Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
> In the older layers of mediaeval Slavic borrowings in Romanian, taken
> from languages that still had the nasal vowels, the normal reflexes
> are <âN/îN> (< aN) or <uN>, where the place of articulation of the
> nasal depends on the following consonant (it's /m/ before /b/, in
> particular)
>
> Piotr
>
> Piotr
Hier is an very interesting question Piotr. The word in question ,
"zimbru" is a Thracian word. It doesn't matter where the Romanians
cradle has been, it was in the Thracian territory north or south, for
the discussion of the slavic influence on Romanian language, the place
here doesn't pay a clue.
So, you are right when you say that the normal reflex particulary before
/b/ is an /m/ in such cases. So far, so well.
The verb "to smile"= a zâmbi= from slavic " zonbU"= teeth, and "smile"=
zâmbet"= cf. bulgarian "zabja se", we see in "to smile" is the rule you
speak about.
Now we have two possibility:
-the word existed in Slavic languages under the form "zabru" too as it
existed in Thracian under the form "zVmbrV"
-the romanced population forgot (?) the Thracian word "zVmbrV" (V=
vowel) and they learned it again from Slavs.
It seems very plausible.
The only point here is that the Romanians brought again to the form
"zVmbrV" as the Thracian form of the word which is attested by
Greeks.Can it be that every language kept its word and there is no loan
at all ?
Alex
.