Ion Dragoumis recognizes the Macedonian language in 1907!

[Risto the Great]

He thinks everything is Greek, this post doesn't make sence. He recognizes a language which is a mixture of other languages, there's nothing to be happy at. And has anyone ever heard of such a scientist ? And actually the Greeks come from Ethiopia or India, why are they always talked of being "so civilized" ?

Iamgination, you say you are Russian.
I will entertain that for the time being. Can you tell me about the French influence in Russian? Why did it come about?

Macedonian certainly has some influences but I definitely would not call it a mixture of other languages.

What basis do you use to suggest Greeks came from India and Ethiopia?

[TrueMacedonian]

A source from one of my articles for the AMHRC Review that I think belongs here:





and this interesting gem from the same author:

[George S.]

that's a great find TM.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Here is the current wiki article about him. Some interesting information.

Ion Dragoumis (Greek: Ίων Δραγούμης) (September 2, 1878–July 31, 1920 Julian calendar) was a Greek diplomat, writer and revolutionary.

Born in Athens, Dragoumis was the son of Stephanos Dragoumis who was foreign minister under Charilaos Trikoupis. The family originated in Vogatsiko in Kastoria. Ion's great-grandfather, Markos Dragoumis (1770–1854), was a member of the Filiki Eteria revolutionary organisation.

Ion Dragoumis studied law at Athens University and, in 1899, entered the diplomatic branch of the Greek Foreign Ministry. In 1897, he enlisted in the Greek Army and fought in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897.

In 1902, Dragoumis was made deputy consul in the Greek consulate at Monastir (present-day Bitola). In 1903, he became head of the consulate at Serres and later went on to serve in Plovdiv, Burgas, Alexandria and Alexandroupolis. In 1907, he was assigned to the embassy in Istanbul.

In 1905, during his time the Vice-Consul of Greece in Alexandria, Dragoumis met and started a love affair with the writer Penelope Delta, who was married to the businessman Stephanos Deltas. Out of respect for her husband and children, Dragoumis and Delta eventually decided to separate, but continued to correspond passionately until 1912, when Dragoumis started a relationship with the famous stage actress Marika Kotopouli.

Dragoumis became instrumental in the Macedonian Struggle. In Macedonia, a new Filiki Eteria was founded, under the leadership of Anastasios Picheon from Ochrid, whilst in Athens, the Macedonian Committee was formed in 1904 by Dragoumis' father, Stephanos Dragoumis.

In 1907, he published the book Martyron kai Iroon Aima (Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Blood), which presented his views on the situation in Macedonia and on what the Greek government should do to more properly defend the Greek element there. During this period, he also toyed with the idea of a Greek-Ottoman Empire, believing that Greeks, already having control of commerce and finance, would also gain political power in such an arrangement.


In 1909, the Goudi Revolt broke out and his father, Stephanos Dragoumis became Prime Minister of Greece. However, the force behind the new Prime Minister was Eleftherios Venizelos. When the First Balkan War broke out, Dragoumis travelled to Thessaloniki as an attaché to Crown Prince (later King) Constantine.

In 1915, he resigned from the diplomatic corps; having entered Greek politics as an independent, he was elected to the Greek Parliament for Florina Prefecture. On July 30, 1920 an attempt was made to assassinate Venizelos at the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris. The next day, July 31, Dragoumis was stopped by Pavlos Gyparis, head of the Venizelist Democratic Security Battalions (Δημοκρατικά Τάγματα Ασφαλείας) and executed as a form of payback. Though her relationship with him ended many years before, Penelope Delta deeply mourned Dragoumis, and after he was killed wore nothing but black until her own death two decades later. In the late 1930s she received Dragoumis' diaries and archives, entrusted to her by his brother Philip. She managed to dictate 1000 pages of manuscripted comment on Dragoumis' work, before deciding to take her own life in 1941.[1]

[Daskalot]

I find his last name interesting, what does Drag/o mean in Greek?

[Onur]

It`s not a Greek word. By looking at the wiki article above, i can easily say that his ancestors was a "dragoman" in Ottoman administration. "Dragoman" means interpreter and the dictionaries says that it`s a semitic word, rooted from akaddian, aramaic.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dragoman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragoman

[Daskalot]

Thank you for the information Onur!
The suffix -man in Turkish, what does it mean?
I have seen it on several Turkish words, like Ottoman, Jandarman etc.

[Onur]

The suffix -man in Turkish, what does it mean?
I have seen it on several Turkish words, like Ottoman, Jandarman etc.

It`s same as the suffix "-man, -mann" used in Germanic languages. The words with the suffix "man" used for a person who has some kind of qualification, an ability or used as a title and it exists in the very first Turkic texts ever discovered.

"Ottoman" is the modern germanic/romanesque derivation. Ottoman was the founder of the Ottoman empire in 1299 and his real name in Turkish was in fact "Ataman". "Ata" means father in all Turkic languages but it also means leader. The word "Ata" and it`s derivatives are widely used in early Germanic, Gothic era. In Gothic German, "Ata" also means father as in modern Turkic languages. In modern times, Ukrainians used that title for their military leaders a century ago. That`s quite understandable cuz you know today`s modern Ukraine was the ancestral home of the Tatar Turks (also Goths in earlier). I found the wiki article for it;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataman

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ataman

Afaik, the suffix "-man" is very old, coming from the Sumerian, Akkadian era and it`s widely used in all Turkic and also used in Germanic languages too. Like surnames "reich-mann" rich/wealthy person in German or "richman" for english. Or even "alle-mann" for German and "alle-mann-ia" for the place where German men lives, aka Germany.

[Soldier of Macedon]

The word 'ata' is appears to be cognate with the Balto-Slavic words 'tato', 'tata', 'tetis', etc.

[Risto the Great]

Otec (pronounced Otets) is not too far from the tree either.

[Soldier of Macedon]

You're right, missed that one. In Macedonian it is used more in a religious context, whereas in Croatian and Serbian it is more generally applied. To distinguish it properly, it would probably be 'tato' for dad and 'otec' for father.

[Daskalot]

So then it is likely that Drago-, Otto-, Jandar- does not have a Turkish root. But rather a foreign that was incorporated into the Turkish vocabulary.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Not sure Daskale, it could have something to do with the possible interaction between PIE and a Proto-Altaic language. Another word that seems similar is the one for 'gold', see below for a comparison between Indo-European languages and Turkic:

aurum (Latin)
aur (Romanian)
ar (Albanian)
oro (Italian)
ór (Irish-Celtic)

zar (Old Iranian)

altan (Turkic)

salta (Thracian)
zalto (Proto-Slavic)
zelts (Latvian)
zlato (Macedonian)

gold (German)
guld (Dannish)
gull (Norwegian)

[Daskalot]

Lets look at the Turkish word, Jandarman which translates into English as police/soldier.
It is a loan word from the French language, GEN D' ARMERIE see here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie
The Turkish language has many French loans.

[Onur]

You guys are trying to analyze the words which belongs to totally different categories. The word and the concept of "gendarmarie" created not more than 200-300 years ago but "gold" exists since antiquity. So, both of you are right but you are talking about vastly different periods.

Btw, Turkish has many French loans, i think it`s around ~5000 words today but all of them came after 1800s. It was because of dominance of francophonie in all around Europe in 18-19th century and the fact that Turkish modernism, industrialism being adopted from France for the first time.

For the word "gendarmarie", i can say that this French word entered Turkish after 1830s, when Ottoman empire was trying to form a modern army after janissary squad has been abolished.