Any other nations (then the USA) have sovern nations inside them?

Factual Questions
41

Polycarp and Eva Luna: Newsflash, dudes— Uzbekistan isn’t Slavic any more. They gained independence in 1991. It really chaps my ass the way Americans still hold onto the old habit of filtering everything from independent Central Asia through Russia. That is so 1980s. Eva Luna, I’m surprised. You of all people in the Dope, I would expect you to know better.

The Qaraqalpaq language is like a dialect of Kazakh. The Uzbek and Kazakh languages both have a phoneme that is distinct from K, and they use a special letter to write it (no jokes about “Special K,” please!). That letter is transliterated as Q in the romanization systems of the Library of Congress and the Board of Geographic Names. Actually, the Kazakh name for itself should be transliterated Qazaq— which wins the award for “Longest name you can spell using the leftmost tier of the keyboard.”

Monty— The Iroquois passport success story was reported in the article “The Iroquois: Keepers of the Fire — The Fire that Never Dies: The Living Iroquois Confederacy” by Harvey Arden, in the September 1987 issue of National Geographic. You can easily find a copy at your local public library.

Also, this article on international law is germane to the topic:
The International Personality of Indigenous Peoples

42

Jomo, I can’t speak for Eva Luna but I made reference to the Qaraqalpaqs (sheesh, that’s tough for an English-speaker to type! ;)) as Turkic, not Slavic – and expressed my surprise at the Q’s because so far as I knew no Turkic language had two distinct K-type phonemes. I merely made reference to what they’d been called when part of the (Uzbek S.S.R. of the) Soviet Union, to question why the Q. I appreciate the information.

[For those who don’t know and are interested, the Turkic family is a part of the Altaic language phylum, and includes, besides Turkish spoken in Turkey itself, Kazakh, Qaraqalpaq, Uzbek, Gagauz (a small minority in IIRC Bulgaria), Kirghiz, Uighur (spoken in Sinkiang), one of the languages of Afghanistan (but I don’t recall which one), Azerbaijani, and a bunch of less significant dialects.]

Brian M., I don’t suppose I need to point out to you that the latter opinion you cite is the one about which Jackson uttered his infamous, “Mr. Marshall has given his opinion; now let him enforce it.”

43

Unfortunately, transliteration-to-Latin schemes are not consistent with each other, and are sometimes inconsistent with themselves. However, the “q” instead of “k” use can correspond to an unvoiced stop that is articulated further back in the throat than English (or most Western European languages) articulate “k”.

44

Apparently Kazakh and Uzbek are somewhat distinct in this ;). Check out the charts on this page and scroll down to “Turkish, Azeri, and other Turkish languages” : http://www.world-gazetteer.com/pronun.htm

It’sd an interesting question though. I always understood ( and I could be 100% in error on this, as I don’t speak Turkish - it’s just something I remember reading ) that in Turkey Turkish, the Arabic qaf is pronounced like a “regular” k. However as a history geek reading material written in different eras, I’ve noticed the old ( largely ) Turcoman confederacies of the Akkoyunlu and Karakoyunlu are in more modern works transliterated as Aqqoyunlu and Qaraqoyunlu. Which raises the question in my mind just how did tribesmen of the Aqqoyunlu themselves pronounce the name? Is the modern transliteration the result of being parsed through Farsi ( or Azeri transliteration of Farsi prounciation ) or Arabic ( which would make sense in either case considering the regions those confederacies dominated )? Or did the Turks ( and some Kurds I believe ) of those confederations make a distinction between kaf and qaf?

Jomo Mojo - Any thoughts on the above?

  • Tamerlane
45

Oh good, I get to put on my linguistic übergeek hat. One feature of the Altaic languages is vowel harmony: the distinction between back vowels and front vowels, so that a word plus its suffixes has either all back vowels or all front vowels.

Historically, the scripts used to write Altaic languages didn’t show the difference in the vowel characters—they used different consonant characters. One character for a consonant used with front vowels, and a different character for the same consonant phoneme used with back vowels. This goes all the way back to the very first Altaic writing, the runic Orkhon inscriptions of the 6th century. The adaptation of Aramaic script for writing Uyghur and later Mongolian and Manchu used the same principle. When Ottoman Turkish was written in the Arabic script, it too took advantage of different Arabic letters this way.

