# Relationship of current Slavic languages to Proto-Slavic and to one another.



## Michael Zwingli

Hello,
I have discerned that of all the current language families of Europe, the Slavic is the one which I understand the least. This, despite having some Polish ancestry on my mother's side. I do not have a good sense of how the different Slavic languages relate to one another and to their common ancestor: Proto-Slavic. If I might have some discussion about this general area, it might be helpful to my gaining a greater understanding of this topic. Let me start of such a discussion by asking the following questions: Which current Slavic language or languages appear(s) to be 'closest', from the grammatical standpoint, to Proto-Slavic, and how do the extant languages differ from one another in general, in terms of their individual strengths? What, in general, are the various external influences from other language families, on the various Slavic Languages that we know today? Can any of them be said to lend themselves better to abstract thinking, to description, or to emotional expression? Again, I am trying to get a sense of how these languages relate to one another.
Thanks in advance,
Mike


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## Christo Tamarin

The CV of Slavophonia


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## Allienella

If you want to find out how we feel when it comes to other Slavic languages,let me describe my first-hand experience. The only language i can well understand when a person is speaking is Ukrainian. Probably,also Belorussian,but I have hardly heard it during my life.
Another language that is quite clear to me is Bulgarian,but mostly when I read.
 Croatian: when I was in Croatia for the first time, the speech was obscure to me except for very simple situations. Reading was much better but  not always,it depended on a particular text.
I have faced with other Slavic languages not so much. But definitely,Croatian and Serbian are clearer to me than the Czech language...
To summurize,it seems that the South Slavic group is much closer to ours,the East Slavic group.


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## Michael Zwingli

Allienella said:


> To summurize,it seems that the South Slavic group is much closer to ours,the East Slavic group.


That's a useful bit of information, in terms of my gaining a general understanding.


Allienella said:


> But definitely,Croatian and Serbian are clearer to me than the Czech language...


I would surmise, then, that such West Slavic languages as Polish and Czech, form a group which are somewhat more distant from the greater body of the Slavic Language family. Would that be fair to say? Oddly enough, I would have thought the opposite: that Polish, Belorussian and Russian, for instance, would be much closer than Russian to Bulgarian or Serbian; that the South Slavic group would be the more distant one just from the standpoint of geography (i.e. looking at the map of Europe). I guess sometimes geography can lie to us... It is always good to be disabused of false notions!


Christo Tamarin said:


> The CV of Slavophonia


This seems like it will be very helpful for me. Thanks much for the link. Hopefully, therein I will find the answer to my question regarding which Slavic language or Slavic language group bears the closest resemblance to the common ancestor languages.


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## rushalaim

I do understand Belorussian easily but I hardly understand Ukrainian and don't understand Polish at all (but Polish men understood my Russian easily, strange).


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## Michael Zwingli

rushalaim said:


> I do understand Belorussian easily but I hardly understand Ukrainian and don't understand Polish at all (but Polish men understood my Russian easily, strange).


That is a phenomenon known elsewhere within language families. While speakers of Portuguese can basically understand the nature of an overheard conversation in Spanish, Spanish speakers have told me that most often they cannot even begin to comprehend what is being said within a conversation in Portuguese. I believe that it has to do with the idiosyncratic nature of pronunciation in some languages, such as Portuguese in this example (for a Latin based language, Portuguese pronunciation is highly idiosyncratic). Perhaps another contributing factor in your example might be the fact of the dominance of Russia over the other eastern bloc countries during the Soviet era?


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## Awwal12

Allienella said:


> But definitely,Croatian and Serbian are clearer to me than the Czech language...


Czech is comparatively difficult to understand. On the other hand, I wouldn't call BCSM particularly intelligible either. To me the easiest non-East Slavic languages (in their written forms) are Polish and formal Bulgarian. Polish has a comparatively easy syntax, and exposure to Ukrainian and Belarusian (which is natural for an educated Russian, especially in the age of Internet) does provide a huge help, since those are literally soaking with words loaned from Polish. Plus, thanks to Church Slavonic influence, Russians generally don't get puzzled at the sight of words with nepolnoglasiye (mleko may look not too close to moloko, but they are prepared). Finally, Polish and Russian used to have some minor direct influence on each other after all.

