Medjugorje?

[Mark Odegard]

>From a Polish Slavicist/phoneticist/IEist/Historian of English of impeccable
credentials (he has responded to Anne also):

--start quote--
The name is Serbian/Croatian, and the place (with the "Hill
of Vision") is in Bosnia-Herzegovina now.

The <medju-> part, with <dj> pronounced rather like English
<j> corresponds to Russian <mez^du->, Czech <mezi->, Polish
<mie,dzy->, all of them prepositions meaning 'between'
(historically, case forms of a noun meaning 'division
line'). The Proto-Slavic prototype was *medja <
Proto-Indo-European *medh-jo- 'middle'. It is directly
related to English mid-, Greek messos/mesos, Latin medius,
Sanskrit madhya-, etc.

<gora> means 'mountain' (also a word going back to PIE).
Compounds of the form Prep+Noun+Ije are characteristic of
Slavic, cf. Pol. Pomorze 'Pomerania' < *po-morIje = '(land)
reaching as far as the sea'. They can even be formed
productively in the modern languages, cf. Rus. Zakavkaz'je
'Transcaucasia' = '(land) beyond the Caucasus' (from the
phrase <za Kavkazom>).
--end quote--


>>Does Slavic "medju" point back to the same IE root as Latin/Romance
>>"meso"/"medio"?
>
>It certainly looks as though it should reflect the same IE *medhyo-, which
>persists in similar senses in virtually all IE languages, I think.
>
>Why Serbocroatian "medju" versus "mezhdu" or so in other Slavic languages
>(including Bulgarian and Old Church Slavonic, apparently), I don't know.
>
>-- Doug Wilson

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