Unitaz - Karandash

[jdingley at YORKU.CA]

Hi,

Being picky, "vertolet" is probably not a DIRECT calque of "helicopter",
since the second element in "helicopter", viz. "pter", means "feather" or
"wing". However, the usual Greek word for "to fly (like a bird)" is formed
from this root, viz. "petomai"(shortened from "ptEsomai"). According to
the OED "helicopter" is first recorded in English in 1872.

John Dingley

Quoting Ralph Cleminson <Ralph.Cleminson at PORT.AC.UK>:

> Just because Vvedenskaja and Kolesnikov express their opinions so
> dogmatically, that doesn't mean they're right.  For example вертолет
> is
> a pefectly straightforward calque of helicopter, in which the верт-
> corresponds to ἕλιξ , and has nothing to do with
> вертикальный.
>
> As far as карандаш is concerned, κάλαμος > kalem is
> uncontroversial, but
> deriving карандаш  from kalem is highly problematical, and not only
> for
> phonological reasons.  If one looks at the Routledge "Dictionary of the
> Turkic Languages", one finds that the Turkish for pencil is kurşun kalem
> (literally a lead pen!), though since Turkish vocabulary underwent such
> radical evolution in the twentieth century this is not really evidence
> for what it might have been in earlier periods.  Of the remaining Turkic
> languages (generalising the phonology), Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uighur
> use karandaş, while Turkmen and Uzbek use kalem; Tartar uses both.  The
> four that use karandaş for pencil use kalem for pen, while those that
> use kalem for pencil use ruçka for pen.  This very strongly suggests
> that the direction of borrowing was from Russian to Turkic and not the
> other way round, and that we should not be looking to Central Asia for
> the origin of the Russian word.
>
> There remains the traditional etymology from (Ottoman) Turkish.  Here
> the source quoted by Will Ryan,  'v odnom iashchike ruda, nazyvaiut ee
> po nemetski olovko, a po ruski karandash samoi priamoi', is most
> interesting.  This means that the substance was called olovko
> (presumably Blei) in German, but nevertheless was not what the Russians
> called olovko (incidentally, when did lead become свинец in Russian?),
> but what they called карандаш.  Even more interesting from the point
> of
> view of this discussion is the evidence that in seventeenth-century
> Russian карандаш meant not (or not only) the writing implement, but
> the
> material, graphite, which is of course nothing other than a black stone,
> kara taşı.
>
> As has already been pointed out, the main problem with this etymology is
> the origin of the n, which is indeed a difficulty if one assumes that
> the word was borrowed directly from Turkish into Russian. This is not a
> necessary assumption.  It is noticeable that words entering Russian from
> Greek frequently acquire a nasal before a voiced plosive, both proper
> names such as Амбакум, Кондрат and common nouns such as
> (begging your
> pardon) афендрон.  Given the commercial activities of the Greeks
> throughout Central and Eastern Europe at this period, such a mediation
> is entirely plausible, and the established etymology given by Vasmer et
> al. altogether probable.
>
>
>
>
> >>> <lino59 at AMERITECH.NET> 28/08/08 10:04 PM >>>
> There's an interesting ( to some? to me?) discussion of this etymology
> in
> the last section of this article beginning with Показательна в
> этом отношении этимология слова
> карандашhttp://www.relga.rsu.ru/n37/rus37.htm:
>
> http://www.relga.rsu.ru/n37/rus37.htm
>
>
> ------------------------------
> >Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:35:40 -0700
> >From: augerot <bigjim at U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
> >Subject: Re: Unitaz = "Universal'nyi Taz" = Toilet Bowl
> >
> >карандаш. Definition from Wiktionary, a free
> dictionary ... [edit] Etymology. From Turkish kara (black) + >taÃ
Ÿ
> (stone). [edit] Noun. карандаш (karandáÃ
¡) m.
> ...
> >
> >.
> >--
> >james e. augerot ________________________________________________
> >professor slavic langs and lits, box 353580, seattle, wa 98195
> >206-543-5484/6848 fax 206-543-6009
> >adjunct prof linguistics
> >treasurer society for romanian studies
> >secretary south east european studies association
> >web denizen http://faculty.washington.edu/bigjim/
>
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