# Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages: similarities?



## vince

Hi everyone,

This is sort of related to the Farsi vs. European languages thread. I'd like to know what similarities exist between Slavic languages (Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc) and Indo-Iranian ones (Kurdish, Farsi, Hindi, Panjabi, Bangla, etc) that DON'T exist between Indo-Iranian and western European languages such as English, French, Spanish, German, etc.

Because I heard that within the Indo-European languages, one can distinguish two groups: CENTUM  languages and SATEM languages (based on each group of language's way of saying "hundred"). Slavic languages (as well as Baltic ones) belong to the Satem group along with Indo-Iranian, but Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages belong to the Centum group. So I was wondering if similarities exist in the two languages besides this phonological grouping.

You can bring up grammatical similarities as well as vocabulary. Thanks!


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## Pivra

I don't know if this is related or not but in Thai "Sata-" prefix is used to say something about "hundred".

eg.  satawaat  ... century; waat from varsha in Sanskrit.


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## vince

Yeah I think from a previous thread that Thai has a Sanskrit (Indo-Iranian)-based number system despite being non-Indo-European.


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## Alijsh

How can we here discuss about similarities? Comparing vocabulary or grammar?


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## vince

Alijsh said:


> How can we here discuss about similarities? Comparing words?



"You can bring up grammatical similarities as well as vocabulary. Thanks!"


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## Jana337

vince said:


> "You can bring up grammatical similarities as well as vocabulary. Thanks!"


I hope you find people sufficiently proficient in languages of both families. 
If it's helpful, the Average Jana is completely ignorant about any potential similarities.

But thanks for pointing out the isogloss - I had no idea. 

Jana


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## vince

Here's a map of the isogloss:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Centum_Satem_map.png


To start the ball rolling:
The word for "woman" in various Iranian languages:

Kurdish: žin
Mazandarani: zəna
Persian:  zan


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## albondiga

vince,

I've got no knowledge of any other languages from these families, but in my very limited knowledge of both Hindi & Russian I did notice that the word for the number "4" begins with a "*ch*" sound, and "5" with a "*p*" sound, in both languages; in both cases different from most Western European languages.  

But I don't think this is necessarily meaningful...   "четыре" might be more closely related to "cuatro" than it is to "chaar" despite the initial sound, and the initial "p" in the words for "5" is might be related to the initial "f" in many Western European languages...

Not much, but it's all I've noticed...


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## docoleg

I am a native Russian speaker, who grew up in Central Asia in childhood. Having been exposed to Russian, Uzbek (Turkic language) and Tadjik (Farsi, persian group) I can't think of many intrinsic similarities. Grammar and sentence structure are profoundly different. Having said that, I do agree that there are some words that can be the same, reflecting the penetration of cultures due to centures long co-existence. For example, 'astakan' in Tadjik is the same as Russian for 'stakan', a drinking glass in English. The observed the same phenomenon for Ukranian and Turkic languages, for example, maidan in Ukranian, is the same as maidon in Uzbek, "square" in English.


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## albondiga

As a follow-up to my post above, after reading the other thread about Farsi/I-E languages, I'm thinking that maybe both   "пять" and "paNch" could be related to the Greek root for "5" (penta-), thus both more distant from the "Western European" (Latin and Germanic) words for this number... just a guess.

Edit: if anyone knows the word for the number "5" in Sanskrit, Old Slavonic, etc., that might help confirm or deny this guess...


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## Flaminius

vince said:


> The word for "woman" in various Iranian languages:
> 
> Kurdish: žin
> Mazandarani: zəna
> Persian:  zan


And in Lithuanian, a Baltic language:
žmona (wife),
though no relatedness is assured.


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## Alijsh

Unfortunately I don't know any of Slavic languages. I have just a smattering of Russian and can read Cyrillic. In Russian, they say "spasiba" (thank you) and we have "sepâs" (spâs in Middle Persian) that might be cognate. Also we say "naft" and they say "neft" (oil). However, it might be a loanword from Persian.

I'm trying to find basic vocabulary of mentioned Slavic languages in the Internet to extract words that seem cognate. From Polish I found these:

Jestem - hastam (I am)
sześć - shesh (six)

If you know any vocabulary list please introduce me.

***
Dear Docoleg, estekân (Tajiks say stakân) is a Russian loanword in Persian just like samâvar, doroshke (carriage), etc.


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## Alijsh

albondiga said:


> if anyone knows the word for the number "5" in Sanskrit, Old Slavonic, etc., that might help confirm or deny this guess...


 
Avestan: pancha, Sanskrit: panchanh, Old Church Slavonic: пѧть(pętĭ)


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## Jana337

vince said:


> Here's a map of the isogloss:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Centum_Satem_map.png
> 
> 
> To start the ball rolling:
> The word for "woman" in various Iranian languages:
> 
> Kurdish: žin
> Mazandarani: zəna
> Persian:  zan


Surprising...

Czech: žena

Jana


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## jester.

Jana337 said:


> Surprising...
> 
> Czech: žena



Russian: жена (zhena)


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## batka

vince said:


> Because I heard that within the Indo-European languages, one can distinguish two groups: CENTUM  languages and SATEM languages (based on each group of language's way of saying "hundred"). Slavic languages (as well as Baltic ones) belong to the Satem group along with Indo-Iranian, but Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages belong to the Centum group. So I was wondering if similarities exist in the two languages besides this phonological grouping.



You can find it a bit off-topic, but I don't really get it...
I mean in English and German it's "hundred" and "hundert" and in Dutch "honderd", but in French it's "cent", in Italian "cento", in Spanish "cien", so how can Roman languages and Germanic languages be in the same group basing on that? oO"