So in most Turkic languages, /q/ is a phoneme only used with back vowels, and /k/ is the corresponding phoneme only used with front vowels. That’s why there are two different letters. When Central Asian languages like Chaghatay (the ancestor of modern Uzbek) used the Arabic script, they used the Arabic letter qâf for /q/ and kâf for /k/. It was just a coincidence that Arabic had these two different letters, because the Arabic phonological system did not use vowel harmony like Turkic. When writing Turkic words in Persian, they used the same Arabic script, so the convention was carried over into Persian. The historical sources you saw that spelled “Qara Qoyunlu” were no doubt taken from Persian.

When Turkic languages were modernized in the 20th century, they were put into the Roman or Cyrillic alphabets. Some language reformers saw no need to keep using two different letters for /k/ and /q/. Why? Because the different vowel characters were sufficient to show the distinction between back and front consonants.

Modern Turkish ditched the <q> and just writes <k> for both. There is a difference in pronunciation, though not a strong difference: /q/ is articulated further back, and /k/ further front, almost palatal. But sometimes in loanwords they still have to show the distinction when back vowel /a/ is used with /k/ instead of the expected /q/, so they write <kâ> with a circumflex to show that it’s /k/ and not /q/. That is the only vestige of the old system remaining in modern Turkish orthography. Modern Kyrgyz, unlike its close relative Kazakh, has simply dropped the k/q distinction altogether and just uses <k>. Azerbaijani written in the Roman alphabet in the Republic of Azerbaijan uses only <k>, like Turkish. But Azerbaijani used in Iran is written in the Arabic alphabet and still uses qâf.

46

Wow this one took a turn for the weird!

47

Excellent answer JM, thanks :).

  • Tamerlane
48

**Jomo Mojo, ** believe me, I am well aware that the Soviet Union is dead, and that the Karakalpaks are a Turkic-speaking people. Note that I mentioned Cyrillic to English transliteration schemes, not Russian to English; AFAIK, just about every language in Central Asia is still written in Cyrillic (although Azeri officially reverted to the Latin alphabet a few years back), and old transliteration habits die hard. All the recent English-language publications I’ve seen are still using the K spelling, but if I’m pissing off any Turkic folks by sticking to what is becoming an outmoded usage, well, then, I apologize.

I don’t speak any Turkic languages, so I will leave it to those who do to discuss whether the Roman alphabet is capable of rendering a more accurate pronunciation scheme than Cyrillic is, and if so, which spelling is better, Q or K. (FWIW, the Central Asian languages that were originally Cyrillicized got a few extra letters added to render more accurately some Turkic sounds, but I don’t know much about that debate.)

49

John Trochmann declared himself a sovereign in court papers after founding the Militia of Montana group.

http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/mom.asp?xpicked=3&item=mom

:smiley:

50

More than you ever wanted to know about the parts of the Russian Federation Constitution that apply to national vs. local sovereignty (and have you ever seen a Constitution with so gosh-darned much *stuff * in it? Believe me, I could have included more, but I’ll have mercy on you guys.):

(from http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/rs00000_.html)

Article 4 [Sovereignty]

(1) The sovereignty of the Russian Federation applies to its entire territory.
(2) The Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal laws have supremacy throughout the entire territory of the Russian Federation.
(3) The Russian Federation ensures the integrity and inviolability of its territory.

Article 5 [Federal Structure]

(1) The Russian Federation consists of republics, territories, regions, federal cities, an autonomous region and autonomous areas, which are equal subjects of the Russian Federation.
(2) The republic (state) has its own constitution and legislation. A territory, region, federal city, autonomous region and autonomous area has its own charter and legislation
(3) The federated structure of the Russian Federation are based on its state integrity, the uniform system of state power, delimitation of scopes of authority and powers between the bodies of state power of the Russian Federation and the bodies of state power of the subjects of the Russian Federation, equality and self-determination of the peoples in the Russian Federation.
(4) All the subjects of the Russian Federation are equal among themselves in relations with the Federal bodies of state power.