Bulgarian, on the other hand, has an entirely alien grammar, but as long as we speak about formal terms, they are very familiar, because a) formal and poetic Russian was hugely influenced by Church Slavonic, which is derived from Old Bulgarian, and b) modern Bulgarian has experienced a considerable Russian influence. Of course, normal colloquial Bulgarian is full of false friends and generally unfamiliar vocabulary, and then the syntax finishes you off.

All in all, belonging to particular branches aside of your own has little impact on intelligibility; the exact history of the languages in question is more important.


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## Eirwyn

I would also add that once you get familiar with the specific sound changes of West Slavic languages, you start noticing familiar syntax patterns and derivation schemes in speech, which is definitely not the case with South Slavic languages. You hear familiar words here and there, but it feels more like if someone extracted random morphemes from your mother tongue and constructed something completely new out of them, rather than merely a distorted version of your native language.


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## Michael Zwingli

Good discussion!
I can see that the Bulgarian branch would have had a significant effect on the language of those Slavs who are traditionally Eastern Orthodox, through the Old Church Slavonic, and comparatively very little on a traditionally Roman Catholic country such as Poland. There are indeed many facets to and influences upon a language during its development. I wonder if the language of the Rus' people and the Varangians, who I believe were essentially Scandinavians, left any linguistic marks upon the Russian and/or Ukrainian languages.


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## Awwal12

Michael Zwingli said:


> I wonder if the language of the Rus' people and the Varangians, who I believe were essentially Scandinavians, left any linguistic marks upon the Russian and/or Ukrainian languages.


Close to non-existent. Suffice it to say, the amount of loaned Scandinavian personal names is larger than the amount of all other early Scandinavian loanwords. The situation was very different from Britain, which Norsemen were colonizing in masses; Eastern Europe mostly was a poor, scarcely populated area, and most lands were less suitable for agriculture than in Scandinavia (far in the south they were much better, but long distances along the local rivers with numerous portages made colonization impractical anyway). The main value of the local lands was their trade routes; therefore Rus', starting as a rather small group of traders and raiders, ultimately became a ruling minority among local Slavic, Baltic and Finno-Ugric tribes. It seems they quickly adopted local material culture as their own; even though they kept their tribal Norse cults, the conceptual border between Norse and Slavic deities was vague, as it often happens among pagans; soon they became bilingual, or even just Slavic-speaking (especially since their "capital" was moved far southwards), but, of course, their very tribal identity survived till the mass Christianization.

Turkic loanwords are pretty numerous, though; they were accumulating since the times when most East Slavic tribes paid tribute to the Khazar Kaghanate. By now Ukrainian and Russian have a larger amount of them compared to Belarusian (for obvious geographical reasons), even though there is a set of common Turkic loanwords in the basic vocabulary of all East Slavic idioms (like "kulák" - fist, "lóshad'" - horse, or "tumán" - fog).


Michael Zwingli said:


> I can see that the Bulgarian branch would have had a significant effect on the language of those Slavs who are traditionally Eastern Orthodox


More or less so, but the degree varies greatly. For several reasons, Russian is affected the most. By the way, nearly all South Slavs currently use the variation of Church Slavonic ultimately derived from the Russian one (a historical irony).


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## jasio

Before I give you my West-Slavic perspective, let me give a remark that several dialect continuums exist within the Slavic language family, binding the languages together - albeit post-WWII migrations and mass media disrupted it to an extent. For example, as far as I am aware, a Polish Silesian dialect is very close to the Silesian dialect spoken in the Czech Republic. Polish dialects along the Carpathian mountain range are very close to the neighbouring Slovak dialects, and Polish dialects in Eastern Poland, along the Bug river, are very close to rural Ruthenian dialects of Westernmost Ukraine and Belarus. Consequently, official languages which are based on more central dialects, differ much more than their local counterparts.

Secondly, there is a small group of words, including the basic words for everyday things, body parts, personal pronouns, some terrain forms, foods, which are commonly used in all/many languages, even in distinct language groups. Dom, chleb, ryba, woda, rzeka, morze, góra, mama, mięso, ręka, noga, głowa, iść, jechać, jeść, biały, zielony, niebieski - are often almost identical or cognates (not always though). A specific example which came to my mind is a an inscription I found years ago painted on a barrow in Southern Bulgaria: "водата е мокра". In Polish we would say "woda jest mokra" (the water is wet), and apart for a definite article/suffix in Bulgarian, it sounds almost identical to Polish (albeit in general, Bulgarian is very distant and difficult to understand for us). Anyways, these Old Slavic traces make identifying later influences more difficult, at least for non-linguists.

