Re: Albanian Christian religious terminology

From: g
Message: 23865
Date: 2003-06-26

>(f) Saviour. Rom.: SALVATOR*. Alb.: ?
>
>* is this a recently borrowed term ? Pacurariu doesn't
>mention it.

Yes, it is. The old ones are the Slavic <izbãvitor> (practically
not in use, unlike its verb, <a izbãvi, izbãvire>) and the
Hungarian <mântuitor>.

(cf. http://tinyurl.com/fb2c <mentõ> "rescuer" + "ambulance"
[õ that is ö with 2 accents instead of 2 dots stands for a long ö],
<mentõS> "ambulance man;" and <menteS> "free (of); de/void"),
<mentõöv>, <mentSég> & al. of the same family. Attention: the
online dictionary puts all these in the same list with other
*un*related words, such as those containing the Latin -ment-)

In Rumanian, the basic word, the Hung. verb <ment/eni>, gained
further connotations: to get healed; to finish, to be done with, to
end; and as a substantive <mântuialã> in the locution
<de mântuialã> "(to do sth.) superficial/ly."

[I myself keep wondering how on earth all Daco-Romanian dialect
speakers managed to _uniformly_ get rid of previous terms
meaning "The Saviour" and replace them with the Hungarian
calque thereof, given that up to 1700 --with few exceptions--
Romanians stubbornly sticked to the Orthodox rite of the Christian
faith, resisting all Catholic (and Protestant) pressures and attractions. :]

George