Books that illuminate the likely link between the Veneti language, long extinct, and Slovenian language, which is very much alive today, keep appearing from least likely places. Canada, Austria, Italy -- but not from Slovenia. Academicians in Slovenia are still holding the party line and only rarely a positive article appears in Slovenian periodicals or newspapers discussing the topic rationally. Mostly, the official line from Slovenia remains the old South Slav theory that was so useful to the architecture of Yugoslavia. One can easily understand why such degrading theory would be favored for many centuries by anybody who employed the hard-working Slovenian people. But one wonders what motivates Slovenian authorities today to cling to it.
But, the evidence against the 6th century arrival of Slovenian nation, whose elite, according to official historians and school curriculum consisted of illiterate beekepers and goatmen, continues to grow. The third book on this topic GORDIAN KNOT UNBOUND by Canadian attorney Anthony Ambrozic (brother of Canada's cardinal Ambrozic) was just published. As in his two earlier books Adieu to Brittany and Journey Back to the Garumna, the author uses Slovenian language as the principal catalyst to understand the roots or derivations of toponyms and other inscriptions in France.
On 146 pages and several appendices, the author attempts to translate many inscriptions that were engraved and chiselled in stone over two thousand years ago in Anatolian Plateau. I have no competence to say whether their translation is valid or even if they have ever been successfully translated before or not. I can only say that some tranlations looks plausible, some interesting and some astonishing, including still circumstantial evidence that Alexander the Great and his Macedonian people may very well have been Veneti. It is up to professionals to discern which is which.
Here is a reprint of the first few paragraphs of the Conclusions in the book by
Published by Cythera Press, Toronto, Canada.
Available from the author, 8, Lafayette Place, Thornhill, Ontario, Canada, L3T 1G5. Tel. 905-881-2836
The march of centuries has not been kind to the toil of the Phrygian stonemasons of ancient Anatolia. Barely one sculpted inscription for each elapsed century has survived undamaged into our time. Unweathered sufficiently for us to cull the import of their glyphs only some twenty-four have outlived the predatory surge and ebb of time. Yet, these are enough to give us a sense of the people who cultivated the ancient land, who built the fortified towns, and over time organized themselves into an empire. They are enough to give us insight into the ethos of their culture and the spirituality which guided it. Above all, cast in stone, the passages give us an unadulterated imprint of the Old Early Slavic spoken on the Anatolian plateau 3,200 years ago.
It is to this latter that this work has been addressed. For the claim to have been posited at all, the Slovene literary and dialectical counterparts have been juxtaposed beside the Old Phrygian. Guideance for this has come from the principles of the so-called comparative method. Although some of its refinements have in the past led to over-complication and logistic inflexibility resulting in inevitable paralysis, on the whole, the method appears to have outlived its competitors, over a century of scrutiny.
Its claim that derivational affinity between two languages is the more credible the more often one finds repeated agreements between them in the speech-sound sphere and in the word-meaning area has manifest logic. One is almost tempted to say that its obvious commonsense simplicity contains elements of the precept of res ipsa loquitur. Plainly speaking, show me and let the logic of the matrix speak for itself. Place the paired words side by side and let the comparison speak for them.
And that is exactly what has been done.