Re: [tied] Re: Trajan's column

----- Original Message -----
From: "george knysh" <gknysh@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2003 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Trajan's column


> *****GK: Here's an interesting paragraph from B.
> Mahomedov's recent book on the Chernyakhiv culture.
> It's from the chapter discussing its ethnic components
> (under "Thracians and other ethna"), at p.129:
> "Traces of a Thracian substrate have been preserved..
> in the languages of Carpathian Ukrainians [ref. to a
> 1976 article by Desnitskaya]. These are the words:
> vatra, koliba, tsaryna, gazda, barda, kiptar, virkolak
> (vurdalak), koshara, tsap, brindza, mamalyga, palanka,
> play, beskyd. The roots of similar words may be found
> in Albanian, a Paleo-Balkanic language closest to the
> ancient Thraco-Dacian tongues." Anything to that?*****

Nearly all these words occur in the highland dialects of Poland (including
the Tatras). Most of them, however, belong to the technical vocabulary of
shepherds, and their phonological makeup absolutely rules out a Proto-Slavic
date of borrowing. They are Carpathian (and in some cases Balkan)
"travelling loans" disseminated by Daco-Romanian-speaking shepherds during
the Middle Ages. Some of them (especially those with Albanian cognates) may
ultimately derive from the Albanoid ("Dacian") substrate in Romanian, but
they don't testify to the presence of Dacian-speakers in the northern
Carpathian region.

Piotr