Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/čьrtъ

Etymology???

What is that Old Ossetic etymology? That word is attested in 10-12th century (per Wikipedia) and PS is 7th century at best? Namig pagan gods "wood" or "stone" comes from the Bible (Abrahamic religions), you can't just push view that pagan Slavs used the same logic. So, how does "stele" shift to "evil demon" instead of expected "god/deity" (again, in pagan community)? It is either from *kʷer- (“to form, to make, to enchant”) or *(s)ker- (“to cut”). @Fay Freak. Sławobóg (talk) 21:54, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

@Sławobóg: It may be by disapproval of a particular figure in the pantheon of another pagan community, and the idea of the devil dissipated before Christianization (for a written language, Arabic شَيْطَان (šayṭān) for instance dates to mostly pagan times), and some basic memes from Christianity outside the realm of the Polish swamps could have been known and applied, in as much as anyone however unedicated nowadays knows some features of religions strange to him but widespread in another known part of the world, so there is no point in whether and how much Slavs were pagan or Christian. You are basically constructing a false dichotomy by which Slavs were Manichaean simpletons that did not apply some creativity in their religious terminology; fortunately language is arbitrary and does not follow the strict dogmatics of theologians.

Contact to Iranian-speaking peoples has existed from the 7th century to modernity under various names without any interruption I make out, so I neither discern an argument in this direction from Iranian languages having been too far.

So I think I have made a good job to think through, for the reader, the possibility of a borrowing, which the etymology-interested have always to be wary of: whilst relating a word to a Proto-Indo-European root is like a Donald Trump tweet, anybody can say anything at three o’clock in the morning. This is a good practice of etymological writing, particularly in the religious sphere where we are swift to embarrass ourselves with ad hoc fish stories.

Please don’t assume proximity to Abrahamic religious thinking in me in spite of me editing their most holy languages. 👺 Fay Freak (talk) 22:50, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Your editing of "holy languages" means nothing here. Arabic šayṭān is a direct borrowing from Hebrew, which was closely related to Arabic, and means actually the same thing. In addition, Judaism was an influential religion in Arabia and many Arabs converted to Judaism. Anyway, a ^{citation is needed} for the sentence "dates to mostly pagan times". I know the religion of the Slavs quite well, and this is nonsense. This does not suit the Slavs in any way. There is no reason to believe Slavs wanted to demonize any pantheon, and they met a lot of them. We have literally 0 examples of that; also, Slavs were pretty tolerant. Plus I don't think we have any borrowings from Ossetic into Slavic (that Dnepr etymology...). The idea that Iranians had a major influence on the religious vocabulary of the Slavs has been debunked, only meaning of bog shifted under Iranian etymology. Meanwhile etymology from *(s)ker- is supported from Slavic side pretty well (demons being damaged). By writing that all these etymologists are "Donald Trumps" you ridicule yourself, because you are the "Donald Trump" here, who presents his own unsupported theory as fact, what you wrote is a fringe theory. One should also ask how do you know that they did not know this Ossetian word? Also: Wiktionary:References#Etymologies. Sławobóg (talk) 09:55, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

@Sławobóg: Unfortunately with some words there are only fringe theories, or the most widely repeated etymologies are impossible and/or already debunked. One always has to weigh the linguistic arguments, in place of merely copying claims of references—understand the references and expand upon them, highlighting contrasts.

For شَيْطَان (šayṭān) see in particular the Nöldeke cite provided below (it also has been controverted what the direct source of it is). The Marr paper is provided on this page; there is nothing wrong in explicitly mentioning what a particular author could not know in his time. As we always hold on linguistic material, there are clear criteria and rationales by which “synthesis” and “original research”, infamous on Wikipedia, cannot go out of hand—we don’t write biographies of living persons here but imitate an actual science to our best knowledge and capabilities.

For other examples I also point out بَطِّيخ (baṭṭīḵ) where I found a vague idea, the significance of which most readers, in the cited Elmaz but needed to think through and jot down a set of attested words to provide any complete etymology at all, which this word has not had, in spite of being a rather important plant; and Old Armenian ատեան (atean) where there are various conflicting Indo-European derivations (as here) against an easy Semitic one which found assent from the most important Armenian linguist on the internet, again someone on Wiktionary who knows things better than everyone else (isn’t it great?): again for Latin culullus some academic listed all the many etymologies of the word but did not find a Semiticist’s one which I have deemed correct. So you see I pursue a consistent art.

Still you find that for *čьrtъ I do not present any particular etymology as fact but formulated with care, as said only for the sake of the method presenting the possible view of a borrowing first (which by the way is the regular case across languages for their words for devil), then listed the various PIE theories, noting correctly – you will hardly deny, given that no one reads everything, especially if published in an obscure journal in another field – that they did not know at least this borrowing theory, which makes this page merely look more slanted than it actually is. Fay Freak (talk) 13:08, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Ok, maybe satan is Proto-Semitic word, I don't know. It still doesn't translate to our context at all. You say you don't push your view as fact, but in Old Ossetian lemma you linked čьrtъ as borrowing, and etymology is presented in such a way as to make that etymology look most probable, although no etymologist supports it. The fact that the word was allegly unknown changes nothing (although Marr died long before ESSJ or SP came into existence). The Wiktionary is dependent on sources, as is Wikipedia. Provide the source. Additionally, Slavic etymologies are inaccurately described. I will be fixing it soon. Sławobóg (talk) 14:59, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

@Sławobóg: The categorization is sometimes only if an etymology is simply mentioned as possible, e.g. Possibly from {{bor|…, as the people who use categories might seek merely argued borrowings. Satan is certainly not a Proto-Semitic word but also a wanderwort inside Semitic, some said from Ge'ez into Arabic, and if old sources say from Ge'ez it is often not really from Ge'ez but from Old South Arabian which is badly attested and hardly understood before the 1930s (before Rhodokanakis interpreted the inscriptions correctly), so you see why Wiktionary modifies the old a bit. Your claim of Wiktionary depending on sources as Wikipedia is untrue, Wiktionary:Wiktionary is not Wikipedia, and again I provided the source but we are not required to place footnotes under every claim as English Wikipedia but can also place references for the whole page (as is even standard on German Wikipedia; I see you edit Wikipedias often, I don’t know the others, but here on English Wiktionary the reference for the idea on the bottom is bare enough; I have not added the kind of references German Wikipedia calls Einzelnachweise since the Slavic or Indo-European etymologies don’t have particular references either, it makes sense though anyway to format the cites this way).

Maybe the Slavic etymologies can be described better, I did not describe them (if I had they would sound more elaborate, isn’t it …). Fay Freak (talk) 20:08, 28 October 2022 (UTC)