Talk:Ossetian language

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edit·history·watch·refresh Stock post message.svg To-do list for Ossetian language:
  1. Add information on the substratum theory.
  2. Flesh out the Provisional Ossetic grammar


Is ævzag a cognate of Russian word язык (jazyk) which means "language"? Is Ирон a cognate to Иран (Iran) and Aryan? --Nixer 12:21, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Æвзаг means language and tongue (as the Rus. word язык does too). Ирон means Ossetic/Ossetian. - Slavik IVANOV 19:48, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
The Russian word язык presumably had a nasal segment before the 'z' at an earlier stage, so the two words do not look very close.... Jakob37 08:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Word язык("yazyk") means "tongue" or "speech" in russian. It has turkic origins, probably from kipchak word yazyq/yazıq (modern variations are jasuq, žasıq, yasıq, which means "sin", "vice", but not tongue (originally). It could be related to ossetian ævzag through parallel forms, such as yæzaq, æzaq, yæwzag, æwzag. I should note that nasalization of this word (jaŋzɨk) could be lost or acquired due to very fragile nature of nasalization itself, since it is tend to be assimilated by neighbouring phonemes. Or nasal ŋ could transform to m, b,v,w to make æŋzk look like æbzg, ævzg or more simplier caucasian mzi. The transformation of k to g is also explainable, silent k, x, q, χ sounds transform to g, ɣ because of presence of voiced z. This is a rule of consonant harmony of word's evolution.
It is probably related to abkhaz ábz, adyghe-kabardian bza & abaza bzə. Among Dagestani languages - lezghian mez, rutul miz, avar mac (matz) & others. Here ævzag can be traced as æbzaχ, æmbzax, ɑbza, mza, moz, miz & etc.
Regards, Iliassh (talk) 03:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Wrong, for Russian. язык is pure Indo-European, formed off PIE *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂- 'tongue' with a suffix. The initial consonant doesn't match well, but this is the case in several other branches too (and I wonder whether we're actually dealing with resolution of a rare initial cluster or something). It's formally perfect otherwise. 4pq1injbok (talk) 23:53, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Final Verdict[edit]

I was able to finally get an email response from Prof. Ilya S. Yakubovich[[1]] Here is his response:

(begin response) The question about the percentage of the Iranian words in Abaev's dictionary is a bit beside the point because Abaev tried to include there all the words, except for the recent borrowings from Russian. The percentage of borrowed words there is indeed rather large, but so is the percentage of Arabic words in Mo'in's dictionary, which does not make Persian a Semitic language. What matters is the percentage of borrowed words in the basic Ossetic lexicon. There are various ways of deliniating what constitutes a basic lexicon, but the least of 100 basic "meanings" compiled by Swadesh is particularly popular. Among the 100 Ossetic words belonging to the basic lexicon, only 4 are demonstrable borrowings c'ar 'bark' < NE Caucasian, adAjmag 'man, human' < Arabic, tymbyl 'round' < Turkic (?), lenk (kAnyn) 'to swim' < NE Caucasian. For all the other basic words, some Iranian or Indo- European etymology is available. To be sure, there are also cases when Ossetic has both the Iranian and the borrowed word from the same basic meaning, but this is also the case in many other languages (e.g. Persian hame/ tama:m 'all'). Thus the claim that Ossetic is an Iranian language is completely justified. For the concise description of Ossetic as an Iranian language see e.g. Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum (ed. R. Schmitt), Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1989. (end of Professor's email).

