LL-L: "Etymology" LOWLANDS-L, 12.DEC.1999 (03) [D/E]

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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Etymology [N]

"Prachen" is ook een nederlands woord. De Vries schrijft:

"Waarschijnlijk uit het duits ontleend, waar sedert 1559 het woord
"pracher", `bedelaar' optreedt en wel te Breslau. Dat wijst op slavische
herkomst, vgl kleinruss [= oekraïens ?] "prochaty", `vragen, verzoeken'."

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Etymology

John, you quoted De Vries:

> "Waarschijnlijk uit het duits ontleend, waar sedert 1559 het woord
> "pracher", `bedelaar' optreedt en wel te Breslau. Dat wijst op slavische
> herkomst, vgl kleinruss [= oekraïens ?] "prochaty", `vragen, verzoeken'."

Hmm ...  Are we getting somewhere now?  I still wonder.

First of all,  the word is considered Low Saxon (Low German), though it is not
impossible that Dutch borrowed it from a German dialect that had borrowed it.

Should the oldest attested *written* occurrence of _pracher_ in Wroclaw
(Breslau, Poland) lead us to the conclusion that the word came from that general
area (which is Poland, not Ukraine)?  I think that would be a definite case of
jumping to a conclusion.  As a general rule, German and Low Saxon words went
eastward with the colonization of predominantly Slavic-speaking areas rather
than Slavic words going westward (though there are a few such early loans [not
counting Slavic loans from other countries] that reached Standard German via
eastern dialects).  Slavic loans tended to become parts of the German or Low
Saxon dialects that came to be created in the eastern colonies, mixtures of
imported western and local Slavic varieties.  In the case of Low Saxon (Low
German), this took place eastward from a rough north-south line from
Holsteen/Holstein via Hamborg/Hamburg and Hanover.  Several loans from now
extinct West Slavic varieties have been identified.  I think it was fairly rare
for such loans to spread far westward, such as the assumedly Polabian loan
_Dö(ö)ns_ 'front room', 'parlor', 'living room' that seems to have spread a
little westward.

If _prachen_ and _pracher_ were indeed Slavic loans, I'd first assume that they
came from the more westerly West Slavic languages.  Unfortunately, all of these,
except the Sorbian (Lusatian) one are now extinct, and there are only scarce
written samples of one variety of Polabian.  I can't find any trace of a related
words in these data.

I wonder if that Ukrainian verb is supposed to be related to the following:

Lower Sorbian _p{s^}osy{s'} 'to request', 'to beg', _p(r^)osa{r'}_ 'beggar_ (cf.
_p{s'}a{s'}a{s'} 'to ask')

Upper Sorbian _prosy{c'} 'to request', 'to beg', _pro{s^}er_ 'beggar' (cf.
_pra{s'}e{c'} 'to ask')

Polish _prosi{c'}_ 'to request'

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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