# Etymology: soba (Serbian/Croatian)



## DickHavana

Hello, _dobar dan_:
In the forum Spanish Only we have an interesting thread about the etymology of the Spanish slang _sobar_ (=to sleep). Looking for the origin of that word, it´s possible that it comes from the Romani (gypsy) word _sojba/sobar. _I observed the gypsy word for room (_sovamni_) seems related to the Croatian word _soba_ and the Hungarian word _szoba_.

Can anybody help me with the etymology of the Croatian (Serbian) word _szoba_?
Is it used in all the field of extension of the languages Serbian and Croatian?

Thank you very much
Hvala ljepo


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## Athaulf

DickHavana said:


> Hello, _dobar dan_:
> In the forum Spanish Only we have an interesting thread about the etymology of the Spanish slang _sobar_ (=to sleep). Looking for the origin of that word, it´s possible that it comes from the Romani (gypsy) word _sojba/sobar. _I observed the gypsy word for room (_sovamni_) seems related to the Croatian word _soba_ and the Hungarian word _szoba_.
> 
> Can anybody help me with the etymology of the Croatian (Serbian) word _szoba_?
> Is it used in all the field of extension of the languages Serbian and Croatian?



Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything reliably except that _soba_ is indeed a very common word in both Croatian and Serbian, which means _room_ (in the sense of an enclosed space within a building, like _cuarto_ in Spanish), and that it comes from the Hungarian _szoba_. 

As for whether the similarities you mention are coincidental, such questions are always hard to answer.  I don't think you'll be able to get a reliable answer from anyone who isn't a linguist specializing in the languages in question.  Generally, you should be skeptical until you get a confirmation from an expert source, since any pair of languages will have some accidental similarities like this due to sheer chance.


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## DickHavana

Athaulf said:


> As for whether the similarities you mention are coincidental, such questions are always hard to answer.  I don't think you'll be able to get a reliable answer from anyone who isn't a linguist specializing in the languages in question.  Generally, you should be skeptical until you get a confirmation from an expert source, since any pair of languages will have some accidental similarities like this due to sheer chance.




I know all this. The probable gypsy origin of the Spanish _soba_ is recognized in some sources and the other question is more difficult to demonstrate it, but we are trying lingüistic-fiction.   It's possible that the similarity betweeen the Croatian-Hungarian and the Romani word can be only chance and really only an expert source can get a confirmation. That's why I'm asking, to know what is the information about these words in another places out of Spain.

Another people told me the same: Croatian _soba_ comes from Hungarian _szoba_. I try to know the Hungarian etymology too.

Thank you very much
Regards


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## Athaulf

DickHavana said:


> Another people told me the same: Croatian _soba_ comes from Hungarian _szoba_. I try to know the Hungarian etymology too.



I don't think even linguists are certain about this one.  The origins of many words (something like 30%) in Hungarian are totally obscure, since that language has borrowed heavily from a number of distant language families in both historical and prehistorical times. Apparently, the same word _soba_ means _stove_ in Turkish, but I've never come across any authoritative opinion on whether there could be any connection there.  (Hungarian has something like 10% of Turkic words in its vocabulary, not only because most of Hungary was overrun by Turks some 400-500 years ago, but also because proto-Hungarians apparently had close contact with some Turkic peoples in prehistoric times.)

This is as far as I came in my attempts to find out where the Croatian _soba_ could have ultimately come from (which greatly interests me too).  Note however that my ability to search for this kind of information is rather low because I can't read any Hungarian whatsoever.


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## DickHavana

Athaulf said:


> This is as far as I came in my attempts to find out where the Croatian _soba_ could have ultimately come from (which greatly interests me too).  Note however that my ability to search for this kind of information is rather low because I can't read any Hungarian whatsoever.



Dobro jutro:

That's the problem. Hungarian, Romani... Really, we are talking about two languages too much complicate. I knew about the connection between Turk-Altaic languages and the Hungarian and another Ugro-Finese languages. 