According to Wikipedia (sorry, can't paste the link yet) the difference between CENTUM i SATEM is in the change of pronunciation of Proto-Indo-European_ *kʷ_ (labiovelars), _*k__*ḱ_; (palatovelars) (velars), and _*ḱ_; (palatovelars).

~~~~
And now in-topic: 

Polish: "woman" - "kobieta", but "wife" - "żona", a similarity to Russian and Czech, only different meaning.

Also:


> From Polish I found these:
> 
> Jestem - hastam (I am)
> sześć - shesh (six)


The rest of conjugation of a verb "to be" in Polish is:
to be - być
I am - ja jestem
you are - ty jesteś
he/she/it is - on/ona/ono jest
we are - my jesteśmy
you are - wy jesteście
they are - oni/one są

also for comparison I'm adding the numbers:
one - jeden
two - dwa
three - trzy
four - cztery
five - pięć
six - sześć
seven - siedem
eight - osiem
nine - dziewięć
ten - dziesięć
hundred - sto

is it similar to the languages you know? (sorry, I don't know any other Slavic language)


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## panjabigator

vince said:


> Here's a map of the isogloss:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Centum_Satem_map.png
> 
> 
> To start the ball rolling:
> The word for "woman" in various Iranian languages:
> 
> Kurdish: žin
> Mazandarani: zəna
> Persian:  zan



In rustin Hindi and Urdu, the letter Z is pronounced as a J.  And then we have the following words:

Hindi:  /janani/ (almost never used)
Panjabi: /janaanii/ (used)

Urdu has the word /zanaan/ but it is originally from Persian.


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## panjabigator

albondiga said:


> As a follow-up to my post above, after reading the other thread about Farsi/I-E languages, I'm thinking that maybe both "пять" and "paNch" could be related to the Greek root for "5" (penta-), thus both more distant from the "Western European" (Latin and Germanic) words for this number... just a guess.
> 
> Edit: if anyone knows the word for the number "5" in Sanskrit, Old Slavonic, etc., that might help confirm or deny this guess...



Sanskrit: /panca/ (I am pretty sure...)
Hindi:  /paa.nc/
Panjabi: /pa.nj/


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## Pivra

panjabigator said:


> Sanskrit: /panca/ (I am pretty sure...)
> Hindi: /paa.nc/
> Panjabi: /pa.nj/


 

 I am here to confirm.. it is Pañca(with the NY letter, the C is pronounced like a Ch because there is already another Ch). The 5 sages that Buddha encountered were called Pañcavaggi.


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## Alijsh

I know Russian doesn't have in/definite articles just like Persian. Do you know any other Slavic language?


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## albondiga

batka said:


> According to Wikipedia (sorry, can't paste the link yet) the difference between CENTUM i SATEM is in the change of pronunciation of Proto-Indo-European_ *kʷ_ (labiovelars), _*k__*ḱ_; (palatovelars) (velars), and _*ḱ_; (palatovelars).



Besides centum/satum, there are probably some other areas as well where Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages match, but due to sound shifts others do not match completely, despite potential common roots...

from Wikipedia's page on "Grimm's law":
English: _cold,_ Dutch: _koud,_ German: _kalt,_ Icelandic, Faroese: _kaldur,_ Danish: _kold,_ Swedish: _kall_ Latin: _gelū_, *Sanskrit: hlad, Russian: holod*


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## Jana337

Alijsh said:


> I know Russian doesn't have in/definite articles just like Persian. Do you know any other Slavic language?


Here's a long thread about it. 

Jana


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Hmmm... I never read anything about Slavic-Persian connection. But there's lot of reading about Sanskrt-Slavic connection. I don't think that looking for the isolated words to prove this theory is a good approach. Otherwise I can prove that Slovene is a sister-language to Greek. (for example: the word for 1 is exectly the same  )



albondiga said:


> from Wikipedia's page on "Grimm's law":
> English: _cold,_ Dutch: _koud,_ German: _kalt,_ Icelandic, Faroese: _kaldur,_ Danish: _kold,_ Swedish: _kall_ Latin: _gelū_, *Sanskrit: hlad, Russian: holod*


Oh, another "proof" Sanskrt is sister language to Slovene: *hladen    *


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## chung

vince said:


> Hi everyone,
> 
> This is sort of related to the Farsi vs. European languages thread. I'd like to know what similarities exist between Slavic languages (Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc) and Indo-Iranian ones (Kurdish, Farsi, Hindi, Panjabi, Bangla, etc) that DON'T exist between Indo-Iranian and western European languages such as English, French, Spanish, German, etc.
> 
> Because I heard that within the Indo-European languages, one can distinguish two groups: CENTUM languages and SATEM languages (based on each group of language's way of saying "hundred"). Slavic languages (as well as Baltic ones) belong to the Satem group along with Indo-Iranian, but Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages belong to the Centum group. So I was wondering if similarities exist in the two languages besides this phonological grouping.
> 
> You can bring up grammatical similarities as well as vocabulary. Thanks!


 
A few diglossia of Baltic/Slavonic and Indo-Iranian 

*Baltic*: _agrs_ "early" (Latvian)
*Slavonic*: N/A
*Indo-Iranian*: _ágra-_ "front, tip" (Old Indian)

*Baltic:* _anglis_ "coal" (Lithuanian)
*Slavonic:* _uhol_ id. (Slovak) _ugalj_ id. (Croatian)
*Indo-Iranian:* _angišt_ (Iranian); _áŋgāra_ (Old Indian)

*Baltic:* N/A
*Slavonic:* _blahý_ "joyful" (Czech); _blag_ "benign", "mild" (Croatian)
*Indo-Iranian:* _bǝrǝxđa_ "dear", "treasured" (Avestan)

*Baltic:* _banga_ "wave" (Lithuanian)
*Slavonic:* N/A
*Indo-Iranian:* _bhaṅga_ "wave" (Old Indian)

*Baltic:* _bez_ "without" (Latvian); _bhe_ id. (Old Prussian)
*Slavonic:* _bez "without" (Czech, Polish, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian)
*Indo-Iranian:* bahíḥ "outside" (Old Indian)

Source: Database of Indo-European etymology at http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?flags=eygtnnl
As far as I could tell from the database, these etymologies that I've picked are ones which have links only in Baltic or Slavonic and Indo-Iranian.


The centum-satem division is well-known and as pointed out is based on tendencies on how certain Proto-Indo-European velars evolved._


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## palomnik

Russian из = Farsi āz.

Aside from the numbers, it's the only item I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are others.


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

As I mentioned in the Slavic subforum I spent some time last evening with the Slovene ethimological dictionary. I was checking random words - actually I was picking out common words of Slavic origine - to see if anywhere any persian is mentioned. Guess what I have found out. Yes, there were none. In Slovene the majority od words are of Slavic origine and those which are not came to Slovene via German. All those Slavic words rooted from OCS and further from proto-Slavic and of course from IE proto-words. No explanatian gives any link to any Persian, so I must conclude that these Persian words which look similar just took a similar development from the IE proto language.
Oh, yes, I did meet a few words where a persian was mentioned. I don't remember the exact words, but in two or three cases it happened that these words have been loaned from Croatian and Croats loaned them from serbian and Serbs collected them from Turkish and Turks from Persian.


The word _naft_ has been mentioned somewhere above. I also checked this one as we say _nafta_ in Slovene. If I remember correctly we loaned this word from old German naphtha or something similar. The Germans loaned it from Latin and Romans from old Greek. Further Greeks loaned it directly from Persian. 
To be honest I really don't understand how this word could be loaned to Slovene from persian directly as people here have no connections to Persia and being under Habsburg rule didn't have much contacts to Russians, Serbs and other Slavic rules outside Habsburg monarchy. And this earth oil only became common with the the industrial revolution in the 19th century here in this part of Europe.


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## Alijsh

I agree Tolovaj_Mataj. I haven't found direct similarities so far. For example, I found these

Persian: quti; Albanian: kuti; Bulgarian: кутия (You have taken it from Greek: κουτί)
Persian: miz; Bulgarian: маса (masa); Macedonian: маса; Albanian: menca (You have taken it from Latin: mensa)


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## Frank06

Hi,


batka said:


> You can find it a bit off-topic, but I don't really get it...
> I mean in English and German it's "hundred" and "hundert" and in Dutch "honderd", but in French it's "cent", in Italian "cento", in Spanish "cien", so how can Roman languages and Germanic languages be in the same group basing on that? oO"



All these forms go back to the same sound, the shifts to /h/ (Germanic) and /s/ (Romance) are _later_ developments.
On the other hand, the kentum/satem 'division' is a bit problematic: it surely isn't an east-west division, and it is a bit weird to divide language groups on the basis of _one single_ phenomenon.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Alijsh said:


> Persian: quti; Albanian: kuti; Bulgarian: кутия (You have taken it from Greek: κουτί)
> Persian: miz; Bulgarian: маса (masa); Macedonian: маса; Albanian: menca (You have taken it from Latin: mensa)


The first one doesn't ring any bells. Ok, it does if I think Serbian: kutija (a box).
But the other one is interesting. It's _miza_ of course (a table). I'll check it, when I come home. (No, we don't name a table _stol_ like other Slavs. _Stol_ is a chair in Slovene, but the same is in Swedish.)


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## Alijsh

I found those words here "Wikipedia:Balkan linguistic union". It says you have taken one from Greek and the other from Latin. I meant I haven't found any direct similarity (other than Russian *spasiba* versus Persian *sepas* that I had written earlier in the thread).


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Alijsh said:


> I found those words here "Wikipedia:Balkan linguistic union". It says you have taken one from Greek and the other from Latin. I meant I haven't found any direct similarity (other than Russian *spasiba* versus Persian *sepas* that I had written earlier in the thread).


hmmm... Could you please explain what the Persian word sepas means? Do you know its ethimology?
I don't know any Russian, but I remember I saw once an explanation of their word спасибо (spasibo). It took me quite a while to find it, but here is the link: http://forum.wordreference.com/showpost.php?p=1847510&postcount=3
"Cпасибо" is a shortened version of the idiom "Спаси Бог!" /God save (you)!/

Does this still prove your theory?
http://forum.wordreference.com/show...1072;&#1089;&#1080;&#1073;&#1086;#post1847510


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

chung said:


> *Baltic:* _bez_ "without" (Latvian); _bhe_ id. (Old Prussian)
> *Slavonic:* *bez*_ "without" (Czech, Polish, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian)_
> *Indo-Iranian:* _bahíḥ_ "outside" (Old Indian)


Correction
In Slovene it is _brez_.


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## Alijsh

спасибо means "thanks". sepâs means the same both in Persian and kurdish. It has been spâs in Middle Persian. I just guess they are cognate and I have no claim.


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## Lugubert

Frank06 said:


> On the other hand, the kentum/satem 'division' is a bit problematic: it surely isn't an east-west division, and it is a bit weird to divide language groups on the basis of _one single_ phenomenon.


That division was scrapped when Tocharian was encountered. Tocharian A and B are the easternmost IE languages. They are mainly _kentum_ languages.


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## chung

I doubt that the centum-satem division was scrapped. It's still a valid way of organizing or thinking about the Indo-European languages. Mind you, if you're referring to the old belief that "centum" = western Indo-European and "satem" = eastern Indo-European, then there's no argument that centum-satem is invalidated by the presence of the mummies of Tocharian speakers in northwestern China. (Unless those speakers of Tocharian had even earlier  packed their bags and rode east from Western Europe... )


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## vince

Hmm looks like similarities are hard to find...

Tolovaj Matai, we're not looking for loan words from one language to another. More like words that came from a common origin that is not shared by other Indo-European languages.

The problem with words like p'at (five) is that there are Centum languages that clearly have the word (e.g. Greek penta-). Early Slavic languages simply dropped the n sound.

If you look at an etymological dictionary for common words between Indo-Iranian and Slavic, they would probably be listed as proto-IE in origin rather than Slavic/Indo-Iranian. Maybe there are so few because the period of contact between Slavic and Indo-Iranian before they diverged was very short.


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## Frank06

Hi,


chung said:


> I doubt that the centum-satem division was scrapped. It's still a valid way of organizing or thinking about the Indo-European languages. Mind you, if you're referring to the old belief that "centum" = western Indo-European and "satem" = eastern Indo-European, then there's no argument that centum-satem is invalidated by the presence of the mummies of Tocharian speakers in northwestern China. (Unless those speakers of Tocharian had even earlier  packed their bags and rode east from Western Europe... )


