English and Slavic parallels

Most languages of Europe belong to a big Indo-European family and therefore it is not strange to find some words which are shared by English and Slavic languages. However, on this list, there are more than one hundred such words. I tried to include only the words which were in used since ancient times.

Note: In many Germanic words, the original Indo-European sound “P” at the beginning of the word was exchanged for the sound “F”. For example pater-father, fire-pyr, fish-pesces, for-por… In the same way, some English words starting with F, have Slavic cognates starting with the P sound.

Nature: SUN – SUNCE, EAST – ISTOK, DAY – DAN, SNOW – SNEG, LAKE – LOKVA, SEMEN – SEME, DOLINE – DOLINA, FLAME – PLAMEN, FUEL – PALITI (to burn), TREE – DRVO

Food and drink: MILK – MLEKO, WATER – VODA, WINE – VINO, MEAD – MED, SOUP – SUPA, LEEK (Old English for “onion”) – LUK, FRY – PRZITI, OIL – ULJE, FRESH – PRESNO, CHEESE – KISEL (SOUR), SOUR – SIR (Cheese)

Family relations: MOTHER – MATER, SISTER – SESTRA, BROTHER – BRAT, SON – SIN, DAUGHTER – DUSHTER (Old Church Slavonic), CHILD – CHELJAD, NEPHEW – NECAK, WIDOW – UDOVA

Body parts: NOSE – NOS, RIB – REBRO, BROW – OBRVA, BEARD – BRADA, HEART – SRCE (via German Hertz), FIST – PEST

Animals: WOLF – VUK, MOUSE – MIS, GOOSE – GUSKA, CAT – KOTKA, LION – LAV, SWINE – SVINJA, EWE – OV(CA), WOOL – WULNA, HERD – KRDO, COW – GOVEDO, HEDGE(HOG) – JEZ (both words share the same PIE root “h₁eǵʰis”. In Old English the name for hedgehog was “igil”, a cognate with Slavic “igla” – needle, coming from the same PIE root as above)

Objects: BARREL – BURE, STOOL – STOL(ICA), DOOR – DVERI, CROWN – KRUNA, PATH – PUT, GRAIN – ZRNO, WHEAT – ZITO, DESK – DASKA (wooden board), CUP – ĆUP, HOOK – KUKA

Misc nouns: GUEST – GOST, STEP – STOPA, STEPS – STEPENICE, LIE – LAZH, LUST – SLAST, WILL – VOLJA, DEVIL – DIAVOL, FLEET – PLUTATI (to float) FREE and FRIEND – PRIJATELJ (officially via Sanskrit priya, dear, beloved) CURVE – KRIVA, CRY – KRIK, CREAM – KREMA, TRAP – TRAP (PIT, HOLE, CAVITY, DITCH)

Misc verbs: TO ASK – ISKATI, TO LOVE – LYUBITI (via German Liebe), FLOAT – PLUTATI, TO FALL – PAL, PASTI, TO BREAK – (VIA PROTO-GERMANIC “BREKANA”) – PREKINUTI, TO PREACH – PRICHATI (TO TALK, VIA PROTO-SLAVIC PRITCHA – TALE, STORY), TO TALK – TOLKUVAT, FROM PROTO-SLAVIC tъlkъ – INTERPRETATION), TO TOUCH – TACI, TO ROAST – ROSTILJATI

Misc adjectives: SMALL – SMOL(EN), BROWN – BRAON, BLUE – PLAV, NEW – NOV, DEEP – DUBOK, ARABLE – ORANICA

Numbers: ONE – JED(AN), TWO – DVA, THREE – TRI

Basic grammar: YES – JESTE, NO – NE, TO BE – BITI, some forms of personal pronouns like (to) ME – MI, MENI, TO – DO, and so on…

But there are some other interesting parallels that are maybe less obvious. Here is my Top 10 list:

(Note: All English etymologies are taken from http://www.etymonline.com. You can go directly to the link by clicking the highlighted word.)

