# All Slavic languages: -št- -šp- -šk- from German?



## shifter78

I am curious if the group of š and p, t, k, d, etc, or more precisely, the shift of pronunciation from _s + consonant_ in old latin words to _š + consonant_ has come from German languages. It seems like yes (in Slovak, Czech...) as we were in contact with German languages. What I would like to know how it is in other slavic languages - especialy Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, because they are also in direct contact with Italian, or with vulgar latin before? Is it because all these loan words came to our language through German, or also Slavic languages had before "a problem" with pronunciation of this group also (the same as spanish has to have es- like in  estocolmo, españa)? I am reluctant to believe it, because we have lots of not loaned words in mentioned group.
spain, españa -> španielsko
post -> pošta
Stockholm -> Štokholm
šport, štart, škola etc.


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## sokol

In Slovenian it is like in Czech and Slovak - _šport, [škola] EDIT: __šola__, _etc. In Croatian 'sport' is _sport _and 'school' is _škola _- but the latter is the same in Russian, too: so 'school' probably would not fit into this list of words.

And yes, it seems that this is due to German influence.


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## skye

sokol said:


> In Slovenian it is like in Czech and Slovak - _šport, škola, _etc. In Croatian 'sport' is _sport _and 'school' is _škola _- but the latter is the same in Russian, too: so 'school' probably would not fit into this list of words.
> 
> And yes, it seems that this is due to German influence.


 
A small correction: Škola is šola in Slovenian.


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## papillon

Modern Russian is a mixed case. In general there seems to be no problem in pronouncing s- as -s, but this may not have been the case in the past, and some of words mentioned do contain the _sh_ sound:
Spain, España, Hispania - Испания, Ispani<y>a, but curiously there is a couple of terms where the obsolete adjective шпанский (*sh*panskiy) is preserved: *ш*панская вишня (*ш*пака), *ш*панская мушка.
post - почта (po*ch*ta). In this case the *ch* sound is used.
Stockholm - Стокгольм (*S*tokgol'm)
sport  спорт (*s*port)
start   старт (*s*tart)
school - *ш*кола (*sh*kola)


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## Ptak

papillon said:


> Spain, España, Hispania - Испания, Ispani<y>a, but curiously there is a couple of terms where the obsolete adjective шпанский (*sh*panskiy) is preserved: *ш*панская вишня (*ш*пака), *ш*панская мушка.


Hm... I have never heard "шпанский", but only "гишпанский".


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## shifter78

Yep, meantime I was browsing and comparing dictionaries, apart from škola/school I didn't find any other similar loan words with šk-, perhaps beause škola is very old loan and there was another influence from latin 'schola'.

And compared slovak šport, štart, špeciálne, štandard, štatistický, štát with Czech and Croatian opposites mostly with s not š, it results that just Slovak has been influented vastly...


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## papillon

Ptak said:


> Hm... I have never heard "шпанский", but only "гишпанский".


Yes, that's a good point, ги*ш*панский is the old version of испанский. 

I always assumed that шпанский was a reduction of гишпанский. I gave the example of шпанский because it was the one preserved in шпанская мушка and шпанка (a type of sour cherry).


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## sokol

skye said:


> A small correction: Škola is šola in Slovenian.



Yes, of course, sorry - I'm already mixing up the different Slavic languages, I fear.


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## skye

Must be difficult to keep them apart.


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## Athaulf

shifter78 said:


> I am curious if the group of š and p, t, k, d, etc, or more precisely, the shift of pronunciation from _s + consonant_ in old latin words to _š + consonant_ has come from German languages. It seems like yes (in Slovak, Czech...) as we were in contact with German languages. What I would like to know how it is in other slavic languages - especialy Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, because they are also in direct contact with Italian, or with vulgar latin before? Is it because all these loan words came to our language through German, or also Slavic languages had before "a problem" with pronunciation of this group also (the same as spanish has to have es- like in  estocolmo, españa)? I am reluctant to believe it, because we have lots of not loaned words in mentioned group.



Croatian and other B/C/M/S variants definitely have lots of purely native words starting with _sp-_, _st-_, and other clusters beginning with _s_: _spustiti_, _starost_, _skloniti_... Therefore, these clusters are definitely not a problem for pronunciation. 

As far as I know, the situation is similar in other Slavic languages. If nothing else, all of them should have _s-_ among the prefixes used to create perfective verbs (like e.g. _pustiti_-_spustiti_ in Croatian or _просить_-_спросить _in Russian) -- and I've never heard of a Slavic language that would have limitations on the possible starting consonants of verbs to which this prefix can be added (although of course _s_ may get voiced into _z_ if the verb starts with a voiced consonant).

Thus, I think the issue is mainly due to German loanwords, although of course any particular word might have its own surprising individual history.


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## sokol

Thanks for the remark, Athaulf, I overread that first time - yes, certainly the pronunciation of -st- -sp- -sk- would not pose any problems for _any _speaker of a Slavic language, is what I'd say. These consonant clusters are very common in Slavic languages.

The question just is wether the forms -št- -šp- -šk- of loans are due to German influence, meaning nothing but: have these forms come to specific Slavic language through German mediation (meaning, did the specific words come from Latin or Romanic languages via German to a specific Slavic language).

