On Mon, Dec 29, 2003, at 07:11 PM, tgpedersen wrote:
> Thanks, but you didn't answer the question: Why "must've"?
> Could the word not be older, since there is already one
> supposedly Albanian-substrate word in the area?
>
> Torsten
IMHO, the best explanation is the one given by
Piotr on two different occasions. And indeed: the
most probable carriers of the word in the mountaineous
regions (and Piotr underlined in Polish the word
is limited to those Carpathian areas) were the
Romanian pastoral migrants, known outside the
Romanian language as Vlachs. What's more: those
Polish & Slovak areas are so-to-speak nextdoor
neighbors to provinces inhabited by Romanians (look
at maps reflecting the administrative situations
up to September 1939; besides, in some periods,
Hungary's frontier was near Przemysl; and Pocutia,
a region between Maramuresh and Bucovina belonged
for a while to the princes of Moldavia, after some
kinda transaction with the Polish king). Romanian
migrations to Poland, Slovakia and Moravia in ME
times seem to be pretty well documented. (For the
time being I'm not able to give bibl. references
though.)
George