)

I will try and find out not only the authors but also the names of the works. It is understandable why these forms sound weird to you (and to me also). They are dialectical and I wanted to include them to illustrate that this infinitive form does not always coincide with the past aorist tense. Arath 09:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the examples! I see what you mean, but I think this article should emphasize the literary language, not forms that are so archaic and dialectical. I mean, you can find all kinds of strange things in authors from Vazov's, Bogorov's and Yavorov's time - look at this "би-ще зима", a Serbian-like future tense construction that is totally un-Bulgarian today, so we don't include it as an example of Bulgarian future tense. My point is that in the modern language, the "infinitive" forms tend to coincide with the aorist, and those that don't coincide simply aren't used a lot, and are hardly part of the language any longer. I'd expect to hear "стига яде" (or indeed "стига си ял") in modern colloquial Bulgarian, but not "стига я". Don't bother to find the names of the works; it's more important to check precisely what the authors of grammars say about them, and whether they regard them as part of the modern language. --91.148.159.4 12:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Along the lines in this conversation, please make it a little more clear that some of these forms, especially "nedei ya" and "nedei zna" are not only dialectal, but archaic and of no frequent usage, and thus of interest only to historical linguists. There are more current examples, and I can contribute some if you'd like me to (I'm a native Bulgarian speaker, particularly of eastern dialects). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.232.31.177 (talk) 01:36, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Layout

Features should IMHO be mentioned early: brief in the intro, and directly after the intro as a short list. It is not too easy to read a long history and statistics of various degrees of "belongingness", and much later hear what features constitutes the sprachbund. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 21:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

"Albanian and Bulgarian: back vowels are fronted before i in the following syllable."

Examples would be nice. Fnugh (talk · contribs)

Updated the table about the word "the woman"

In modern Romanian, "femeie" is the word, not "muiere" (this latter one would logically mean woman, but in a degrading or redneckish way, like "broad" in English, so don't use) 24.203.68.10 (talk) 03:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

The pejorative meaning of "muiere" is limited to an area of Romania. The central and Western parts use this word in non-pejorative way. Aristeus01 (talk) 11:03, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

I wondering How albanian word for teacher "mësues" is connected with source word "διδάσκαλος (didáskalos)"? in the table for Loan words. Other question for there is why not all words on greek do not have some phonetical explain? Николов (talk) 07:36, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Dubious

I was browsing through this article and it is very odd to see many features in Romanian compared to the Balkan languages, as they would be exclusive to the languages in this part of Europe. For example „locative and directional expressions”: „in Greece and into Greece” both translate in Romanian as „în Grecia”, but what makes this different from Italian „andiamo in Grecia”/„siamo in Grecia? Then the „bare subjunctive constructions”, like „să te duci”: in what is that different to Spanish „que te largas”, that also has imperative meaning? Or for the grades of comparation of the adjectives: in what is „bun, mai bun, cel mai bun” different from „bueno, mas bueno, el mas bueno” (Spanish) or „buono, più buono, il più buono„ (Italian)? Then the analytic perfect tense, „am promis”, in what is that different to Italian „ho promesso" or Spanish „he prometido”? Moreover, we can build past in Romanian in a simple way „promisei” (Romanian)-„prometí” (Spanish), „noi terminarăm” (Romanian)/-„noi terminammo” (Italian). Of course similar features can be found in Balkan lanauges (as they can be found in English or German also), but my feeling is that this article is meant to promote this features as Balkan features, while they are (at least in Romanian) inherited from Vulgar Latin as they were inherited in Italian, Spanish, French or Portuguese.--Danutz (talk) 18:35, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The line doesn't have any reference either. Aristeus01 (talk) 11:02, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Bulgarian Turkish

"isterim yazayım" In Standard Turkish in Turkey this is "yazmak istiyorum" where "yazmak" is the infinitive.

In Azerbaijani Turkish, you can say: istəyirəm yazım. Azerbaijan is located in Caucasia. --85.102.184.166 (talk) 06:53, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Maria's book

Έδωσα το βιβλίο της Μαρίας.

that really means: I gave Maria's book (to "someone", left unspecified)

anyway most of the article is just wrong. And I mean really, badly messed up. it should be tagged and re-written. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.131.71.250 (talk) 04:24, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

rewrite referenced

• This article should be either rewritten and supported by references or nominated for deletion! -- Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/85.125.157.26 (talk) 01:05, 15 December 2010 (UTC) -- Comment signed by Kndimov (talk) 02:50, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Linguistic map