In the case of škola & šola this is very likely, in other cases this may not be so, one would have to take a closer look at each specific word - e. g. гишпанский: I cannot fathom where the ш here does come from as the German version never was *'espanisch' (spoken 'eschp-') but always 'spanisch': proclitic 'e' is not typical here for German. (And proclitic 'e' would, or could, be transcribed to Russian as 'ги'.)
But it _might _be a merger of German 'spanisch' and Spanish 'espanol'. That's the only explanation I could come up with, but very likely this is not correct.


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## tkekte

Russian usually has a starting š when the word comes from German, and an s when it's from Latin or English.

f.ex.:
шпиндель, штепсель, штора, шкаф, штраф, шпага, штука, штиль, шторм, штамп, штат, шпалы...
[špindel, štepsel, štora, škaf, štraf, špaga, štuka, štil, štorm, štamp, štat, špaly...]
from German.

But... Stahl -> *с*таль [stal]. Polish also has stal. I wonder why is this... maybe the source isn't German? Also, Polish has "strefa" instead of sztrefa. Actually, German just has "zone" where Polish has "strefa", so I don't know where strefa comes from. German "Strasse" is just трасса [trassa] in Russian. Or maybe трасса is related to words like "trace" and "track" instead.

"Standart" gives two words, штандарт [štandart] (military banner) and стандарт [standart] (a standard).



sokol said:


> certainly the pronunciation of -st- -sp- -sk- would not pose any problems for _any _speaker of a Slavic language, is what I'd say.


What if the speaker is a grandma whose teeth fell out?


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## sokol

tkekte said:


> What if the speaker is a grandma whose teeth fell out?


Well yes, but in this case it wouldn't even help if her mother tongue were German. 

Otherwise, concerning your remarks: there's still no explanation for гишпанский (German 's[ch]panisch'), but else very interesting.
As for трасса, my dictionary does not give 'street' as meaning (which would be German 'Straße') but 'Trasse' = 'location route' according to my English dictionary (meaning of 'Trasse' is, predominantly, the route as such and not a particular street).

As for *с*таль, I am as puzzled as you are. A possible explanation: it came to Russia in its written form and wasn't thought of as 'German', so that by mistake no ш is applied here. The form 'stal' as such clearly is German.
Probably *с*таль even came through Polish to Russian, and probably due to purism (which exists in Poland but is not very popular in Russia, it seems) the 'Germanic' _sch _was abandoned there.


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## tkekte

"Stal" must be a very old loan... sometime in the dark ages. I don't think the concept of "purism" existed back then, in languages that weren't even written down.  Maybe the loan is so old that the initial st- in German wasn't pronounced as sht- yet.

Гишпанский <- hiszpański.

Also, here is what I found when I googled "гишпанский". O_O


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## sokol

tkekte said:


> "Stal" must be a very old loan... sometime in the dark ages. I don't think the concept of "purism" existed back then, in languages that weren't even written down.  Maybe the loan is so old that the initial st- in German wasn't pronounced as sht- yet.



This, too, is a possibility - the loan wouldn't have to be that old, too, because it could be a (probably even pretty young) loan from Lower German where (today only on a dialectal level) it is still [s]trand and not [š]trand.
Thanks for giving me this idea. ;-)

(As for purism, you wouldn't believe how purist some of the old writers could have been  - some Latin authors thought Seneca was kind of a barbarian because of is straighter style, which too was much closer to how language really was spoken at the time, and the Latin writers even went back to Cicero's pompous style later.)


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## tkekte

I never heard Low German, but I heard some Dutch (and Low German is supposed to be somewhere in between German and Dutch ) and their s often sounds like sh (to me at least ).

If I had to use Cyrillic letters to write "alles is liefde", I would write аллэш ыш лыфтэ. (the d sounds like a t)


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## Outsider

sokol said:


> I cannot fathom where the shch here does come from as the German version never was *'espanisch' (spoken 'eschp-') but always 'spanisch': proclitic 'e' is not typical here for German. (And proclitic 'e' would, or could, be transcribed to Russian as 'ги'.)


It could be from _*Hi*spania_, the Latin word where "Spain" comes from, pronounced with a German accent. For many German speakers, "s" before a voiceless plosive is pronounced "sch". Hence "Hischpania". Then, the typical Russian sound shift from  (which doesn't exist in Russian) to [g], and you get _Gishpaniya_, or something similar.


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## sokol

tkekte said:


> I never heard Low German, but I heard some Dutch (and Low German is supposed to be somewhere in between German and Dutch ) and their s often sounds like sh (to me at least ).
> 
> If I had to use Cyrillic letters to write "alles is liefde", I would write аллэш ыш лыфтэ. (the d sounds like a t)



Dutch would be another possibility, of course. Didn't Peter the Great bring lots of Dutch workers to Санкт-Петербург?
He certainly did bring lots of German workers, and probably they did came from Low German region; also there's to consider the influence of the Hanse centuries ago.
So lots of possibilities for German loans to take their way into russian both with and without 'š'.


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## palomnik

sokol said:


> Dutch would be another possibility, of course. Didn't Peter the Great bring lots of Dutch workers to Санкт-Петербург?
> He certainly did bring lots of German workers, and probably they did came from Low German region; also there's to consider the influence of the Hanse centuries ago.
> So lots of possibilities for German loans to take their way into russian both with and without 'š'.


 
Sokol's got a very good point. It's worth bearing in mind that in many areas of north Germany initial _s-_ before a _p, t _or_ k_ is not pronounced _š-._ One can put together a good argument about German vocabulary coming into Russian at different times, from different areas.


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