The Satem/Centum 'division' (better: isoglos) as a concept is completely passé. Linguists in the late 19th century made a big deal out of it, because it seemed to be an isogloss that divided east from west. What remains of the so-called big important centum/satem division after the discovery of Tocharian et. al. are a few echoes. The c/s isogloss is not more or less important than the 70 (80?) other isoglosses. And that was my point. *One *isoglos, *one* single feature is surely not enough to account for a (dramatic) split. Otherwise said, the grouping of genetically related languages is based on neither *one single* isoglos, nor on phonetic _similarities_.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Bienvenidos

Actually, studies have shown that some  people of Serbo-croatia are of Iranian origin, which means there should be some subtle similarities.


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## Lugubert

Frank06 said:


> Otherwise said, the grouping of genetically related languages is based on neither *one single* isoglos, nor on phonetic _similarities_.


I certainly support this view on isoglosses.

On phonetic "similarities", there's a web page somewhere, mathematically proving that between any two languages, related or not, you will find lots and lots and lots of word pairs that look similar.


			
				bienvenidos said:
			
		

> Actually, studies have shown that some people of Serbo-croatia are of Iranian origin, which means there should be some subtle similarities.


Try for example Colin Renfrew: _Archaeology and Language_, and you'll realize that people and languages are two different things.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Bienvenidos said:


> Actually, studies have shown that some  people of Serbo-croatia are of Iranian origin, which means there should be some subtle similarities.


Genes don't talk .
Nevertheless, the Slavic and Baltic languages do share some features with the _Indo-Iranian_ languages (mind the adjective _Indo Iranian_).

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Bienvenidos,
there exists a theory that only Croats came to Europe from Iran, the same doesn't apply to Serbs. But this is only a theory yet to be proved.

Well, there also exist Slovene people who are totally persuaded that we are not Slavs but Venetes, which came to this land even before Romans.

You can believe if you like.


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Frank,
I've always thought the language group is called Indo-*European*. Or am I wrong? From which theory is your adjective?


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## Outsider

Indo-Iranian is a subgroup of Indo-European.


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Actually I must rewrite my question for Frank:
which are those features the both groups share? It seems like you know. If you answer this, you hit the nail to its head, because this is all what this topic is about.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> There exists a theory that only Croats came to Europe from Iran, the same doesn't apply to Serbs. But this is only a theory yet to be proved.


There are good reasons to connect the word Hrvat (<Proto Sl. *xurvat(in)u) (Croat) with  Iranian *xar-wa(n)t. But here, 'Iranian' has to be understood as a linguistic term, the second part of the term 'Indo-Iranian', and not as 'from Iran', and that's a huge difference. Connections between Iranian and Slavic tribal names should not come as a surprise, due to the geographical proximity of the ancient homelands of speakers of Slavic and (some) Iranian languages (NW Pontic region). The Iranian etymology does not imply, however, that the Croations are Iranians (or Scythians, as I read somewhere), and certainly not that they came from Iran.



> which are those features the both groups share?


- a lot of loans due to Iranian (cultural) dominance in the Pontic region
- the already mentioned centum-satem isoglos
- the RUKI rule
- some shared morphological features (see here, 1/3 of the page).

I'll do my best to find more information on the 1st, 3rd and 4th  point this weekend.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## roh3x2n

Outsider said:


> Indo-Iranian is a subgroup of Indo-European.


I think you meant that Indo-European is a subgroup of Indo-Iranian.


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## Frank06

Hi,


roh3x2n said:


> I think you meant that Indo-European is a subgroup of Indo-Iranian.



No, it really is the other way round. Indo-Iranian is a subgroup of the Indo-European language family, as Outsider pointed out already. Or, if you want, Indo-Iranian is a branch on the IE language tree. This is [*edit*] mainly solely [*/edit*] contested by some extremist Hindutva pseudo-linguists who claim that Sanskrit (or another Indic, Vedic, whatever 'Indian' language) is the original Proto-IE language, a claim which can easily be dismissed.


Wikipedia is not my favourite source, but the article is concise and clear enough for our purpose.


Groetjes,

Frank


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## roh3x2n

As far as I know the Asian started imageration through Europe.
So how come that Indo-iranian is a subgroup of Indo-European?

The link that you pasted is on Wikipedia,It can be written by anyone.


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## Frank06

Hi,


roh3x2n said:


> As far as I know the Asian started imageration through Europe. So how come that Indo-iranian is a subgroup of Indo-European?


I have the impression that your searching for too much in the commonly accepted terms IIr and IE. The phrases "Indo-Iranian" and "(Proto-)Indo-European" don't say a thing about the origins of PIE, nor about the directions of migrations, nor about how the IE languages spread.
Once the term Indo-Germanic was popular (still to be found in some (German) publications, and after the second WW, the term Indo-_Aryans_ was abandonned. 
I don't think the terms as such really matter: Indo-European and Indo-Iranian are commonly accepted, which makes it easy to talk about it without having to define the terms again and again. But, well, they could have given them any other name.



> The link that you pasted is on Wikipedia,It can be written by anyone.


As said before, I am not a fan of Wikipedia, but sometimes it is easier to give a link to a Wiki article that reflects the modern concensus, then spending time on searching for other sources (*you *could have done that by now, no?) or referring to titles of books and the resp. pages.
(Read: sometimes I am too lazy to search for other on line stuff. And as written before, I think the Wiki-article is good enough for our purpose.) 

Any which way: non-Wikipedia articles on Indo-Iranian being a subgroup of the IE language family:
- Texas univ
- Encyclopedia Britannica
- Cyril Basaev (see previous post)
- C. Watkins (a nice, short and very basic intro to PIE and IE linguistics)
- Titus project
- And virtually any other electronic _and _printed source on the subject matter.


Groetjes,

Frank


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## Lugubert

roh3x2n said:


> As far as I know the Asian started imageration through Europe.
> So how come that Indo-iranian is a subgroup of Indo-European?


I'm not sure that I decipher this quote correctly, but I'm afraid that you are mixing up people and languages. They don't necessarily follow one another.

I don't buy everything Colin Renfrew writes, but you really should read his  _Archaeology and Language_ to get a feeling for the difference. HE has some extremely interesting theories on how the IE languages spread out.


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## Milosh

I am new to this forum, so maybe I missed something. As a native speaker of Serbian and a learner of Farsi I noticed some simmilarities:

verb "to be" in Farsi is _*budan*_, and in Serbian *biti*
The Present Tense of the verb budan/biti is:

Farsi          Serbian                  Farsi         Serbian
      Singular                              Plural
*1. hastam  jesam (yesam)      hastim       jesmo (yesmo)*
*2. hasti      jesi (yesi)                 hastid        jeste  (yeste)*
*3. hast       jeste (yeste)           hastand     jesu   (yesu*

Negation:

*1. nistam   nisam                      nistim          nismo*
*2. nisti        nisi                           nistid           niste *
*3. nist         nije                          nistand        nisu*

Also verb "to give" in Farsi is *dadan*, and in Serbian is *dati.*


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## modus.irrealis

Frank06 said:


> the term Indo-_Aryans_ was abandonned.



Just a side question -- I always thought Indo-Aryan referred to the India part of Indo-Iranian (so Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, etc.) -- does it, or maybe did it use to, also have a broader meaning?


----------



## Frank06

Hi,


modus.irrealis said:


> Just a side question -- I always thought Indo-Aryan referred to the India part of Indo-Iranian (so Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, etc.) -- does it, or maybe did it use to, also have a broader meaning?



Oops, you're right.

Groetjes,

Frank


----------



## Tolovaj_Mataj

Frank06 said:


> Hi,
> 
> There are good reasons to connect the word Hrvat (<Proto Sl. *xurvat(in)u) (Croat) with Iranian *xar-wa(n)t. But here, 'Iranian' has to be understood as a linguistic term, the second part of the term 'Indo-Iranian', and not as 'from Iran', and that's a huge difference. Connections between Iranian and Slavic tribal names should not come as a surprise, due to the geographical proximity of the ancient homelands of speakers of Slavic and (some) Iranian languages (NW Pontic region). The Iranian etymology does not imply, however, that the Croations are Iranians (or Scythians, as I read somewhere), and certainly not that they came from Iran.


I've just finished reading Patrick J Geary's "The myth of nations" in Slovene translation (of course). His theory about the Croats is far different from what you wrote above. Btw, he doesn't connect Slav peoples with Iranians at all. Unless you think that Avars = Iranians. He didn't write this anywhere.



> - a lot of loans due to Iranian (cultural) dominance in the Pontic region
> - the already mentioned centum-satem isoglos
> - the RUKI rule
> - some shared morphological features (see here, 1/3 of the page).


I can only speak for Slovene. As I said before, I have played with this book: Snoj, Marko: Slovenski etimološki slovar http://cobiss4.izum.si/scripts/cobiss?ukaz=DISP&id=2308567460701612&rec=5&sid=1

and I couldn't find any loans from Persian/Iranian if they were not loaned from Turkish through Serbian and Croatian. All panslavic words end somewhere in proto-Indo-European language. Well, you can say the author of this dictionary was biased, but this is the only ethimological dictionary of the contemporary Slovene language available.

I guss I would believe you only if you find strong Persian influence on OCS language.



> I'll do my best to find more information on the 1st, 3rd and 4th point this weekend.


Yes, please do.


----------



## Frank06

Hi,


Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> I've just finished reading Patrick J Geary's "The myth of nations" in Slovene translation (of course). His theory about the Croats is far different from what you wrote above. Btw, he doesn't connect Slav peoples with Iranians at all. Unless you think that Avars = Iranians. He didn't write this anywhere.


I could only read the digest of the book, and it sure looks interesting. 

But does he tell about the *word* Hrvat and Iranian *xar-wa(n)t? 
Does he say something about the various Slavic speaking tribes known as "Croats" which have roamed various areas including the area of Krakow on the upper Vistula (that is, in the low country north of the Carpathians), Subcarpathian Ukraine, etc.?

I am the last one to believe that "Thee Croatians" came from "Persia". But that doesn't exclude that the word 'hrvat' has *Iranian* roots (see below for a note on Persian and Iranian). 
All in all, it's not more or less weird than 'Franks' and 'French', not more or less weird than the history of the (name of the) various peoples called 'Goths'.



> I can only speak for Slovene. As I said before, I have played with this book: Snoj, Marko: Slovenski etimološki slovar http://cobiss4.izum.si/scripts/cobiss?ukaz=DISP&id=2308567460701612&rec=5&sid=1


I'll pm you a longer quote from another e-group. I can't put it here since it is against the WR rules. Nevertheless, the person who wrote it expressed his doubts about the suggested etymology.



> and I couldn't find any loans from Persian/Iranian if they were not loaned from Turkish through Serbian and Croatian.


A quick search in some very general articles:

- "A few spiritual elements were borrowed from the Indo-Iranian speech community: notably LCS *bogŭ 'god' and *bogatŭ 'rich' correspond to Avestan _baga_ 'god', Sanskrit _bhagas_ 'distributor' and _bhagavant-_ 'honorable'..." 
Source and see here and here.

I do agree that 2/3 words (so far) isn't particularly overwhelming, but I'll try to come back at this later.

I couldn't find any further information about this one, but given your explanation, the article "Early Slavic-Indo-Iranian Lexical Contacts.- IN: Proceedings of the Annual    UCLA Indo-European Conference, 2000" must be a very short one.
[I'll ask around to see if I can get it from someone.]



> I guss I would believe you only if you find strong Persian influence on OCS language.


Maybe I am nitpicking now, but please re-read what I wrote so far. I am not talking about *Persian* influence, I am talking about *Iranian* influence. This difference, which has been pointed out already in this thread, is quite crucial. In this whole context, Persian does not equal Iranian at all; and in this context, Iranian doesn't mean 'from Iran'.
