faux amis

[Uladzimir Katkouski]

Wow, Daniel. Impressive!

First of all, I would like to warn you that I have no formal training in
linguistics whatsoever. I do all of it just for a hobby, so I might be
lacking some necessary knowledge.

Perhaps, I was wrong in my understanding of the term "faux amis". For
me, if the first and most frequently used meaning of a word W1 in the
language X coincides with the first and most frequently used meaning of
a word W2 in the language Y, then they are NOT "faux amis".

(In our case, that would be "duma" - "duma" and "matka" - "matka" and
some other pairs, which I marked as "wrong".)

As I could see, you would like to mark some words as "faux amis" even if
only some secondary meanings (which are rarely used or/and archaic)
don't coincide. In my opinion, this too far-fetched. But, again, I don't
know what's the normal practice in such cases.

And here some clarifications regarding the words:

> > 7. prosta - prosto - Now both meanings are used (direct and simple),

I meant that in _Belarusian_ people would use the word "prosta" _much_
more often in the meaning which coincides with Russian (simple), and
only very rarely to mean "direct". If you want to say "direct", in
Belarusian you say "prama" or "nauprost", "naprostki".

> > 8. nahly - naglyj - Well, "nahly" is definately a "polonizm" and you

> Okay, so should I mark this word as non-existing in Belarusian?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=be&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%BB%D1%8B+%D1%96
= as you see rom Google search result, there only *11* pages in the
whole internet that contain Belarusian word "nahly". As I said, it's
used mostly in colloquial speech.

> > 20. kraska - kraska.

I am sorry! That completely slipped out of my mind. You are totally
right. It has this meaning as "flower" in Belarusian.


> 24. rasiejski - rasiejski

Well, it is very similar distinction in Belarusian:

rasiejski = related to Russsians, Russia, Russian Federation;

ruski = related to Belarus and Ukraine, Rus (Ruthenia), the old Kievan
Rus, our Old Belarusian language.


Regards,
Uladazimir Katkouski
http://www.pravapis.org/ - Belarusian Language Site


--------------------------------------------------
 What\'s your MailBox address? - http://mailbox.hu

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------