Thirdly, sources of professional and "educated" vocabularies differ from language to language. In Polish educated vocabulary comes mostly from Latin (commonly taught in the Middle ages - of course considering, what 'commonly' meant at the time), French (a second and often preferred language of the educated classes until some 19th century) or German, in the Czech language - mostly from German, surprisingly I also recognised a significant group of German loanwords in Russian. And I'm not referring only to the modern-day artificially coined scientific terms based on Greek or Latin roots, which are pretty much unified globally. But for example many Polish words referring to an urban life and organisation (ratusz, burmistrz, rada) come from German (Rathaus, Burgmeister, Rat). The same goes for a number of artisan tools and techniques, etc.The reason is simple: for several hundred years in Middle ages a number of German or Germanic settlers migrated to Poland, and albeit in most rural areas they were fairly quickly diluted among local Slavic people, in towns they formed local majorities and retained their cultural distinction until some 19th century (in central Poland; there are regions where the German populations survived until WWII). Besides, the towns themselves were often settled based on the laws of Magdeburg.

A religion was mentioned: indeed, Old Church Slavonic liturgy might have contributed to a conservation of certain old words and structures in East and South Slavic languages - hence perhaps a distance between Russian and South Slavic languages seems to be lower than between the West and South Slavic languages. But for example, BCS is officially pretty unified and mutually comprehensible, albeit Croats were historically Roman Catholics, Serbs - Christian Orthodox, and Bosnians were muslims.

An influence of Russian over Polish: indeed, it's not huge, despite Russian was a language of education in the central Poland for over a hundred years since early 19th century. But it left traces mainly in some constructs and fraseologisms rather than on vocabulary, so they are more difficult to trace for the native speakers. An asymetry in undersanding, referred to by @rushalaim, depending on the age and origins of the Polish person, may come from Russian being taught at schools during communist times, or perhaps from Ruthenian influences along the Eastern border. Anyway, albeit I barely speak Russian, I retained quite a grasp of passive understanding of the language, which also helps me with Ukrainian.

This brings us to intelligibility of the languages, and the mileage vary. Everyday Slovak language is pretty much intelligible for an average Pole. When I return from more distant countries, language-wise, in Slovakia I feel almost at home already. I recall conversations with the Slovaks, where everyone of us spoke their mothertongue, and we were mostly fine with that. The Chech language is significantly less intelligible, and a conversation requires quite a lot of effort, but to an extent it's doable. I do not have much experience with Upper and Lower Sorbian, minority languages spoken in South-Eastern Germany. Kashubian - a minority language in North of Poland - is almost unintelligible for me, at least in its spoken form. In writing it's easier, and I understood 60-90% of the text depending on a particular fragment, albeit understanding the topic of the article was a great help. I understand quite a bit of Russian, but I would attribute it to an education in 70s and 80s, rather than to proximity of the languages; there are more similarities - or parallels - in patterns and structures than in vocabularry. The same goes for Ukrainian: I have an impression that my fading Russian contributes more to understanding the language than my native Polish, at least in case of the official language. However if I overhear immigrants, who probably come from the Western Ukraine, it may be both. With regards to the South Slavic languages, I agree with @Eirwyn - to me they look like a bunch of recognisable morphemes randomly scattered around completely cryptic mass of text - with Bulgarian being more understandable than Croatian though - which again may be because of my Russian learning in the past.


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## Awwal12

jasio said:


> surprisingly I also recognised a significant group of German loanwords in Russian


Why surprisingly?  Ancestors of modern Russians were in direct contact with Germans since the XIII century, when the Livonian order appeared in the modern day Estonia and Latvia (even though those contacts largely were wars and border clashes, they weren't limited to that). Well, actually disregard that: Germans of the Hanseatic League opened their factory in Novgorod in the late XII century already. And, of course, the reforms of Peter the Great together with his conquests of the early XVIII century intensified those contacts a lot. Many notable Russian generals, officials and scholars were ethnic Germans invited to Russia, and Catherine the Great herself was originally a princess of Anhalt; of course, it was only a tip of the iceberg. Thanks to German communities in Russia, Russian acquired not only a lot of cultural vocabulary, but even certain morphological calques. For instances, "выглядеть" acquired its modern meaning, together with the imperfective aspect, during the first half of the XIX century under the influence of German "aussehen".

