jsburbidge (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jsburbidge) wrote2012-09-25 12:01 pm
jsburbidge) wrote2012-09-25 12:01 pm
Politicians and Language
President Ahmadinejad of Iran has been quoted as saying: "Iran has been around for the last seven, 10 thousand years".
Ignoring entirely the validity of considering, say, continuity from Cyrus[1] to the present as meaningful or useful for anything other than linguistic research, I seem to recall that the entire Indo-Iranian branch broke off PIE (one of the latest subgroups before PIE can be considered to have vanished forever) maybe five thousand years ago or a little less (and presumably did so not in the area of what is now Persia but more likely in the steppe areas of what is now southern Russia). So neither seven nor ten thousand is even possible.
Continuity in the Middle East (well. actually anywhere) based on language is a slippery concept even when not blurred by modern ideological aims, whether those of Iran or those of the State of Israel. Linguistic transfer has regularly happened without significant genetic admixture (obvious examples being the transfer of various branches of IE to Europe and the transfer of Arabic to Syriac-speaking populations in the Middle East). Likewise, Persian was a high-status language which spread over considerable areas previously using non-IE languages.
(Speaking of ahistoricity, religion, and politics, it would be interesting to ask Romney exactly what his views of the history of North America are in the light of current archaeological knowledge.)
[1]I.e. about the time of the Book of Ezra. Prior to Cyrus the area certainly had speakers of some variant of Persian/Iranian, but they were not a dominant political unit.
Ignoring entirely the validity of considering, say, continuity from Cyrus[1] to the present as meaningful or useful for anything other than linguistic research, I seem to recall that the entire Indo-Iranian branch broke off PIE (one of the latest subgroups before PIE can be considered to have vanished forever) maybe five thousand years ago or a little less (and presumably did so not in the area of what is now Persia but more likely in the steppe areas of what is now southern Russia). So neither seven nor ten thousand is even possible.
Continuity in the Middle East (well. actually anywhere) based on language is a slippery concept even when not blurred by modern ideological aims, whether those of Iran or those of the State of Israel. Linguistic transfer has regularly happened without significant genetic admixture (obvious examples being the transfer of various branches of IE to Europe and the transfer of Arabic to Syriac-speaking populations in the Middle East). Likewise, Persian was a high-status language which spread over considerable areas previously using non-IE languages.
(Speaking of ahistoricity, religion, and politics, it would be interesting to ask Romney exactly what his views of the history of North America are in the light of current archaeological knowledge.)
[1]I.e. about the time of the Book of Ezra. Prior to Cyrus the area certainly had speakers of some variant of Persian/Iranian, but they were not a dominant political unit.