Piotr Gasiorowski schrieb:
>
> <xvala>, <xvaliti> can be found with this sense in Old Church Slavic,
> and of course in Serbian/Croatian, so it's quite likely that early Slavs
> used such words to express thanks. There's also <blagodariti> (not in
> West Slavic), but that smacks of a formal Church Slavicism and is, I
> believe, a calque from Gk. eukHarizo^.
> Piotr
pomana= alms, charity, gratis
it seems the habit to say thanks in the way we know it today is
something new. If I remember right, in the past this habit have had
a more religious conotation where god was the one who was invoqued.
For instance the paysants stil today do not say "thank you" when
they become something for alms, just because of charity, gratis.
They invoques stil todays the name of god here for this aspect. The
sentece which is said is "bogdaproste" which is not understood but
they, the peasants know, they must say so. The word is in fact the
Bulgarian sentence "bog da prosit" (god bless you(?) which became in
Rum. "bogdaproste" and in some other regions the "gd" cluster got
reduced to "bodaproste". They say it, they know they have to say it
that way, they have no idea what it means exctly. The sentence is
not analysable for these speakers, they cannot recognise there no
god in that sentence, they cannot recognise no bless, but they use
it as such:-)
Thus, bog & prosit seems a plausible alternative for saying thank
you in older times.
Alex