According to the Balkan Languages Evolution map, most of Dobruja from the 14th to 18th century was Romanian speaking. But is this really true? As far as I know (I may be wrong), Dobruja in that time period was inhabited by Turks, Tatars, Bulgarians, and Romanians, with none forming a majority.--Frglz (talk) 07:38, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

It does not look plausible, to be frank. I haven't seen that image before, but it also strikes me as using pretty crappy English. It don't think it merits a place in the article. --Laveol ^T 21:34, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

old albanian

this must be joke. there is no mention of albanians before michail ataliota, dechani hrisovulji and turkish defters. also genetically they don't belong to balkans since their main haplogroup is the north african E1b1b. the german linguist Gustav Meyer has found that albanian language has about 400 words of it's own. the rest of the words are mostly vlach, than slavic, than turkish. whoever is pushing this idea i would recommend the eupedia haplogroups research. lay off of that 19th century national-romanticism.89.205.2.27 (talk) 00:20, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

The "Old Albanian" section is 100% copied from a 2008 project presentation. So I have removed it as plagiarism/copyvio. Moreover, this work has not been published in any scholarly journal (even now, 7 years after the project presentation), so does not meet our criteria for a reliable source. --Macrakis (talk) 21:33, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Maybe you should google albanian genetics again. It's not E1b1b. If Albanians don't "belong to balkans" - then a lot other "don't belong to balkans too", for example greeks, south italians etc. But you were also claiming other ridiculous stuff. Your comment should have been deleted. Get your facts RIGHT pls.

However, here's THE REAL SOURCE: ■ "Etymological Dictionary of the Albanian Language" , Strasbourg 1891 - Gustav Meyer [from 1891. >>>A LOT happnd since 1891.]

■ And here is a QUICK UPDATE: "... in this Dictionary, the first of its kund for Albanian, he analyzed >>5140 WORDS and ASSERTED that only 400 OF THEM were of DIRECT INDO-EUROPEAN ORIGIN, THE REST being LOANWORDS or of UNKNOWN ORIGIN. By stressing the Latin influence in Albanian he came to CONCLUSION that Albanian was a SEMI-ROMANCE language, >>A HYPOTHESIS THAT IS NOE GENERALLY REJECTED."<<

Pls quote from a trustful source and make sure you quote correctly. Bc Gustav Meyer did not analyze "ALL" albanian words or the entire albanian language - but 5140 albanian words. Albanian vocabulary is HUGE. Despite the fact that his Hypothesis is generally rejected. Albanology moved a little bit further since then. Stop spreading such albanaphobic claims. Remember that arvanitika and gheg is also a thing. If you want to judge albanian language - then learn and study it - like linguists do. If not - don't feel free to come up with such lies and insults. Thanks! ILYHDRAB (talk) 13:33, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

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Postposed article

In the section with this heading we read:

With the exception of Greek, Serbo-Croatian, and Romani, all languages in the union have their definite article attached to the end of the noun, instead of before it. None of the related languages (like other Romance languages or Slavic languages) share this feature and it is thought to be an innovation created and spread in the Balkans.

It has been pointed out that there are postposed articles in Northern Russian dialects, and so the second sentence is not entirely accurate. It struck me that, since the feature is found only in some of the Slavic languages of the Balkan sprachbund and in Romanian, geographically close to Bulgarian, and in Albanian, geographically close to Macedonian, this might be a specifically Slavic feature which has found its way into Romanian and Albanian. I have no special knowledge of the history of the Slavic languages. Can anyone more knowledgeable tell us whether this feature was at one time more widespread in them? Or has the feature arisen independently at the northern and southern extremes of their range? LynwoodF (talk) 20:59, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I have added a brief proviso to the sentence. LynwoodF (talk) 21:42, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I have now been looking to see if I can answer my own question. In particular, I came across this article, which discusses suffixed articles in the Balkans and Scandinavia. Also, I find that the suffixed definite article first appeared in Bulgarian round about the 13th century. It crossed my mind that perhaps the suffixed article in Northern Russian dialects was borrowed from the Scandinavian languages. If so, its development would be quite independent of the similar phenomenon found in the Balkans. LynwoodF (talk) 22:31, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Here are the credentials of the author of the paper mentioned above: J.K. Kusmenko. LynwoodF (talk) 09:41, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Greek - ripening

"For example, the word "ripen" (as in fruit) is constructed in Albanian, Romanian and (rarely) in Greek (piqem, a (se) coace, ψήνομαι)"

I have never heard this use of the word ψήνομαι ever, and am quite sure it is completely off base. As others have mentioned, many of the Greek examples are quite frankly wrong. This entry requires thorough re-examination in all the cases Greek is mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atmilios (talk • contribs) 14:25, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Should Serbo-Croatian be included in the sprachbund?