So Mr. Barefact needs to stop pushing his nationalistic unsubstantiated point of viewpoint from his unscholarly webpage. Already he had one of his enteries closed because of lack of material:[2]. So what constitutes Ossetic lexicon basic words, is clearly 96% Indo-Iranian and it has nothing to with Stalin like Mr. Barefact claimed. Borrowed words in the dictionary are not necessarily even used in the language, else Turkish is easily 80% Persian/Arabic since virtually every single Persian and Arabic word has been used somewhere in Turkish and Ottoman Turkish. So a dictionary does not constitute every day used lexicon and one can call a compilation of dictionary as a lexicon. Also I might add that just like barefact misinformed us about Ossetian being agglutinative and Ossetian being non-Iranian, he also misinformed us that there is no Swadesh list for Ossetic whereas Prof. Yakubovich proved him wrong. --Ali doostzadeh 02:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Good work, Ali, congratulations. I would accept Prof. Ilya S. Yakubovich as an arbitrator. If needed, I would join you in appealing to Prof. Ilya S. Yakubovich for arbitration. Is it OK with you?Barefact 14:58, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I have no problem with that as he has an impressive resume and knows many many languages. --Ali doostzadeh 18:17, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
You don't seem to understand, a dictionary of 4000 words does not contain all of Ossetic lexicon. Also among 50% of which Ossetic dictionary? Abaev's monumental work has at least 30000 Ossetic words and any source should use this more updated reference. Also borrowed terms used infrequently or in text does not constitute basic lexicon. The most you can say that in dictionary X, there are this percentage of Ossetic words and this percentage of Caucasian words and etc. But then I will just bring the statement from the scholar I mentioned who is much more qualified than you in this field. Also it is not clear if the dictionary you are quoting has Russian words. Also do not delete Abaev's English language statement that the basic leixcon of Ossetic is Iranian. . Also your statement: None of the dialects of the Ossetian language has a published Swadesh list or its analysis. is false as Ilya Yakuobovich a linguist has said that out of the 100 words, only 4 of them are borrowings. As the statement from Prof. Yakubovich is clear, the overwhelming majority of basic Ossetic lexicon is Indo-Iranian and you need to desist in putting faulty information. --Ali doostzadeh 22:26, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Very good. You still have to produce the estimate with reference, since what is the subject of contention was not answered, "the percentage of the Iranian words in Abaev's dictionary is a bit beside the point" is not an answer, it just avoids answering the heart of our contention. Do not delete "Lexicon" section at any outcome, it is a necessary property of the language, it has to stay.
We can modify the Swadesh statement to reflect Prof. Ilya S. Yakubovich information. He did not indicate the source, so we mark it with "source needed" until you provide the source.
Prof. Ilya S. Yakubovich did not specifically address the statements of Abaev about the properties of the Ossetian language that you claimed as being false, maybe because you did not formulate your questions. If Prof. Ilya S. Yakubovich addresses these statements and certifies that they are incorrect, the replacement statement will be added. These Abaev statements are:
Morphologically Ossetian has a verb system with alien to the all Iranian world fully developed agglutinating declination. The well developed agglutinating declination in each Ossetian case finds more or less exact typological equivalent in the declination of the Caucasian languages with the same semantical meaning and the same syntax function. Instead of flective Ancient Iranian (and respectively Indo-European) system of declination, the agglutinating declination of Ossetian is similar to the neighboring Caucasian languages of the Kartvelian and Eastern Mountaineer groups (V.I.Abaev p.99).
In the semantics of the verbal prefixes (pre-verbs) the "Iranian" elements turn out to be filled with Caucasian languages contents (V.I.Abaev p.106).
Ossetian declinations have identity of the syntax functions of Ossetian cases with the corresponding cases in the languages of the S. Caucasian (Georgian., Mengrel) and Eastern Mountaineer groups. Ossetian, as southern and eastern Caucasus languages, instead of the Indo-European system of pretexts, has a system of postpositions which, usual for the Caucasian languages, demand a genitive case....Adding such fact as twenty-based count, the Ossetian-Caucasian languages convergences grow into a whole system from which, as from a song, you cannot erase a word (V.I.Abaev p.108).
The fact of the concurrence of the whole system of the Ossetian consonantism with the consonantism of the Caucasian group of languages is incomparably more important and instructive.... (V.I.Abaev p.96).
In other words, we want Prof. Ilya S. Yakubovich to disspell all false statements made by Abaev in his "Ossetian Language..." 1949 book. All he has to do is to confirm erroneousness of Abaev's statements, or confirm it. Any statement like "it is beside the point" should be discarded as not addressing the question.
Until these Abaev's blunders are disproved by an arbitrator or a proper source, do not remove the "dispute" label. It will be vandalism unbecoming to you. Regards, Barefact 22:39, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

You need to bring English sources as I can not trust the content of The scholar I brought is a source himself since he is a scholar in the field in a highly reputable university. I can provide you the English words in Swadesh list and he says only 4 of them are non-Indo-European. Also I and someone else brought English source that showed Ossetic is highly inflective. You need to bring sources in English that contests this or at least from Abaev's latest works. The problem i have with your source (if it is indeed quoted right although you have probably skipped large portions about Iranian connections) is that it was written when Yaphetic theory was official policy of USSR. Yet my English source from Abaev is more recent than yours.. None of your information is in Abaev's English translated material that is readily available for all readers. Also You are not quoting Abaev directly which is your other problem. Among the modern Iranian languages, Ossetic is distinguished by its complex system of nominal case inflection, exemplified by the following paradigms for bæx "horse" in the two major dialects, Digor (D) and Iron (I):(n2)