Personally, I see that _the words szoba_, _soba_ and the romani radical _sob_-_sov _(words related with sleep and room) seems related (we don't speek about football and potatoes, we speek about rooms and to sleep ). Gypsy people got vocabulary from places where they settled (Hungary, Romania, Turkey, etc) and I know that it's impossible at the moment to reinforce this, but I vote for the posibility of a connection that took that word from Hungary to Spain. Of course, to reinforce clearly this, it would be necessary to study detailedly both Romani and Hungarian, and it's possible that even then, experts didn't find nothing.

Thank you very much for your help


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## chung

According to my copy of the Hungarian etymological dictionary ("A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára" or TESz) _szoba_ is a "vándorszó" (nearest translation is the German "Wanderwort")

Related words include: stove (English); stuba, stupa "bathroom" (Old French); Stube "room" (German); tupa "room"; "hut" (Finnish); izba "room" (Slovenian).

The dictionary's editors go on to point out that its origins in Hungarian are disputed and that it's not possible to determine from which language the Hungarian 'szoba' came to be (my edit: if it were indeed not native to the Hungarian vocabulary.).

"Művelődéstörténeti és szóföldrajzi kritériumok alapján inkább nyugat-európai műveltségszónak látszik; valószínű ugyanis, hogy a fogalom és az azt jelölő szó a felső társadalmi rétegekből hatolt lefelé, továbbá hogy a magyar nyelvterületen is nyugatról terjedt kelet felé." (Source: Benkő (eds.) (1976) "A magyar nyelv történteti etimológiai szótára - III. kötet Ö - Zs", Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 774)

If I understand this text correctly (and if my Hungarian is not that rusty...) then it seems to be a cultural loanword from Western Europe based on criteria in cultural history and lexical geography and that it's probable that it originated from [the speech of] the upper classes and spread further from west to east on the territory comprising Hungarian speakers.

Finally, the dictionary states that the Hungarian form directly or indirectly entered several languages. sobă "stove" (Romanian), соба "stove"; "clean room" (Bulgarian - dialectal); soba "room" (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian); soba "stove" (Turkish)


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## Athaulf

chung said:


> According to my copy of the Hungarian etymological dictionary ("A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára" or TESz) _szoba_ is a "vándorszó" (nearest translation is the German "Wanderwort")
> 
> Related words include: stove (English); stuba, stupa "bathroom" (Old French); Stube "room" (German); tupa "room"; "hut" (Finnish); izba "room" (Slovenian). [...] Finally, the dictionary states that the Hungarian form directly or indirectly entered several languages. sobă "stove" (Romanian), соба "stove"; "clean room" (Bulgarian - dialectal); soba "room" (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian); soba "stove" (Turkish)



This is fascinating!   Thanks a lot for this information!



> The dictionary's editors go on to point out that its origins in Hungarian are disputed and that it's not possible to determine from which language the Hungarian 'szoba' came to be (my edit: if it were indeed not native to the Hungarian vocabulary.).


The problem is however that the prehistoric development of ancient Hungarian was so complex and obscure that it's hard to even define what it means for a word to be "native to the Hungarian vocabulary."


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## chung

Your second point is exactly what I'm talking about.

We know that szoba, soba, stove, Stube etc. appear in several languages. Why? What I find interesting is that a word is usually considered "native" to Hungarian if it is Finno-Ugric (i.e. show a cognate with a word in Khanty or Mansi, or a little more distantly, Estonian, Finnish, Lappish, Nenets, Mordvin, Komi etc.). For all we know, perhaps szoba originated from Hungarian and its form spread (not at all likely, but possible.) to another language, which spread to another language and so on...

Whatever. This is just the gears in my brain that are turning. I don't really take issue with the linguists on this one, but when something is obscure or based on hypotheses, we have to remember that.

In the same way, whenever I read articles about Proto-Turkic or Proto-Slavonic, I find that reconstruction is more an exercise in mental gymnastics than anything else. In a way, you're doing "reverse-engineering" of attested forms, and drawing on assumptions a priori. While it's interesting, it only represents the guess based on what we observe in later forms. If a tablet or something similar would emerge in an archaelogical dig that shows a language used before the time of the putative proto-languages, I wonder how closely it would match up to the reconstructions that've been put forth by comparative linguists using attested forms and assumptions.


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## DickHavana

Thanks for your information, _chung_.

