Re: [tied] Russian for Homerus

From: tgpedersen
Message: 17431
Date: 2003-01-06

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Sergejus Tarasovas"
<S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:
> These are <Gom鲦gt; and <Gon⩪>. An initial <g-> is traditional (one
> would expect <x-> in a present-day borrowing): a bulk of foreign
names
> containing [h] were adopted in the 18th c., when Russian
intellectuals
> used to talk a local variant of Church Slavonic to each other
(except
> they were drunk, quarreling or discussing everyday life), and
Russian
> Church Slavonic orthoepy ascribes a phonetic value of [G]
([fricative
> g]) or even [h] to what is spelled <g>, so <Gom鲦gt; and <Gon⩪>
seemed
> to fit better than +<Xom鲦gt; and +<Xon⩪> (cf. also <G鮲ix G骮e> for=

> Heinrich Heine and even <Gí´¬er> for Hitler, the latter being merely
> traditional, as nobody spoke Church Slavonic in 1920). An older
Russian
> name for Homer was <Omí²¦gt; -- a direct borrowing from Middle Greek,
but
> it (and many others) was completely lost out to the more prestigious
> form adopted from the languages of Western Europe (German in this
case).
>
>
> Sergei

I was wondering if the Russian translitteration Western h- > Russian
g- had anything to do with the status of the Dutch language under
Peter the Great (and with that language's later replacement by German
under Catharina, which would mean a development in some loaned words
G- > g-)?

Torsten