Greek+Slavic

In fact, I beleive that generally Greek and slavic are not vrey close in IE context. I mean that Greek was formed centures before slavic, and thus, these branches are not very close to each other (consider greek:centum while slavic:satem). Greek also has a lot of preIE words which are very important in every-day  speech (anthropos, thalassa). Most of these basic words survive today and this is why Greek Linguists always considered the greek language ONE continuous language; this is not the case in any other IE language (old english>modern english, latin>romance, old bulgarian+local slavic>slavjanoruskij+local slavic> russian, old bulgarian>>> modern bulgarian, sanskrit>indian IE languages). The relations between Greek and Slavic are mainly characterized by mutual loanword-flows, particularly between slavic peoples under ottoman rule and Greeks. Greek has also given a lot of 'classical' words in the international vocabulary and thus, greek classical words and neologisms have passed to all slavic languages.

Mate Kapovic <mkapovic@...> έγραψε:

> I had wondered about the etymology of the common Slavonic vulgar term
> kurva "whore". Recently learning that Greek kore "girl" was once
> written with digamma after the rho, it seems likely that these words
> are descended from a common ancestor. It wouldn't be unlikely for a
> neutral word to get a pejorative meaning in one language but not
> another. For example, the Romanian word (of Dacian origin?) copil
> "child" has a cognate in Bulgarian kopele "bastard".
>
> Is my supposition correct or is there no way for Slavonic kurva to be
> cognate with Gr. korwa?

No way. Slavic *kury originally means "hen" (cf. Frenche cocotte). Slavic
*kurU "cock" (in both meanings as in English) is most probably onomatopoeic.
If not, it could be derived from PIE *k(W)owr- but there's no cognates.
Greek kσrwos means "boy, young man" and can be derived from (possible)
PIE*k(')orw-. Thus it doesn't match Slavic word neither in meaning nor
phonologically.

Mate