Nevertheless, I will do my best to come up with some more information.

Slaapwel
(Good night, it's late/early here 

Frank


----------



## Frank06

Hi,

The following might contain quite some repitions, so my apologies in advance. I added some extra information, and tried to sum up a few things. But alas I had to choose between the options 'enough spare time during the weekend minus the proper resources' and 'no time during the working week but plenty of resources in the local university library'.



Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> His [Geary's] theory about the Croats is far different from what you wrote above.


I think here we stumble upon the first problem which sneaked into this thread. It has been pointed out by several people already that 'people' doesn't equal 'language', that genes don't talk, etc. So far, I haven't said a thing about 'the Croatians', I didn't say or meant to imply that one day the 'Croatians' took the train (or caravan, whatever) _en masse, _and leftPersia for nowadays Croatia. I'll leave that to the so-called "Irano-Croatianists", Hindutva "doctors", and other psuedo-linguists and historians on the fringe.
I only said something about the _name_ Hrvat. The best possible etymology of this name, though not without problems, connects 'Hrvat' with an *Iranian* word. 
Maybe it's too black and white a statement, but I have the impression that in ancient times _names_ wandered around even more than people (in the sense of 'a group of persons', rather than 'tribe' or '(national) people'.)
Genes, culture and languages are three separate things to consider, though are often lumped together and abused by so-called historians to make the wildest claims about the ethnogenesis of a 'people' (or 'nation', or 'tribe') X or Y.



> and I couldn't find any loans from Persian/Iranian if they were not loaned from Turkish through Serbian and Croatian. All panslavic words end somewhere in proto-Indo-European language.


I can't follow this argument very well. Any which way, the quote above doesn't seem to exclude loans from (Indo-)Iranian languages (from now on IIr), since IIr languages belong to the very same IE language family. But that's probably not what you mean.
Maybe you can start here.
I am aware that this is a controversial topic, and that a lot of people disagree with a lot of other people, but following words are commonly believed to have IIr roots:  *xorn-; bogú, *ave (OCS jave), *bergú, *xorniti, *radi, ... 
Others (I couldn't doublecheck): *gatati, *divъ, *rajь, *patriti, *sobaka, *toporъ, *xvala, *xata, ...



> I guss I would believe you only if you find strong Persian influence on OCS language.


I don't understand this argument either. I am not here to claim a "strong Persian [or IIr] influence on OCS" or Proto-Slavic.
The topic of this thread is 'Slavic and _Indo-Iranian_ languages: similarities', not 'the Persian (or IIr) roots of Proto-Slavic' (which would indeed be nonsense).
And here we have a second problem: the use of terms 'Persian', 'Iranian' and 'Indo-Iranian'. In short: Persian is an Iranian language, Iranian languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, which in itself is a subgroup of the IE language family. Iranian languages are not confined to Iran (or historical Persia), and in the context of historical comparative linguistics, 'Iranian' doesn't mean 'from (nowadays) Iran _at all_. I hope that we can agree upon this rather _standard terminology_ by now. 

So far, I only gave a few indications that Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages share some features, share some similarities, and this from a historical linguistic point of view. 

The already mentioned _centum-satem isoglos_ is quite important. IIr and Balto-Slavic are often called the 'core satem languages'. It is believed that the satem developments aren't independent changes, given the fact that the languages affected were more or less contiguous. The (cultural) area in which historians believe that (Proto-)Slavic - IIr contacts took place is the so-called Chernyakhov culture and in the Pontic steppes.
Add to the Centum-Satem isogloss the RUKI rule, which are found in both Slavic and IIr languages. In short, PIE s > s^ (sh) before r u K i. (see here, here).
Other phonetic similarities: Iranian loss of aspiration in voiced aspirated stops is shared by shared with Balto-Slavic. The morphological features shared by IIr and Slavic can be found here (1/3 of the page).

All in all, it adds up when talking about similarities, no?

Anyway, comments, additions, corrections and critiques are more than welcome.

Groetjes,

Frank


----------



## chung

Frank06 said:


> Hi,
> 
> The Satem/Centum 'division' (better: isoglos) as a concept is completely passé. Linguists in the late 19th century made a big deal out of it, because it seemed to be an isogloss that divided east from west. What remains of the so-called big important centum/satem division after the discovery of Tocharian et. al. are a few echoes. The c/s isogloss is not more or less important than the 70 (80?) other isoglosses. And that was my point. *One *isoglos, *one* single feature is surely not enough to account for a (dramatic) split. Otherwise said, the grouping of genetically related languages is based on neither *one single* isoglos, nor on phonetic _similarities_.
> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Frank


 
Given your latest posting, I don't understand your assertion that the concept of the centum/satem isogloss is completely passé, when what I had posted was that the centum/satem isogloss is still important, but just invalid as a way of dividing IE languages into centum = west and satem = eastern because of Tocharian.

For the sake of your examples, it seems helpful in comparing Balto-Slavonic and Indo-Iranian, eh?

Anyway, the idea of foreign names for ethnic groups is not restricted to 'Hrvat". In Hungary, the people call themselves "Magyar" (probably a compound of Finno-Ugric and Turkic) but many outside Hungary call them "Hungarian", "Hongrois", "Ungarisch", "Ungarese" etc. (a corruption of a probable Turkic compound). The Turkic name ("Hungarian" etc.) of the Magyars doesn't mean that these people were Turkic or were dominated by Turkic members in their tribes. (Magyars speak a Finno-Ugric language, but like many tribes in antiquity mixed with neighbouring peoples. Their biological origins show varying influences from Turko-Mongolian, Finno-Ugrian, Iranian and later Slavonic and Germanic people)


----------



## Frank06

Hi,


chung said:


> Given your latest posting, I don't understand your assertion that the concept of the centum/satem isogloss is completely passé, when what I had posted was that the centum/satem isogloss is still important, but just invalid as a way of dividing IE languages into centum = west and satem = eastern because of Tocharian.


I'm sorry to have been unclear: it's probably not the first and it certainly will not be the last time . 
What I meant was the idea of a 'big divide' (be it geographical or _not_) on the basis of _one_ isoglos is out of date. In the history of historical linguistics, the perceived east-west division by the centum-satem isoglos, which prooved to be wrong, is still having its  consequences, viz. the weight given to that c/s thing is still overrated. 
But all in all it would be the same as creating a dividing line between IE languages on the basis of one randomly chosen phenomenon at a randomly chosen point of time, let's say, the loss of aspiration of PIE *bh.



> Anyway, the idea of foreign names for ethnic groups is not restricted to 'Hrvat". In Hungary, the people call themselves "Magyar" (probably a compound of Finno-Ugric and Turkic) but many outside Hungary call them "Hungarian", "Hongrois", "Ungarisch", "Ungarese" etc. (a corruption of a probable Turkic compound). The Turkic name ("Hungarian" etc.) of the Magyars doesn't mean that these people were Turkic or were dominated by Turkic members in their tribes. (Magyars speak a Finno-Ugric language, but like many tribes in antiquity mixed with neighbouring peoples. Their biological origins show varying influences from Turko-Mongolian, Finno-Ugrian, Iranian and later Slavonic and Germanic people)


Agreed.

Groetjes,

Frank


----------



## mugibil

As a speaker of a Slavic language, who has dabbled in Indo-Iranian languages just a little, I have indeed encountered a few surprising Indo-Iranian cognates with Slavic that I haven't seen in other Indo-European languages (namely Germanic or Romance languages, which are the only groups I'm fairly familiar with). I have checked, these are indeed cognates following sound laws and not just coincidences. I will be giving Russian examples as representative of Slavic. The Indo-Iranian examples are from various languages, because I'm looking at some incomplete Swadesh lists; ideally, I would have used only Sanskrit and Avestan, but I don't have time to check such dictionaries.


1. long: Sanskrit dīrghá - Russian долгий (dolgiy)
2. to know: Sanskrit jɲā - Russian знать (znatj)
3. earth: Persian zamin - Russian земя (zemja)
4. to live: Kalderash Romani zhuvel - Russian жить, живу (zhitj, 1st pers. zhivu)
5. dry: Hindi sūkhā - Russian сухой (sukhoj)
6. fruit: Hindi phal - Russian плод (plod)
7. fire: Sanskrit agni - Russian огонь (ogonj)
[8. road: Bengali pôth - Russian путь (putj)] (haven't checked this one.)

Some cognates are present in other languages, too, but they are more obvious in Indo-Iranian:

1. woman/wife: Persian zan - Russian жена (zhena), as already mentioned.
2. yellow: Persian zard - Russian жолтый (zholtyj)
3. meat: Hindi mā̃s - Russian мясо (mjaso)


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## mugibil

This is more like what it should like, I guess:

1. long: OCS dlŭgŭ, Russian dolgij - Sanskrit dīrghá, Avestan darekha
2. to know: OCS znati - Sanskrit jñā
3. earth: OCS zemĭ - Avestan zam
4. live: OCS živŭ - Sanskrit jīvá, Avestan jvô
5. fire: OCS ognĭ - Sanskrit agniḥ
6. fruit: OCS plodŭ - Sanskrit phalaṃ

Some cognates are present in other languages, too, but they are more obvious in Indo-Iranian:

1. woman/wife: OCS žena - Vedic Sanskrit jáni, Persian zan
2. yellow: OCS žlŭtŭ, Russian žëltij - Persian zard
3. meat: OCS męso - Sanskrit māṃsaṃ


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## Awwal12

Well, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages have many similarities - no wonder, since they have the common origin. But could you, for instance, statistically prove (basing on random selection from the basic vocabulary) that Germanic languages are more far from Slavic ones?.. Since Germanic and Slavic languages also have many similar pairs. And, of course, it is only vocabulary.

By the way, it is not very correct to compare OCS and Sanskrit - since the first is approximately twice younger, whereas Sanskrit is probably of the same age as the common Balto-Slavic linguistic community... Probably when Sanskrit was spoken 4000 years ago, even the First Germanic Sound Shift hasn't happened yet!


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## mugibil

Awwal12 said:


> Well, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages have many similarities - no wonder, since they have the common origin. But could you, for instance, statistically prove (basing on random selection from the basic vocabulary) that Germanic languages are more far from Slavic ones?..



That's an interesting question. I suppose one could try to do that, if there were any practical interest in it. Measuring "similarity" is very tricky and I don't want to even start discussing the question how you actually define similarity - preserved similar vocabulary, known common origin, preserved similar sounds, known genealogical relatedness, or perhaps even grammatical similarity. 

Otherwise, one could do a couple of things. One count the preserved cognates with the same meaning by looking at Swadesh lists for example - I guess anyone of us could do it for fun, and I've no idea what the result would be and what value it would have. It's harder to measure the degree of sound similarity - intuitively, it's clear that OCS žena (жена) and Sanskrit jani (джани) are closer to each other than to Gothic qino (куино), but measuring that objectively based on sound features would be a lot of trouble (historically, of course, this is more or less the same centum-satem thingie that started this thread, and is taken as a evidence of  genealogical or at least geographical closeness at some point in time). So yes, certainly I was expressing a subjective impression - perhaps, if I had learnt Germanic last, I would have been amazed by some striking Germanic-Slavic correspondences that I now take for granted.



Awwal12 said:


> By the way, it is not very correct to compare OCS and Sanskrit - since the first is approximately twice younger, whereas Sanskrit is probably of the same age as the common Balto-Slavic linguistic community... Probably when Sanskrit was spoken 4000 years ago, even the First Germanic Sound Shift hasn't happened yet!



I think it's a good idea to compare the earliest attested written languages from each group. It's also common practice to do so.


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## neonrider

vince said:


> Hi everyone,
> 
> This is sort of related to the Farsi vs. European languages thread. I'd like to know what similarities exist between Slavic languages (Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc) and Indo-Iranian ones (Kurdish, Farsi, Hindi, Panjabi, Bangla, etc) that DON'T exist between Indo-Iranian and western European languages such as English, French, Spanish, German, etc.
> 
> Because I heard that within the Indo-European languages, one can distinguish two groups: CENTUM  languages and SATEM languages (based on each group of language's way of saying "hundred"). Slavic languages (as well as Baltic ones) belong to the Satem group along with Indo-Iranian, but Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages belong to the Centum group. So I was wondering if similarities exist in the two languages besides this phonological grouping.
