LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.04 (01) [E]

Wed Mar 4 16:12:39 UTC 2009

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L O W L A N D S - L - 04 March 2009 - Volume 01
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From: clarkedavid8 at aol.com
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.03 (04) [E

Ron wrote: What many people do not realize is that Finnic languages used to
be spread over a much larger area than they are nowadays. For instance, what
is now Western Russia, including St. Petersburg, used to be Finnic-speaking,
and t pockets of Finnic language communities still remain in those areas.

There was a big move of Finnish speakers out of what is now Russia when the
eastern Finnish border moved west after WW2, much as occurred with the
Germans in eastern Europe. Vyborg apparently used to be Finland's second
city, but it is now entirely Russian speaking, I am told.

David Clarke

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From: clarkedavid8 at aol.com
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.03 (04) [E

 There has been quite a lot in the British press this last week about how
cricket was originally a game played by Flemish weavers, who brought it to
England in the Middle Ages. In fact, there is also evidence of golf and
bagpipes (commonly supposed to be Scottish inventions) in Flemish paintings.
I suspect that all these games and pastimes were present in some form
throughout Europe at one time, but were forgotten and then reintroduced.
Surely football and rugby are English inventions, though (although I once
heard of a Russian who thought that football must be Russian because the
Russian word "futbol" is declined like a normal Russian noun, unlike
obviously foreign imports such as "vino", which is indeclinable)?

David Clarke

 From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>

Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.02 (01) [D/E]

>From Heather Rendall    heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk

 Roger wrote i.a. in his fascinating exposition on cricket:

*1. Krik* in Belgian dialects (and in Dutch) is a jack (as one uses for
lifting a car or for supporting the tail of a plane against tail-tipping)
cf. the French *cric
*http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cric

Bloch in his dictionnaire Ã©tymologique refers to
middle high German: kriek
and middle low German: krich

2. Cricket 1855, mot angl.., *peut-Ãªtre d'origine fr.;* on trouve au xve s.
*criquet *au sens de "bÃ¢ton servant20de but au jeu de boule

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From: "Mari Sarv" <mari at haldjas.folklore.ee>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.03 (04) [E]

If you are interested, there is a thorough report from this century:
http://www.mari.ee/eng/scien/topical/Katrin_Saks_Report.html

and quite a lot of information, including news on the homepage:
http://www.fennougria.ee/?lang=en

And for Paul an etymologic list of Estonian words:
http://www.eki.ee/dict/raun/

If youâ€™ll search for word â€žgrmâ€œ, you will get all supposedly germanic origin
words in this list, â€žbltâ€œ - baltic, â€žkasksâ€œ = keskalamsaksa â€™middle saxonâ€™
etc.

Mari Sarv,

Tartu,

Estonia

From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.03 (03) [E]

>>From Heather Rendall  heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk

Ron wrote: What many people do not realize is that Finnic languages used to
be spread over a much larger area than they are nowadays. For instance, what
is now Western Russia, including St. Petersburg, used to be Finnic-speaking,
and t pockets of Finnic language communities still remain in those areas.

I picked up a booklet when in Helsinki Museum about surveys done in the 20th
century on existing pockets of Finno-Ugric languages. The booklet was
published in 1990Z

The Finno-Permyak Group

1.  The Baltic Finns

Finns        5 milllion speakers

Estonians  1,100,000

Karelians  140,000

Vepsians   8,000

Votes  30

Livonians  150

2. The Lapps or Samis   40,000

3. The Volgans

Mordvinians  1,200,000

Cheremis or Maris  620,000

4. The Permyaks

Zyrans or Komis    480,000

Votyaks or Udmurts 710,000

The Ugric Group

1. Ob-Ugrians

Ostyaks of Khants   21,000

Voguls or Mansis  7,600

2. The Hungarians   14,000,000

Some of the pictures are very revealing: a picture dated 1905 of a teepee is
a summer camp of the Voguls on the lower reaches of the Sosva ( tributary of
the Ob?) and a 1900 photo of a village gathering of Ostyaks and samoyeds
could for all the worldhave been taken on a North American Indian
reservation, so similar do they look.

Just one question: Have the Votes survived?

Heather

Worcestershire, UK

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

Thanks, Heather.

Speakers of Votic are currently being estimated as counting less than 20.
However, as an ethnic group, the Votes will probably continue to exist for a
few more generations, albeit Russian speaking, much as it is the case in
other parts of Siberia, and using English, French, Spanish and Portuguese,
among the aboriginal peoples of the Americas. In such cases, songs, dances,
folk craft, rituals and customs tend to be remembered in the ancestral
language, at least for a while.

In Livonia (within today's Latvia) a Livonian language revival effort of
sorts is currently underway, the language being used in some popular music
as well.

Absent from your list are the Ingrians (a.k.a. Izhorians), the indigenous
ethnicity of Ingermanland (Izhoria) along parts of Russia's Baltic coast.
Speakers of Ingrian are currently estimated at around 300.

We can safely assume that a pretty large percentage of Russians of the area
around Lake Ladoga and the Russian coast of the Baltic Sea are of more or
less Finnic stock. Some cultural institutions probably go straight back to
the Finnic past, such as the Russian steam bath (Ð±Ð°Ð½Ñ *banya*) which is
obviously connected with the Finnic sauna (Estonian *saun*, Livonian
*sÅna*etc. < Proto-Finnic
**savÅ„a* originally probably 'pit'; cf. Sami *suovdnji* 'pit dug into snow')
which has relatives in sweat lodges throughout Siberia and throughout North
America. We might even hypothesize that Russian phonology has been partly
influenced by Finnic. When you listen to some Finnic varieties, the
Volga-Finnic languages especially (Erzya, Mari, Merya, Meshcherian, Moksha,
Muromian), you are not sure if they are spoken with Russian accents or if
Russian has been influenced by them.

All of the Balto-Finnic peoples have been having more or less intensive
contacts with speakers of Slavic, Baltic and Germanic. Those that have lost
their ancestral languages and cultures have been gradually absorbed into the
ethnic majority populations, though Finnic substrata undoubtedly survive in
the local dialects of Slavic and Baltic. In addition, parts of these areas
used to be governed by Germany, Denmark and Sweden, apart from long-standing
Hanseatic contacts. So there were sustained contacts with Germanic languages
and cultures.

By the way, for some time during the Middle Ages Denmark administered not
only all of the Jutland Peninsula (the southern border being in what is now
within Hamburg) but also much of what is now the state of Mecklenburg â€“
Western Pomerania as well as some adjacent areas to the east of it. This was
a larger area than that later occupied by Sweden.

So, cultural and linguistic contacts and stratification abounded along the
southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, areas previously dominated by
speakers of Slavic, Baltic and Finnic. And we have not even mentioned the
massive waves of Germanic eastward expansion from all over the Western
Lowlands, from Britain, from Southern Scandinavia and from areas farther
south in Germany.

Regards,
Reinhard/Rin
Seattle, USA

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.03 (04) [E]

Is it just me, or is anybody else getting these messages repeated dozens of
times?

Paul

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology

Paul, I for one get everything only once. Maybe there's a temporary stutter
in your case where the list server thinks mail to you is undeliverable, so
it keeps trying.

Tere, Mari! Milline meeldiv Ã¼llatus yhteydenottoasi!

Thanks for the information. We should also draw people's attention to the
short list of (Low) Saxon loanwords in Estonian witch which you kindly
helped me:

http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/eesti-info2.php

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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