'veritas'-'vera'

[Ralph Cleminson]

> At 3:13 PM 9/26/96,  Damijan Vodopivec wrote:
>
> >        I heard on TV that the latin word 'veritas' (truth) has its origin
> >in slavic word 'vera'(faith).Is that true? I can't find any information
> >which confirm that theory. Any help - details, historical background, etc. -
> >would be much appreciated.

And Georges Assadovsky replied:
>
> Why not ? It seems to be a lot of common roots (some of them certainly
> Indo-european ) :[etc].

What is curious to me is that the reply appeared in my mail, but the
original message didn't.  However, that's between me and my server.
Returning to the point, the short answer to the question is No.  Lat.
noun veritas derived from Lat. adj. verus, which is certainly not
derived from anything Slavonic.  However, there does seem to be
general agreement that both this and Slv. vera (and Ger. wahr, for
that matter) are derived from a common IE root, which must be
something like *wer- (with a long e), which presumably meant
something of the same sort (if something is true or real, then you can
believe it, so there's a fair semantic congruity amongst them all).

It is however crucial to distinguish between A being derived from B,
and A and B both being derived from C.  The second is the case here;
your TV commentator, in proposing the first, is simply wrong.  This
is important not only because if we claim to any sort of academic
respectability, we should try to get things right, but also because
failure to appreciate it leads to all kinds of nonsense.  If we're
not careful we'll be back with Kollar peopling ancient Italy with
Slavs!  Amicus Plato, magis amica........!

R.M.Cleminson, M.A., D.Phil.
Dept of Mediaeval Studies, Central European University
Post: H-1245 Budapest 5, P.O.B.1082
Phone: +361 327 3024   Fax: +361 327 3055
http://www.ceu.hu/medstud/ralph.htm