> 
> You can bring up grammatical similarities as well as vocabulary. Thanks!



You say that Baltic languages belong to "satem" group? Indeed, Lithuanian "Shimtas" by my opinion is a transitional word between CENTUM and SATEM or it even belongs to the Centum group.

Shi- <= Ce- (se), Ci- (si), Ci- (tshi)
-mt- <= -nt
Shimt <= Sent
Shimt => semt* => sent => cent
*Semt in lithuanian means "to draw, to scoop" (water).
**Samtis = a scoop ("100" drops of liquid?)

Also, what does CENTUM have to do with Germanic HUNDRED, HUNDERT?


----------



## neonrider

Alijsh said:


> Unfortunately I don't know any of Slavic languages. I have just a smattering of Russian and can read Cyrillic. In Russian, they say "spasiba" (thank you) and we have "sepâs" (spâs in Middle Persian) that might be cognate. Also we say "naft" and they say "neft" (oil). However, it might be a loanword from Persian.
> 
> I'm trying to find basic vocabulary of mentioned Slavic languages in the Internet to extract words that seem cognate. From Polish I found these:
> 
> Jestem - hastam (I am)
> sześć - shesh (six)
> 
> If you know any vocabulary list please introduce me.
> 
> ***
> Dear Docoleg, estekân (Tajiks say stakân) is a Russian loanword in Persian just like samâvar, doroshke (carriage), etc.



In Lithuanian 6 = sheshi' and 5 = penki'.


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## Christo Tamarin

Alijsh said:


> I agree Tolovaj_Mataj. I haven't found direct similarities so far. For example, I found these
> 
> Persian: quti; Albanian: kuti; Bulgarian: кутия (You have taken it from Greek: κουτί)
> Persian: miz; Bulgarian: маса (masa); Macedonian: маса; Albanian: menca (You have taken it from Latin: mensa)


 


Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> The first one doesn't ring any bells. Ok, it does if I think Serbian: kutija (a box).
> But the other one is interesting. It's _miza_ of course (a table). I'll check it, when I come home. (No, we don't name a table _stol_ like other Slavs. _Stol_ is a chair in Slovene, but the same is in Swedish.)


 
The word *masa* is common to Turkish/Slavo-Balkanic/Romano-Balkanic. It did not exist before AD1800. Probably, Ladino-speakers (Sephards) brought that word into Balkans about AD1830 to denote a new kind of furniture. The Slovene *miza *seems to be another borrowing from Romance (from Latin *mensa* again). I do not know if these words have any connection to the Persian *miz*.


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## mugibil

It's cool to chat like this, but sometimes I think we're going too far; when something isn't clear, and it clearly isn't a forum invention, one should just read textbooks or research about it rather than argue. I'm sure there's a wiki article about it.



neonrider said:


> You say that Baltic languages belong to "satem" group? Indeed, Lithuanian "Shimtas" by my opinion is a transitional word between CENTUM and SATEM or it even belongs to the Centum group.
> 
> Shi- <= Ce- (se), Ci- (si), Ci- (tshi)
> -mt- <= -nt
> Shimt <= Sent
> Shimt => semt* => sent => cent
> *Semt in lithuanian means "to draw, to scoop" (water).
> **Samtis = a scoop ("100" drops of liquid?)



The centum - satem thing is about stops versus fricatives or affricates (specifically sibilants). "Centum" is pronounced "kentum" in classical Latin, with a stop.  Shimtas is a fricative (specifically a sibilant), so it's "satem". The main misunderstanding is that the distinction should make sense synchronically - it doesn't, it is only about history and origin - whether at a certain point far away in time the language belonged to the stop group or to the fricative group. So although almost all the modern Romance languages have come to have fricatives or affricates in cento/cent etc (chento), this is a later development; they belong to the centum group.



neonrider said:


> Also, what does CENTUM have to do with Germanic HUNDRED, HUNDERT?



First Germanic consonant shift. Stops become fricatives. k > x/h just like p > f (pied - foot) and t > th (tu - thou). But as I said, it's not supposed to be a synchronic division.


----------



## neonrider

Thanks for the explanation, it is appreciated. Yet I did not really get it, perhaps I need to become a linguist to understand it completely. "K" instead of a "C" is rather a Central-East European phenomenon, isn't it?
That is German and Baltic etc. I know examples when "k" becomes a soft "ch" in Turkic languages for example. Perhaps a "K" sound could become a "S" as well. I know there are Romance languages and then there are Germanic languages and English is quite a mix of both, but Swedish or German is rather not.

Since I am not a linguist, I "argue" it just as the 99% of the population would understand and take it. Since languages are created mostly by regular folks, and not linguists, we assume we can say our word as well, even when we may be wrong. I just point out how it looks to me personally. I don't claim to be correct, but I tried my luck. 

And since any sound can become anything else, then I also want to add that we can always make a pig out of a duck. Take a look:

DUCK => DWUCK => DFUGH => PFUGG => PFIGG => PIG

( it's probably just a joke  )

Yet I believe that this is how some linguists "operate"  No pun intended. I know, I am wrong, but I hope I'm forgiven.

Oh, and another one - *KENT*ETI (Lit. "to suffer") suffer from a blow of 100 rods, for instance. Perhaps I'm just improvising. ;-) I guess not... but I believe that a suffering is older than arithmetics and separating language groups by the way they pronounced "100" I think is a little bit inappropriate, but linguists know better, no argument there. Big Brother says - we listen and obey. ;-)


----------



## clevermizo

neonrider said:


> And since any sound can become anything else, then I also want to add that we can always make a pig out of a duck. Take a look:
> 
> DUCK => DWUCK => DFUGH => PFUGG => PFIGG => PIG
> 
> ( it's probably just a joke  )



And a humorous one, too! But in linguistic science, certain sound changes are more _probable_ than others. It's a probability game. Suppose there are 9 stop consonants in English (D and P are both "Stop consonants" - meaning the airway is completely blocked and then opened again). So, the probability, giving every stop equal weight, of changing D>P is 1/9. Or if you don't want to consider phonological groups at all, there are about 24 phonemic consonants in English. So any change of X>Y has a probability of ~1/24, giving equal weight.

However, in the case of P>F, [p] and [f] are part of a group of 5 sounds in English made by making physical contact with a lip or both of the lips (the others being [m], *, [v]). So, giving everybody equal weight, the probability of P>F is 1/5.

So, with my crude assumptions, there is approximately a 20% chance of P>F, but comparatively an 4-11% chance of D>P. Obviously D>P is still possible, but P>F is about 2-fold more possible. The probabilities in real life depend on more parameters, but an estimation can still be calculated.

Rules of sound change are dictated by a couple things: 1) history: What sound changes have occurred in history? What can we infer by comparing languages and by older written records, 2) phonology and probability: What sound changes are likely? Given where they are produced in the mouth, etc. All sound changes are possible, but some are more probable than others for physical reasons.

This is getting way off topic, but naturally there are other reasons for sound change. There could be cultural or social reasons that have nothing to do with the above. But typically, without a dictator mandating his or her subjects all speak a certain way, things proceed naturally (just as in biology) more or less according to probability.




			but I believe that a suffering is older than arithmetics and separating language groups by the way they pronounced "100" I think is a little bit inappropriate,
		
Click to expand...

And it has been very well established earlier in this thread that many linguists also agree with you. It seems this method of separating language groups is considered by some to be very old fashioned.*


----------



## neonrider

I like people like CLEVERMIZO. They are polite, kind, helpful and have a good sense of humour  Thanks very much for explaining it in a human language ;-)

The way I felt about this CENTUM-SATEM separation, it serves well to keep the Eastern part of Europe from Western parts of Europe both economically, culturally and politically. Today that has become more difficult. Yes, you may call it a conspiracy theory, but even linguists are sometimes paid to do things for the politics.

Take a look at the map # 2 from the top:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum-Satem_isogloss

The CENTUM-SATEM line 100% matches the EAST-WEST or CAPITALIST-SOCIALIST line that was dividing Europe until 1989-91.


----------



## sokol

The distinction between Kentum and Satem languages has of course no relation with politics, this is at best an urban myth (but not even that as I've never heard that one before, and urban myths are well-known for being ... well: known, for one, and believed by many ).

Kentum/Satem distinction is about a fundamental sound change - it's as simple as that; and a well-researched one too. It is _*not*_ about two consonants but a consistent consonant phoneme shift (the languages which shifted consonants were the Satem-languages).

Anyway, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages are rather closely related to begin with (that is, within the Indo-European group in general); and also Indo-European linguists usually agree that there must have been a period in time when Slavs and Iranians lived as close neighbours, because some Iranian words have been loaned to Slavic languages. This however is only a loan relationship - not a "closer" genetic one (the closest language group related to Slavic of course is the Baltic group).

Germanic languages, on the other hand, are _quite_ distinct from Slavic languages - and those similarities you notice, Awwal12, are due to cultural influence which resulted in plenty of loans.


----------



## Frank06

neonrider said:


> Take a look at the map # 2 from the top:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum-Satem_isogloss
> The CENTUM-SATEM line 100% matches the EAST-WEST or CAPITALIST-SOCIALIST line that was dividing Europe until 1989-91.


You should also have looked at some dates given in the article: 1890/1897, that's way before the capitalist-socialist divide.

Now, can we bring the topic back to Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages and leave the antiquated division centum-satem/west-east (which is about sounds, not about letters or words) for another thread? We can also discuss there in how far the divide centum/satem was under strain after the discovery and descriptions of Tocharian (early 20th century) and Hittite (1902/1917). 

Frank


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## Frank06

*Hi,*

*The topic, as the title of the thread indicates, is about Indo-Iranian and Slavic languages. *

*Other topics can be discussed in other (slash new) threads.*

*Thank you.*

*Frank*
*Moderator EHL*


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## koniecswiata

Slavic and IndoIranian languages share some commonalities because they:

1.  Both are Indo European languages
2.  Probably were spoken in nearby areas at one point (Ukraine-Southern Russia more or less).  This seems to be backed by words of IndoIranian origin in Ugric languages of the Volga region.

On the other hand, the satem vs. centum "divide" looks at one isogloss.  No more than that.  

Also, a Polish linguist, Witold Manczak did a study by counting etymologically related pairs and found that the BaltoSlavic languages had somewhat more in common (number of related words--discounting later borrowings) with Germanic than with IndoIranian.  Overall, languages that were in closer geographical proximity tended to have more in common (shared vocabulary roots) than languages that were geographically farther apart.  That doesn't seem like a big surprise.

Many of the cognates given in previous posts struck me as largely having cognates also in Germanic, Italic, or other IndoEuropean languages.  Slavic "zhena" is a cognate with English "queen" and Greek "gyne".  Slavic "znat'" is a cognate with English "know" and Latin" gnos-"  Sorry, if I didn't put the IndoIranian cognates here, but they were listed previously with the Slavic words, while the other IndoEuropean branches were left out. 

It's very difficult to prove particular relations between particular branches of IndoEuropean languages.  It's just known that they are ALL related with each other.


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## mugibil

koniecswiata said:


> Many of the cognates given in previous posts struck me as largely having cognates also in Germanic, Italic, or other IndoEuropean languages.  Slavic "zhena" is a cognate with English "queen" and Greek "gyne".  Slavic "znat'" is a cognate with English "know" and Latin" gnos-"  Sorry, if I didn't put the IndoIranian cognates here, but they were listed previously with the Slavic words, while the other IndoEuropean branches were left out.



Yes, I did mention that "Some cognates are present in other languages, too, but they are more obvious in Indo-Iranian", including zhena - gyne - qino/queen. But I was indeed wrong to leave out znati/jñā from the list of these cognates - it crossed my mind that it seems to correspond to English know, Greek gnoo- as in gnostic and Latin (g)n- as in nosco and cognitus, but I wasn't 100% sure. I guess I was never intuitively struck by the similarity between znati and gignooskoo/know, while I was struck by the similarity betwen znati and jñā-. I think most people would react in the same way (though I might be wrong about that).