I don't even mentioned German loanwords which came into Russian exactly through Polish (танец, штука etc.); during the XVII century the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was an important source of innovations for Russia and had a pronounced cultural impact.


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## Michael Zwingli

Very informative post, Jasio.


jasio said:


> ...sources of professional and "educated" vocabularies differ from language to language...in the Czech language - mostly from German...


This is not surprising, for several reasons: German universities have rendered a tremendous amount of scholarship within many academic fields in recent centuries, and German seems a language well suited to expression of abstract concepts, receiving new terms which often prove difficult to translate into English, and, I am sure, other languages as well. I am led to wonder, though, if the Czech language appear to be influenced by German in more fundamental ways, since there is a history of large amounts of German speaking settlement especially in the Bohemian portion of the Czech lands. Does Czech appear in any way to be more (for lack of a better term) "Germanized" than other West Slavic languages?


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## jasio

Awwal12 said:


> Why surprisingly?  Ancestors of modern Russians were in direct contact with Germans since the XIII century, when the Livonian order appeared in the modern day Estonia and Latvia (even though those contacts largely were wars and border clashes, they weren't limited to that). .


Indeed, I tend to locate the Germans only Westward to Poland, and underestimate their past presence along the Baltic coast. . ;-)



Michael Zwingli said:


> This is not surprising, for several reasons: German universities have rendered a tremendous amount of scholarship within many academic fields in recent centuries, and German seems a language well suited to expression of abstract concepts, receiving new terms which often prove difficult to translate into English, and, I am sure, other languages as well.


Indeed, albeit in this case I would credit a long-lasting German presense along the Baltic coast, reaching as far as modern day Latvia, Russian modernisation programs since the tsar Peter the Great, and longlasting contacts between Russian elites and Germans, including employing German military officers and civil servants - which @Awwal12 kindly recalled. The history of German cultural influence across the whole region seemed to be wiped-out in the post-WWII period, and it seems that I underestimate it.



Michael Zwingli said:


> I am led to wonder, though, if the Czech language appear to be influenced by German in more fundamental ways, since there is a history of large amounts of German speaking settlement especially in the Bohemian portion of the Czech lands. Does Czech appear in any way to be more (for lack of a better term) "Germanized" than other West Slavic languages?


It's difficult to say without a thorough scientific research, which I could not find at the moment. I would normally bet on Lower and Upper Sorbian as the "most Germanised", but I know practically nothing about these two languages - except that they are relics of a mainly Slavic population in the modern Eastern Germany about 10th century. After all, for almost a thousand years they have been living in a predominantly German speaking country, including the whole modernisation period, with very limited contacts with other Slavic languages. Czech would be highly on my list as well, because since 14th century they were ruled by foreign dynasties, until they expelled Habsburgs after WWI, and their own elites must have been Germanized fairly quickly. Slovak was rather under Hungarian influence. Poland had a whole bunch of languages spoken in the country by dosens of ethnicities (including Germans, Jews, Ruthenians, Russians, Gypsies, Armenians, Tartars, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Greeks - to name just a few in a random order), and later two different languages (German and Russian) being imposed by the foreign rulers, so the influence of a particular language could be naturally weaker. I do not know much about Kashubian - a minority language in the North of Poland - except that it was a predominantly rural language, and Poland was quite close, so it could have been more resistant. If we go down to dialects, Upper-Silesian has a lot of loanwords, and Polish spoken in Wielkopolska region also seem to be more saturated with Germanisms than the standard language.

On the other hand, across the whole region there were processes of artificial language purification, especially in 19th and 20th centuries. I've found information about such processes in Germany (from Slavic influences, but also from dialects), Poland, Hungary, Slovakia (mainly from Hungarian influence, as far as I am aware), Romania (primarily from Slavic influences) etc, so it's quite likely that the Czechs did the same. In an old thread  All Slavic languages: German loanwords, it was said that using German loanwords in Slovenian is considered 'substandard', and using Slovenian words is encouraged instead - which would mean that these processes have not been completed entirely yet. Plus the whole post-WWII migrations. where people speaking local dialects were thrown away to areas where different dialects were spoken.

So it's complex. My gut feeling is that the Czech language is more saturated with Germanisms than the standard Polish, but I can't say it for sure. Besides, the more I dig into it, the more words I find which I would normally consider native, but which are in fact loanwords, sometimes very early ones.


