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Post by Eric on May 8, 2013 10:28:57 GMT -7
The fundamental basis of Russian is Church Slavonic. So, if a word in Russian comes directly from Church Slavonic, then there is no older word that would be used. Church Slavonic IS the oldest that's used in Russian.
You're right, though. Poland wasn't influenced by the Orthodox Church the way Russia was, and so this reflects itself in the language, too. All Slavic languages have many similarities, but the Orthodox languages (East and South Slavic) have distinct differences from the Catholic languages (West Slavic).
For example, because I speak Russian, I can understand Belarussian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and even Serbo-Croatian very well. However, languages like Polish and Czech are more difficult for me. (Ironically, I can understand Slovakian a lot better than Czech, even though they are so similar. It's strange!)
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Post by kaima on May 8, 2013 16:08:48 GMT -7
All these words are practically identical between Russian and Polish: day = день / dzień night = ночь / noc salt = соль / s�l left = левый / lewy new = новый / nowy snow = снег / snieg "Life" in Russian is "жизнь" (zhizn), the same root as Polish, but "rye" is "рожь" (rozh). Jaga speculated that it must be a newer word, but "рожь" actually comes directly from Church Slavonic, which means it is a very, very old word in Slavic languages. Eric, That you can do better with Slovak than with Czech is no surprise to me at all. My mother learned Slovak from her East Slovakian mother, so language from ca. 1890 - 1910. My mother had an easier time talking to Slovaks and Poles than to Czechs. At times there were some arguments that East Slovakian should be a separate language from West Slovakian. The difference is still far, far less than the difference between North German and South German! The modern differences have shrunk, and even with my low level of skill in Slovak I can discern a difference, but to me it is more of accent and some words. If I knew the language better I suspect I would have a more difficult time. Stepping away from what I have read, I conclude that eastern Slovak evidently has elements / influence of Rusyn/Ukrainian, which may help explain why you can better understand them. Slovaks also claim that theirs is the 'middle' Slavic language.... Cyrill and Methodius arrived as far west as Prague around 863, a fact the Czechs are quite proud of. I suspect because it dates Christianity in Greater Moravia to before the arrival of the German missionaries and their nationalistic brand of Christianity/Catholicism. Even before that there is talk of Irish missionaries being there. Back to language, Church Slavonic as I see it would be closer to proto-Slovanic, Mother of all Slavic languages. Simply, it is older. I suspect Czech and Polish (with the Polish sub-categories of peoples who melded to become the Polish peoples, Masurians, Wends, Polabians. etc.) Czech and Polish have more influence from western contacts. One quite ignored influence is the influence on Russian of the Mongol / Tatar / Eastern Languages. Latvians loved to purge Russianisms from Latvian and construct new Lavian words. Did the Russians also purge mongol words? Khan / Gospod/ who knows what? I am sadly most impressed by the Slavic need to NOT unite, to be independent of one another, even when unity would be clearly to the mutual advantage. We seem to have a very anarchistic streak. Kai PS. As a Slavic-American Anarchist, I date the untergang of America from our lost Whiskey Rebellion. Had we won that we would have kept our other freedoms!
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Post by Eric on May 8, 2013 16:37:10 GMT -7
The Mongol invasion of Russia certainly left its mark on the Russian language. For example, "money" is "деньги", a word of Mongol origin.
Latvian may try to avoid Russian words in its lexicon, but the fact of the matter is that the Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithuanian) are distant relatives of the Slavic languages. In fact, there is a Baltic-Slavic language family from the distant past, so that there are grammatical and vocabulary similarities between the two branches. They're not at all mutually intelligible, but many of their roots are the same.
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Post by Jaga on May 8, 2013 21:47:21 GMT -7
Eric, I was always surprised why "diengi" is so different from Polish "pieniadze" My mother had to study old Slavonic church language. She said it is beautiful.... Kai, I am not surprised that Slavs do not want to unite. There is just so much difference in size. Russia is way too big for any other Slavic country to feel equal. Than leaving Russia away, Poland is much bigger than Czechs, Slovaks and Bulgarians together, so why to bother.....let everybody to be independent. By the way, my parents had good Slovak friends. They wanted to be independent from Czechs even admitting that Czechs helped them to keep their life standards. These are just different cultures, different influences.... Bulgars are basically Turks with Baltic language, who hate Turkey, therefore were always more willing to get along with Russians....Lusitsians are almost gone due to the unification of Germany. Eastern Germany actually protected their rights pretty well and they could not leave their region easily. Now, thanks to the freedom and money, their countryside is slowly dying.