Anyway, as the isoglosses given in the wikipedia article ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum-Satem_isogloss#Alternative_views], scroll downwards) show, there don't seem to be many Slavic - Indo-Iranian inherited similarities beyond the centum-satem thing. Another issue is whether there are remarkable _synchronic_, _typological_ similarities between the _modern_ Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian (grammar, cases etc.). It would be interesting to compare them; I think they would be vastly different, but it would be a cool thing to do anyway.


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## mugibil

clevermizo said:


> So, with my crude assumptions, there is approximately a 20% chance of P>F, but comparatively an 4-11% chance of D>P. Obviously D>P is still possible, but P>F is about 2-fold more possible. The probabilities in real life depend on more parameters, but an estimation can still be calculated.



Sound change is not arbitrary, it's not a matter of just any sound turning into any other possible sound. Sounds are not just an unstructured list, they share features with each other and form groups of similar sounds. /k/ doesn't just turn into /m/, they are too different. Usually it's one or two feature changes at a time, and these are often motivated by the context (surrounding) of the sound. /d/ > /p/ is virtually impossible as a direct change, it should undergo devoicing (/d/>/t/ or /b/>/p/) and labialization (/d/ > /b/ or /t/ > /p/ ) as two separate changes, and I would expect the latter to only occur in the vicinity of rounded vowels or labial consonants.



clevermizo said:


> Neonrider wrote:
> but I believe that a suffering is older than arithmetics and separating language groups by the way they pronounced "100" I think is a little bit inappropriate,
> 
> And it has been very well established earlier in this thread that *many linguists also agree with you.* It seems this method of separating language groups is considered by some to be very old fashioned.



That statement is very far from being accurate, to put it mildly. The point is that all instances of sound 1 turn into sound 2, and this includes all kinds of words, everyday or abstract, counting-related or feeling-related. The choice of the word for hundred in this case was completely arbitrary, one could have chosen among many other words. This method is not old-fashioned, it's the only one available, and no linguist would agree with such reasoning; what's old-fashioned is just the idea that the specific centum/satem difference corresponds to a major division into two IE full-fledged dialects with many other differences.


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## koniecswiata

Mungu,

That is true that people--well, those people who notice language-related things--would notice the znati/jña similarity before noticing znati/know/gnosco--precisely because of the k(g) to s(z) sound change that Slavic and Indo-Iranian both went through in relation to those sounds.  I read somewhere that in Baltic that same sound change did not go through completely, and that some of the "k" were preserved.  Of course, that doesn't make "know/gnosco" less related.

As for typological matters, I read somewhere that modern Indian languages deriving from Sanskrit (Hindi, etc...) are largely analytical, or word issolating languages, not like Sanskrit which was highly inflected (synthetic).  That is one of the big differences between them and Sanskrit.  So, the situation was much like what happened to Latin when it gave rise to modern Romance Languages, or Modern English in relation to Anglo Saxon (also inflected, even with dual number).  Besides, I think typological matters don't necessarily go hand in hand with languague family relatedness as we understand it, but may be more related to Sprachbund (areal features)--which might mean thinking of things in other terms for groupings--but that would be going off topic here.


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## Orion7

Frank06 said:


> The already mentioned _centum-satem isoglos_ is quite important. IIr and Balto-Slavic are often called the 'core satem languages'. It is believed that the satem developments aren't independent changes, given the fact that the languages affected were more or less contiguous.


Baltic languages are not true _satem_ languages, in German linguist's W.P. Schmid's opinion Baltic languages are _kentum_ languages which are interleaved by some _satem_ language (Scythian, Thracian). This opinion is based on many Baltic words which are _kentum_ ones.
Compare Latvian:
_a*k*mens_ 'stone' / a*s*mens 'blade' vs Greek. _akmōn,akmē_, Skr. _ašmā_, Ave. _asman_
_*k*uņa_ 'bitch' / *s*uns 'dog' vs Greek _kuōn_, Skr. _šva, šunas_, Ave. _spā, sunam_
_*k*aukt_ 'to yell' / _*s*aukt_ 'to call'
_*k*vitēt_ 'to blossom' / _*s*vitēt_ 'to dawn'
_at*k*ala_ 'ice-up ' / _*s*als_ 'cold'
_*k*vēpt_ 'to blacken with smoke' / _*s*vēpt_ 'to fumigate' vs Greek _kapnos_ 'smoke'
_*k*veldēt_ 'to burn' / _*s*veldēt_ 'to burn'
_*k*lausīt_ 'to listen' / _*s*lavēt_ 'to praise' vs Slav. _slušati_, Lat _auscultāre_.
Lithuanian is more satemized than Latvian as it observes _r.u.k.i._ law whereas Latvian doesn't (_taut*iš*kas_ vs _taut*is*ks_ 'national'). As also Lithuanian is closer to Sanskrit whereas Latvian is closer to Avestan and Old Persian (_šuo & šva, ašmuo & ašmā_ vs _suns & sunas, asmens & asman, zeme & zamī_) due to persistent contacts with Iranian tribe Scythians (cf. Latvian place-names _Vārkava, Barkava, Var(a)kļāni_, Scythian _varkas_ 'wolf'). Basing on my personal research I have made a conclusion that Latvian (Latgallian) language originally was a language of Iranian group (closely related to Scythian) which was later heavily lithuanized, this fact is attested in multiple Finnish loanwords from North-East Baltic languages (e.g. Old Latgallian), like _sata, vandā, deksan, heinä, heimo, leipä, sisar, paimen, taivas, silta_, very similar to Iranian ones.


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## neonrider

Orion7 said:


> Baltic languages are not true _satem_ languages, in German linguist's W.P. Schmid's opinion Baltic languages are _kentum_ languages which are interleaved by some _satem_ language (Scythian, Thracian). This opinion is based on many Baltic words which are _kentum_ ones.
> Compare Latvian:
> _a*k*mens_ 'stone' / a*s*mens 'blade' vs Greek. _akmōn,akmē_, Skr. _ašmā_, Ave. _asman_
> _*k*uņa_ 'bitch' / *s*uns 'dog' vs Greek _kuōn_, Skr. _šva, šunas_, Ave. _spā, sunam_
> _*k*aukt_ 'to yell' / _*s*aukt_ 'to call'
> _*k*vitēt_ 'to blossom' / _*s*vitēt_ 'to dawn'
> _at*k*ala_ 'ice-up ' / _*s*als_ 'cold'
> _*k*vēpt_ 'to blacken with smoke' / _*s*vēpt_ 'to fumigate' vs Greek _kapnos_ 'smoke'
> _*k*veldēt_ 'to burn' / _*s*veldēt_ 'to burn'
> _*k*lausīt_ 'to listen' / _*s*lavēt_ 'to praise' vs Slav. _slušati_, Lat _auscultāre_.
> Lithuanian is more satemized than Latvian as it observes _r.u.k.i._ law whereas Latvian doesn't (_taut*iš*kas_ vs _taut*is*ks_ 'national'). As also Lithuanian is closer to Sanskrit whereas Latvian is closer to Avestan and Old Persian (_šuo & šva, ašmuo & ašmā_ vs _suns & sunas, asmens & asman, zeme & zamī_) due to persistent contacts with Iranian tribe Scythians (cf. Latvian place-names _Vārkava, Barkava, Var(a)kļāni_, Scythian _varkas_ 'wolf'). Basing on my personal research I have made a conclusion that Latvian (Latgallian) language originally was a language of Iranian group (closely related to Scythian) which was later heavily lithuanized, this fact is attested in multiple Finnish loanwords from North-East Baltic languages (e.g. Old Latgallian), like _sata, vandā, deksan, heinä, heimo, leipä, sisar, paimen, taivas, silta_, very similar to Iranian ones.



In relation to Sanskrit (Indo-related topic), Lithuanian for a "dog" is either _šuo (dog) or šuva (dog)_ or _šuniukas (doggy)_ or _šunys (dogs)._


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## koniecswiata

Orion7, that is a good point about Baltic Languages not being "Core Satem".  First, the distinction between Centum and Satem languages focuses on only one sound change, which might make the supposed importance of this distinction exaggerated.  
What you point to is that often sound changes in languages are not 100% complete, and there exist stages.  Even Western Slavic say "kwiat" (Polish) for flower, as opposed to East Slavic "tsviet" (Russian), alson stone in Polish is "kamien" with k.


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## neonrider

How did Polish get "wakacje" and how Russian got "kanikuly"? I also have no idea how Lithuanian got "atostogos". All are words for "vacation". If someone could explain that would be great.


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## Maroseika

Russian каникулы < Polish kanikuɫa < Latin саnīсulа (doggie). Latin diēs canīculāres (dog days) < old name of Sirius < Greek κύων - dog [of Orion, the hunter], because those were the most hot days of the year, when nobody worked. Cf.  κυνόκαυμα - dog heat. 
Sirius (Dog-star) stayed the most high that time and Greeks supposed it to be the source of the summer heat.
Other calques of the Greek expression:
English - dogdays
German - Hundstagen
French - jours caniculaires
Russian - собачья жара (dog heat).

I don't know about Polish wakacje, but Russian вакация is from seminarian Latin.


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## Orion7

neonrider said:


> How did Polish get "wakacje" and how Russian got "kanikuly"? I also have no idea how Lithuanian got "atostogos". All are words for "vacation". If someone could explain that would be great.


Lithuanian _atostogos_ imho from _atostodos_ (<*_atastādās_), which means the same as Russian _otpusk_ 'vacation' (liter. 'release, dismissal'), cf. Russian _otpuskat'_ = Latvian _atstādināt,atlaist_ 'to release, to dismiss [from job]'.


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## Ben Jamin

neonrider said:


> In Lithuanian 6 = sheshi' and 5 = penki'.


 Spasibo in Russian is a quite modern word, coming from spasi bog = let god save you. Dificult to connect with iranian.


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## Gita-Etymology

Ben Jamin said:


> Spasibo in Russian is a quite modern word, coming from spasi bog = let god save you. Dificult to connect with iranian.



Except for the second word there, _bog_ - Many consider Slavic _bog_ to be an Iranian borrowing.


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## Ben Jamin

Gita-Etymology said:


> Except for the second word there, _bog_ - Many consider Slavic _bog_ to be an Iranian borrowing.


 That's another tale, we discussed the word spasibo. But yes, there is almost a consensus between the Slavicists now that bog and related words came from Iranian. Remember however that the original meaning in Slavic was good, rich, as in *bogaty* and the opposite *ubogi.*


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## Gita-Etymology

Aha, so semantically _bogъ _was then originally an adjective?

Just out of curiosity, why can't be it from Indo-European? (_ie. bogъ = sansk. _bhagaḥ)? Would we have to expect _*bag_ъ due to Winter's Law?

As an aside, Poland's Bańkowski, I think, claimed _bogъ = bhogʷ-o-s (_from _bhegʷ_ 'run')_ = Gr. phobos "_fear"_. _Probable?


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## mercury62

some Slavic similarities with Persian (Iranian) words :

SIX , persian : shish or shesh , latvian : seši (seshi) , lithuanian : šeši (sheshi) , polish : sześć (shesc)  , russian : sheyst , slovak : šesť (shest) 
SIXTY , persian : shast , russian : sheyst dee syaat , slovak : šesťdesiat (shestdesiat) , sanskrit : sasta
EARTH , persian : zamin or zemin , avestan persian : zem , latvian : zeme , polish : ziemia , czech : země ,russian : zimliah
WOMAN , persian : zan , croatian : žena , czech : žena , slovak : žena , kurdish : jin
ANT , persian : moor , russian : moo raa vey  , bosnian : mrav
TABLE , persian : miz , slovenian : miza   , bulgarian : masa 
BRANCH (of a tree) , persian : shakheh , sanskrit : shaakha , lithuanian : šaka 
FROM , persian : az or ze , croatian : iz , polish : z , slovenian : iz
AM or I AM , persian : hastam , polish : yestem , czech : ysem
 MY , old persian : manā .... in persian "man" means "i" .... lithuanian : mano , latvian : mans 
 WE , persian : ma , kurdish : me , slovenian : me , latvian : mēs , lithuanian : mes , croatian : mi , russian : mee 
WINTER , persian : zemestan , avestan : zimo , polish : zima , latvian : ziemas , lithuanian : žiema, croatian : zima , czech : zimni , russian : zeemaa
I AM NOT , persian : nistam , serbian : nisam , slovenian : nisem , slovak : neysem , polish : nie yestem
YOU ARE NOT (sing.) , persian : nisti , serbian : nisi , slovenian : niste , slovak : nieste , polish : nie yesteś
AXE , persian : tabar , russian : topór 
WHERE , persian : koja , isfahani persian : kooja , russian : kooda
 FROM WHERE , persian : az koja or az kooja , russian : "at kooda"


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## Frank06

mercury62 said:


> some Slavic similarities with Persian (Iranian) words : SIX , persian : shish or shesh , latvian : seši (seshi) , lithuanian : šeši (sheshi) , polish : sześć (shesc)  , russian : sheyst , slovak : šesť (shest)


1. neither Latvian nor  Lithuanian are Slavic languages.
2. It would be far more interesting to give examples which aren't found in the other IE languages (English six, Dutch zes, etc.). I mean, since they are all IE languages, it's quite obvious they have words in common. 
The point of this thread is to give examples (and explanations, please don't forget explanations) which more or less sets apart the Slavic/IIR languages in the IE language family.

Frank


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## Angelo di fuoco

mercury62 said:


> some Slavic similarities with Persian (Iranian) words :
> 