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## Allienella

This is to add what i wrote about Serbian and Croatian. As for speaking,yes,it is obscure if you haven't heard it before. One of the reasons is stresses which fall on the first syllable in Sr/Cr (mostly) but they fall on some other syllable in Russian (compare: vOda -S/C,vodA -R ("water"). There is a number of other reasons...

But as for reading,it is much clearer. When I was in Montenegro, i tried to read a newspaper and a living of a saint once,much of it was clear, though I must confess I had to put some efforts. I knew no more than ten Serbian words at that time.

Having some experience with the language (2 months of self-teaching), I am reading a book,and it is not something like running a marathon. Frankly speaking,the language of the book is not sophisticated,a number of words which I don't know are similar to Russian ones (what a pleasant coincidence!). I can hardly imagine that I was able to read even a book like this in German after such a short term.

Of course,it depends on what you read. Ivo Andric and quant physics are still a matter of the future.

To get to know another perspective,I'm quoting a Serbian girl who left a comment about the Russian language in a similar topic on another web site:"I don't know Russian...I understand a half of what you write and almost everything if you speak slowly". Probably,she faced only with our casual language,it's unbelievable that she grasps both the sense of Dostoevsky and of a master thesis...

In the end I'd like to say that if you remember something from Church Slavonic,that is very useful both for S/C (e.g.,to recognize meanings of some words and some grammar structures) and other Slavic languages


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## jazyk

Wise words.


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## Vukabular

Allienella said:


> In the end I'd like to say that if you remember something from Church Slavonic,that is very useful both for S/C (e.g.,to recognize meanings of some words and some grammar structures) and other Slavic languages


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## jasio

A hint for those who did not recognize it: it is Pater  Noster in Old Church Slavonic. At least on the left side. On the right side - probably in Greek (Ellinika) despite similar characters. At the top - I'm not sure, albeit it looks like a word of explanation in Serbian to me.

Many words are indeed similar to the modern Polish.


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## Christo Tamarin

At the top - Serbian before Karadžić's reform.

On the left side: Church Slavonic (just Church Slavonic, not Old Church Slavonic).

On the right side: Not Greek, most probably fake, some kind of constructed language.


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## Allienella

The sentences on the top are absolutely clear! On the left there is no Greek,it is either a variation of Church Slavonic (not sure which exactly, I learnt only our variation) or a non-existent language.

It seems I found one Greek word - fota (light).

Where is this passage from and what is the whole text about? When was it written? The last question occured to me as the text above seems weird a bit,some grammar forms are closer to ours (e.g., dokazuju (bears a resemblance with the Rissian word dokazivaju) instead the modern Serbian dokazujam. All this means "I am proving").


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## Awwal12

Allienella said:


> e.g., dokazuju (bears a resemblance with the Rissian word dokazivaju)


Except it's a 3p.pl. form (I've just checked the conjugation tables, but it should be obvious already after looking at the subject - езыкоиспытательи). Shouldn't be surprising - many Slavic idioms were dropping the final -ть (even some dialects of Old Novgorodian).


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## Allienella

Awwal12 said:


> Except it's a 3p.pl. form (I've just checked the conjugation tables, but it should be obvious already after looking at the subject - езыкоиспытательи). Shouldn't be surprising - many Slavic idioms were dropping the final -ть (even some dialects of Old Novgorodian).


Indeed...I perceived it otherwise because of the spelling


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## Christo Tamarin

I have asked Greek people for help and got an answer


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## Allienella

Christo Tamarin said:


> I have asked Greek people for help and got an answer
> 
> So what? How is this gibberish connected with Greek?


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## Vukabular

Writen by *Constantine Oikonomos* of the Oikonomoi (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Οικονόμος ο εξ Οικονόμων), also *Constantine Economos*, he was a Greek priest of the Church of Constantinople and theologian of the early nineteenth century.


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## Awwal12

But what he attempted here is a translation to a particular dialect of Ancient Greek (and I've a feeling that he wasn't unbiased in his... reconstruction).


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## rushalaim

Christo Tamarin said:


> At the top - Serbian before Karadžić's reform.
> 
> On the left side: Church Slavonic (just Church Slavonic, not Old Church Slavonic).
> 
> On the right side: Not Greek, most probably fake, some kind of constructed language.


I can see on the left side the standard text of churches. 
By the way, отче < аттас is Turkic word (ataman). Or, хлеб < klaibaz is Gothic word.