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Post by kaima on May 10, 2013 2:09:37 GMT -7
We normally stick to English on this forum, but since this seems quite interesting and in line with the topic, I present this from Der Spiegel. How Bantu conquered Africa Bantu belongs among the world's largest language groups, with 542 dialects, including Swahili and Zulu. Linguistik: Wie Bantu Afrika eroberte Bantu zählt zu den am weitesten verbreiteten Sprachgruppen der Erde, 542 Dialekte gibt es in Afrika. Forscher haben kartiert, wie sich Bantu über den Kontinent verbreitet hat. Die Völker der Bantu in der Mitte und im Süden Afrikas sehen sich nicht als Einheit. Die Verwandtschaft ihrer 542 Sprachen verrät allerdings ihre gemeinsame Abstammung. Forscher haben nun einen Stammbaum der Dialekte erstellt. Er zeigt, wie sich die Bantu-Völker ausgebreitet haben. Bantu zählt zu den größten und am weitesten verbreiteten Sprachgruppen der Erde. Dazu gehören etwa Swahili, das die meisten Sprecher hat, Zulu oder Xhosa. Experten sind sich einig, dass die Urheimat der Bantu - und damit auch der Bantu-Sprachen - im Grenzgebiet von Nigeria und Kamerun in nördlicher Nähe des Äquators liegt. Strittig war hingegen bislang, wie sich die Völker dann über die südliche Hälfte Afrikas ausbreiteten. Um dies zu klären, prüften die Forscher, ob einzelne Wörter der Sprache einen gemeinsamen Ursprung haben, und ordneten sie dann bestimmten geografischen Gebieten zu. Bantu-Sprachen werden in Äquatornähe in der Nähe ihres Ursprungs in kleineren Gebieten gesprochen, berichten die Wissenschaftler um Thomas Currie vom University College London in den "Proceedings B" der britischen Royal Society. Mit zunehmendem Abstand vom Äquator werden die Sprachregionen immer größer, in denen eine Bantu-Sprache gesprochen wird. Die Analyse zeigt, wie sich die Bantu-Völker vor etwa 3000 bis 5000 Jahren von ihrer Heimat aus verbreiteten: Zunächst durchquerten sie den tropischen Regenwald in südlicher Richtung. Danach bewegte sich ein Zweig der Bantu nach Süden und Westen. Ein zweiter Zweig zog ostwärts zu den Großen Afrikanischen Seen, also Richtung Tanganjikasee, Victoriasee oder Malawisee. Aus dieser Gruppe gingen die ostafrikanischen Bantu-Sprachen hervor, darunter auch Swahili. Die Erkenntnisse zum Ausbreitungsmuster gingen über die Linguistik hinaus, betonen die Wissenschaftler. Demnach liefern sie Daten über den Ursprung und die Verbreitung kultureller Errungenschaften wie Viehzucht oder Metallbearbeitung.
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Post by pieter on May 26, 2013 9:23:25 GMT -7
Kaima,
I have experianced the Bantu speaking people in South-Africa through the Xhosa language of the Xsosa people in and around Cape Town and the Bantu languages of the many African migrants in the Netherlands. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said with a rising or falling or high or low intonation. One of the most distinctive features of the language is the prominence of click consonants; the word "Xhosa" begins with a click.
Xhosa is the southernmost branch of the Nguni languages, which include Swati, Northern Ndebele and Zulu. There is some mutual intelligibility with the other Nguni languages, all of which share many linguistic features. Nguni languages are in turn part of the much larger group of Bantu languages, and as such Xhosa is related to languages spoken across much of Africa.
The map of the spread of Bantu languages in German is not entirely correct, because it leaves out the Bantu language speaking Xsosa people of the Western-Cape Province in South-Africa and the majority of the Namibian population which is of Bantu-speaking origin – mostly of the Ovambo ethnicity, which forms about half of the population – residing mainly in the north of the country, although many are now resident in towns throughout Namibia. Other ethnic groups are the Herero and Himba people, who speak a similar language, and the Damara, who speak the same "click" language as the Nama.
The Creole language Sranang Tongo of Suriname is very close to West-African languages like Ghanese:
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by kaima on May 26, 2013 16:45:43 GMT -7
Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said with a rising or falling or high or low intonation. Pieter, The comment about the tonal languages reminds me of meeting a Chinese-American family in a US campground and talking to them a bit. They talked to each other in Chinese, and I associate Chinese - rightly or wrongly, as the first Chinese speaker I listened to spoke English with rising and falling tones - I associate Chinese with rising and falling tones. From appearance, accent and dress I assumed they were Japanese, and when I mentioned it to the man he automatically assumed I was a Typical White Man - that all Orientals look alike to us. Unfortunately I often feel no need to explain myslef to others, so I left him with that misconception. I should have engaged him in conversation about language and learned if the rising and falling of tones truly is a Chinese trait.
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Post by Jaga on May 26, 2013 20:11:55 GMT -7
Pieter, I loved the presentation of Bantu language. I had no idea that there are clicking sounds. I realize that some languages have not only very different sounds but the way they are created but these clicking sounds are just amazing Just two days ago, students in one of my classes were discussing languages, one said that according to some research English language is the most difficult language to learn.... of course I strongly disagreed. English has its difficulties but it is not the most difficult language in the world for an average European at least!
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