--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
People,
> especially bilingual speakers, are often quite well
> aware of regular
> correspondences between evidently related languages
> and make use of them
> when importing loanwords.
****GK: Your view would be that the word was imported
from Polish into Ukrainian at some point when
bilingualism (Ukrainian-Polish) existed in Ukraine?
This is to some extent plausible for the 15th century
(as attested by the "djakuju" examples in my "Slovnyk
Staroukrajins'koji movy"-- they're all from that
century). But cf. below.*****
As for direct borrowing
> from Germanic into
> Ukrainian -- some form of High German stills seems
> to be the only
> possible source, and given the distribution of the
> word in Slavic
> (everywhere in West Slavic, only Ukrainian in East
> Slavic)
****GK: What about Belorusian "dziakavac'" (= to
thank)?****
plus the
> conventional pattern of substitutions between Polish
> and Ukrainian
> (/dz'/ --> /d'/, /eN/ --> /ja/), Polish is a likely
> intermediary.
>
> Piotr
****GK: Despite the apparent plausibility of the
"Polish intermediary" scenario, I'm still not sure
it's the only possibility. Prior to 1340, the
bilingualism you mention did not exist. And contacts
between Ukrainian and German territories (political
and commercial) are documented from at least the 10th
century.****
Further query: What would the Polish, Czech, and
Ukrainian words for "thanks", "to thank" have been
before the borrowing? Something like "xvala" or
"slava"? When was "danke" borrowed into West Slavic?
>
>
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