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## ajitam

rushalaim said:


> By the way, отче < аттас is Turkic word (ataman).


Source for this claim? _*otac*_ is considered to be a common IE word (Latin atta, Greek ἄττα).


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## Awwal12

rushalaim said:


> I can see on the left side the standard text of churches.
> By the way, отче < аттас is Turkic word (ataman). Or, хлеб < klaibaz is Gothic word.


Ancient Greek "ἄττα" is Indo-European, as much as Latin "atta", Gothic "atta" or Slavic *otьcь < *otьkъ. The resemblance to Turkic "ata" comes either from remote relationship between the language families (Nostratic hypothesis) or from simple coincidence, since the both terms almost certainly ultimately come from baby speech.
The Turkic origin of East Slavic (sic) "ataman" is unlikely (even though some contamination might have taken place), since it cannot be directly derived from any attested Turkic expression; at least the main source must be Polish "hetman", of obvious Germanic origin.

The "bread" in the fragment looks problematic indeed; I have no information about that root being attested outside of Balto-Slavo-Germanic.


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## rushalaim

Awwal12 said:


> Ancient Greek "ἄττα" is Indo-European, as much as Latin "atta", Gothic "atta" or Slavic *otьcь < *otьkъ. The resemblance to Turkic "ata" comes either from remote relationship between the language families (Nostratic hypothesis) or from simple coincidence, since the both terms almost certainly ultimately come from baby speech.
> The Turkic origin of East Slavic (sic) "ataman" is unlikely (even though some contamination might have taken place), since it cannot be directly derived from any attested Turkic expression; at least the main source must be Polish "hetman", of obvious Germanic origin.
> 
> The "bread" in the fragment looks problematic indeed; I have no information about that root being attested outside of Balto-Slavo-Germanic.


Turks were in Ukraine (the outskirts lands of Polish Empire) and Hungary, that is source of Turkish "ataman" (hetman). IE are "father (English); pater (Latin); patros (Greek); batya (Russian)".


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## Awwal12

rushalaim said:


> Turks were in Ukraine (the outskirts lands of Polish Empire) and Hungary, that is source of Turkish "ataman" (hetman).


Except the only form attested in Turkic languages is "odaman",  which obviously cannot have any relation to "ata". It MAY be ultimately Turkic (see Vasmer for details), but deriving it from "ata" is little more than a folk etymology.


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## Allienella

Guys, my colleague has shared her opinion about the West Slavic group. She had been living in the Czech Republic for seven years and she speaks Czech fluently. Here is her perspective:

"If a Russian reads something in Czech,it may seem that lots of things are clear,but actually it is not true. The Czech grammar is different,and your knowledge of Russian only confuses you. E.g.,Serbian has more in common with Russian."

She has never learnt Serbian.

One more opinion to support the view that the East group has more connections with the South group.

Thanks for this discussion!


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## rushalaim

Awwal12 said:


> Except the only form attested in Turkic languages is "odaman",  which obviously cannot have any relation to "ata". It MAY be ultimately Turkic (see Vasmer for details), but deriving it from "ata" is little more than a folk etymology.


Some might say as if Matthew-gospel was written in Judeo-Aramaic before. Lord's prayer in Matthew begins with "Our Father". "Father" (Abba) in Judeo-Aramaic might refer to a chief rabbi or a leader of congregation that's why the Lord's prayer gives details "our Father in heaven (not on earth)". Thus, Slavic "oтец" is "ataman" more (something like a Pope or pappas in Greek). I didn't hear any "отец"-word addressing a father in Russian families but just "батя" (father).


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## Awwal12

Czezh and Russian never actually interacted to begin with, so difficulties are very much expected, but it's not the case for Polish. Suffice it to say, I can read Polish texts using a dictionary without actually learning it and with rather little effort; certainly I couldn't read Czech that easy.


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## Vukabular

rushalaim said:


> Some might say as if Matthew-gospel was written in Judeo-Aramaic before. Lord's prayer in Matthew begins with "Our Father". "Father" (Abba) in Judeo-Aramaic might refer to a chief rabbi or a leader of congregation that's why the Lord's prayer gives details "our Father in heaven (not on earth)". Thus, Slavic "oтец" is "ataman" more (something like a Pope or pappas in Greek). I didn't hear any "отец"-word addressing a father in Russian families but just "батя" (father).


