Re: [tied] Re: Germanic - Balto-Slavic connections?

--- pielewe <wrvermeer@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh
> <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
>
> > *****GK: "robota" ("labour" attested 1386) in
> > Ukrainian."nee" ("no") in Ukrainian. Cf. also
> "rab"
> > "rob" ("slave") "roba" ("female slave" attested
> 1352).
> > I believe the word "robota" also exists in
> > Polish.*****
>
>
> I'm sorry, my formulation was too fast to be
> accurate. What I intended
> to say was something along the following lines:
>
>
> _robota_/_rabota_ definitely is not the Common
> Slavic word for 'work'.
> It is a transparent derivation built on robU/rabU
> 'slave' originally
> meaning something along the lines of 'the condition
> of being a slave'
> (or even 'the illness of being a slave'), which it
> still means in Old
> Church Slavonic.

*****GK: Interestingly, the term "rob" "rab" is
ignored in East Slavic legal documents (except for the
female slave as above). Instead, one has "chelyad'"
(for both sexes), and "kholop" for the male slave.
Perhaps this was due to the influence of Christianity?
Where the faithful was "rab Bozhyj" ("God's slave").
It was inconvenient to use the same word with respect
to real (male) slaves, inconvenient for the ruling
classes of course.*****

If one would want to look for a

> Common Slavic word
> meaning 'work' the best bet would probably be
> _de^lo_, /.../
> It is no accident
> that the modern Slavic languages have several
> different words
> for 'work', like Czech _pra/ce_ and Slovene _delo_
> and SCr _rad_.

****GK: Or for different 'shades of meaning'. In
Ukrainian "dilo" stands for "business" "affair"
(something which can also be expressed by "zajnattja"
["vin zajnattyj" = "he is busy"] ("Dilo" was the name
of the main Ukrainian interwar newspaper in Lviv).
"Pratsja" usually though not exclusively for work in
the sense of "occupation", or of more "dignified"
labour, if one can so put it (like the question to a
writer "what are you working on"). "Robota" for plain
work, usually though not always involving physical
labour and drudgery.*****

>
> Moreover, the suffix -ota cannot be brought under
> the same heading as
> the Germanic element continued in Germ. -eid.
>
>
> Willem
>
>
>
>

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