Re: Loans, Slavs, Church (it was : Walachians are placed far North

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:

> In so far I am informed, the languages used by Slavonic Church did
> not played any building role in the language of Romanians.

I agree, but loans from Church Slavonic do confuse the issues for
those poor souls who want to sort out what happened.

> The Slavic loans are
> mostly before the Slavic methathesis, aka prior IX century.

There must be a misunderstanding here. If the Slavic loans were pre-
metathesis you wouldn't have "drag" and "gra~dina~" and "prag"
and "praf" and "straja~" and "vreme" etc. Indeed, the generally late
phonological shape of the Slavic loans into Rumanian and Albanian
constitutes one of those important hard facts that the ultimate story
will have to account for (on Albanian see, e.g., Svane). Not that
loans presupposing an earlier phonological shape are completely
absent, but it is a surpringly thin layer.

> ... These "early"
> loans, are -coincidence again- very common with Albanian as well. I

mean,

> apparently the Albanians and Romanians loaned _almost_ the same

words from

> Slavs.

I quite agree and it is an interesting fact.


....


Willem