--(Ronald Kim, Journal of the American Oriental Society; Jan-Mar2003, Vol. 123 Issue 1, p43) --Ali doostzadeh 22:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I have asked the above scholar about your claims.. hopefully he will respond soon and we will see where this goes. Also I am looking for the 1989 source that he mentions on Ossetian. it is probably written by Abaev himself. Also selectively quoting some caucasian influence (assuming your quotes are correct) and not mentioning the vast amount of Iranain characateristics is plagarism as well. --Ali doostzadeh 22:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I have to say that I find this whole argument a bit useless. What is the use of trying to claim a language for a language family or another, besides curing the hurt nationalistic pride. Imagine that Ossetic is a Turkic language too, what difference would that make? Aside from native languages of Caucasus and Tati or Talysh, most other Caucasian languages are Turkic. No one is trying to deny the presence of Turks or Turkish elements in the Caucasus.

Notice something: Wikipedia is an "Encyclopaedia". It's wiki-nature has made the false impression in people's minds that this is the place to discuss and approve or disapprove the scholary output. Encyclopaedias by nature are not there for this purpose: they reflect the most commonly held and scholarly viable view about a subject. The place to discuss whether Abaev was trying to forge anything or whether Ossetic is Turkic is not here, but in scholary journals. Here, the article is supposed to reflect the accepted view and current research, which if you look up any average book, will show that Ossetic is part of the Northwestern Iranian languages (for example, Compandium Linguarum Iranicarum, hrsg. R. Schmitt).

By the way, Iliya is a personal and very good friend of mine (give him my regards when corresponding with him, Ali). I will also call him and see what the deal is, as soon as I am back in the US. Meanwhile, cool it people and do not bring half-baked intenrnet ideas to the forth. People come to the Wikipedia to get a general knowledge of a subject, one that they could pay hundreds of dollars and get from Britanica or something, but they get here for free. They are not interested in conspiracy theories and nationalistic movements and one-man-against-the-whole-academia arguments. --Khodadad 17:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