We should definitely leave the Prizren-Timok or Torlakian dialects in the sprachbund, but I don't see how Shtokavian/'Serbo-Croatians' significantly relates to the sprachbund apart from some vocabulary. --Beat of the tapan (talk) 06:05, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Only Prizren-Timok dialect, which is more closely releted to Bulgaro-Macedonian East South Slavic diasystem. Jingiby (talk) 06:53, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

If that's the case, maybe both Serbo-Croatian and Torlakian (in general) should be dropped from the sparchbund. We should leave sparchbund features of Serbo-Croatian and Torlakian which have been already stated, but I don't think they carry enough of such features that they should be considered part of the sprachbund. Even mentioning terms such as Balkan Slavic maybe too broad Beat of the tapan (talk) 11:43, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Torlakian is part from the Sprachbund. Read article Balkan Slavic. Jingiby (talk) 13:01, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Dubious statement in "Clitic pronouns" section

In section 4.1.4.3 Clitic pronouns There is a paragraph which ends thusly:

→"Southwest Macedonia appears to be the location of innovation."

The lack of citation for this statement combined with its use of weasel words makes it feel very dubious to me. Can anyone provide a citation for this? If not I'll delete it in a few days. --Skoulikomirmigotripa (talk) 13:05, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

As the tag at the top of the article states, the article lacks inline citations even though there are many references listed in the article. I would discourage dropping the statement (which I would not categorize as "weasel") until we are confident that it is unrelated to the references provided. --Beat of the tapan (talk) 06:32, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

I suppose that's a good point. In that case, I won't be deleting the statement, though I do think it should remain flagged in some way. Claims of origin that lack evidence (particularly when origin is not central to the discussion) do not belong in any article and, I would argue, should be flagged (if not removed) until evidence is cited. Without a citation, this claim (which feels tacked on to me) doesn't add any value to the section and arguably adds to the article's controversy. I'm going to go ahead and reinstate the "dubious" tag while we continue this discussion but, given that the article does have many sources which simply aren't being cited, I won't delete anything! --Skoulikomirmigotripa (talk) 12:35, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Sure. I agree. Beat of the tapan (talk) 07:02, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Greek distinguishes direction with προς

It's really wrong that Greek doesn't distinguish direction. It absolutely does. Προς is equivalent of "towards" and σε is equivalent of "to". I'm not sure if I should correct it and leave it there or if it should be trashed entirely, it's a bad example LightningLighting (talk) 16:23, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Who invented the term?

According to the current version: "The term "Balkan language area" was coined by the Romanian linguist Alexandru Rosetti in 1958..."

The current version does not specify the source of the information. Although according to other sources, the term was coined as early as 1923 by the Russian linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy. At that time, it was only in Russian (языковой союз), but it was translated into German for a linguistic conference in 1928, when the term Sprachbund was created. So how could Rosetti have invented it if it existed 30 years before him? Or are we talking about a different term?

sources:

- Trubetzkoy, Nikolai S, Vavilonskaja bašnja i smešenie jazykov. Evrazijskij Vremennik, (1923)

- Trubetzkoy, Nikolai S. (1930), "Proposition 16. Über den Sprachbund", Actes du premier congrès international des linguistes à la Haye, du 10-15 avril 1928, Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff, p. 17-18 (1930)

- Viacheslav A. Chirikba - The problem of the Caucasian Sprachbund p. 25-94 (2008)

- Oliver Winistörfer - A multi-variate approach to the ‘prototypical’ case of language contact p. 1 (2020) Enlightenment1685 (talk) 07:53, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Loanwords

Why is διδάσκαλος designated as Byzantine Greek word? After all it is an ancient Greek word, used by e.g. Plato (in the Protagoras, in the Alcibiades, in the Gorgias and other dialogues) and Lysias with the same meaning, i.e. teacher. Clearly a word used in classical ancient Greek. I understand that λιβάδιον could be considered Byzantine, although it is used by Plutarch, because its meaning has shifted; Plutarch uses the word not to mean meadow but a small stream. But there's no such shift in meaning of διδάσκαλος. So is there a reason it isn't desiganted ancient Greek that I have missed? 89.160.209.172 (talk) 11:01, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

The "ethnographic map" from 1847 should be deleted.

it's incredibly inaccurate. Dinonysos (talk) 10:25, 20 October 2024 (UTC)