I was just wondering. The Rus were a Viking band who settled in what is now Russia. Are there any linguistic traces of this? Does Russian appear to be more influenced by Germanic languages than other Slavonic languages?
Bingley
auugh! the post i made hours ago? where is it?
ok--again.. basicly, my dear Mr bingley, i dunno, but...
czar (or tsar, if you'd like) is from the german, kaiser, (which is from the latin ceasar).. and in some thread in the past, about numbers, i think, only i know i mentioned zwieback (twice bakedbread) and its verged on to a food thread-- in anycase, in that thread, some one pointed out some numbers in russian (2, and others) were very similar to the german..
so there are at least 2 words.. there have been posts on and off from those who know some russian, you could do an informal survey.. (maybe someone else remembers another thread/post (i'm not interested enough to look it, to be honest, but zwieback is an ususal enough word that using the search tool should be possible)
some numbers in russian (2, and others) were very similar to the german..
No closer, I think, than to any other IE language. And some, notably 1, odin, 4, chetyre, 5, pyat' 8, vosem' and 9, devyat' are considerably different. And tsar could have as easily come from Latin through Greek as from Latin through German.
something that immediately comes to my mind is that some "true Russian" names like Oleg(male)/Olga(female), Igor are Scandinavian and came from original Vikings that were asked to be warlords of Slav tribes. the division of Eastern Slavonic languages from Old Slavonic into Russian,
Belorusian and Ukrainian had happened a thousand years later so I think it is hard to distinguish the primary influence from secondary, tertiary etc. I am out of my depth in comparative linguistics but as a native speaker I can not say that there is more German than, for example, English words in modern Russian and Belorussian. I'll try to get some help from other forums where people are better qualified to discuss this.
And tsar could have as easily come from Latin through Greek as from Latin through German.
Or directly from "Rome", doncha know? There was much trading up through the Black Sea to Russia from Can'tStandYourNosePulled during the 5th - 10th centuries, and maybe later. From memory, these were the days of the Varangarians, the Norse adventurers who traded everything from furs to slaves up and down the Russian river systems. While the Eastern Empire Upper Class Geeks spoke Greek of a kind, heavily interlaced with Latin, the hoi-polloi appear to have continued to speak an increasingly debased form of vulgate Latin for quite some time after the fifth century. Traders are likely to have come from the hoi-polloi end of the social spectrum, I would have thought. "Caesar" could therefore have easily travelled north in the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Just a thought.
Or directly from "Rome",
Yeah
this is an opinion of a Russian historian in my translation
In reply to:
Political terminology (where an influence of Viking language must have been most noticeable) of the Old Russian language does not have traces of the Scandinavian influence. For example, see Jaroslav Mudry’s “Russian truth” (medieval collection of law documents, composed in Kiev Rus – vika) where the various status of Rus and the Slav is postulated.
The question who were Rus-vikings from the court of Rjurik (first king of Rus) is not that simple. It is quite possible, that the term "viking" / "varjag" should be understood as a designation of professional group - pirates and dealers who were not only Scandinavians, but also Slavs. It is remarkable, that in the east of Europe (modern Ukraine and Russia) vikings were not robbers but traders or simply travelled thought Slav lands to attack Byzantium (a way from varjag in Greeks), that allows some historians to assume that attacks of vikings in the Western and Southern Europe were characterised by religious war of pagan North-East against a Christian South-West. And in this war Scandinavians and east Slavs were allies.
You appear to have it correctly, Vika. Here's a translation from the Russian Primary Chronicle for 863-866:
"863-866 (6371-6374) Oskold and Dir attacked the Greeks during the fourteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Michael. When the emperor had set forth against the Saracens and had arrived at the Black River, the eparch sent him word that the Russians were approaching Constantinople, and the emperor turned back. Upon arriving inside the strait, the Russians made a great massacre of the Christians, and attacked Constantinople in two hundred boats. The emperor succeeded with difficulty in entering the city. The people prayed all night with the Patriarch Photius at the Church of the Holy Virgin in Blachemae. They also sang hymns and carried the sacred vestment of the Virgin to dip it in the sea. The weather was still, and the sea was calm, but a storm of wind came up, and when great waves straightway rose, confusing the boats of the godless Russians, it threw them upon the shore and broke them up, so that few escaped such destruction. The survivors then returned to heir native land."
Oskold was a contemporary of Rurik of Novogorod and must have had Rurik's sanction to attack Constantinople.