Aiwropais Ahvos Thiudozuh

Mon May 22 18:21:11 UTC 2006

åÇÏÒÏ× ÷ÌÁÄÉÍÉÒ <vegorov at ipiran.ru> wrote:    > You are wrong also regarding another your statement. "Chyud" means nothing in Old Church Slavonic, neither "ancient giants" nor anything else. 

  - Dear Vladimir, I suspect it’s not me but the Russian Academy of Sciences which you can address that. In 1994 it issued Staroslov’yanski Slovar’ (10-11 cc.) where it’s asserted (I’m citing out of memory so there may be errors) that the noun _sht’yud’i_ (don’t know the right way to transliterate that) as well as the derivative adjective _sht’yuzhd’i_ ARE attested in Old Church Slavonic, what answers the traditional view of it as a Common Slavic epoch borrowing from Germanic, most probably East-Germanic. The latter adjective still lives in the most Slavic languages meaning “foreign”, “alien” and the like. I doubt very much that it could spread from Russian into the rest of Slavia as late as the 8th-9th cc. (supposed time of East-Slavs approaching the Baltic area) when the Common Slavic language processes had been long over. This is more likely to mean that the East-Slavs reached the region where their later annals localize this mysterious people already bearing in mouth
 the word _chud’_ (< PSl *t’jud’i < Goth. thiuda) of an “unknown, foreign people”, which they specified for the Baltic Finns as the only non-Slavic folk they encountered there. The word itself seems to go back to that stormy epoch of 2nd-6th cc. when very active contacts were being maintained between the would-be Slavs and the Goths during the Chernyakhov time and later within the Hunnish “coalition”. You know chud’ is far from being the only Gothic loanword in Slavic, and there’s a couple of words in attested Gothic which are supposed of a Slavic origin (I know of the verb plinsjan “to dance” < PSl. plesati (nasal _e_), and if “my” idea of connecting Goth. slawan “to be silent” with the name of Slavs I posted here before be right (?), then that’s another one).
  - As for the chronology and precise meaning (let alone the very existence) of the word _sht’yud’i_ in Old Church Slavonic so I’ll have a look in the said Slovar’ or in Vasmer’s Russisches etymologisches Wörterbuch and post it with an accurate up-to-the-page-number reference as soon as I can. Until then I beg your trust that this “ancient giant” is not a product of my imagination (what of course does happen sometimes, but I hope not this time). There can easily be some other errors thereabout in the meanwhile.
  - Actually, I guess the view on this stem as a Common Slav borrowing is to be found in every academic etymological dictionary of Slavic languages, and the Russian ones are no exception. But if you believe that the Russian science “refuses to admit evident facts” or is based on “traditions with no real grounds” then maybe it’s no argument. But then, who launched the first manned spaceship? shall I ask :)

  > Never and nowhere the old Russian annals defined "Chyud" as the Baltic Finns (nor the Balts, nor Finns). 

  - I see I better define the term “Baltic Finns”. It refers to Suomi, Eesti, Karjala and several smaller groups as opposed to Volgaic Finnish and Ugric. I don’t know precisely about the annals, but in spoken Russian a word “chukhna” (< chud’) was (is?) used as a derogatory slang name of Estonians.

  > And the main question is: Who were the aborigines here? According > to Tacitus, the entire southern coast of Baltic See was Germanic in > the first centuries AD. I do not see reasons to deny the Germanic substrate for the mentioned region as well. I would not risk contending that there were the Goths, as we understand them nowadays, but some unknown East Germanic people looks very probable. I guess it > were forefathers of the so-called Izhora (i.e. Ingermanni).

  - A Germanic substrate in Southeast Baltic preceding Finns? That’s interesting, but is there some more evidence besides Tacitus? According to Tacitus, the Earth is a flat disc, maybe :) The Ingermanland (Inkeri) language still lives, though close to extinction, in several villages near St.-Petersburg. It is well described in the literature and is no more Germanic than Finnish or Estonian. It belongs to the same Baltic Finnish group I said of above.
  - Finally, I wonder what is “Venedic” in your context?

  I hope our list-mates will not consider this discussion as being totally off-topic. If you nevertheless do, please give us a hint so that we could stop.

  Ualarauans

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