OCS, Polish, and other Modern Slavic languages

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Wait, are you saying they shared common developments after splitting up?

-- no, I'm saying that the existance of common innovations allows us to date
the split.  Which was late.

>What you might as well say is "rather as Caesar became Kaiser or Tsar."

-- that's what I said.  It's significant in Slavic, because the word was
borrowed _uniformly_ into the proto-Slavic language and then underwent the
characteristic developments of the various (later) languages.

>"Karl" shows up in a 900 Graeco-Russian treaty alongside of names like "Boris"
>and "Vlad".  That's a little more tricky.  Almost makes you wonder which way
>the borrowing went.)

-- no, it doesn't, unless one is playing useless games.  You are aware,
aren't you, that Scandinavians founded the Russian state, and constituted a
ruling class there for several generations?  Complete with their personal
names, which only gradually became Slavicized as they were assimilated?

You know, Rurik of Jutland, those guys?

>All depends on what "karl" meant before Charlesmagne and whether  any
>Slavic-speakers could have access to that word and meaning, doesn't it?

-- the actual meaning in the Germanic languages was roughly "retainer" or
"follower", originally.  (As in "huscarl").

Charlemagne campaigned extensively in the East; he was the pattern of a
"powerful king"; the Slavs, who were at a much more primitive level of
political evolution, adopted the word as their term for a ruler.

As to access to it, there are Germanic loanwords in proto-Slavic (some
specifically Gothic) and the Slavs have always been in at least intermittent
contact with the Germanics.

>But I wonder what it proves about 800 ace.  I just wonder if words like
>"father," "your", "heaven" and "hallowed" and the common liturgical prayer of
>Christianity however are where you look to find the active differences between
>languages.

-- take another sentence, then.  And how is the religious element going to
affect linguistic evolution, in this precise case?

Face it, all Slavs could communicate in 800 or so.