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Mysterious fate of some sounds in Slavic (reflexes of "juses" and "jers").
The thread's name is only supposed to lure you here , it's actually just a little linguistic article by me, might be interesting to people who like linguistics and/or Slavic languages.
Old Slavic language had two types of sounds absent in modern Slavic languages - nasal vowels, so called "Juses" or "Yuses", and ultra-short vowels, so called "Jers" or "Yers". They are lost as sounds, but leave hints that are very interesting in reconstructing Old Slavic words.
These were two Yuses - "Big Yus" (Ѫ ѫ) and "Small Yus" (Ѧ ѧ). Big Yus sounded like nasal "o" (ɔ̃), small Yus sounded like nasal "e" (ɛ̃). Later these sounds transformed and/or where lost in nearly all Slavic languages.
1)The only language to retain nasal sounds at all is Polish. It has the same sounds, as Old Slavic - nasal "o" (ɔ̃), represented by letter "ą", and nasal "e" (ɛ̃), represented by letter "ę". But positions of these sounds do not correspond to positions of nasals in Old Slavic. Where Old Slavic had long Yuses (both Big and Small), Polish has "ą", the Big Yus, and where Old Slavic had any of the short Yuses, Polish has "ę". This is because nasal vowels in Polish first merged in one, and then rediverged according to sound length.
2)In Russian, Small Yus, Ѧ, became the sound "a" after palatalised (soft) consonant. In Cyrillic script it is represented by famous "reverse R" letter "Я". Big Yus became simple "u" (like in English "moon", "gloom" etc, or Latin "sunt").
So f.e. Polish "ę" can correspond to both soft "a" and "u" in Russian - "pięć"="piat'" ("five"), but "ręka"="ruka" ("arm").
Thus, by comparing Russian and Polish word we cant determine exactly which Yus was in the Old Slavic word. For example Russian word for "Oak" is "Дуб" (Dub/Doob), while Polish is Dąb, so the original Slavic word was *Dѫb-.
3,4)Czech and Slovak, like Russian, have lost nasal sounds. "Ѫ", again like Russian, became "u", but unlike Russian it retained it's length. Where Russian had "u", and Polish - "ą" (so the original sound was long Ѫ), Slovak has long "u" (), and Czech - corresponding diphtong "ou".
It is amazing how these correlations still exist after thousand years!! For example, in this word, both cases are present at the same time, and they haven't mixed:
Budu(t) - Będą - Bud - Budou (plural future tense of "to be").
Short small Yus in Slovak and Czech became "" and "ě", or sometimes "а" and "е"
Sia - Się - Sa - Se (reflexive form, not translatable, literally "-self") Desiat' - Dziesięć - Desať - Deset ("ten")
Long small Yus in Slovak is the same "a", but in Czech it mutated in (long i, like in "bee"). There are not much examples of such in Slavic language, but for example Adjectival participles:
Desiatka - Dziesiątka - Desiatka - Destka (another form of "ten", like a noun).
Thought Czech sometimes has Slovak-like forms, f.e. for Rus-Pol-Svk Jazyk-Język-Jazyk ("tongue") and Poriadok-Porządek-Poriadek ("order") - same Jazyk и Pořdek.
South Slavic languages generally have "e" in the place of old "ѧ".
Russian-Polish-Slovak-Czech-Serb-Bulgarian
Piat' - Pięć - Pť - Pět - Pet - Pet("five") Pamiat' - Pamięć - Pamť - Paměť - Pamet - Pamet ("memory", Serb word is dialectial.) Miakki - Miękki - Mkk - Měkk - Meka - Meka ("soft")
Though sometimes "i", f.e. Sia - Się - Sa - Se (reflexive form) is "Se" in Serb, but "Si" in Bulgarian and Slovenian.
Big Yer became "U" in Serb, like in Russian, Czech and Slovak. In Bulgarian it merged with "Yer".
"Yers" are ultra-short vowels "O/U" (Ъ) and "E/I" (Ь), that dissapeared completely when unstressed (only palatalization remains), and became full vowels when stressed.
Funny how this can be sometimes used for reconstructions. F.e. lets take general Slavic word for "Prince" or "Duke" in its Russian form - "Kniaz'", "Князь", same as f.e. Serbian "Knez", Czech "Knže" etc. The original Old Slavic form was "Kъnѧz". Now that we know that "ѧ" is nasal "e", and "ъ" is short "o", we can reconstruct how it sounded. Kŭnenz'. Reminds of smth? Now remember, that Slavic palatalization moves Indoeuropean "g" to palatalized "z". Kŭneng. Bingo!
BTW, is "king" included in the slavic "original" stock or is a germanic loanword?
"Kniaz" is not a "King". It more like a "Duke", "Furst" or maybe "Prince". It is original Slavic, *kŭningŭs -> *kъnѧzь -> knez/kniaz. *Kŭningŭs is cognate to germanic *kuningaz, from with "king", "konung" (Norse), "knig"(German) etc are derived.
Slavic word for "King" is "Korol" (Russian), "Krl" (Polish), "Krl" (Czech) etc, and are derived from the name "Karl" - Charlemagne, or "Karl the Great".
Slavs also occasionally used word "Tsar" or "Czar", which is derived from "Caesar".
Kralj means king either way we also used veliki zupan Велики жупан in cyrillic
We said Zupan before we said Kralj and car! Maybe a pre christian thing? But then again the serbs and croats used it a couple of hundred years after we becam christian.
Church Slavonic Županъ, Old Russian Žoupanъ, Slovenian Župàn, Slovak Župan. But in all these it's not a "King" or smth, more like a "Boss". In Slovak it now means "Conductor". It's ultimately of same root as Polish and Belorussian "Pan", and Czech "Hṕan". Proto-slavic *gъраnъ -> either "Žъpan" or in some languages "Hъpan" by consonant alteration, later in Polish "Hpan" - > "Pan", in Czech - "Hṕan".
So it's originally was smth like "Lord" or maybe "Superior". "Veliki Župan" would be "Great Lord" then.
I have already told you that until the late 15th century Russian Kniaz had always been translated into West European languages as King. Which part of it do not you understand?
King may mean anything from the ruler of a huge centralized state to a tribal chief or head of a band of sea brigands.
meanings haven't always been the same throughout the history, you might have apoint
Mysterious fate of some sounds in Slavic (reflexes of "juses" and "jers").
, it's actually just a little linguistic article by me, might be interesting to people who like linguistics and/or Slavic languages.
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Originally Posted by Magavariko
we also used veliki zupan