[gothic-l] Re: Gothic & Greek B in Slabonic

Thu Aug 26 09:22:11 UTC 2004

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Hi Llama nom!

Of course, it is hardly to suppose the word <korabl'> 
having been an early borrowing as the Slavs never were 
seafarers and just did not sense necessity in borrowing 
words to express a notion of a ship (vessel) until 
the word appeared in translated Greek texts.

The Old Bulgarians could not follow a tradition 
of themselves in reproduction of the Greek Beta 
as a Slavonic _v_ because they merely had not got 
such a tradition. The Bulgarian written language 
and initial Bulgarian literature originated from 
and always remained under influence of Greek writing 
tradition. And certainly, the Bulgarians of the IX-XI cc. 
had opportunities to hear Greek speech and oration 
almost every day. We cannot thus help accepting 
pronunciation of the Beta by the Greeks as _v_ 
(or a sound that Bulgarian ears perceived as _v_) 
at least since IX c.

Finnish borrowings from the Common Germanic are 
an intriguing riddle that gives me no rest. 
Where and when the Finns had contacts with speakers 
of Common Germanic? Besides, is the form <hlaibaz> 
really attested in Germanic? (BTW, the same question 
in respect of the form <hlaibaR> in ON.) 
However that may be, Finnish actually has borrowings 
from Common Germanic, not Norse, that is a fact and-- 
a mystery!

If it is of interest, the pronunciation _hlep_ 
in Russian is not a "development" from _hleb_. 
In all Slavonic languages, more or less, voiced stops 
at the end of words are pronounced as paired unvoiced. 
That is, <hleb> is a written form, which was pronounced, 
from the very beginning, as _hlep_. To compare, 
the genitive is <hleba> with the same pronunciation _hleba_. 
I have mentioned this example only in order to show that 
a Slavonic ear took Gothic <hlaifs> as containing a stop 
(its voicing is here of no importance) rather than 
a fricative (Old Slavonic knew both _f_ and _v_). 
Perhaps this feature sheds a little light upon specificity 
of the Gothic _b/f_.

Vladimir

-----Original Message-----
From: llama_nom [mailto:penterakt at fsmail.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 8:07 PM
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [gothic-l] Re: Gothic & Greek B in Slabonic

Hi Vladimir!

Ah, so the appearance of /b/ in korabl' isn't necessarly evidence in 
itself for an early borrowing.  Thanks for the extra background 
details.

I guess even if we could pin down the pronunciation of Gothic at 
any one time, that still leaves a wide area in space and time where 
the exact value is unknown. In Primitive Germanic, it is thought 
that there was originally no voiced bilabial stop except after /m/. 
Elsewhere there was only a fricative /b/, which eventually became a 
stop initially in all of the historically attested Germanic 
languages, including Gothic. Medially and finally it remained a 
fricative in OE, OS, ON, but became a stop in OHG. In Gothic, 
was used to transliterate a fricative in the name of the Roman month 
November, Got. Naubaimber.

The alternation of : <f> in inflection also implies that at some 
time at least stood for a fricative.

Latin writers spelt Gothic as initially. Medially, they 
normally used <v> (Braune/Helm, Gotische Grammatik, 54). After /l/ 
and /r/ Gothic is usually considered to represent a stop, since 
it isn't devoiced to <f> at the end of a word. Against this is the 
personal name Silva, but the spelling of this particular name was 
probably influenced by the Latin word.

It has also been suggested that Greek Paulos retained a fricative 
pronunciation in Gothic Pawlus, giving rise eventually to Spanish 
Pablo (Braune/Helm, Gotische Grammatik, 39.1) - maybe with an 
intermediate stop stage between Gothic & Modern Spanish?

Occasionally final <f> (representing an earlier /b/) appears written 
as , especially in Luke and certain other parts of the Bible. But 
I'm not sure whether this was just a spelling difference, or if the 
analogy extended to speech.

Finnish laipa might have come from Germanic or Old Norse: 
hlaibaz/hlaibaR. The modern Russian, etc. pronunciation _hlep_ is a 
later development, isn't it? It has in Old Bulgarian.

My thought was that to speakers of a language which has a labio-
dental fricative /v/ and a bilabial stop /b/, hearing words of 
another language with a voiced bilabial fricative, it isn't a 
foregone conclusion that they would interpret this as closer to /v/. 
For example, the Spanish , <v> which has very little friction 
sounds to me more like English /b/ than /v/. Maybe that's why Gothic 
hlaib- appears in Russian as hl'eb. The common omission of medial 
<g> in Gothic names by Latin writers makes me think that maybe this 
too had a fairly gentle pronunciation, more like Spanish <g> than say 
Dutch.

Maybe the writers of Old Bulgarian who prefered <v> to transcribe the 
Greek beta, were following in a tradition themselves, as the later 
Russian writers were - imitating each other. But an adhoc oral 
loanword might involve a more arbitrary choice of nearest equivalent 
sound. Or maybe the Greek sound had become closer to OB /v/ at this 
time?