First, I want to congratulate ourselves that we left the war zone and are down to discussing the subject, instead of flying epithets and proclamations. Secondly, the whole Scytho-Ossetian hypothesis was created in German, Russian and French, with no English, and complaint about Russian illustration is funny, especially when the next illustration is in Cyrillic too, and it is Ok with you. Learning a little Russian would not hurt when you want to contest statements made in Russian.
In his book, Abaev pointedly stated that 'all properties of language, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Consonantism (Phonetics), and Lexicon not only do not have "vast amount of Iranain characateristics", but are pointedly only non-Iranian. In contrast with his lip service to Iranian, his list of "basic" Iranian words has only 4 (four) words, while his SAcythian word list in the book has 300 words. In individual analysis of Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Consonantism (Phonetics), and Lexicon every time Abaev states "non-Iranian". Abaev states that Ossetian declinations have identity of the corresponding cases in the Karvellian and Adyg languages (he phrases it "languages of the S. Caucasian (Georgian., Mengrel) and Eastern Mountaineer groups", and not Iranian. These are the "non-Iranian" statements that you are contesting .
I also want to add Abaev's statement that Ossetic was studied only, I repeat only, from the position of its Indo-Europeism. It is a first sentence if the "Lexicon" illustration. I hope you can stomach the words of the sage.
I just noticed that you fell back to rv war. Please stop it. I will revert your deletinons of the contents and disputed tag. The tag has to stay until you (or other participants ) bring material proving that Abaev statements were false. You can add material, but can't delete it, it is a vandalism. I will also give you another last warning. Regards, Barefact 18:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I want to thank Khodadad to entering this discussion which is really indeed one man here against Academia(including Abaev). Ilya is extremly busy these days but I think him for providing me with the English words of the Swadesh list used for Ossetic. Also he refers me to the Compendium article which I will try to obtain soon. Meanwhile I will see Khodadad's expert advice in order to make sure ultranationalistic non-scientific half baked viewpoints do not enter the discussion on Ossetic language.
As per barefact,more of Barefact's false manipulation can be seen here: [[3]]. As you can see, he cleverly overlooks Abaev's works and just looks at the portion 95-109 where the caucasian substratum of Ossetic is being discussed and some of the material could even pertain to Caucasian languages being discussed and not Ossetic. Yet he conviently skips over the section of basic lexicon and over the major sections of the book. So Mr. barefact wants to skip the fact that even in the Russian book (from 1949 when Yaphetic theory was enforced in the USSR), Abaev clearly has said Ossetic is Iranian and yet he insults Abaev by saying he is paying lip service! So in the book Mr. barefact quotes, Abaev also calls Ossetic as part of Iranian group. (too bad for Mr. barefact who conviently skips major sections of the book and does not mention these facts to the rest of us who can't read Russian. He also claimed 1/3 of Persian lexicon is Turkish!!
Again all your statements are false per Abaev. Abaev says Ossetic is Iranian and its basic lexicon is Iranian. The statement is right here in ENGLISH whereas you have brought no modern ENGLISH material. [4]. Before disputing Abaev who has clearly stated Iranian LANGUAGE and Iranian lexicon, you need to bring ENGLISH sources from Abaev or some other scholar who has said something else. As per Swadesh list, Ilya has that only 4 of these words have non-Indo-Iranian origin! Only 4 of the following basic words have non-Iranian origin and the rest are Iranian, yet barefact wants to shove his non-scientific viewpoint down Wikipedia's throat.
all,ashes,bark,belly,big,bird,bite, to,black,blood,bone,breast,burn, to,claw,cloud,cold,come, to,die, to,dog,drink, to,dry,ear,earth ,eat, to ,egg,eye
fat-grease,feather,fire ,fish ,fly, to,foot ,full ,give, to,good ,green,hair,hand,head,hear, to,heart horn,I,kill, to,knee,know, to,leaf,lie, to
liver,long ,louse,man-male,many,meat-flesh,moon,mountain,mouth ,name,neck,new,night,nose ,not,one,person,rain,red ,road,root,round, say,to, see,to, seed,
sit,to, skin,sleep,to, small, smoke,stand to, star, stone, sun, swim,to, tail, that, this,thou,tongue, tree, two , walk,to, warm, water,we, what, white,who,
woman, yellow.
Ilya said only 4 of these words are non-Ossetic in the Ossetic language and the rest have indo-European roots. So you need to stop claiming there is no Swadesh list published. It is indeed published and Ilya who is much more knowledgable said so. Abaev has said the basic lexicon of Ossetic is Indo-Iranian.