Article 12 [Local Self-Government]
Local self-government is recognized and guaranteed in the Russian Federation. Local self-government operates independently within the bounds of its authority. The bodies of local self-government are not part of the state power bodies.

Article 15 [Supreme Law]

(1) The Constitution has supreme legal force and direct effect, and is applicable throughout the entire territory of the Russian Federation. Laws and other legal acts adopted by the Russian Federation may not contravene the Constitution.
(2) Organs of state power and local self-government, officials, citizens and their associations must comply with the laws and the Constitution.
(3) The laws are officially published. Unpublished laws are not applicable. No regulatory legal act affecting the rights, liberties or duties of the human being and citizen may apply unless it has been published officially for general knowledge.
(4) The commonly recognized principles and norms of the international law and the international treaties of the Russian Federation are a component part of its legal system. If an international treaty of the Russian Federation stipulates other rules than those stipulated by the law, the rules of the international treaty apply.

Article 65 [Republics]

(1) The Russian Federation consists of the subjects of the Federation: Republic of Adygeya (Adygeya), Republic of Altai, Republic of Bashkortostan, Republic of Buryatia, Republic of Dagestan, Republic of Ingushetia, Kabardin-Balkar Republic, Republic of Kalmykia – Khalmg Tangch, Karachayevo-Cherkess Republic, Republic of Karelia, Republic of Komi, Republic of Mari El, Republic of Mordovia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Republic of Tatarstan (Tatarstan), Republic of Tuva, Udmurt Republic, Republic of Khakasia, Chechen Republic, Chuvash Republic – Chavash Republics; Altai Territory, Krasnodar Territory, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Maritime Territory, Stavropol Territory, Khabarovsk Territory; Amur Region, Arkhangelsk Region, Astrakhan Region, Belgorod Region, Bryansk Region, Vladimir Region, Volgograd Region, Vologda Region, Voronezh Region, Ivanovo Region, Irkutsk Region, Kaliningrad Region, Kaluga Region, Kamchatka Region, Kemerovo Region, Kirov Region, Kostroma Region, Kurgan Region, Kursk Region, Leningrad Region, Lipetsk Region, Magadan Region, Moscow Region, Murmansk Region, Nizhny Novgorod Region, Novgorod Region, Novosibirsk Region, Omsk Region, Orenburg Region, Oryol Region, Penza Region, Perm Region, Pskov Region, Rostov Region, Ryazan Region, Samara Region, Saratov Region, Sakhalin Region, Sverdlovsk Region, Smolensk Region, Tambov Region, Tver Region, Tomsk Region, Tula Relation, Tyumen Region, Ulyanovsk Region, Chelyabinsk Region, Chita Region, Yaroslavl Region; Moscow, St. Petersburg – federal cities; Jewish Autonomous Region; Aginsky Buryat Autonomous Area, Komi-Permyak Autonomous Area, Koryak Autonomous Area, Nenets Autonomous Area, Taimyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Autonomous Area, Ust-Ordynsky Buryat Autonomous Area, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area, Chukchi Autonomous Area, Evenk Autonomous Area, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area.
(2) Accession to the Russian Federation and formation of a new subject of the Russian Federation within it is carried out as envisaged by the federal constitutional law.

Article 66 [Territories, Regions]

(1) The status of a republic is defined by the Constitution and the constitution of the republic in question.
(2) The status of a territory, region, federal city, and autonomous region and autonomous area is determined by Constitution and the Charter of the territory, region, city of federal importance, autonomous region, autonomous area, adopted by the legislative (representative) body of the relevant subject of the Russian Federation.
(3) A federal law on autonomous region, autonomous area may be adopted at the nomination from the legislative and executive bodies of an autonomous region, autonomous area.
(4) Relations between autonomous areas within a territory or region may be regulated by the federal law and an agreement between bodies of state power of the autonomous area and, respectively, bodies of state power of the territory or the region.
(5) The status of a subject of the Russian Federation may be changed only with mutual consent of the Russian Federation and the subject of the Russian Federation in accordance with the federal constitutional law.

