Talk:cickány

Etymology

@Fay Freak: Do you have a reference for the Romanian origin? According to the New Hungarian Etymology Dictionary, it is not from Romanian. Here is the Hungarian text with a couple of English translations added by me for your convenience:

1800 Tzitzkány (Márton) J: ’[?]; Spitzmaus (Sorricidae)’. Jövevényszó (loanword), valószínűleg (probably) a németből (from German). ⊗ Ném. (tud.) dshilkissitskan: ’csíkos egér???’., dschilkis- tsitskan ’pikkelyes egér???’ [török eredetű (of Turkish origin); vö.: csag. sičqan; kirg. sı̈ škan; bar. cı̈ ckan; stb. ’egér’].. – A magyarban a természettudományi szakírók honosították meg. – A hangalak keletkezéséhez a cickafarkcica is hozzájárulhatott. – A török (Turkish) nyelvekből való közvetlen átvétel a szó kései előfordulása miatt nagyon kérdéses.

Panda10 (talk) 19:15, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Panda10: The Romanian has a native derivation (listed at its page, sourced e.g. here and here), and the same meaning (and some dialectal variants some of which may be phonetically closer to the Hungarian word). So logically this derives from Romanian if the Romanian word, considered identical, is natively derived. Does the sign “⊗” mean it is not from German? In any case, the thing you cited is not German. For any Hungarian etymology dictionary which claims that it is manifest the author does not know German. Do you see that yourself? You say you have “grundlegende Deutschkenntnisse”, and @PUC was also close to hysterical laughter when he saw that “German” derivation. Peter Pallas writes it 1778 p. 328 as a transcription of a Tatar word (Latin there, which you would need to understand). So you see some Hungarians confused everything and etymological dictionaries of Hungarian parrot their errors? I see also errors with the Turkic forms given, e.g. the alleged “Kirgiz“ sďškan given by Gábor Kiss Etimológiai szótár 2006 where the same wrong German origin is claimed while your source writes it sı̈ škan, both corrupted.

“Transcription” means it is also not a correct Tatar spelling, of course. It is some adjective together with sıçqan; but you cannot derive the Hungarian word from a term constituted of an adjective plus a noun from the family of sıçqan then claim it is from the family of sıçqan, here again your etymology contradicted itself.

Your source says it is not directly from Turkic. Which languages has mediated it then? If it is not directly from Tatar, Crimean Tatar, Ottoman Turkish etc., nor can you offer a German form. You are cornered. You have no option but Romanian.

It remains debatable that it is from a descendant of Proto-Turkic *sïčgan (“mouse”) (see Bashkir сысҡан (sısqan); what does @Bogdan think? Did one invent a Romanian derivation for chițcan more from passion than from reason? There is Crimean Tatar spoken in Romania and Gagauz in Moldova but their forms of the word seem to lack the third consonant), perhaps directly, contrary to what some etymological dictionaries fabricate, but then the Romanian word would also have to be changed.

But the story you have sourced is out of the question. Your etymology was broken, do you understand that? Fay Freak (talk) 20:05, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak The ⊗ symbol doesn't mean "it is not from German". There is another English language source here, titled "On the Origin of Hungarian cickány". See the section "Etymology of the H word". Panda10 (talk) 21:04, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Romanian has relatively few words from Tatar and they're generally just local in Dobruja. We have a lot of Ottoman Turkish words and a few older Cuman words, but relatively few of them were in use in Transylvania in 19th century, as the Ottoman influence was not strong around that area.

The problem with this Tatar (or Cuman) derivation is that it should end up with something like *sâcigan, nowhere near chițcan.

So my guess is that the internal derivation of chițcan is correct.

There is another Romanian word (guzgan (“rat”)) which may be a contamination of chițcan with guz, which is from Hungarian güzü. Bogdan (talk)

For reference: Kumyk чычкъан (çıçqan), Northern (Noghai) Crimean Tatar çıçan (“mouse”) (<*çıçqan) (this variety is/has been spoken in Romania), Nogai шышкан (şışkan) (<*çıçqan), Karachay-Balkar чычхан (çıçxan), all meaning 'mouse'. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 21:30, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Panda10: That reference is worthy. I worked it in, not failing to note the similarity to the Romanian form which may be a motive, after all multiple origins can be true if the word is artificial, the important sentence here is “it was mediated into H[ungarian] through the German scientific literature”. So according to this some Hungarian zoologists collected Tatar animal names and thought “hey, let’s borrow it!” – a strange enough etymology that the Romanian lookalike should be mentioned in any case. It was never part of the German language, so the formulation in the same article “copied from the German scientific language” is grenzwertig.

@Allahverdi Verdizade: These are useful notes, because it is doubtful that the etymological dictionaries refer to the correct word (it is not only a combined term but also a quite different taxon, as I have shown), even if one assumes this outlandish scenario of picking up Turkic words from zoology transcriptions; although it must be considered that there are other now defunct meanings of the Hungarian word. We have Johann August Donndorff 1792 v. 1 p. 817b transcribing a Tatar Zyzkan for “rat”, this form could well be the origin from reading ⟨z⟩ as /t͡s/. As with your examples it would probably not be Tatar proper but one just believed it to be Tatar, everything Kypchak was “Tatar”, and so it ends up in 21st century etymological dictionaries as “Tatar”. Fay Freak (talk) 21:59, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

See also here, page 22. --Vahag (talk) 06:44, 6 July 2021 (UTC)