Talk:Saka language

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Saka and Scythian are different Iranian languages. azalea_pomp

See Scythian languages. Cheers, cab 09:16, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that the Scythian languages (Scythian, Sarmatian, Alanian, and Ossetian) are different from Saka (Khotanese, etc.). There is no reason they should share a page. Check any source on Iranian languages such as the Linguarum Irancarium, etc. Yes, I know that Saka is often called Scythian, but to be precise Saka is restricted to Khotanese as not to be confused with the western Scythian languages. azalea_pomp

Oh sorry, there used to be a (stub) page here, didn't realise that someone had gone and redirected it. Will work on it when I get a chance. cab 06:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If the Scythians were the Sakas, why do we have two separate pages for the same language?

I thought 'Saka' was the self-designation of the Scythians and the name by which other Iranian groups called them (Persians, Medes, etc...), Scythian being the Greek name for the Sakas.

Why is there page on the so-called "Saka" language if it was spoken by the same ethnic group? How does it differ, apart from the location spoken? It's a Northeastern-Iranian language also... I don't think there's any difference.

It's like having two pages for the German language based on the foreign designation and ethnic designation for it: Deutsche language and German language.

Or Russian Language and Russky Language, Spanish Language and Espanol Language. Doesn't make sence? Gamer112 (talk) 16:09, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

This is because Saka is used for both the Scythian languages as a whole and also for the specific Eastern Saka of Khotan. Many times one terms represent more than one idea. For example, Persian could mean only Farsi (the Persian dialect of Iran), but also can be a cover term for all Persian dialects: Dari, Tajik, Aimaq, and Hazara. Azalea pomp (talk) 08:11, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Sakan and Khotanese

See http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/2008-October/008629.html for details. Two months ago, I found that in http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=xsk the Linguist List said that Khotanese is an alternate name of Sakan. Then I emailed to ask the people on Ietf-languages mailing list to clarify this. Finally at Oct 23 2008, they confirmed that Sakan will be listed under Khotanese as an alternate name of Khotanese. The ISO 639 code “kho” will be used instead, and “xsk” will be marked as a duplicate. Now you can see that in xsk this code has been retired.--✉ Hello World! 03:34, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

In the article it said There are two known dialects, identified with the cities of Khotan and Tumxuk. However, the Tumxuk language is listed using the name Tumshuqese in the Linguist List and has a code “xtq”. The picutre may be that, the Khotanese language is also called Sakan, but Sakan is also used to name Tumshuqese, which may be somewhat inaccurate.--✉ Hello World! 03:53, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Nice find Hello World. Terms like Scythian and Saka are often cover terms for several languages or were used for particular languages. Khotanese and Tumshuqese are welcomed terms over Saka or Sakan. This will help distinguish them from the Western Scythian languages: Scythian, Sarmatian, and Alanic. This reminds me of the term Persian which is used for Farsi (the Persian of Iran) and as a cover term for all Persian dialects: Dari, Hazara, Aimaq, and Tajik etc. Azalea pomp (talk) 08:08, 24 October 2008 (UTC)