Llama Nom

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, åÇÏÒÏ× ÷ÌÁÄÉÍÉÒ <vegorov at i...> wrote:
> ***<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-
com:office:office" />
> 
>  
> 
> Hi Llama nom!
> 
>  
> 
> Having nothing to add to the matter in question, I'd like to 
discuss some 
> your postulates regarding Greek and Gothic influences on Slavonic.
> 
> Pronunciation of the Greek Beta as _v_ in Russian loanwords from 
Greek 
> is usual but not absolutely obligatory. Note that Old Russian 
borrowed 
> most of Greek words in a written form (from ecclesiastic 
literature, 
> hence not earlier than in the XI c.). No matter, which way the real 
Middle 
> (Byzantine) Greeks pronounced the Beta in the XI c., Russian monks 
never 
> heard Greek enunciation and translated solely manuscripts. From 
this standpoint, 
> the Beta might be translated (black and white) as _b_ or _v_ 
depending on 
> preferences of a particular translator. Predominance of the variant 
_v_ 
> is explained only by the fact that many Greek texts, especially 
within the initial 
> period after the Christening, came to Russia through Bulgaria 
already translated 
> into Old Bulgarian (Old Slavonic) where the Bulgarians, well 
acquainted 
> with the Greek culture and language, used to put the Slavonic V-
equivalent 
> instead of the Beta. Nevertheless, there are a few modern Russian 
loanwords 
> from Greek with _b_ in place of the Greek Beta. Besides the 
mentioned 
> <korabl'> I'd point out the word <bibliya> 'the Bible' that 
preserved 
> both _b_ of the Greek original. Maybe we have here an example of 
> a "holding action" of the _l_ after the Beta?
> 
> Now we touch "the presumed fricative Gothic b/f > b in loanwords to 
Slavonic". 
> You know, the stem of the Gothic word <hlaifs> was <hlaib> (cf. G. 
<hlaibis>), 
> but "quality" of this _b_ is under question. I do not know how 
exact is reflection 
> of the sound in a conventional writing _b_. At least the modern 
Russians 
> pronounce <hlep> while the modern Finns pronounce <laipa>, both 
with _p_ 
> in place of the Gothic _b/f_.
> 
>  
> 
> Regards
> 
> Vladimir
> 
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: llama_nom [mailto:penterakt at f...]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 1:32 PM
> To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [gothic-l] Re: Goths and Vandals
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Jim,
> 
> There are some early Greek loanwords in Slavonic, for example 
Russian 
> KORABL' < Gk. karabi(on), a sort of boat.  According to Entwhistle 
& 
> Morison's "Russian & the Slavonic Languages" this must have been 
> borrowed before the Greek Beta became a fricative, because later 
> borrowings have _v_.  Do you know when that happened?  Wright, and 
> Streitberg I think, both say that it was before the time of the 
> Gothic Bible, but I don't know how long before.  (The same word was 
> borrowed later into Norse, giving Old Icelandic KARFI).  On the 
other 
> hand, the presumed fricative Gothic b/f > b in loanwords to 
Slavonic 
> (e.g. chl'eb < hlaifs...
> 
> Maybe a bilabial fricative sounded closer to B than to V in 
Slavonic 
> ears.  I've always assumed that Greek B went through a bilabial 
stage 
> on its way to the modern V sound, but I don't know about the timing 
> of any of this.
> 
> Another Greek loan to Slavonic, OB. kopije 'spear' < Gk. 
> koopion 'haft', is said to have been transmitted via the Germans (?
> Goths).
> 
> Given such words, maybe we shouldn't read too much into Priscus's 
> comment beyond the immediate situation at Attila's court, or maybe 
it 
> didn't apply at an earlier time.  If it was true though, the 
> following article might explain it:
> 
> http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art198e.pdf
> 
> Here Frederik Kortlandt argues that the Goths migrated not directly 
> from the Vistula to the Ukraine, but along a more westerly route, 
> along the Danube.  This, he says, explains certain Latin & Celtic 
> influences on Gothic.  I'm a bit wary of some of his conclusions 
> though.  He seems very definite about certain things, and doesn't 
> mention alternate explanations, e.g.:
> 
> "The words Kreks `Greek' and dat. pl. marikreitum `pearls' also 
> betray the influence of an Upper German dialect without voiced 
> obstruents (cf. Kortlandt 1988: 9)."
> 
> Usually Got. Kreks, OE. crecas, etc. are explained as an earlier 
> borrowing, with K for G due to the lack of voiced stops in 
Germanic.  
> Kortlandt's idea assumes a very early date for this distinctively 
> Upper German consonant shift, pre 350!  Also, that the Germanic 
> tribes had no established name for Greeks before this time.
> 
> "Gothic phonology resembles that of Latin and Romance more than 
that 
> of the other Germanic languages" - is a curious statement.  I 
wonder 
> what exactly he has in mind here.  The other Germanic languages are 
> only recorded extensively in much later forms.  In the mid fourth 
> century the runic evidence suggests that they were much closer to 
> Gothic, with a simpler set of phonemes.
> 
> That said, I don't know enough to comment on the overall 
hypothesis.  
> Maybe there is something in it.
> 
> "It seems to me that gen. pl. skaurpjono `scorpions' almost 
suffices 
> to show that the Goths entered the Balkans from the west, not from 
> the north."
> 
> Almost suffices, I don't know, but Gk. skorpios (accute accent on 
i) 
> versus Lat. scorpio, does suggest that the Goths took the word from 
> Latin rather than Greek.  Another reason for the Latin influence 
> might be the prevelance of Latin in the military, even in the 
East.  
> I'm not sure of dates or sources for this, but I've read that Latin 
> persisted longest in the Eastern Empire as the official language of 
> the army.
> 
> Llama Nom
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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