> SIX , persian : shish or shesh , latvian : seši (seshi) , lithuanian : šeši (sheshi) , polish : sześć (shesc)  , russian : sheyst , slovak : šesť (shest)
> SIXTY , persian : shast , russian : sheyst dee syaat , slovak : šesťdesiat (shestdesiat) , sanskrit : sasta
> EARTH , persian : zamin or zemin , avestan persian : zem , latvian : zeme , polish : ziemia , czech : země ,russian : zimliah
> WOMAN , persian : zan , croatian : žena , czech : žena , slovak : žena , kurdish : jin
> ANT , persian : moor , russian : moo raa vey  , bosnian : mrav
> TABLE , persian : miz , slovenian : miza   , bulgarian : masa
> BRANCH (of a tree) , persian : shakheh , sanskrit : shaakha , lithuanian : šaka
> FROM , persian : az or ze , croatian : iz , polish : z , slovenian : iz
> AM or I AM , persian : hastam , polish : yestem , czech : ysem
> MY , old persian : manā .... in persian "man" means "i" .... lithuanian : mano , latvian : mans
> WE , persian : ma , kurdish : me , slovenian : me , latvian : mēs , lithuanian : mes , croatian : mi , russian : mee
> WINTER , persian : zemestan , avestan : zimo , polish : zima , latvian : ziemas , lithuanian : žiema, croatian : zima , czech : zimni , russian : zeemaa
> I AM NOT , persian : nistam , serbian : nisam , slovenian : nisem , slovak : neysem , polish : nie yestem
> YOU ARE NOT (sing.) , persian : nisti , serbian : nisi , slovenian : niste , slovak : nieste , polish : nie yesteś
> AXE , persian : tabar , russian : topór
> WHERE , persian : koja , isfahani persian : kooja , russian : kooda
> FROM WHERE , persian : az koja or az kooja , russian : "at kooda"



"куда" & "откуда" are only for directions, not for stable positions.
"mee" = "ми", but "mi" is the name of a note in music, not of the pronoun "мы".
"шейсть" - no offence, but you should brush up your Russian pronunciation first before writing this.


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## Maroseika

mercury62 said:


> AXE , persian : tabar , russian : topór


Russian топор and other Slavic cognats were just loaned from the Persian and initially meant a weapon as opposed to секира - axe as a tool (acc. to O. Trubachev). Later these 2 words (топор and секира) meanings changed to the "opposite"


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## volkonsky

I've read somewhere that Proto-Slavic *miru (peace, joy, commune) was borrowed from Iranian. Can anyone confirm?


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## SSlava

I am Russian) compiled a list of similar meaning and sound of words with Sanskrit



> bhajati{  bhaj  } - brat'
> dadaati   {  daa  } - dat'
> tanoti   {  tan  } - tyanut'
> mayate - menyat'
> manas - mnit'
> rujati   {  ruj  } - rushit'
> rodana, roditi{  rud  } - rydat'
> lih - lizat'
> vartate   {  vRt  } - vertet'
> siidati   {  sad  } - sidet', sadit'sya
> peya - pit'
> buddha,prabuddhaH - Budit', probudit'
> plavate - plavat'
> sthala - vstat'
> preSayati - prosit'
> smayate   {  smi  } - smeyat'sya
> datta - dat'
> eti   {  i  } - idti
> eSati  { iS } - iskat'
> { tras } - tryastis'
> patana, patati   {  pat  } - padat'
> yabana - ebat'
> druta,dravati - drapat'
> upanyasyati - ob''yasnyat'
> laalayati   {  lal  } - leleyat'
> hima - zima
> agni - ogon'(ogni)
> kada - kogda
> sada - vsegda
> dvi  - dva
> dvar  - dver'
> dam - dom
> nabha,nabhas - nebo, nebesa
> giri - gora
> bharati - hranit'
> naTana - tancy
> mahan - mahina
> kaNa - kanut'
> stambha - stolb
> matya - motyga
> nava - novyi
> vedana - vedat'
> tvam - vam
> naasaa - nos
> nakta - noch'
> snuSaa - snoha
> pratyeti - prinyat'
> na  kadaapi - nikogda
> miira - more
> gala - gorlo
> garjana - gremet'
> bhraatR - brat
> kiila -kol
> tapas - teplota
> aakheTa - ohota
> vaata  - veter
> sattva - sut'
> mana - mnenie
> guJjati - gul
> rajju - rozga
> sabhaa - sobranie
> phala -plod
> kartayati   {  kart  } - kornat'
> tap - topit'
> tamas - t'ma
> anya - inoi
> vac - vyakat'
> sapta - sem'
> svapati - spat'
> ghraati   {  ghraa  } - hrapet'
> priya - priyatnyi
> dRka - dyrka
> kaasate   {  kaas  } - kashlyat'
> daana,daaya - dar
> tittiraa - teterev
> zaza - zaya
> rava - rev
> phena - pena
> maatraa - mera
> raya - potok reki (reka)
> dina - den'
> kim - kakoi
> vivara - vina
> suutra- struna
> madhu - med
> droNii - vedro
> nakha - nogti
> nagna - nagoi
> parda,pardate   {  pard  }  - perdet'
> maasa - myaso
> madhye - mezhdu
> { ni } - niz
> laSati { laS } - laskat'
> zaalaa - zal
> etat - yеtot
> garva - gordost'
> patha -  put'
> mRtyu - umeret'
> dairghya - dolgota
> bhuurja - bereza
> yuvan, yauvana - yunyi, yunosha
> gala - gorlo
> pratisedhati - presekat'
> matar - mat'
> sva - svoi
> caturdaza - chetyrnadcat'
> tadaa - togda
> tanu - tonkii
> muuDha - mudak
> prabhu - pravitel'
> gurutaa - girya
> lumpati   {  lup  } - lupit'
> na - net
> manth - mandrazh
> vaara - vorota
> puraa,aadi - pervyi (odin?)
> tad - tak
> vraNa - rana
> saMtaana - sem'jа
> bhuu - budet
> kokila - kukushka
> kaaSTha - koster
> paapaatman - popa
> katara – kotoryi
> bhruu - brov'
> oSTha - usta
> raTat - orat'
> graavaa - granit
> kiila - klin
> pratyaniika - protivnyi
> paantha, pathika - putnik
> vaayu,vaata,vyoman - vozduh
> svaatanya - svoboda
> muuSaka - myshka
> prasaada - poshada
> dhuuma - dym
> sarvara - sobol'
> tuuda - tutovnik
> nazati - naiti


But the list is not complete yet


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## Ben Jamin

SSlava said:


> I am Russian) compiled a list of similar meaning and sound of words with Sanskrit
> 
> 
> But the list is not complete yet


Could you supply more information about the following words (PIE root, transtitional forms, etc) as the connection is not so easy to see for them?
Could you also give a translation of both cognates? Few people know Sanskrit, and many of the Russian words are also less known.

bhajati{ bhaj } - brat'
mayate - menyat'
manas - mnit'
rujati { ruj } - rushit'
rodana, roditi{ rud } - rydat'
eti { i } - idti
eSati { iS } - iskat'
upanyasyati - ob''yasnyat'
sada - vsegda
bharati - hranit'
naTana - tancy
mahan - mahina
kaNa - kanut'
pratyeti - prinyat'
kiila -kol
vaata - veter
guJjati - gul
sabhaa - sobranie
tamas - t'ma
dRka - dyrka
zaza - zaya
rava - rev
phena - pena
vivara - vina
zaalaa - zal
etat - yеtot
garva - gordost'
yuvan, yauvana - yunyi, yunosha
pratisedhati - presekat'
muuDha - mudak
prabhu - pravitel'
gurutaa - girya
manth - mandrazh
vaara - vorota
puraa,aadi - pervyi (odin?)
tad - tak
vraNa - rana
saMtaana - sem'jа
paapaatman - popa
graavaa - granit
kiila - klin
pratyaniika - protivnyi
paantha, pathika - putnik
vaayu,vaata,vyoman - vozduh
prasaada - poshada
sarvara - sobol'
tuuda - tutovnik
nazati – naiti


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## SSlava

manas - mnit'  Sanskrit:imagination Rus:imagine


> Gk. μένος (menos), Lat. mēns, Skr. मनस् (manas), Av. manah, Eng. gemynd/mind, Goth. muns, ON minni; man, Gm. minna/Minne, Lith. mintis, Ltv. minēt, Old Prussian mēntimai, OCS mineti, Russ. мнить (mnit'), Alb. mund, Pers. mainyāhay/, Toch. mnu/mañu, Ir. do-moiniur/; dermet/dearmad, Welsh cof, Arm. իմանամ (imanam)


eti  - idti (In Russian it can be said: iti) Sanskrit:go Rus:go

tamas - t'ma  Sanskrit:dark  Rus:dark


> Skr. तमस् (támas), Lith. tamsa; tamsus, Ltv. timt, Lat. tenebrae; temere, Av. təmah, OCS tĭmĭnŭ, Russ.тьма(t'ma) тёмный (tjomnyj), Ir. temel/teimheal, Gm. demar/Dämmerung; dinstar/, Polish ciemny, Alb. terr, Av. temah, Pers. tār, Toch. /tamāsse, Illyr. Tomaros



rava - rev Sanskrit:roar Rus:roar


> Lat:rudo



zaza - zaya(zayac) Sanskrit:hare Rus:hare


> Polish: zając Czech: zajíc   Macedonian:зајак



kaNa - kanut' Sankrit:drop Rus:drop


> Latin:*cado *Bulgarian:капка Byelorussian:кануть



zaalaa - zal Sanskrit:hall Rus:hall


> Latvian:zāle Lithuanian:salė



vaata(vāta) - veter Sanskrit:wind Rus:wind


> Latvian:vējš Lithuanian:vėjas Latin:ventus



vraNa - rana(царапина) Sanskrit:Scratch Rus:Scratch, wound

kraNa  - rana Sanskrit:wound Rus:wound

mahan - mahina Sanskrit:great Rus:great

dRka - dyrka Sanskrit:hole Rus:hole


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## djmc

I don't think that a list of similar words in different languages gives much of any idea of the affiliations of the languages themselves. However the reason why the theory of the affiliation of indoeuropean was evolved was because Jones (1794) and Bopp (1816) realised the closeness of Sanscrit to both Latin and Greek both in terms of both vocabulary and also in terms of grammar. The classification of languages within the IE category was done with a historical intent. In general it was thought to be pointless to use a later development if an earlier one is available. Thus if one is making a comparison of original roots there is little point in comparing say French and Hindi since Latin and Sanscrit are available. Some languages are far more conservative both in terms of vocabulary and grammar than others, and some do not have any ancient written form. The theory about the satem - centum divide was introduced to try to introduce some sort of classification. This is not the only sound shift, there was a mapping of the sound shifts from IE to the Germanic group known as Grimm's law. 

I think now the 19th century theories are to some extent démodé, and other languages have been thrown into consideration such as Hittite and Tocharian. However while Latin is and was thought to be very much of the western group and Sanscrit of the eastern group the similarities are more remarkable than the diferences.


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## SSlava

sabhaa - sobranie Sanskrit:meeting Rus:meeting

yuvan, yauvana - yunyi, yunosha Sanskrit:young Rus:young


> OCS junu, Russ. юный (junyj), Skr. युवन् (yuvan), Gaul. Jovincillus, Lith. jaunas, Ltv. jauns, Eng. geong/young, Av. yavan, Lat. juvĕnis, Umbrian iuengar , Gm. jung/jung, ON ungr, Goth. juggs, Welsh ieuanc, Ir. óc/óg, Pers. javān



vaara - vorota Sanskrit:gate Rus:gate


> Latvian:vārti Lithuanian:vartai



phena - pena Sanskrit:foam Rus:foam


> Latvian: putas Serbian: пена(pena) Czech: pěna



sada - vsegda Sanskrit:always Rus:always


> Lithuanian:visada



na kadaapi - nikogda Sanskrit: never Rus: never


> Lithuanian: niekada Latvian: nekad




etat - yеtot(It is said as yеtat) Sanskrit:this Rus:this


> Czech:tento



katara – kotoryi(It is said as katoryi) Sanskrit:which of the two? Rus:which


> Lithuanian: kuris Latvian: kas



tad - tak Sanskrit: so Rus: so


> Latvian: tā Lithuanian: taip Belarus:так



tvam - vam Sanskrit: you Rus: you


> Ukrainian:вам



kim - kakoi Rus: 	which? Sanskrit: which?


> Lithuanian: kas Latvian: kas



dadaati { daa } - dat' Sanskrit:give Rus:give


> Russ. дать (dat'), Arm. տալ (tal), Lith. duoti, Ltv. dot; deva, Skr. ददाति (dádāti), Av. dadāiti, Osset. дæттын (dættyn), Alb. dhashë, Gk. δίδωμι (didōmi), Kashmiri dẏyūn, Polish dać, Phryg. dadón, Old Prussian dātwei, Lat. dō, Oscan dede, Umbrian dadad, Ir. dán/, Welsh dawn, Hitt. dā, Lyc. da, Luw. da-, Lyd. da-, Gaul. doenti, OCS дати (dati), Pers. ���������� (dadātuv) / دادَن (dādan)



datta - dat' Sanskrit:give Rus:give

bhajati{ bhaj } - brat' Sanskrit: take Rus: take


> Ukrainian:брати, Belarus:браць



patana, patati { pat } - padat' Sanskrit:fall Rus:fall


> Lithuanian: patekti Bulgarian:падане


mayate - menyat' Sanskrit:change Rus:change


> Lat. mūnus, Eng. gemǣne/mean, Gm. gimeini/gemein, Goth. gamains, Skr. मयते (mayate); मेनि (meni), OCS mĕna, Russ. менять (menjat'), Lith. mainyti, Ltv. mains, Ir. móin/, Welsh mwyn, Polish zmiana, Av. maēni, Hitt. immiya-


yabana - ebat' Sanskrit:fuck Rus:fuck


> Gm. eiba/—, Skr. यभति (yabhati), Russ. ебать (jebat'), Illyr. Oibalos, Gk. οἴφω (oiphō)/, Polish jebać


parda,pardate { pard } - perdet' Sanskrit:Fart Rus:Fart


> Russ. пердеть (perdet'), Skr. पर्दते (párdate), Lith. persti, Ltv. pirst, Phryg. perdomai, Alb. pjerth; pordhë, Eng. feortan/fart, Gm. ferzan/furzen, ON freta, Gk. πέρδομαι (perdomai), Av. pərəðaiti, Welsh rhech


sthala - vstat' Sanskrit:rise Rus:rise


> Ukrainian:всати(vstati)


bharati - hranit' Sanskrit:keep Rus:keep
upanyasyati - ob''yasnyat'(объяснять) Sanskrit:explain Rus:explain


> Lithuanian: paaiškinti



nazati – naiti Sanskrit:find  Rus:find


> Bulgarian:намирам Ukrainian:знайти



tapati { tap } - topit'(tapit') Sanskrit:warm up Rus:warm up, burn


> Ukrainian:топити



rodana, roditi{ rud } - rydat' Sanskrit:cry Rus:cry, sob


> Lithuanian: raudojimas



pratisedhati{ prati- sidh } - presekat' Sanskrit:stop Rus:stop

eSati { iS } - iskat' Sanskrit:search Rus:search


> Lithuanian: paieška



peya - pit' Sanskrit: drink Rus: drink


> Russ. пить (pit'), Skr. पिबति (píbati), Gk. πίνω (pinō), Alb. pi, Ir. ibim/ibh, Welsh yfed, Lith. puota, Old Prussian poieiti, Hitt. pas, Thrac. pinon, Arm. ըմպել (ëmpel), Lat. bibere, Umbrian puni, OCS пити (piti)



{ tras } - tryastis' Sanskrit: shiver Rus: shiver


> Macedonian: тресете Belarus: трэсці



mathati { manth }  - mandrazh Sanskrit: 	agitate Rus:agitate, shiver

druta,dravati - drapat' Sanskrit: 	to run Rus: to run, skedaddle


> Belarus: драпать, Ukrainian: драпати



laalayati { lal } - leleyat' Sanskrit: cherish Rus: cherish


> Latvian: lolot



svapati - spat' Sanskrit:sleep Rus: sleep


> Ukrainian: спати Byelorussian: спаць



buddha,prabuddhaH,prabodhayati - Budit', probudit' Sanskrit:Awaken Rus:Awaken



> Lith. budinti, Ltv. budīt, Old Prussian budē, Av. buiðyeiti, Ir. buide/buidhe, Welsh bodd, ON bjóða; boð, Gk. πυνθάνομαι (punthanomai), Eng. bēodan/bid; bodian/bode, Kamviri bidi, Russ. будить (budit'), Polish budzić, OCS блюсти (bljusti), Gm. biotan/bieten; gibot/Gebot, Goth. ������������������ (anabiudan), Pers. /bēdār-šudan




tanoti { tan } - tyanut' Sanskrit:	stretch  [ cord ] Rus:stretch


> Ukrainian:тягнути Lithuanian: traukti



aakheTa - ohota Sanskrit: hunting Rus:hunting

naTana - tanус Sanskrit: dance Rus: dance


> Ukrainian:танець



vac - vyakat' Sanskrit: talk Rus: talk, blather


> Ukrainian: дзявкали



vedana - vedat' Sanskrit:knowledge Rus:know


