abarca/abarka/alpargata

Sheila Watts sw271 at cus.cam.ac.uk
Wed Mar 17 10:13:29 UTC 1999


>“... in October 1913, the Balkan League of Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and
>Monte Negro, encouraged by Russia, declared war on Turkey.  In Belgrade,
>Trotsky watched the 18th Serbian Infantry marching off to war in uniforms of
>the new khaki color. They wore bark sandals and a sprig of green in their
>caps.

These were perhaps sandals made of a substance called bast, traditionally
used for a kind of basketwork in Russia (to my knowlegde) and quitte
possibly  also in other Slav countries. My Cahmbers dictionary says it is
'inner bark, esp. of lime' (also 'phloem' (?), 'fibre' and ',matting'),
though it looks rather like woven rushes or reeds. Russian folktales
frequently refer to peasants wearing this kind of footgear.

According to Chambers also, it rhymes with gas, not with mast, in RP. Sorry
everyone, this is an answer to a question Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen asked me
nearly 15 years ago. In my variety of English all the -as words rhyme with
each other (gas, gassed, past, mast, mass etc.), so I couldn't answer Jens'
question at the time.

Best wishes
Sheila Watts
_______________________________________________________
Dr Sheila Watts
Newnham College
Cambridge CB3 9DF
United Kingdom

phone +44 1223 335816



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