Talk:Balkan sprachbund

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[edit] This article is a Joke

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)

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)

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)

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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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..

[edit] 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

[edit] 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 ([1]):
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;

[edit] Conlang

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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.)

[edit] 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).

[edit] 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)