the two mirs

[Andrew Jameson]

Dear Nikolaus,
We are talking about Common Slavic, maybe pre-500 AD.
I don't know what evidence the Baltic languages can offer, perhaps
someone else can help here.
May I suggest that we regard the words in question as capable of development
through metaphor, and here my common sense (and years of working
with the Russian language) suggests the following:
Mir originates in Slavic with the meaning community (as still exists today,
although no-one has mentioned this specifically in this particular debate).
This was for the ancient Slavs their world, it was a small world, but in time
the meaning was extended more widely. The mir represented the people
with whom you were at peace, otherwise it wouldn't have been a community.
As simple as that.
Later, as literacy and written records appeared, ambiguities arose and people
started spelling the world and peace meanings differently. Fortunately the
alphabet at that time had two letters for the sound "i". (This was a fortunate
accident due to the phonological development of Byzantine Greek, where
differing vowel sounds had "fallen together", but the letters representing them
were retained. As the Byzantine Greek alphabet was the basis of the Cyrillic
alphabet, the redundant letters were retained in the Cyrillic alphabet of the
period.)

Andrew Jameson
Chair, Russian Committee, ALL
Languages and Professional Development
1 Brook Street, Lancaster LA1 1SL UK
Tel: 01524 32371  (+44 1524 32371)

----------
From: Elisabeth Ghysels <ElisabethG at YUCOM.BE>
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: the two mirs
Date: 22 September 2000 22:31

Thank you for your very comprehensive answer. Does all this then mean, that
the Russian language has (had) a word for peace, and a different word for
world, society; and that all nice efforts to find a philosophical reason why
the Russian language has one word, that means peace as well as world, are
meaningless?
Kind regards,

Nikolaus

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU]Namens Andrij Hornjatkevyc
Verzonden: vrijdag 22 september 2000 16:48
Aan: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Onderwerp: Re: the two mirs


At 01:06 AM 09/22/00 +0200, you wrote:
>The two "mirs" raise several questions for me:
>
>1) when and how did the "i desjaterichnoe" disappear in Russian?

It was abolished in the orthographic reform that had been prepared by the
Imperial Academy of Sciences, but not implemented in 1913 because the
Romanovs were busily celebrating their tricentennial, and then other events
took precedence. The orthographic reform was implemented only after the
October Revolution.

When Peter I introduced the "grazhdanka" for secular texts, he proposed
that "i desjaterichnoe" be used throughout and the "i vos'merichnoe" be
eliminated from the alphabet, but this detail of his decree did not take
hold, and both "i"s continued to be used.

>2) am I right, that it has been retained in Ukrainian?

It is retained in Ukrainian for the /i/ phoneme, while the "i
vos'merichnoe" designates the /y/ phoneme.

>3) How can it be explained, that such an important difference between both
>languages has developed apparently during the Soviet era, of all eras?

While in the pre-reform Russian orthography both 'i's designated the same
phoneme - /i/, in Ukrainian they designate different phonemes, and this
difference in practice antedates Soviet times by at least a century, and
actually much longer.

>4) When did the "i desjaterichnoe" appear in the first place, since it
>didn't seem to exist in old church Slavic?

As a matter of fact, the "i desjaterichnoe" can be found in the oldest
classical Old Church Slavic Cyrillic MSS. Furthermore, even the glagolitic
alphabet had three characters for the /i/ phoneme.

>5) How were "peace" and "world" written before the appearance of the "i
>desjaterichnoe"?

See above.



Dr. Andrij Hornjatkevyc
Associate Professor
Canadian Institute of           Modern Languages and
Ukrainian Studies               Cultural Studies
352 Athabasca Hall              200 Arts Building
University of Alberta           University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E8    Edmonton, AB T6G 2E6
phone (780) 492-3765    phone (780) 492-0733
fax (780) 492-4967              fax (780) 492-9106

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