Talk:hâtru

Cognates

Cognates for borrowings are usually not helpful in the etymology section, but in the special case of words borrowed into Romanian from Slavic languages they are.

Slavic languages are often very similar and Romanian has many borrowings from most of them (especially Proto-Slavic, Old Church Slavonic, Old Bulgarian, modern Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish). Deciding which language was the source is often not straightforward and seeing the forms does help. Bogdan (talk) 20:01, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

For instance, for this particular entry, the linguists who chose Ukrainian chose it because the other variants didn't quite fit phonetically:

• Old Church Slavonic хꙑтръ (xytrŭ) and Bulgarian хитър (hitǎr) did not end with "i", making the "u" ending unlikely. (the singular ending in "u" was obtained from the "hâtri" plural) Church Slavonic version would end up as *hâtnic, *hârtnic, by using Slavonic suffixes to make it more adjectival in Romanian.
• Russian хитрый (xitryj) has the ending fit the ending "i", but the middle "и" is not pronounced the same as "â". It would end up as *hitru.
• Ukrainian хитрий (xytryj) fits phonetically perfectly.

Bogdan (talk) 21:49, 19 February 2021 (UTC)