Re: [tied] Ukrainian words from Carpathians

Thanks for this Dan.
--- "Daniel J. Milton" <dmilt1896@...> wrote:

> Z. Golab "The Origins of the Slavs, a Linguist's
> View"
> (1991) has a lengthy discussion of
> `Bieszczady/Beskidy' (pp.
> 341-345). Although now primarily one major mountain
> range, variants
> of the word were used for individual mountains in
> the Carpathians
> and in Ukranian for "rock, mountain, cliff,
> precipice"

*****GK: This is well attested*****

and as a

> verb for "to graze cattle in the mountains"

*****GK: But this is news to me. Does Golomb give a
source here? It may be a dialectism which did not make
it into the "national" language.*****

(cf.

> `alp',
> which is properly a mountain meadow rather than a
> range�DJM).
> Golab says only two attempts at etymology deserve
> serious
> consideration: the Germanic and the Illyrian. For
> the Illyrian he
> refers to Trubacev who derives Bieskidy/Bieszczady <
> Illyr. *biz-
> kit/*biz-ket from *buz- from Proto-IE *bhug "beech +
> kit-
> "forest" justified by the allegedly Illyr. Ketion
> oros in Ptolemy.

*****GK: Seems rather strained. Actually neither this
Illyrian nor the Germanic etymology clearly explains
the Ukrainian use of the word.*****

> Golab prefers, however, an etymology
> proposed by
> Rozwadowski in 1914, from Germanic *biskaid-, which
> is represented
> by MLG `beschet' "trennung".

*****GK: But "trennung" means division, separation
does it not? Does he explain how this fits = "divided"
(mountain ranges)?*****

Golab goes at great

> length into phonological details, which I will not
> attempt to
> summarize, but he satisfies himself that they are
> explainable. He
> entitles his excursus "a Vestige of the Germanic
> Bastarnians in the
> Toponymy of the Carpathians?". The specific form
> "beskid" (with a
> short rather than long initial vowel in my
> simple-minded
> understanding), however, he believes is Ukranian and
> associates with
> the so-called "Walachian" colonization of the late
> fourteenth and
> fifteenth centuries,

*****GK: Added explanation. One calls this
colonization "Wallachian" (though at the time it
involved Slavs almost exclusively) because it
consisted in the founding of new villages in the
mountains based on the economic model (cattle
breeding) and organizational example of Romanian
(Vlachs) shepherds.*****

during which Ruthenians

> (Ukranians) migrated to
> the Western Carpathians.

*****GK: And changed the pronunciation of a word they
received from ... ?****

> Dan Milton

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com