On 2008-01-17 22:11, ualarauans wrote:
> Is it o > u > ü > i?
Something of the sort, except the /u/ stage. It's very much like the
fronting of ME /o:/ in Scots (the <guid> vowel, which also has become
/i/ in some, but by no means all, Scots accents). Ukrainian dialects
often have a special vowel (distinct from /i/) in this lexical set; it
can be described as high, unrounded, not-quite-front and very tense; the
usual spelling used by dialectologists is <y^>, and the realisation is
more or less = X-SAMPA [1].
>> This particular pun (I've never seen it, but get it) would work
>> throughout Slavic. Most of out swear-words have very ancient
> pedigrees.
>
> Could you please recommend some reliable and easy-to-get source for
> the origin and etymology of these words?
I wonder if there is one. Etymological dictionaries may be helpful, but
I don't think it has occured to anyone to write a monograph about
obscene words in Slavic (which is a pity). And as for dictionaries... I
have just discovered, to my severe disappointed, that Vasmer's Russian
etymological dictionary, otherwise so complete, has none of the three
worst ones (by which I mean two nouns and one verb). How Victorian! Just
like the New English Dictionary omitting the two most tabooed English
tetragrammata. Derksen has an entry for the verb *(j)ebati, presumably
because its Sanskrit and Greek cognates make it too time-honoured to be
ignored, but I can't see the nouns there. Aren't the Baltic and Albanian
connections of *pizda 'cunt' respectable enough? Even good old Pokorny
has an entry for it!
Those words present interesting comparative problems and certainly
deserve to be discussed; in particular the exact relation of Gk. oípHo:
(and zépHuros) to *jebati and Skt. yábHati _has_ been much discussed
(however, without reaching firm conclusions). There is a brief
discussion of these issues in Beekes's Greek dictionary in the relevant
entries.
Piotr