--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Mate Kapovic wrote:
> To Marius and George:
>
> I am getting tired of debating about the accent. It has no purpose.
Well, as far as you did not come out with eventual examples of
early Hungarian loanwords in Russian having consistently conserved
their accent on the first syllable, the debate has indeed little
purpose.
> But if you want to prove that Rus. korocËun7 comes via Hungarian
I do _not_ want to prove that. That was Piotr's suggestion dismissed
by you way too quickly for my taste. It is not that I would bet my
money on that: actually I do _not_ think Russian word came from
Hungarian. It is just the way you dismissed the suggestion that
made me somehow unhappy. You focused on that as if it were the main
objection; in fact it was rather marginal and the only reason you
answered it is you could cope with it at your ease while the main
semantical point was forgotten.
> I remind you, if we consider Russian korocËun7 as an original
> Slavic word form Proto-Slavic *korcËun7 we have no problems
> whatsoever. Phonological correspondence is *perfect*, accentual
> correspondence is *perfect*.
For a word _not_ linked with `Christmas` and `feast`, yes, the
Proto-Slavic form you & your source of inspiration gave explains
the phonetical shape. You still conveniently forget about actual
meaning which has very little to do with your proto-word. I can
perfecly explain that by contamination _in Russian_ between a
Slavic original word having nothing to do with `Christmas` or
`(winter) feast` and an early (Balkan-)Romance loanword meaning
`Christmas` for Romance population and `(winter) feast` for those
Slavs getting it. The distribution of meanings points to that as
clear as Via Appia, Via Salaria and Via Ostiense point to Rome.
> I think mr Occam is on my side :-) Sorry, guys.
Well, I will account that your sorry is for the unhappy sentence
you produced "you will continue to argue that Romanian is relevant
for everything"; in which concerns Occam, how's about applying it
to the main A (or A', as you insist) versus B hypothesis?!
Regards & Happy New Year 2004!
Marius Iacomi