In some parts of Serbia and in Bosnia and Hercegovina father=babo


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## rushalaim

I assume Slavic Lord's prayer uses Gothic "klaibaz" because it's liquid bread "по*хлеб*ка" (maybe because of soaking dry bread of Eucharist in wine).


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## Vukabular

In my opinion Serbian word "hleb" is derivated from "lepak" (glue), "lepiti" (to glue) because the dough is sticky before the bread is baked. Arhaic word for bread is "leb" or "lebac" (-ac determines the masculine singular) and we still say "lepinja" (-nja determines the feminine singular) for small bread (bun). Arhaic words "leb" and "lebac" are still in use with older people in the countryside and we have swear "lebac ti jebem" (I will not translate that).


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## Vukabular

Serbian "lebac" and German "laibaz" sound similar. In Serbia we have ritual bread "kolač" derivated from "kolo".

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/hlaibaz - Wiktionary

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/kʷel- - Wiktionary


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## nimak

Vukabular said:


> ...Arhaic words "leb" and "lebac"...


Those "archaic" words are not archaic at all in *Macedonian*.

*леб* (leb) [lɛp] n. masc. = _bread_
*лепче* (lepče) ['lɛpt͡ʃɛ] n. neut., diminutive = _small bread_


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## Vukabular

nimak said:


> Those "archaic" words are not archaic at all in *Macedonian*.
> 
> *леб* (leb) [lɛp] n. masc. = _bread_
> *лепче* (lepče) ['lɛpt͡ʃɛ] n. neut., diminutive = _small bread_


Because you did not have Vuk Karadzic to in collaboration with the Austro-Hungarians ruin your dialect with his reform and for that he was well paid and earned a pension from them. He used to sell folk songs to Goethe so he published them as his own, and in Berlin there is a museum bearing his name, which holds books that he sold to the Germans and they keeps reciepts of how much they paid him ...


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## rushalaim

Vukabular said:


> Serbian "lebac" and German "laibaz" sound similar. In Serbia we have ritual bread "kolač" derivated from "kolo".
> 
> Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/hlaibaz - Wiktionary
> 
> Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/kʷel- - Wiktionary


Russian has "колач" (kolač) too but it's not ritual but mundane. I think, "хлеб" is recent word/culture in Russian and was liquid before a kind of porridge. It's derived from Gothic "klaibas". See Estonian "leib", or Finnish "leipä" for example.


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## Vukabular

Serbian: lepak - glue
German: kleber - glue
English: glue or paste
English: paste - dough
Serbian: dough - testo
Italian: pasta, pesto - dough


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## nimak

@Vukabular



nimak said:


> *леб* (leb) [lɛp] n. masc. = _bread_
> *лепче* (lepče) ['lɛpt͡ʃɛ] n. neut., diminutive = _small bread_



*лепиња* (lepinja) n. fem. = _a rounded soft bread_
*лепи* (lepi) verb. = _to glue, to stick_
*лепило*, *лепак* (lepilo, lepak) n. masc. = _glue_
*лепешка* (lepeška) n. fem. = _feces of animals (bovine, horses etc.); lit. "sticky-thing"_


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## Vukabular

Here is another example:
lipa - a linden tree
Anyone who parks a car under a linden tree knows that a sticky, hard-to-wash sticky thing is dripping from it.  I think that the previous theory that the words for bread (klaibaz) and glue (kleber) of German origin were already derived from the Slavic language from lep(b) and refer to something sticky.

lep - beautiful

If someone is beautiful women stick to him


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## Awwal12

Vukabular said:


> In my opinion Serbian word "hleb" is derivated from "lepak" (glue), "lepiti" (to glue)


But initial h- is left absolutely unexplained then. Not only in Serbian, but in ALL Slavic languages.
In Macedonian леб is expected, since Macedonian has simplified all хл- clusters (cf. also ладен, which is a false friend to Russian ладный).


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## nimak

@Awwal12

I just found out there is a Russian word *лепешки*, *лепёшка* meaning _*flatbread*_. 
_Google:_ Плоское круглое изделие из печёного теста.


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## Vukabular

In order to understand languages, we must reject some things, such as the theory of Indo-Europeans, or as they were originally called Indo-Germans.  Indo-European language never existed but was invented as Esperanto.  There was one language spoken in Europe, much of Asia, Anatolia and the Persian Empire ... The language was created by onomatopoeia and associations such as the example in the posts above for bread. To understand what I am talking about, I will give an example for a word that does not need to be adopted in the absence of its own, such as "eyes".  Pay attention to the writing as well as the pronunciation. Eyes associate with ice, glass and smooth surface.