Then, what do you think about this? it seems a relationship between:

1- Hungarian word _szoba_ and the Romani sovamni/sovardi. Related with this, there is a lot of Romani words with the radical _sov-_ refering _room_ and to _sleep_. You can see it here.

2- In the Spanish marginal slang, it's used the word _sobar_ with the meaning of _dormir_. That word is reconigzed for some sources as Gypsy origin (as another slang words in Spanish). We know that Western Europe gypsies come from Eastern Europe (the zone that comprises Hungary, Romania and the former Yugoslavia).  Far gypsie origin is India, of course. But it seems an indirect loanword from Hungarian (or one of the derivations (Romanian, Serbian, etc.)) to Spanish. Of course, to establish this with a certain clarity, it would be necessary to verify that gypsy radical _sov- _don't appears in Asian gypsie languages (nor Indoarian languages based on sanskrit).


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## robbie_SWE

> ...sobă "stove" (Romanian)...


 
_Sobă,_ a fireplace of metal or ceramics used to heat up a house, is believed to come from Turkish to the Romanian language by some linguists. But others think that it does come from Hungarian.

 robbie


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## DickHavana

robbie_SWE said:


> _Sobă,_ a fireplace of metal or ceramics used to heat up a house, is believed to come from Turkish to the Romanian language by some linguists. But others think that it does come from Hungarian.
> 
> robbie



But then _stove _is as the Spanish "estufa" (heater), and the dictionary of the Spanish Academy of Language (DRAE) refers _estufa_ and the verb _estufar_ coming from the Latin _extufāre,_ here_.
_
Also, I only speak about _szoba_, _soba as_ related with _room_ or to _sleep. _I'm sure that there are another similar words with another meaning. For example, _sobar_ in Spanish is to finger, to touch a girl (or a boy) with bad manners. Spanish _sobar_ as to sleep and Spanish _sobar_ as to touch are not necessarily related, I think. It seems that _sobar_ as to finger comes from the  Latin "_subagere/subigere_", and some sources point at _sobar_ as to sleep coming from Romani "_sobar/sovar_"


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## janecito

robbie_SWE said:


> _Sobă,_ a fireplace of metal or ceramics used to heat up a house, is believed to come from Turkish to the Romanian language by some linguists. But others think that it does come from Hungarian.


 
You're right, according to my DEX, Romanian *sobă* (stove, fireplaces) comes from Turkish *soba* and Romanian *sobă* (room - used regionally) originates in Hungarian *szoba*:

*SÓBĂ* (1), _sobe, s.f._ Instalaţie pentru încălzit (cu lemne, cărbuni, gaze etc.) încăperile de locuit sau pentru gătit, făcută din cărămidă, din teracotă, din fier sau din fontă. – _Din tc._ *soba*. 
*SÓBĂ* (2), _sobe, s.f._ _(Reg.)_ Cameră, odaie de locuit. – _Din magh._ *szoba*.

Anyway, I don't know if that contributes anything to resolving the Spanish dilemma...


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

DickHavana said:


> But then _stove _is as the Spanish "estufa" (heater), and the dictionary of the Spanish Academy of Language (DRAE) refers _estufa_ and the verb _estufar_ coming from the Latin _extufāre,_ here_._


Last evening I spent quite some time with the Slovene ethimological dictionary. About this word _soba_ it is written that this word was loaned to Slovene from Croatian in the 19th century. The older word for the same thing is _izba_. The Croatian word was loaned from Hungarian and that one further from German, which is then related as far as Latin what is mentioned above. The meaning has changed from a heated place to just a place/space in the house.
On the other hand also the word _izba_, which has Slavic roots and similar words exist also in Czech, Polish, etc. The old Slavic word is also derived from the same Latin cognat.
There are no Romanian or Turkic roots mentioned in this book.


