# Rosija/ruski



## dihydrogen monoxide

What is the explanation for the country name Rosija, but adjective is ruski. Why isn't the development Rusija/ruski. Is the accentuated i the expected development from Proto-Slavic in a country name and how do we explain other languages where they have the first syllable accentuated.


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## Awwal12

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> What is the explanation for the country name Rosija, but adjective is ruski


Rússkij, to be precise.
Rossíja is loaned from Greek around the XVI century as a kind of prestigious official form. The native form is Rus' (Русь < Early Old Russian /rusĭ/), from the tribal name rus' which referred to the local Norse  population (up to the XI century or so), and gradually came to mean the territory controlled by the tribe. "Rússkij" is, basically, "one belonging to Rus'" (cf. the parallel form Rusin "one of the Rus'", whence Rusyn "Rusyn").


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## Circunflejo

From Rossija, there's the adjective rossíjskij but it seems to be used just for the country and the nationality.


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## Awwal12

Circunflejo said:


> From Rossija, there's the adjective rossíjskij but it seems to be used just for the country and the nationality.


Yes, of course, I needed to clarify that from the start.

Rossíjskij:
adj. related to Russia.
(ОАО "Российские Железные Дороги")

Rússkij:
n. an ethnic Russian
adj. related to ethnic Russians
(русская кухня, русские народные сказки)

Cf. Rossijánin "a Russian citizen".


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## Ben Jamin

Awwal12 said:


> Yes, of course, I needed to clarify that from the start.
> 
> Rossíjskij:
> adj. related to Russia.
> (ОАО "Российске Железные Дороги")
> 
> Rússkij:
> n. an ethnic Russian
> adj. related to ethnic Russians
> (русская кухня, русские народные сказки)
> 
> Cf. Rossijánin "a Russian citizen".


How old is the name Российский? I can't recall it being used before the 1990-s.


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## Awwal12

Ben Jamin said:


> How old is the name Российский? I can't recall it being used before the 1990-s.


As old as Россия, naturally enough. Of course, during the Soviet era Russia (the RSFSR) was only one of the Soviet republics, so there was no much room for "российский" in the international context. Before 1917, on the other hand, русский was also frequently used in the national meaning (e.g. "русская армия").


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## dihydrogen monoxide

How did Greek confuse /o/ with /u/. Is there an explanation for an /o/ in Greek?


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## AndrasBP

Awwal12 said:


> Yes, of course, I needed to clarify that from the start.
> 
> Rossíjskij:
> adj. related to Russia.
> (ОАО "Российские Железные Дороги")
> 
> Rússkij:
> n. an ethnic Russian
> adj. related to ethnic Russians
> (русская кухня, русские народные сказки)
> 
> Cf. Rossijánin "a Russian citizen".


Apart from русский/российский and латышский/латвийский, are there any other countries where Russian makes this distinction?
I can't think of any.


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## Awwal12

AndrasBP said:


> Apart from русский/российский and латышский/латвийский, are there any other countries where Russian makes this distinction?


Немецкий/германский, персидский/иранский, казахстанский/казахский... Many possible oppositions are simply left unused (while the contrast between "казахстанский" and "казахский" is often relevant just because about 25% of Kazakhstan's population are ethnic Russians, in other cases shorter adjectives will be strongly preferred in all the meanings).


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## Awwal12

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> How did Greek confuse /o/ with /u/. Is there an explanation for an /o/ in Greek?


If it ever was used as an endonym, it should have had /o/. The Proto-Finnic form is reconstructed as *ro:tsi and is likely related to the Old Norse _ró-_ root. However, in early Slavic idioms /*o/ must have been an open vowel (~[ɒ]) and apparently Slavs found it more adequate to use their /*u/ for the close [o:] sound.


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## Sobakus

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> How did Greek confuse /o/ with /u/. Is there an explanation for an /o/ in Greek?


ahvalj explains.


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## danielstan

Россия being written with 2 'с'-s has any influence on its pronounciation?
Would it be written Росия, should be pronounced differently?

Finally, what is the justification of spelling it with 2 'c'-s?


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## Sobakus

danielstan said:


> Россия being written with 2 'с'-s has any influence on its pronounciation?
> Would it be written Росия, should be pronounced differently?


No, it's always pronounced with 1 /s/ even though Russian possesses geminate /ss/ - sometimes even contrary to the spelling (notice how speakers pronounce it hypercorrectly with 1 /s/ when it's a single word on the same website). It's only pronounced with a geminate in the pun _Рассе́я_, after рассе́янный "clumsy and absent-minded".


danielstan said:


> Finally, what is the justification of spelling it with 2 'c'-s?


Greek and Latin and every language that borrowed the word from them.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> after рассе́янный "clumsy and absent-minded"


er... after the basic meaning "disperse" (<<lit. "sown apart"), in fact.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> er... after the basic meaning "disperse" (<<lit. "sown apart"), in fact.


