Осетинский язык он-лайн

On Wikipedia I read that Цы кæныс? Ци кæнис? [chi kænis] is 'how are you?/what are you doing?' which is almost exactly the same as Greek τι κάνεις; (ти канис? букв. "что ты делаеш?"), that's why I'm wondering if it's ust a co-incidence or Greek influence.

And by the way what's the pronunciation of 'ц'? It appears to me from listening to radio_2diktora.mp3 that it's pronounced as /s/, at least word-initially.

Thanks!

Yes, in modern practice it is. Although the thing is not very simple: there are other popular ways of pronouncing Ossetic (e. g. with /sh/ in the place of ц).

On your Greek question: what is the grammar of the question? Ti means "what" or "you"?
There may be no Greek influence (not that large at least) in Ossetic grammar; probably that's Hindo-European unity of the two (in Slavic languages the ending is also -ish/-esh), about the word root: well, probably influence. Abaev in his famous dictionary says, the verb is from ancient Iranian *krn, *kr, *kan, in many Iranian languages there is kan/ken/kardan/kartan in the verb.

Thanks for the response, Slavik!

Actually, I know bits of Persian and I know there is 'chi?/che?' which means 'what?', so це/че doesn't surprise me. I was just curious, you know, the whole thing is just very much like Greek and I was wondering if it's just a co-incidence as both are I-E languages or there might be some Greek influence on Ossetian. I've just had a look here and the present tense endings are indeed quite similar to Slavik and Greek endings.

Ossetic is generally closer to the European IE languages, than it should be by its Iranian origin. That made linguists to suppose long and close contacts between Old Ossetic and Old Russian languages, and probably also Greek.

Ancestors of Ossetes lived by Greek seaside colonies; later they accepted christianity from Byzantine Impire.

Ivo(if he still comes to visit this forum), to understand the origin of the word, wy should understand its verb.I'm interested in one question: the words "τι" and "κάνεις" used in the Greek language in individually form, or is this phrase has only one meaning? For example, in the Ossetian language, word: "Цы; Ци" means: what, or which, word:"каеныс; канис; verb-каенын, which means: to do, to create.

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another interesting parallel for me is the word in Ossetic. It sounds exactly the same as the Greek word for incomprehensible bubbling, at least that was the case in the Ancient Greek. Word derives from that.