Article 71 [Federal Jurisdiction]
The jurisdiction of the Russian Federation includes:
a) the adoption and amendment of the Constitution and federal laws and supervision over compliance with them;
b) the federal structure and territory of the Russian Federation;
c) regulation and protection of the rights and liberties of the human being and citizen; citizenship of the Russian Federation; regulation and protection of the rights of national minorities;
d) establishment of the system of federal bodies of legislative, executive and judiciary power, procedure for the organization and activities thereof; formation of federal bodies of state power;
e) federal and state property and management thereof;
f) determining the basic principles of federal policy and federal programs in the field of state structure, the economy, the environment, and the social, cultural and national development of the Russian Federation;
g) establishment of the legal framework for a single market; financial, monetary, credit and customs regulation, emission of money and guidelines for price policy; federal economic services, including federal banks;
h) the federal budget; federal taxes and levies; federal funds of regional development;
i) federal power grids, nuclear energy, fissionable materials; federal transport, railways, information and communications; space activities;
j) foreign policy and international relations of the Russian Federation, international treaties of the Russian questions of war and peace;
k) foreign trade relations of the Russian Federation;
l) defense and security; defense production; determining procedures for the sale and purchase of arms, ammunition, military hardware and other equipment; production of fissionable materials, toxic substances, narcotics and procedure for the use thereof;
m) defining the status and protection of the state border, territorial waters, the air space, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf of the Russian Federation;
n) law courts; Prosecutor’s Office; criminal, criminal-procedural and criminal-executive legislation; amnesty and pardon; civil, civil-procedural and arbitration-procedural legislation; legal regulation of intellectual property;
o) federal conflict of laws;
p) meteorological service; standards, models, the metric system and time measurement; geodesy and cartography; names of geographical objects; official statistics and accounting;
q) state decorations and honorary titles of the Russian
Federation;
r) federal state service.

Article 72 [Joint Jurisdiction]

(1) The joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the subjects of the Russian Federation includes:
a) ensuring compliance of the constitutions and laws of the republics, charters, laws, and other regulatory legal acts of the territories, regions, federal cities, the autonomous region and autonomous areas with the Constitution and the federal laws;
b) protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen, protection of the rights of ethnic minorities; ensuring legality, law and order, and public safety; border zone regime;
c) issues of the possession, use and management of the land, mineral resources, water an d other natural resources;
d) delimitation of state property;
e) management of natural resources, protection of the environment and ecological safety; specially protected natural reserves; protection of historical and cultural monuments;
f) general questions of upbringing, education, science, culture, physical culture and sports;
g) coordination of health issues, protection of family, motherhood, fatherhood and childhood; social protection including social security;
h) implementing measures to combat catastrophes, natural disasters, epidemics and eliminating consequences thereof;
i) establishment of the general guidelines for taxation and levies in the Russian Federation;
j) administrative, administrative-procedural, labor, family, housing, land, water and forestry legislation; legislation on the sub-surface and environmental protection;
k) cadres of judiciary and law-enforcement agencies; the bar, notaries;
l) protection of the original environment and traditional way of life of small ethnic communities;
m) establishment of general guidelines of the organization of the system of bodies of state power and local self-government;
n) coordination of the international and external economic relations of the subjects of the Russian Federation, compliance with the international treaties of the Russian Federation.
(2) The provisions of this Article equally apply to the republics, territories, regions, federal cities, the autonomous region and autonomous areas.
Article 73 [Regional Jurisdiction]
Outside of the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the powers of the Russian Federation on issues within the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the subjects of the Russian Federation, the subjects of the Russian Federation exercises the entire spectrum of state power.

Article 76 [Direct Effect of Federal Laws]

(1) On issues within the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation federal constitutional laws and federal laws are adopted having direct effect throughout the territory of the Russian Federation.
(2) On matters within the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the subjects of the Russian Federation federal laws are issued and in accordance with them laws and other regulatory legal acts of the subjects of the Russian Federation is adopted.
(3) Federal laws may not contravene federal constitutional laws.
(4) Outside of the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the subjects of the Russian Federation republics, territories, regions, federal cities, autonomous regions and autonomous areas effect their own legal regulation, including the adoption of laws and other regulatory legal acts.
(5) Laws and other regulatory legal acts of the subjects of the Russian Federation may not contravene federal laws adopted in accordance with Parts (1) and (2) of this Article. In the event of a contradiction between a federal law and any other act issued in the Russian Federation, the federal law applies.
(6) In the event of a contradiction between the federal law and a regulatory legal act of a subject of the Russian Federation issued in accordance with Part (4) of this Article, the regulatory legal act of the subject of the Russian Federation applies.