How is that a fact?


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> How is that a fact?


Well, the basic meaning is also the most apparent, isn't it?
I struggle to imagine how "absent-minded, forgetful, clumsy" would be properly applicable here at all (probably as some sort of secondary side connotation at best).


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## Awwal12

To clarify things a bit: Рас(с)ея (not necessary heminated, in fact) is merely an old Russian folk form of Россия (resulting from the misinterpretation of [rɐˈsʲ(:)ijə] as [rɐˈsʲ(:)ejə], having in mind the frequent variaton -ij-/-ej- between official Church Slavonic and folk Russian name forms, which came from the difference in the reflexes of *ьj), since the name "Россия" remained generally unfamiliar and alien to the general peasant population, which sticked to the old name "Русь" instead, for quite a while. In the literary corpus it first appears in the 1860s as imitations of folk speech, both as Расея and Рассея (Krestovskiy, Danilevskiy, Tolstoy etc.).


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## berndf

Awwal12 said:


> If it ever was used as an endonym, it should have had /o/. The Proto-Finnic form is reconstructed as *ro:tsi and is likely related to the Old Norse _ró-_ root. However, in early Slavic idioms /*o/ must have been an open vowel (~[ɒ]) and apparently Slavs found it more adequate to use their /*u/ for the close [o:] sound.


And how then would it end up as ω in Greek then? Was the early East Slavic /u/ open enough to count as an /o/ in Byzantine Greek or do you think the Byzantine word is taken from Old Norse speaking traders?


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## Awwal12

berndf said:


> or do you think the Byzantine word is taken from Old Norse speaking traders?


Not from Slavic speakers, that's for certain. Possibly from Old Norse directly. Annales Bertiniani mention "men who called themselves Rhos" (explicitly noting their Swedish background), so it's quite likely it was really used as an endonym.


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## berndf

Awwal12 said:


> apparently Slavs found it more adequate to use their /*u/ for the close [o:] sound.





Awwal12 said:


> so it's quite likely it was really used as an endonym


If this is that case: Do we know when /o:/ shifted to /u:/ in Swedish? If this shift was already under way at the time this might be another reason why the name ended up as _Русь_ in Eastern Slavic.


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## Awwal12

berndf said:


> If this shift was already under way at the time this might be another reason why the name ended up as _Русь_ in Eastern Slavic.


Not really likely, taken *ro:tsi and Ρώσοι (which must have been loaned almost simultaneously) into account. Early Slavic /*o/ being either near-open or even unrounded must be to blame here. Compare early loanwords in Finnish like akkuna "window" (< *okŭno; cf. Rus. oknó), tappara "axe" (< *toporŭ; cf. Rus. topór) etc., which all reflect early East Slavic /*o/ as /a/. On the other hand, we have numerous examples of foreign /a/ positionally interpreted as /*o/ by early Slavs (καράβιον > *korablĭ, tavar > *tovarŭ, aslan "lion" > *slonŭ "elephant", gataujan > *gotoviti etc.), as well as some other examples of foreign (in particular, Germanic) /o:/ interpreted as /u/ (*plōg(az) > *plugŭ).


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Well, the basic meaning is also the most apparent, isn't it?
> I struggle to imagine how "absent-minded, forgetful, clumsy" would be properly applicable here at all (probably as some sort of secondary side connotation at best).


Firstly, uninformed intuition should not be stated as fact, let alone when disagreeing with someone. Secondly, there's nothing apparent to me about what's supposed to be scattered in Russia; but "the clumsy-country" or "a country of clumsy or absent-minded people" is obvious, and the irony is highly typically Russian. What is scattered in Russia, in your fact opinion, and what's the humour of it? Thirdly, what is the evidence that _Рассея _is a mere "old folk form" as opposed to an ironic pun on _рассеянный_ "clumsy"? Do you consider first appearing in 1860's literature to be such evidence? It's not. Fourthly, _Расея_ might or might not be a genuinely unironic folk form, but that doesn't make _Рассея_ not an ironic pun on _рассеянный_.

In fact - and not just in my opinion - there's no ambiguity whatsoever in Saltykov-Schedrin 1863-74: "Не страна, а Рассея, говорю." ("That's why I say: this is no country, but a _Рассея_". And here's the nearest second quotation from Markov 1872: "У ихнего брата не водится таких-то пьяниц да ругателей, как у нас, на _Рассеи_" ("Their kind don't have this sort of drunkards and dirty mouths as we do in _Рассея_". In fact most of the earliest examples already seem to be ironically mocking.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Not really likely, taken *ro:tsi and Ρώσοι (which must have been loaned almost simultaneously) into account. Early Slavic /*o/ being either near-open or even unrounded must be to blame here. Compare early loanwords in Finnish like akkuna "window" (< *okŭno; cf. Rus. oknó), tappara "axe" (< *toporŭ; cf. Rus. topór) etc., which all reflect early East Slavic /*o/ as /a/. On the other hand, we have numerous examples of foreign /a/ positionally interpreted as /*o/ by early Slavs (καράβιον > *korablĭ, tavar > *tovarŭ, aslan "lion" > *slonŭ "elephant", gataujan > *gotoviti etc.), as well as some other examples of foreign (in particular, Germanic) /o:/ interpreted as /u/ (*plōg(az) > *plugŭ).


