"folk" with an L

[Victor Steinbok]

For a variety of reasons I am going to say "no". The two words are
entirely unrelated. There is no "native" word in Russian for "polka" and
it clearly came from another language--oddly enough, likely from German,
not another Slavic cross-over. And Russians never shy from referring to
various dances by their specific names, not generic ones like you
suggest. Only the first reason is objective, but, I believe, that's
sufficient.

By the same token, one could argue that sol' == salt and solntze == sun
(incidentally, one of the few l-dropping words) are related. They are
not. The resemblance--to me, at least--seems purely superficial. Vasmer
may think otherwise, but I found some glaring errors in that
dictionary--usually based on spurious unevidenced connections.

     VS-)

On 3/19/2010 2:06 PM, Paul Johnston wrote:
> Since "pole" or something like it--and yes, that would be a soft
> (palatalized)/l/ originally--means "field", would not a "pol'ka" be a
> "country dance" rather than a Polish one?
>
> Paul Johnston

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