Meaning of Caucasian in English

Meaning of Caucasian in English

The adjective Caucasian refers to someone who comes from the Caucasus or who or what is linked to this region that develops between Asia and Europe. This makes it possible to speak of Caucasian, caucasian people, Caucasian language, etc.

A person is said to be Caucasian when their skin color is white. The notion arose from an assumption of its origin. A Caucasian or Caucasoid individual, therefore, has a fair complexion.

According to DigoPaul, caucasian people are generally natives of Europe, North Africa, South Asia, and certain regions of America. In any case, the color of the skin varies according to multiple factors and cannot be exclusively associated with a certain country or a certain continent.

It is important to note that the division of the human being into races such as Caucasian, black and others is no longer usually used because it often motivates racism (the discrimination of subjects according to the race attributed to them). In addition, numerous anthropologists affirm that our species does not have races.

The use of the term “white” to designate a race arose in 1781 when it was proposed by a German socio-anthropologist named Johann Friedrich Blumenbach to distinguish the European population from the others. In his hypothesis he maintained that light-skinned people had appeared in the Caucasus mountains, and that from there they had dispersed to other lands.

The racism has been and remains one of the most serious and regrettable problems of our species. As early as 1855, a French diplomat and philosopher named Joseph Arthur de Gobineau proposed the superiority of the Nordic race above all others, in his Essay on the inequality of human races. In the same way, he maintained that the mixture between different ethnic groups was harmful since it could degenerate the purity of the races.

The Caucasian peoples, on the other hand, are the ethnic groups that reside in the Caucasus region. These can be communities living in areas of Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey or Iran.

The languages spoken by these ethnic groups are known as Caucasian languages. The Georgian, the Chechen and Abaza you are among these languages, used by thousands of people in the region of the Caucasus.

Given that all the languages ​​spoken in the Caucasus have some phylogenetic relationship with others (both from the same region and abroad), it is said that no Caucasian language is isolated, that is, they are not natural and lacking a link with others., alive or dead.

Thanks to the work of comparison between the Caucasian languages, the specialists have established the existence of three disjoint families, which at first do not seem to be related: the southern, the northwestern and the northeastern.

The Southern Caucasian language family is also called the South Caucasian, Kartvelian, or Georgian family, and includes Suan (also known as Svan), Georgian, Mingrelian (or Magrelian), and Loop (or Laz); the latter two are very close to each other.

The other two families are part of the northern family. With respect to the Caucasian languages ​​of the northwest, it has three branches: Ubijé, Adigué and Abaza. According to the studies of certain specialists, this family should also include Hatti, an ancient language, now defunct, that was spoken in Anatolia.

Finally, there is the Northeast Caucasian family, also called Nakh-Dagestan, which distinguishes between the languages ​​of Dagestan and those of the central north, where we find Ingush, Chechen and Bacic.

Caucasian