You're confusing both the short and long proto-Slavic /a/ for /o/. The Finnish loans have /a/ because it was /a/ in Early East Slavic that you transcribe as /o/. This vowel was back and rounded when short, but front and unrounded when long, probably exactly like in modern Hungarian (_Balaton = болото, asztal = стол, mák = мак_). There seems to have later arisen a closed short /o/ that later merged with the short /a/. The borrowings _плуг, дума, Русь_ all reflect the same vowel, the long /o:/ which originally comes from PBSl /au/ see again this post.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> You're confusing both the short and long proto-Slavic /a/ for /o/


As far as I am aware, no length distinctions (apart from the supershort reduced vowels /ĭ/ and /ŭ/) are normally reconstructed for Late Proto-Slavic (only residual length as a side parameter for certain phonemes). Granted, that system may not be valid for the age of the early loans from Gothic, but still.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> What is scattered in Russia, in your fact opinion, and what's the humour of it?


Pretty much everything, especially if you look at it from the European perspective. Why any humour should be there at all?


Sobakus said:


> Do you consider first appearing in 1860's literature to be such evidence? It's not.


No it is not. The context (which is quite solemn half of the time), however, is.
Also there is the fact that it is produced from Россия through a sufficiently regular analogical alteration, which doesn't require any "puns" or other specific reasons, thus providing us with a simpler explanation with no fancy ad hoc ideas behind it.
Possible subsequent interpretations (including that one of yours) are another matter.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Pretty much everything, especially if you look at it from the European perspective. Why any humour should be there at all?


Because it's used ironically from its earliest attestations, not to mention today. Can you not read the quotations? As for scattering, you're welcome to provide examples where this meaning is apparent. I for my part think it's obvious that "clumsy" is both the most familiar meaning of рассеянный, and the only one that comes to mind in the context of mocking irony, because it's disparaging and the literal meaning is rare and in no way disparaging.


Awwal12 said:


> No it is not. The context (which is quite solemn half of the time), however, is.
> Also there is the fact that it is produced from Россия through a sufficiently regular analogical alteration, which doesn't require any "puns" or other specific reasons, thus providing us with a simpler explanation with no fancy ad hoc ideas behind it.


Come again? You already said you thought it was a pun on "scattered". The "solemnity" - which is simply folkishly nonstandard language - is exactly part of the irony. Do you not understand the irony of putting puns inside faux-archaic uneducated peasant speech? Do you not see the parody of 19th century rural folksy romanticism (with its icon Толстой)?
Why are you repeating that the word is regularly formed after I've already said that _Расея_ *can* be regularly formed - even though there's no evidence that it has been, *and still* _Рассея_ has been used as a pun from its earliest attestations? Do you understand the difference between etymology and word usage?


Awwal12 said:


> As far as I am aware, no length distinctions (apart from the supershort reduced vowels /ĭ/ and /ŭ/) are normally reconstructed for Late Proto-Slavic (only residual length as a side parameter for certain phonemes). Granted, that system may not be valid for the age of the early loans from Gothic, but still.


The length distinctions were eventually replaced with quality distinctions, but the vowels remained distinct, and the Finns and the Hungarians heard the short vowel as their /a/, not /o/ during that period; and it also was the closest Slavic vowel to the open [ɔ] of other languages.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> The length distinctions were eventually replaced with quality distinctions, but the vowels remained distinct, and the Finns and the Hungarians heard the short vowel as their /a/, not /o/ during that period.


And since Baltic Finns had a rather large inventory of long and short vowels, it precisely points at the quality of the short vowel we describe as /*o/, which still lacked some attributes to be interpreted as /o/ by Baltic Finns (elevation or rounding, possibly  both).


Sobakus said:


> Come again? You already said you thought it was a pun on "scattered".


I've never actually said it was a pun to begin with. "After the basic meaning "disperse"" should not really be read as "a pun after the basic meaning "disperse"" (at least that's definitely not what I've meant).


Sobakus said:


> The "solemnity" - which is simply folkishly nonstandard language - is exactly part of the irony. Do you not understand the irony of putting a pun inside faux-archaic expression?