Abaev has said the basic lexicon of Ossetic is Indo-Iranian. [5]. Since my source is more updated than yours, and it is available online and since your source is from the era when Yaphetic theory was enforced, whereas I have statements from Abaev even after the dissolution of the USSR, you need to desist unless you have modern English sources. Also all the modern Encyclopedias agree with me (Britannica, Columbia, Encarta) whereas none of them agree with you. Philology is a science. Until you bring English materials (there is plenty of English materials on Ossetic that should be good enough to write an articl) , there is no need to trust the content of your nationalistic website. Here is Abaev's book which says none of the stuff you are claiming: [[6]]. Here is Abaev's book: [[7]] if you have a problem with what it says in his book, then bring English materials contesting it from any major scholar including Abaev after the date of the above material (1962 when the imposed Yaphetic theory was dead).. --Ali doostzadeh 23:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Some words from Abaev's lexicon with Ossetic and Persian: (4 volume book): Af (Water Persian Ab), Nal(male Persian Nar), mad(Mother persian Mader), Zasta(hand Persian Dast (avesta Zasta)),Charv (Fat Persian Charb), Vrad(Brother Pamiri dialect of Tajikistan vurut, vrad), baryn(carry,bring Persian bordan), Casm (eye Persian Chashm), cyrgh(fire Persian Jarga, Cheragh), calx(wheel pesian charx),mag'z(brain, Persian maghz), mast(drunk Persian mast), Maaj(Moon Persian maah, Avesta Mong), mix(nail Persian mix), Kar(Deaf Persian Kar), Kusart (Murder Persian Kushtan), Margh(Bird Persian Morgh), Navad(New Persian Naw), boz(goat Persian boz), Faad(foot Persian Paa Baluchi Paad), piryn(fly,feathre Persian par Kurdish per), Rondz(color Persian Rang), Rawdz(Move Persian Rav, Pamiri Raworz), raast(right Persian raast),ruvas(fox Persian rubah), Synag(chest Persian Sineh), syg(Spoke Pushto Six Persian Soxan), syrx(red persian Sorkh), Bour(yellow Persian bour), sau(black Persian Siyah), Yikh(ice Persian Yakh), rog(light Persian Roushn Kurdish Rouzh), sudz(burn persian Sooxt), Bel(Shovel Persian Bil, Yaghnobi Bel), waryn(Rain Kurdish Waran, Persian baran), Khour(Sun Persian Khorr/Khwar), Dandag(Tooth Persian Dandan),...Note these are basic lexicon some on the Swadesh list published in Abaev's book and note Persian has been separated from Eastern Iranian languages for more than 2000 years. --Ali doostzadeh 01:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
No meat again, Ali doostzadeh. Swadesh list in English is known to all, but the subject is Ossetian, not English which you so kindly cited. You need to come up with a source on Ossetian Swadesh list.
"Some words from Abaev's lexicon with Ossetic and Persian:" there are 16,000 words, or 800 Ossetian bases have more or less satisfactory Iranian or Indo-European matches, it is known and you do not need to copy them all in this Talk. You still owe the ratio of Ossetian to Iranian, which Abaev stated as 5:1.
You are right that Abaev's analysis contains major contradictions, which are the ingridients of our article. Presenting Ossetic as Iranian turns a blind eye to the other, Caucasian side. In respect to presentation, it is a one-sided bias you are accusing me of. Unless it can be demonstrated that Abaev lied in his book, his words are a documented verifiable evidence.
You are trying to steamroll the discussion, replacing fracts with sermons. We hear your promises and declarations. Stop vandalizing and start delivering, please. Barefact 15:12, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
There is no contradiction and the only one lacking meat is yourself since you can't even bring one modern English source to defend your claims.. You are either translating wrong or the stuff might be do to the forced Yaphetic theory at the time (1949). Even in 1949 you do not have the guts to mention that Abaev has mentioned that Ossetic is Iranian. You forget to mention that Abaev says the basic lexicon of Ossetic is Iranian. Also you do not even mention the name of the dictionary you are using but whatever it is, it is outdated since Abaev's monumental work was finished in 1989. Also I will bring the relavent Ossetian article on compendium of Iranian languages and that should finish the disucssion, since as Khodadad said, Wikipedia is not about one man against scholars. If you have a problem with modern sources including Abaev himself, you need to take it to serious journals not Wikipedia. My source on Swadesh list was Ilya who is a major scholar and he emailed me directly stating that only about 4 words are non-Indo-European.
Encyclopedia Britannica 20006: eastern Iranian language spoken in the northern Caucasus by the Ossetes. There are two major dialects: (1) eastern, called Iron, and (2) western, called Digor. The majority of the Ossetes speak Iron, which is the basis of the literary language now written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Ossetic is the modern descendant of the language of the ancient Alani, a Sarmatian people, and the medieval As. It preserves many archaic features of Old Iranian, such as eight cases and verbal prefixes. The phonology of the language has been greatly influenced by the non-Indo-European languages of the Caucasus, and the present vocabulary has many loanwords from Russian. There are many folk epics in Ossetic; the most famous are the tales about hero warriors, the Narts. The literary language was established by the national poet Kosta Khetagurov (1859–1906). --Ali doostzadeh 05:16, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Please cite me what does it say about morphology and non-IE lexicon. Thanks, Barefact 16:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
That is general entery from Brtiannica 2006 (this year). The compendium article which should be available in 2-3 days and is written in 1989 will have all the detailed enteries. Ilya is very busy but he told me that article should be sufficient on the matter. --Ali doostzadeh 16:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I found 40 words of turkic origin, though I didn't analyze WHOLE language. Some of them are of common use, some are not. Here are some:
Magpie - dzæĝndzæg, turkic - sağızğan (magpie)
Butterfly - gælæbu, turkic - gelebek, mongol - erbekey
Bull - boĝ, turkic - buqa, mongol - üker
Deer - sag, turkic - suğaq, mongol - čaɣa, tungus. - oron.
Thousand (1000) - min, turkic - mın, mongol - miŋgan
Wind - wad, turkic - qad, evenk - edin
Rug, carpet - gawyz, turkic - keviz
Wolf - biræg, turkic - böru
Public gathering - æmbyrd, turkic - imer
Stomach or belly - gwybyn, turkic - qarın
Two of your words have Iranic roots.
Wind - Ossettian-> wad, Persian-> Bad
Wolf- Ossettian-> Birag, Mazandarani Dialet -> Varg, Persian-> Gorg —Preceding unsigned comment added by SorenShadow (talkcontribs) 06:08, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
I also found 20 similar words between digorian & cherkess languages, here are some of them:
Beard - zač'e, agyghe - žāĉa, kabard. - źāĉa
Family - binontæ, adyghe - bǐnunē
Wheel - tsælh, adyghe - šerḥ
Year - az, adyghe - iʟes
Regards, Iliassh (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 02:31, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Flags in Language Infobox[edit]