> Gm. wizzan/wissen, Arm. գէտ (gēt) Kashmiri vūčhūn, Polish widzieć; wiedzieć, ON vita, Goth. weitan, OIr. fis; fiuss; find/fionn, Gaul. Vindomagus, Welsh gwedd; gwŷs; gwyn, Lith. vaidintis, OPruss. widdai, OCS вѣдѣти (vědět)



plavate { plu } - plavat' Sanskrit: swim Rus: swim


> Lithuanian: plaukti Serbian: пливати Ukrainian: плавати



kaasate { kaas } - kashlyat' Sanskrit: cough Rus: cough


> Lithuanian: kosulys Latvian: klepus Ukrainian: кашляти



ghraati { ghraa } - hrapet' Sanskrit:sniff Rus: sniff

gurutaa - girya Sanskrit:weight Rus:weight


> Pers: girān - weight



prasaada - poshada  Sanskrit:mercy Rus:mercy

muuDha - mudak Sanskrit:ignorant, stupid, idiotic Rus:ignorant, stupid, idiotic, asshole (Negative value)

puraa,aadi - pervyi (odin?) Sanskrit:first Rus:first, one


> Alb. parë, Av. parvō, Lith. pirmas, Ltv. pirmais, Gm. furist/Fürst; fruo/früh, Eng. fyrst/first, Gk. πρότερος (proteros), Hitt. para, Ir. rem/roimh, Kamviri pürük, Lyc. pri, OCS pĭrvŭ, Oscan perum, ON fyrstr, Old Prussian pariy, Osset. фыццаг (fyccag, "first"); фараст (farast, "nine"), Russ. первый (pervyj), Skr. pūrvā; प्रथम (prathamá), Toch. parwät/parwe, Lat. primus, Umbrian pert, Welsh rwyf, OIr. arsaid



graavaa - granit Sanskrit:granite Rus:granite (probably borrowing words))


saMtaana - sem'jа Sanskrit: family Rus:family


> Lithuanian: šeimos latin: prosapia





guJjati { guJj } -gul Sanskrit: hum Rus: hum


> Ukrainian: гул



garva - gordost' Sanskrit: pride Rus: pride


> Ukrainian: гордість Bulgarian: гордост



anya - inoi Sanskrit: other Rus: other


> Latin: alius, aliud, alia Polish: inny Ukrainian: інший



nagna - nagoi Sanskrit:nude Rus: nude


> Eng. nacod/naked, Goth. naqaþs, Skr. नग्न (nagna), Hitt. nekumant, Gk. γυμνός (gumnos), Lat. nūdus, Lith. nuogas, Ltv. nogs, Ir. nocht/, Gm. nackot/nackt, Polish nagi, ON nakinn, Av. maġna, Welsh noeth, OCS nagŭ, Russ. нагой (nagoj), Kashmiri naṅgay



vivara - vina Sanskrit:fault Rus: fault


> Latin: vitium Ukrainian: вина


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## SSlava

> Could you supply more information about the following words (PIE root, transtitional forms, etc) as the connection is not so easy to see for them?
> Could you also give a translation of both cognates? Few people know Sanskrit, and many of the Russian words are also less known.


 Okay, I'm tired already
then continue


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## sokol

Hello guys,

I'm impressed by your enthusiasm - but I still would like to point out that a forum thread is not a very good means of making a list of words for comparative reasons: it is awfully strenuous trying to make sense of that when you've got to skip backwards and forwards to follow a (any) thread.

So I'm asking you to please limit lists to "essentials". (The thread's already cluttered with pure list posts in a way which makes it difficult to follow any discussion on the similarities between those two branches of IE languages.)

The same goes for discussions about individual word pairs: it would be much better to open threads of their own for them.
Please note, this is for the convenience of all users of this forum - if we accumulate even more lists then arguments and discussion threads will all but disappear.

Thanks for your understanding!
Cheers
sokol
Moderator EHL


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## SSlava

http://www.vedamsbooks.com/no55377.htm



> It is interesting to note that in spite of disparity of time and space both Sanskrit and Russian have such a striking similarity in the basic Indo-European vocabulary that one is but bound to believe that they have descended from some common source.



Whether and there is this book in an electronic variant? It is interesting to read


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## john welch

To make it worse, "centum" is pronounced /sentum/. It seems that Scythians-Kambojas influenced both Slavic and Latin, and Indo-Persian Scythians ruled "Cambodia" (Kamboja). "Kamal" perfect man, is "kamil" in Indonesia and in Kamilaroi (Aboriginal Australia). But Skt. "camara" is "chamara" (shamara) royal yak-tail, in Thailand.


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## neonrider

Flaminius said:


> And in Lithuanian, a Baltic language:
> žmona (wife),
> though no relatedness is assured.



In Polish "zhona" = wife. I believe Lithuanians borrowed "zhmona" from Poles. Although "zhmogus" (man, human) seems like it may be original Lithuanian. Lithuanian orginal word for woman is "moteris" with stress on "is", which is similar to Latin "mater" (mother) but also to Russian "matj" (mother). There may be as many as 10% borrowed slavic words in Lthuanian language. That does not make it a Slavic language, just like Romanian or Estonian are not. Yet Slavic, Baltic, Indo-Iranian languages are all IE languages. I believe that Baltic languages are both Centum and Satem languages, thus intermediate or pan-european.


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## sheley1998

I am a speaker of the Slovak language, and have some knowledge in other Slavic languages. Here's my 5 cents:

Blood
Hindi: Rakta, Russian: Rod

Daughter
Assamese: Ziyari, Nepali: Chhori, Slovak: Dcera, Polish: Corka

Day
Hindi: Din, Slovak: Den

Door
Hindi: Darvaza, Slovak: Dvere

Die
Hindi: Mar, Slovak: Mrtva

Earth
Hindi: Zamin, Slovak: Zem

Eye
Kashmiri: Aechh, Slovak: Oci (ochi)

Fear
Assamese: Bhoi, Bengali: Bhoe, Slovak: Bojim

Fire
Bengali: Agun, Sinhala: Agni, Russian: Ogon

Life
Hindi: Jivan, Slovak: Zivot (zhivot)

When
Punjabi: Kad, Slovak: Kedy

Wind
Sanscrit: Vada, Slovak: Vietor

Wolf
Sanscrit: Vruka, Slovak: Vlk

Woman
Kashmiri: Zanaan, Slovak: Zena (zhena)

I'm sure there's lots more, but I'm too lazy to look for them for now


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## fdb

Some of these are Indo-European cognates, some are accidental. But lists are boring....


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## marrish

^ In full agreement, fdb! And I'd take Hindi/Skt. _dvaara-_ for door not _darwaazah_ but I think it is not worthy of a debate.


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## Ben Jamin

neonrider said:


> In Polish "zhona" = wife. I believe Lithuanians borrowed "zhmona" from Poles. Although "zhmogus" (man, human) seems like it may be original Lithuanian.



The Polish word "żona"  (“woman” in Old Polish, but now only “wife”), or rather Ruthenian (Old Belorussian) “zhena” may have influenced the formation of the Lithuanian “žmona”, but the word itself can not be called a loan. It is a full fledged Lithuanian word, as the stem “žmo-“ is original Lithuanian.


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## tappo

vince said:


> Hi everyone,
> 
> This is sort of related to the Farsi vs. European languages thread. I'd like to know what similarities exist between Slavic languages (Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc) and Indo-Iranian ones (Kurdish, Farsi, Hindi, Panjabi, Bangla, etc) that DON'T exist between Indo-Iranian and western European languages such as English, French, Spanish, German, etc.
> 
> Because I heard that within the Indo-European languages, one can distinguish two groups: CENTUM  languages and SATEM languages (based on each group of language's way of saying "hundred"). Slavic languages (as well as Baltic ones) belong to the Satem group along with Indo-Iranian, but Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages belong to the Centum group. So I was wondering if similarities exist in the two languages besides this phonological grouping.
> 
> You can bring up grammatical similarities as well as vocabulary. Thanks!



       Hello.  Actually there are a lot of similarities between Kurdish and Slavic languages also between Kurdish and Germanic (English,German.etc) I do speak some bulgarian and a little bit of others here are few words 

        KURDISH     BULGARIAN     POLISH    RUSSIAN   ENGLISH 
       az                 az                               (yaz)          I  (ay)

    az zanim            aznam                         yaznam        I know

     kude(kudare)     kade (kadare)                                where

    buk                   bulk                                              bride

    xarina               xirina                                             food

    dar                   darvo                                             wood

    mishk                 mishka      mishka/mishk                   mouse

    riz                       riz                                                rice

   der                                                                         door 

    hegg                                                                       egg

    sitar                                                                        star

     gow                                                                       cow

     bra(brader)     brat                                                  brother

     cicik ( prounounced G-g-k)           cycki                      tits

    kurdek                                     kurdka(pol)                   jacket .................. I can go on all night giving you examples


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## tappo

in Kurdish we say wife/woman as Jin or jena as its pronoiunced in polish zhona (exchange o with e sound)


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## Pribina

The original poster was asking for similarities that don't exist between other IE groups. It seems like all the words you listed are of Indo-European origin. For example the reflex of the IE word from which _*jin*_ derived can also be found in Scandinavian, Irish or even Tocharian.


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## Ben Jamin

I will give here some comments and supplements to your list

        KURDISH     BULGARIAN     POLISH    RUSSIAN   ENGLISH 
       az                 az                               (yaz)          I  (ay) Polish and Russian *Ja *(ya), a common IE root

    az zanim            aznam                         yaznam        I know *C: *Polish *znam*, Russian *znayu*, a cognate to German *können*, English *know*, Latin *cognosco*, Greek γνωρίζω (gnorizo), a common IE root

     kude(kudare)     kade (kadare)                                where *C: *Polish *gdzie*, Russian *gd'e, *a common IE root

    buk                   bulk                                              bride *C: *No relation indicated here (buk and bride?!) which language is *buk*?

    xarina               xirina                                             food *C: *Food is *khrana *in Bulgarian, *jadlo *in Polish, *jelo *in Russian.

    dar                   darvo                                             wood *C: *Polish *drewno *(drevno), a common IE root 

    mishk                 mishka      mishka/mishk                   mouse *C: *mouse is *mysz *(mish) in both Polish and Russian, a common IE root

    riz                       riz                                                rice *C: *No cognatic relation, it is a loan.

   der                                                                         door *C:  *Polish *drzwi *(obsolete dz'wierze)Russian *dv'er',* a common IE root

    hegg                                                                       egg ?

    sitar                                                                        star

     gow                                                                       cow *C: *Polish *gowno *means dung/shit, *gawiedz*' meant once "cattle", a common IE root

     bra(brader)     brat                                                  brother, *C:  *a common IE root

     cicik ( prounounced G-g-k)           cycki                      tits 

    kurdek                                     kurdka(pol)                   jacket .................. I can go on all night giving you examples 
*C:  *A coat/jacket in Polish is *kurtka  *or older* kurta *(with a t). Usually explained as a loan from Latin "curta" (short garment), but may be also be related to Indian *kurta*.
Anyway, it is a loan, not a cognate.
Bulgarian is the Slavic language most strongly influenced by Turkic langauges (Volga Bulgarian, Turkish), may be also by Indo-Iranian


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## thegreathoo

I agree with the complaints abut centum satem separation.  It makes 0 sense, I don't buy and no linguistic effort work can prove it.  Not only are centum and satem closer to each other than each of them is to hundred, but both slavic and latin are palatal,  whereas germanic languages are throatal and nasal.  Exceptions are French, and English to some extent, because french grammar is latin, but the speech is germanic with oi, ai, nasal things like that.  They aren't made of the same wool as latin and slavic.


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## Pribina

thegreathoo said:


> Not only are centum and satem closer to each other than each of them is to hundred


??


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## szarotka

Polish: żona (wife), żeński (feminine)
Russian: женщина [ZHEHN-schee-nah]
Kurdish: žin
Mazandarani: zəna
Persian:  zan

Definitely a language connection there. Read about Haplogroup R1a for a genetic connection.


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## Ben Jamin

szarotka said:


> Polish: żona (wife), żeński (feminine)
> Russian: женщина [ZHEHN-schee-nah]
> Kurdish: žin
> Mazandarani: zəna
> Persian:  zan
> 
> Definitely a language connection there. Read about Haplogroup R1a for a genetic connection.



Did I understand the topic of this thread as similarities common to Slavic and Iranian, but not to other languages?

If so, the word "zena" is a common IE word, and does not belong to the mentioned class.


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## MohdKK

Please check my thread for a long list of Slavonis and Iranic similarities.


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