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## DickHavana

It seems that this could be a word with a curious round-trip:
From West to East by carriage (via high-classes)
From East to West by cart (via gypsies)

Regards


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## toshev

Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> Last evening I spent quite some time with the Slovene ethimological dictionary. About this word _soba_ it is written that this word was loaned to Slovene from Croatian in the 19th century. The older word for the same thing is _izba_. The Croatian word was loaned from Hungarian and that one further from German, which is then related as far as Latin what is mentioned above. The meaning has changed from a heated place to just a place/space in the house.
> On the other hand also the word _izba_, which has Slavic roots and similar words exist also in Czech, Polish, etc. The old Slavic word is also derived from the same Latin cognat.
> There are no Romanian or Turkic roots mentioned in this book.




Bulg/Macedonian, izba/vizba: cellar, basement.  (But vinarska v/izba: winery, not wine cellar)

Bulg, staya: room
Mak, soba, odaja: room


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## Maroseika

Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> On the other hand also the word _izba_, which has Slavic roots and similar words exist also in Czech, Polish, etc. The old Slavic word is also derived from the same Latin cognat.


As for this word *izba* there are two versions: German and Roman.
German version says this word is common for German-Baltic-Slavic community meaning "warm/oven place": Engl. stove, Island stofa < German *stuba<steoban = dissipate.
Roman version says this word is close to Spanish estufa < Latin extufare = to steam out.
None of the versions, however, can explain all the sounds of this word.


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## ServusEtSclavus

Reading this thread, I remembered an old Serbian slang word (used by our fathers) _soviti_=to sleep, maybe it has something to do with this.


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## Chazzwozzer

Athaulf said:


> Apparently, the same word _soba_ means _stove_ in Turkish, but I've never come across any authoritative opinion on whether there could be any connection there.  (Hungarian has something like 10% of Turkic words in its vocabulary, not only because most of Hungary was overrun by Turks some 400-500 years ago, but also because proto-Hungarians apparently had close contact with some Turkic peoples in prehistoric times.)
> .


Turkish _soba _comes from Hungarian _szóba_, too. This and that are called _soba_, so are they what you call as "soba" in Serbian and Croatian as well?


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## DickHavana

ServusEtSclavus said:


> Reading this thread, I remembered an old Serbian slang word (used by our fathers) _soviti_=to sleep, maybe it has something to do with this.



OK, OK
In Spain, slang _sobar_=to sleep came from the Gipsy language. Gipsy migrations to Spain came obviously from the zone Hungary-Serbia-Romania. This word was very used by marginal people and "young-modern-people" (sex, drugs and rockanroll) in the 70's-80's.


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## cynicmystic

I would like to add that Turkish also has 'sobar' in the form of 'Zibar', which is quite possibly a loanword coming from the Roman of the Gypsy. Zibar is always used together with yatmak, which means to lay down to sleep. However, zibar adds a negative connotation. 

Yat, zibar! / Almost like saying just go to sleep & piss off or something negative along those lines. It is quite a surprise for me to see that this word has found its way into other tongues as well. 

Personally, I don't think that the Turkish word 'soba' for stove is related to the Zobar.


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## Asgaard

Hi,


DickHavana said:


> Hello, _dobar dan_:
> In the forum Spanish Only we have an interesting thread about the etymology of the Spanish slang _sobar_ (=to sleep). Looking for the origin of that word, it´s possible that it comes from the Romani (gypsy) word _sojba/sobar. _I observed the gypsy word for room (_sovamni_) seems related to the Croatian word _soba_ and the Hungarian word _szoba_.
> 
> Can anybody help me with the etymology of the Croatian (Serbian) word _szoba_?
> Is it used in all the field of extension of the languages Serbian and Croatian?
> 
> Thank you very much
> Hvala ljepo



I hope this will help:
SLEEP

PIE: swepǝ- 
Hittite: sup-, supparija- 
Latin: sōpīre `einschläfern', sopor, -ōris m. `

Proto-Baltic: *sap-n-i-, *sap-n-a-, -ia- c., *sap-en-a-, -an-, -i- c.

Proto-Germanic: *swi[f]an-, *swabja-, *swabjan-, *swibēn-, *swēb[f]=, *swō[f]=, *sub=; *swi[f]na-z , etc.
Old Norse: sofa (svaf; sofinn) 

Norwegian: sova vb

Proto-Altaic: *ǯip`u - evening, darkness

Many more roots @ starling(dot)rinet(dot)ru


Have a nice day
Asgaard


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