Re: [tied] Re: Balkan?

----- Original Message -----

From: x99lynx@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 5:02 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Balkan?

> But, wait.  The Greek must have traded <b> for <v/w> to get "Gk. blakhoi" however it was pronounced. And despite the change in pronounciation, <b> might have been still been read as [b] by non-Greeks.  <Blaccorum> which I believe is in a Latin Papal document is an example.  And I believe the same thing happens in Saxo.  And if the Germanic *walx ever made it into Greek directly, we might also expect <balk->.  There is no reason why the Greeks couldn't have heard it both ways, but stuck with the Slavic version.

 

They borrowed this particular word _after_ the spirantisation of voiced stops (Classical Greek b, d, g > v, ð, G; this is why foreign loanwords in <b-> are spelt with <mb->, i.e. "mu, beta"). The shift of [b] > [v] was complete about the third century, long before the arrival of the Slavs in the Byzantine Balkans. By the time the Slavs appeared on the scene, <b> was the normal spelling of [v] in foreign words (including Latin names, e.g. <pHlabios> for <flavius>). The Greek rendering of [vlaxU] could only be what it was: <blakHos>, just recording the Slavic pronunciation faithfully. Latin writers found Gk. <b> ambiguous (as potentially corresponding to Lat. <v> or <b>), and if a foreign term was known only from a Greek source to them, they may have used a hypercorrect Latin spelling with <b>, unaware that <v> would have done the job better. Then, of course, initial [vl-] was a permissible onset in Greek, but not in native Latin words, which was one more reason for the spelling <bl-> in Latin. Saxo just copied his Latin sources.

 

 

> Correct me if I'm wrong but there are a lot of place names in the Balkans that are not Turkish and some are even of uncertain etymology.  So, if balkan could be from *bAlk- (oh, no, not 'shining, bright' again - it was everywhere!), then that may also open the door to other, non-Turkish possibilities.

 

 

Certainly. Do you know what? It it were not for the _very_ late attestation of <balkan> (half the century after the ultimate fall of Constantinople!), I'd be tempted to derive it from Germanic (*balk-o:n- 'dividing ridge, obstacle, beam'). However, the Balkans were not exotic mountains at the end of the civilised world; the area was politically important and well-known to contemporary geographers -- between the Hungarian kingdom and the Ottoman empire, two great powers at the time. It's hard to imagine that an old name of the mountains should have existed for centuries without being reflected in any written sources; so I find it likely that it was given by the Turks shortly after their conquest of the area, whatever its ultimate etymology.

> I would suggest that Callimachus, if he did not say the word was Turkish, may
have been reporting a non-Turkish word.  ... And again, I don't know what Callimachus actually wrote.

 

 

Nor do I, but perhaps I'll be able to track down the passage in question.

> BTW, the difference in names -- <woloch> and <wloch> -- apparently did not mean that scholars at least thought that the two words were unrelated.  I have this from somewhere on the web:  "We can read in the biography of Zbigniew Olenicki, Bishop of Crakow (written by Filippo Buonaccorsi Callimaco... that Poles considered Rumanians to be Italians (Italos) and called them by the same name (Italiae indigenas)."  (Obviously, the writer actually means the same name was used in Latin, not Polish.)

It should be construed as something like "Romance", in our terms. Remember that Italian was spoken in Dalmatia (controlled by the Venetian Republic) at the time, and the etymological connection between <wl/och> and <wol/och> (<volox>) was self-evident to Polish writers in the 15th century and later. A great proportion of the population of the Polish kingdom (let alone the grand Duchy of Lithuania) was East Slavic speaking; bilingualism was widespread, and the -lo-/-ro- : -olo-/-oro- correspondence was common enough for any child to be able to figure out the regularity (gród : horod 'town', krowa : korova 'cow', gl/owa, holova 'head', etc.).

 

Piotr