English words:
eyes, ice, GLass, GLacier, coLD

Serbian words:
GLeDati (watch), LeD (ice), GLatko (smooth), LaDno (cold), LaD (shade), GLečer (glacier), staKLo (glass)... In Serbian grammar change G to K is normal also losin consonant infront of Č like in word above GLE(D)čer.

Russian words:
глаза (eyes), гладко (smooth), стекло (glass) ледник (glacier)...


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## Awwal12

nimak said:


> @Awwal12
> 
> I just found out there is a Russian word *лепешки*, *лепёшка* meaning _*flatbread*_.
> _Google:_ Плоское круглое изделие из печёного теста.


Indeed, from "лепить". And entirely unrelated to "хлеб" (< *хлѣбъ).


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## nimak

@Awwal12 _"Лепить"_ in what meaning?


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## Awwal12

nimak said:


> @Awwal12 _"Лепить"_ in what meaning?


The prototypical meaning, at least in Russian, is "to form from some sticky, plastic material". "To stick to sth" is "ли́пнуть" (perf. "прили́пнуть"), which is remotely related (through the proto-Indo-European vowel alteration).


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## ahvalj

Awwal12 said:


> The prototypical meaning, at least in Russian, is "to form from some sticky, plastic material". "To stick to sth" is "ли́пнуть" (perf. "прили́пнуть"), which is remotely related (through the proto-Indo-European vowel alteration).


A sidenote: _липнуть_ is an in-Russian creation after _-липать,_ the older form being _льнуть<льнѹти_ (the Aorist _льпъ_), thus: _*lipneti_ (_>льнеть>>льнёт_) — _-līpājeti_ (>_-липаѥть>>-липает_) with the regular lengthening of the root vowel in the Iterative (likewise _*suxneti — *-sūxājeti >> сохнет — -сыхает_). In Ukrainian, a different development took place, with the modern result _линути — -линати, н_ being reinterpreted as part of the root.


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## Vukabular

Irish "láib" = mud
Serbian "glib" = mud
Definitely refers to something sticky.


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## Roman A.

Being Russian I personally find the Polish language easy to understand, when it is written. Many words are similar to Russian, of the same origin and meaning, even swearing words are very similar to Russian. Syntax features such as flexible word order are the same. The other Slavic languages except for Polish and Ukrainian are harder to understand.


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## Allienella

Today for the first time in my life I have heard Bulgarian. I must confess that it doesn't sound clear to me (though,as I wrote before,the written language is understandable,more to the point,it became clearer after I had learnt some BSCM). It seems that it resembles BSCM as for intonation and articulation.


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## GyörgyMS

I'm a native speaker of German and I do have some experiences with slavic languages. I live near the settlement area of the Sorbian minority.

Polish - fluent
Russian - basic
Czech - basic
Ukrainian - basic (started one month ago)

*Sorbian: *To me Upper Sorbian sounds like a Western Slavic language spoken by a native speaker of German with a very strong German accent. For some reason even the written language looks somehow awkward to me. Among all Western Slavic languages it is definitely the one I understand the worst.

Upper Sorbian on German TV

*Czech/Ukrainian: *Both languages are very closely related to Polish, but I didn't understand a lot before I started learning them. But when I did, it actually took me only a few weeks to achieve some kind of fluency in both, which you wouldn't expect so quickly, when you begin to learn a new language.

*Slovak: *It is closer related to Polish than Czech, but after taking classes in Czech, it is a little less intelligible to me compared to Czech. When I went to Bratislava a long time ago - I only spoke Polish at the time - the Slovak spoken in Bratislava sounded a little like Austrian German to me, but I didn't understand a lot to be honest.

*Russian: *Understanding spoken Russian has been always hard, even after taking classes. In some respects Russian is close to Polish, but in others it seems to be really remote.

*Slovenian/BCSM: *I do understand a few words i both written and spoken language. Only sometimes am I able to get what a longer conversation is about. On the other hand once I overheard a conversation between a Croat speaking slowly and clearly to a Pole about a recipe and I understood almost everything. I hear a little Italian accent in both Slovenian and BCSM.

BTW: In my humble opinion the most beautiful Slavic languages are Polish, Ukrainian and Slovenian.


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