User talk:Red Phoenician/Racial Key

Some inaccuracies on Daco-Thracian section

Hi Red Phoenician. Overall you've done a good job on the classification, although I have some objections on some of the sections. Especially the Daco-Thracian section contains, in my opinion, several inaccuracies. First of all the Dacian and Thracian languages that have been extinct since many centuries have no relation to the East Romance languages that are spoken today by the people in the same areas in Eastern Balkans, who are considered to be descendants of Romans and Romanized indigenous peoples (Origin of the Romanians). Apart from that, there is still a lot of confusion over the terms used to describe these people: the term "Vlach" seems to be the most ambiguous one. It was first used as an exonym to describe all the East Romance peoples, including predominantly the Romanians, who are today better classified as Daco-Romanians, to distinguish them from the other 3 groups. Today, the term Vlach seems to have 2 different uses: in South Balkan countries, such as Greece, it is used to describe mainly the Aromanians, but possibly all the Romance-speaking people as well (including Megleno-Romanians). In Northern Balkan countries, like Serbia, it retains a meaning closer to the original one and is actually used to describe the Romanian speakers that are related to (Daco-)Romanians and not to Aromanians.

I noticed some mistakes in the flags as well: the flag of Thracians is actually the one used by Greek independentists from Thrace during the Greek Revolution against Ottoman Turks, so it has no relation to ancient Thracians. The flag of Torvlachs (although completely unknown to me) seems to have been created (https://fotw.info/flags/ro-chops.html) to describe the south-of-Danube East Romance peoples, thus including only the Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians. Also the flag for Megleno-Romanians is completely wrong, because it represents the self-proclaimed pro-Italian Principality of Pindus, created by Aromanian inhabitants of Pindus (mainly from the Samarina village) that have no relation whatsoever with the Megleno-Romanians who live in a completely different region (Moglena) and have a distinct identity.

Finally, I'm a little confused by the Mediterranean section, because I don't really understand the distinction from other European peoples. I see that some of the groups included have a strong component of Middle Eastern ancestry (e.g. Maltese, Cypriots, Corsicans, Sicilians, Andalusians), but others, such as the Venetians, the Asturians or the Galicians have rather a Central-North European ancestry including strong Celtic elements.

Regards, Argean (talk) 17:53, 16 September 2018 (UTC)