I should add that the use of the term 'Caucasian' to describe a language group is controversial (so expectedly).
Plus, the region has loads Indo-European and Turkic language speakers. The only Semitic language I could find were, interestingly enough, speakers of a sort of N. Aramaic (it is often said that Jesus Christ spoke a form of W. Aramaic, Judeo-Aramaic), who had fled to Russia from Turkish persecution in 1917. One of the things that makes Ossetians distinct from Georgians would be language, clearly unrelated in any close sense--Ossetian is Indo-European. (Of course that never stopped, for example, Croats and Serbs, who more or less speak the same language, from going at it over 'difference'.) The discussion page for editors and compilers at the Wiki page (often far more intesting than the article itself) had one American arguing against the use of such terms as Caucasian languages or the Languages of the Caucasus not because of the lack of an overall unifying group term, but because he felt the term referred to the language of white America (I guess as opposed to 'ebonics'). Another source of confusion is the use in Iberia, where there doesn't seem to be anything even remotely related to the Caucasus region or its cultures or its languages. Maybe there is a St. George connection there somewhere? The way Georgia presents itself on CNN-Intl in terms of its images of state, you would almost think it was part of the British Isles. CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