51

Not only is is up for debate, it’s absurd. “The French” in Canada - I assume you meant to say Quebec - aren’t sovereign in any sense of the term.

52

Jomo: Thanks. I shall look it up. The unlawful act of an incompetent border agent, though, does not equate to recognition of one nation by another.

53

Eva Luna and Polycarp, I apologize for getting cranky there. It’s just that when I saw the word “Slavic” in this line:

I reacted abruptly. The Q in Uzbek and Kazakh orthography is based on the Cyrillic letter K, but with an extra stroke added to differentiate it. Of course in Russian typography this extra stroke is lost and the Russians can’t tell the difference. I just fail to see the need for filtering everything through Russian. My reaction was that the Central Asians can now speak for themselves with their own voices, and they can make their own way in the world without any further Slavic tutelage.

Monty, how do you know that there wasn’t a decision by Colombia’s foreign ministry to accept the Iroquois passports rather than just one “incompetent border agent”? How do you know what’s unlawful in Colombian law? Your tone of words reeks of contempt for Iroquois nationhood.

54

Oh, bullshit, Jomo. I made the observation that a mistake by a border agent does not equate to the government itself of a country granting recognition to another. That you read contempt into my observation of a fact tells a lot about you, not me.

55

You used the words “unlawful” and “incompetent.” No, that says more about you. Also, you’re presuming it was a mistake, and I asked what makes you so sure it wasn’t an actual Colombian government policy decision.

56

So, Jomo, what exactly are you saying?

a) That the government of Columbia actually granted recognition to the Iroquois? If so, please provide proof of that.

b) That a border guard is the person in Columbia’s government who gets to decide to grant recognition by the government of Columbia of another nation? If so, please cite the appropriate Columbian statute.

57

I used the word “unlawful” in the sense of “not complying with the law.” I used the word “incompetent” in the sense of “the border agent did what he or she shouldn’t have done; i.e., accepting a passport purportedly issued by a government not recognized by the government of Columbia.”

That does not, in any way, shape, or manner, indicate I have any contempt whatsoever for the concept of Iroquois nationhood. Your continued assertion that I did display any contempt indicates that you are pretending that I said something that I did not say. That tells about you.

58

You’re assuming that it was an “incompetent” “unlawful” mistake even though you haven’t checked the facts of the case. The assumption behind your choice of words is derogatory. That says more about you.

59

You know what’s humorous about this post? My prof for* Islam in the FSU, * who is primarily a Central Asian expert, used to yell at us when we spelled it Kazakh rather than Kazak. Again, I don’t speak any Turkic languages (it’s on my list, but the list is mighty long, and unfortunately I have to work for a living!), but he saw the -kh spelling as a Slavicism. He actually made me do an extra round of thesis revisions to change “Moslem” to “Muslim,” even though the sources I quoted mostly spelled it as “Moslem.” I don’t know why that particular spelling variation was so important to him, and he never answered that particular question.

Sorry for filtering everything through Russian, but at the moment I don’t seem to have much of a choice. (By Slavics, I mean the study of areas traditionally dominated by speakers of Slavic languages.) Even journals in the field of Central Asian studies, such as Central Asian Survey, have used K rather than Q, at least the articles I’ve read. I’ll leave it to you to be a trailblazer in changing Turkic/Roman transliteration habits. :wink:

60

:smiley:

In High School my teacher graded me down for using “Muslim” instead of “Moslem”, because according to him the “Muslim” was a recent innovation created specifically by certain black groups like the the NOI, whereas “Moslem” was the classical spelling for all followers of Islam.

Half-credit. Still pisses me off :p.

  • Tamerlane