Re: [tied] Danke - dzienkuje - any connection?

On 2006-04-12 22:18, george knysh wrote:

> ****GK: What about Belorusian "dziakavac'" (= to
> thank)?****

You're right. Still, it's the western fringe of East Slavic, and very
close to Ukrainian.

> ****GK: Despite the apparent plausibility of the
> "Polish intermediary" scenario, I'm still not sure
> it's the only possibility. Prior to 1340, the
> bilingualism you mention did not exist. And contacts
> between Ukrainian and German territories (political
> and commercial) are documented from at least the 10th
> century.****

Who knows? I only insist on a German source. The exact trajectory (a
chain of borrowings or [semi-]independent loans) is an open question. A
careful investigation might solve the problem, but we must leave that to
Slavic historical dialectologists (not exactly my field). The earliest
written documentation of the 'thank' words in Old Polish (and, I think,
Old Czech) comes from the 15th century, so it's practically contemporary
with their first attestation in Old Ukrainian.

> Further query: What would the Polish, Czech, and
> Ukrainian words for "thanks", "to thank" have been
> before the borrowing? Something like "xvala" or
> "slava"?

<xvala>, <xvaliti> can be found with this sense in Old Church Slavic,
and of course in Serbian/Croatian, so it's quite likely that early Slavs
used such words to express thanks. There's also <blagodariti> (not in
West Slavic), but that smacks of a formal Church Slavicism and is, I
believe, a calque from Gk. eukHarizo^.

> When was "danke" borrowed into West Slavic?

See above.

Piotr