Kurdish and georgian language-classification

West   Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:54 pm GMT
Are they indoeuropean or isolated?
Irrintzi   Thu Mar 08, 2007 7:34 pm GMT
I know that Georgian is "isolated" (or from the dene-caucasian family... but no indo-european), this language has lot stranges similarities with other isolate: Basque.
Josh Lalonde   Thu Mar 08, 2007 8:01 pm GMT
Kurdish is Indo-European (of the Indo-Iranian branch, I believe), but Georgian is a South Caucasian language. The links with Dene and/or Basque are both highly speculative and not broadly accepted by linguists. By the way Irrintzi, are you Basque? Your name looks like it could be.
Maria   Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:13 pm GMT
I wonder about what I read in wikipedia. Is georgian related to hebrew?

<It is the literary language for all ethnographic groups of Georgian people, especially those who speak other South Caucasian languages (or Kartvelian languages): Svans, Megrelians, and the Laz. Gruzinic, or "Kivruli", sometimes considered a separate Jewish language, is spoken by an additional 20,000 in Georgia and 65,000 elsewhere (primarily 60,000 in Israel).>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_language
Josh Lalonde   Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:17 pm GMT
No, Hebrew is an unrelated Semitic language. What the article is saying is that Jews in the area traditionally spoke Gruzinic or Kivruli, which is related to Georgian. This is similar to the way Eastern European Jews spoke Yiddish, and Spanish Jews spoke Ladino, both related to the languages of their areas (German and Spanish, respectively). Most of these languages are currently dying out in Israel as more and more people take up Hebrew.
Apo   Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:37 am GMT
language speaks a volume about

the indoeuropean origin of Kurds

Kurds are considered Indo-European as well as descendants of the groups mentioned above. However primarily from which stock they are, is discussed among scholars; for instance according to Minorsky Kurds are direct descendant of Medes and even he suggests that the endonym of 'Kurmanj' is translated to descendants of Medes (Kur+ manda), while Others such as Mehrdad Izady think the Aryan infleunce on Kurds has been superficial.