LL-L "Slavonic connections" 2004.10.02 (05) [E]

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From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Slavonic connections

Ron wrote:

"those regions of what is now Eastern Germany and Northern Poland used to be
inhabited by other people before the arrival of the Slavs from the Balkans."

The generally accepted view seems to be that the Slavs had been in the
Pripet marshes for at least 1000 years before expanding in all directions
(including into the Balkans) in around 500 CE.

Ron also wrote:

"I ... suspect that ModPol _daisko_ (< *diska) comes from Lowlands Saxon
(_disch_), or better to say from Old Saxon _disk_ or even from an older
version; cf. Germanic *_disko_ 'dish', 'bowl', 'wooden board (to eat
from)'."

My little Polish dictionary only has "deska" (= "board") (and I've only
found "daisko" on the internet in Finnish and Latvian) which looks very like
a cognate of Russian "doska" (both feminine) and others in Serbo-Croat,
Slovak, Czech and Bulgarian. ["P at smatritye n@ dasku" - don't try to click on
that - floats up from my subconscious.]  A fairly late borrowing from
Germanic would probably be masculine. A Polish word in "o" would probably be
neuter so "daisko" is even more puzzling.  Since the basic word is a
borrowing into Germanic from Lat 'discus' from Gr 'diskos' a parallel
borrowing into Slavonic seems plausible.

Interestingly, Onions suggests that our "desk" is from Provencal or Italian
(from the same ultimate source), the Scandinavian form which the word took
on being unexplained.

Regarding the mediaeval "Zug nach Osten" I found this in D Zimmerling _Die
Hanse_, pp 62-3:

"Das ganze Gebiet der Slawen, angefangen von der Eider als der Grenze des
dänischen Reiches, und wie es sich zwischen Ostsee und Elbe durch weite
Landstriche bis nach Schwerin erstreckt, einst von Hinterhalt starrend und
fast ganz verödet, ist nun durch Gottes Gnade vollständig verwandelt worden
gleichsam in ein einziges Siedlungsland der Sachsen." Pfarrer Helmold von
Bosau hat allen Grund, Anfang der siebziger Jahre im 12. Jahrhundert
zufrieden die Hände zun falten: Die heidnischen Slawen zwischen Elbe und
Oder sind fast restlos ausgerottet. Die geringe Zahl, die den Metzleien im
Zuge deutscher Eroberungskriege entkommen konnte, ist christlich geworde,
hat den Herzögen und Grafen Tribut zu entrichten oder ist lehnsabhängig
geworden.

As far as I can make out through Zimmerling's journalistic style (never use
a word twice if there's an alternative) colonisation really only started on
a big scale in the 13th century and, as Ron said, in parallel with the
expansion of the Hanse. But I think they must be seen as separate phenomena.
The Hanseatic merchants didn't own or work the land and traded mostly in
non-agricultural goods such as salt fish, furs, timber and manufactures. OK,
add wine, but that would be from further south. The colonists came from all
over West-Germanic-speaking Europe. I wonder if they were capable of
producing much of an agricultural surplus at this time.

John Feather CS johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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