No, flags in the Language Infobox are not forbidden, but they are not widely used and look out of place where they are not really relevant to the issue at hand, like linguistic distribution. Most places where they have occurred in the past have reverted usage back to a simple list of country names. And your threat of 3RR is rather silly when you notice that I have only removed the flags once. (Taivo (talk) 11:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC))

Take for example Spanish and Portuguese languages. There is no edit war concerning the flags in the language infobox. Flags make the infobox a little bit informative. It's just a matter of taste. Taamu (talk) 13:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Alphabet table[edit]

There is an Alphabet table above, that to me looks better (in layout) than the one in the article. Which should be prefered? RJFJR (talk) 18:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Cyrillic letter Ӕ[edit]

I notice that most of the Cyrillic words in this article use the Latin letter æ (instead of the Cyrillic Ӕ, ӕ). Do the Ossetians actually prefer to use the Latin letter instead of the Cyrillic one? —Stephen (talk) 07:04, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I am sure that is not correct – I have changed Latin æ to Cyrillic ӕ in all Cyrillic words. —Coroboy (talk) 11:25, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Oops! I checked out some pages on the Ossetic wikipedia – they use the Latin æ in Ossetic words, so I put them back in the article. —Coroboy (talk) 11:52, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
I know that some of the non-Slavic languages that use Cyrillic prefer to use certain Latin characters. Chuvash uses Latin ă, ĕ and ç; Chechen and other Caucasian languages use Latin I as the palochka. Their national keyboards usually make these seletions for them. I wasn’t sure about Ossetic, but I suspected that it was the case there as well. —Stephen (talk) 12:12, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Historically there is just one letter ae. And it is latin. So called cyrillic ae is part of unicode symbols. It was created for languages that use latin letters in cyrillic alphabet for comfortable collating. So ossetians use latin ae. Reason for Ossetians didn't accept cyrillic equivalent in computers flew from this comparison: ӕ-æ (cyr-lat). --Bouron (talk) 15:42, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Ossetian language materials in Russian[edit]

Осетинскіе этюды Всев. Миллера By Всеволод Федорович Миллер

Rajmaan (talk) 23:08, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Subdivisons of Ossetic[edit]

As Ossetian is descended from Alanian, wich in turn is descended from Scythian, shouldn't Ossetic be directly behind after Scythian and Eastern Iranian in the language tree, rather than creating a separate branch calling it Early Forms?

LouisAragon (talk) 17:51, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's another way to do it. However, we tend to have trees for reconstructions and other hypothetical forms, not so much for attested ancestors. Not that we have to do it that way, but I can't think of another article that does what you suggest. Old English, for example, is given as an ancestor of English, not as a node in the tree. Before I added the 'ancestor' field to the template, we didn't include attested forms in any box at all, not that I can think of. IMO it's probably a good idea to have consistency between articles, so readers know what to look for. Also, I'm not aware of any classification that states that Ossete belongs to the Alanian subbranch of the Scythian branch of Eastern Iranian, so it would be a bit of OR, though probably obvious enough that we could justify it if we decide to go that way. — kwami (talk) 02:29, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Language name[edit]

As most people currently working on Ossetic (Oleg Belyaev, Natalia Serdobolskaya, David Erschler) use the name form "Ossetic", this article should be renamed to "Ossetic". Haspelmt (talk) 11:44, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. The criterion is what it is most commonly called by all English speakers, not what just among specialists. Ossetian seems to be the commonest descriptor in English. I myself prefer Ossetic, but that's not the state of the English language in 2014. There was a similar dispute at Tsakonian language some time ago. In Greek, it is called Tσακωνικά, and while I agree that calling it Tsakonic in English would be in one sense more "correct," that simply is not how it is known. Jpbrenna (talk) 07:50, 7 October 2014 (UTC)