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Archiver > HERBARZ > 2001-03 > 0985273898


From: "Leon Stevens" <>
Subject: Re: Gear at Grunwald
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 10:11:38 -0500


There aren't any Slavonic "rules." Poles began saying "chleb," "druh," "holota" etc. simply because it sounded cool at the time, just as some Americans pronounce "aunt" as "awnt" instead of "ant," or say "onvelope" instead of "envelope, This is how people make life more interesting for themselves. Maybe the altered pronunciation was inspired by Mieszko's marriage to Czech princess Dabrava. Who knows? What's certain is that it doesn't represent any "German hegemony."

>>> <> 03/21/01 10:12PM >>>
>Bruckner also suggests that "chleb" is borrowed from German, but he is mistaken. He himself indicates .(p.179), that it is cognate with Lithuanian "klepas" ("gift" (of bread)). In fact it is cognate with Polish "klepac"
>("to tap or pat" from Common Slavic "*kliepati" (also "to tap or pat" more at "to knead."

I think that there is some confusion here as to what being "cognate"
entails. That 'chleb has a Lithuanian cognate is by the by as it
simply means that it comes from the same stock or origin - they both
have an indo-european root - as would have had the original Slavonic
word that "chleb" is being held to have replaced. . If in tracing a
word back to an indo-european root, the rules of Slavonic will not get
us past a certain point but the rules of another indo-european
language will, the Slavonic speakers will be held to have abandoned
their own form at some point and, borrowing the word from others,
proceeded to develop that loan word according to Slavonic's own rules.
I have not encountered Bruckner's work but I am sure that he is a
reputable source. Controversy is by no means alien to the rubbing
edges of philology; is there an argument put in his book pro and
contra the various derivations?

>Occasionally, Bruckner who wrote his name with an "umlaut" over the "u," even in works in Polish, tends to >see etymology through German eyes.

If Bruckner is to be used as an authority I cannot think it
consistent to dismiss the inconvenient parts of his work with ad
hominem argument. Bruckner's "German eyes' did not prevent him
putting what I suppose must be called a "non-German" gloss on "stajna"
or "dom". And as for his unfortunate umlaut, it is after all how the
name is spellt in the language from which it comes. My own Polish
cousins, patriots to a person through the "Solidarity" struggles in
Gdansk, use the "oh" form in the middle of their name as opposed to
the "Roda" or "Ruda" that has been used at times in the past, in
inadequate attempts to transfer the teutonic sounds into the Polish.
John Rohde
(Jan Roda)


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