There was nothing archaic in "Рассея" back in 1860s (how exactly it's supposed to be archaic if it never was standard in the first place?). In all the discussed cases it was used to describe speech of simple uneducated people and only them, in a lot of different contexts.


Sobakus said:


> *and still* _Рассея_ has been used as a pun from its earliest attestations?


Hardly by the speakers themselves, though. More like by the educated writers who had found the word "funny".


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> And since Baltic Finns had a rather large inventory of long and short vowels, it precisely points at the quality of the short vowel we describe as /*o/, which still lacked some attributes to be interpreted as /o/ by Baltic Finns (elevation or rounding, possibly  both).


??? Finnish had /o/. It borrowed the sound in question as /a/. How on earth does this precisely point at /o/ in Slavic? What is that vowel in phonetic terms?


Awwal12 said:


> I've never actually said it was a pun to begin with. "After the basic meaning "disperse"" should not really be read as "a pun after the basic meaning "disperse"" (at least that's definitely not what I've meant).


Very interesting, but not very convincing, because I clearly said _"the pun Рассе́я, after рассе́янный 'clumsy and absent-minded'"_, and you said _"no, it's after 'scattered'"_. When you reshape the word _Россия_ after another word, the result is called a pun, and you took that for granted. Why are you denying the obvious?


Awwal12 said:


> There was nothing archaic in "Рассея" back in 1860s (how exactly it's supposed to be archaic if it never was standard in the first place?). In all the discussed cases it was used to describe speech of simple uneducated people and only them, in a lot of different contexts.


O_O Archaic does not mean "it was standard" - archaic doesn't even need any standard to have previously existed. Archaisms in rural speech are a cross-linguistic constant, and they're a constant in the portrayal of the speech of the countryside in Russian literature. Isolated, recently-standardised varieties are often the most archaic. Sardinian, Lithuanian etc.You can't seriously be unaware of this.


Awwal12 said:


> Hardly by the speakers themselves, though. More like by the educated writers who had found the word "funny".


Why do you think it's appropriate to propose your idle speculation in disagreement on a linguistic forum? Where does this "hardly" come from? Do you have a single shred of evidence that the expression wasn't current in urban speech as it is now, or that it shouldn't have been?


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> Why do you think it's appropriate to propose your idle speculation in disagreement on a linguistic forum?


Because of the common sense. In the first place you impose your model of thinking upon the average Russian speaker of the mid XIX century, which is faulty in a huge number of ways. I have to remind that we're speaking about a still typically illiterate, traditionalist, pro-monarchist, extremely superstitious person with no modern notion of nationality. That's about 90% of the population by the early 1860s - the bulk of the native speakers of Russian, even though the least prominent part when it comes to producing culture. Should I explain any further?

Let's say that I don't see how your idle speculation is any better than mine.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Because of the common sense. In the first place you impose your model of thinking upon the average Russian speaker of the mid XIX century, which is faulty in a huge number of ways. I have to remind that we're speaking about a still typically illiterate, traditionalist, pro-monarchist, extremely superstitious person with no modern notion of nationality. That's about 90% of the population by the early 1860s - the bulk of the native speakers of Russian, even though the least prominent part when it comes to producing culture. Should I explain any further?


I don't impose it on the average speaker at all, but on the intelligentsia of both capitals, a phenomenon different from the rest of Russia back then to a much greater degree than today, despite all the modern jokes about Moscow being a different country from Russia. I might not be particularly informed on that period, but I think I know enough to be able to surmise with a good deal of certainty that there was a very sharp divide between the westernised intelligentsia and everyone else, with no equivalent of the European urban bourgeoisie, and that _narodnichestvo_ was a direct reaction to this on the part of the intelligentsia, while parodying _narodnichestvo_ was a typically Russian counter-reaction to the latter.

And I'm sure you will agree that you and I have much more common culturally with the intelligentsia than with the illiterate monarchist Расея-матушка-царь-батюшка peasants, and so I don't see anything outlandish in finding direct parallels between modern usage and that of the period - finding concrete attested parallels, mind you, and not speculating. If one finds a modern pun attested 150 years ago, it becomes incumbent _on the denier_ to demonstrate why the modern interpretation of that pun is impossible for that period; as well as to demonstrate that the writers of the period wrote in a special language that was divorced from the usage of the rest of population of the urban centres, with in-group puns that only they themselves were privy to.

So yes, I'd like you to explain further whether you think I'm missing something here. Because it seems to me that your original objection had nothing to with the XIX century or any models of thinking, because that hadn't even been mentioned - it seems to me like you were simply surprised to learn my (and as far as I can tell, everyone else's) interpretation of the pun _Рассея_, and are currently trying to rationalise this and shift the discussion onto a period where it's easier to argue against my interpretation, for no other reason other than to defend your ego against an intrusive realisation of truth whose source happens to be me. And that is what I find totally unacceptable.


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