10. HAPPY – KOB

happy, (adj) from hap (n.) “chance, fortune”

So what is “hap” then?

hap (n.) from PIE *kob– “to suit, fit, succeed” (Sanskrit kob “good omen; congratulations, good wishes,” Old Irish cob “victory,” Norwegian heppa “lucky, favorable, propitious,” Old Church Slavonic kobu “fate, foreboding, omen”).

The English word “hap” comes from Proto-Germanic “hap”, which in turn comes from PIE “kob”. The original word, “kob”, exists only in Sanskrit and Slavic languages. Etymonline lists it here as “kobu” but that is incorrect. The word “kob”, meaning destiny, fate, omen, is still used in all Balkan languages, and even the Wiktionary lists it as Slavic – kob

9. SWAN – ZVONO

Officially, the etymology behind the name of the swan bird comes from PIE “swonh”, “to sing, to make the sound”. Slavic words zvono – bell, and zvoniti – ringing, come from the same root. However, the common Slavic word for this bird is “labud” meaning “white bird”.

8. STONE – STENA – STAN

stone (n.)  Old Church Slavonic “stena“, Russian stiena “wall”).

So “stone” was STAN in Old English. What does that mean?

-stan from Persian -stan “country,” from Indo-Iranian *stanam “place,” literally “where one stands,” from PIE *sta-no-, suffixed form of root *sta- “to stand”.

Every Slavic person knows that STAN means “dwelling”, STATI means “to stop” and STAJATI means to stand. It seems that this word remained preserved from those ancient times when people were still nomads so they called their rock (stone) shelters STAN?

7. PLOUGH (PLOW) – PLUG

plow (n.) a late word in Germanic, of uncertain origin. Old Church Slavonic plugu.

Ultimately, this word could be Slavic in origin, because there is no other etymology that can explain it in any other language. Namely, before the rhotacism R-L, this word could have sounded “Prug”. Proto-Slavic word “prǫga” meant “strip, streak, stripe”. In modern Serbian, for example, “pruga” means “stripe”, and it also means “railroad”. The process of making stripes is precisely what one does during the plowing process.

6. HLIEF (Old English for BREAD) – HLEB (preserved only in Slavic langauges)

5.Some words beginning with Q

QUEEN – ŽENA (ZHENA)

queen (n.) Old English cwen “queen, female ruler of a state, woman, wife,” from Sanskrit janis “a woman” The original sense seems to have been “wife”

I would never see this one coming without the etymological dictionary. It is interesting that in Slavic ZHENA means both, “woman” AND “wife”. The sound Q sometimes acts as Slavic ZH as we see in these other examples too:

QUERN – ZRNUVI

quern (n.) Old Church Slavonic zrunuvi “mills”

QUICK – ZHIV

quick (adj.) Old English cwic “living, alive, animate,” , from PIE root *gweie- “to live”

4. HAMMER – ČEKIĆ / MOLOT

I know, no connection at first glance. But the etymology of this word is the following:

hammer (n.) “tool with a stone head” , from PIE *akmen” stone, sharp stone used as a tool” (cognates: Old Church Slavonic kamy, Russian kameni “stone”)

3. RED – RUDA

From all colors, the word for the red has the most commonly shared root in all Indo-European languages. We see it even in Sanskrit “rudhira”. However, the meaning behind this root is unknown. In Slavic languages, “ruda” related to the red ore, taken from the mine, which is “rudnik”. This word is probably Neolithic and could originate in the Balkans, where there are some of the earliest traces of mining activities known to history.

2. SADDLE – SEDLO

saddle (n.) from PIE *sed- (1) “to sit” (Old Church Slavonic sedlo “saddle”)

Ok, perhaps we could call the root SED proto-indo-European, but  -LO is a typical Slavic suffix!

1. BOOK – BUKVA (letter) and TO WRITE – RITI

book (n.) Old English boc “book, writing, written document,” from Proto-Germanic *bokiz “beech” (cognates: German Buch “book” Buche “beech;” see beech), the notion being of beechwood tablets on which runes were inscribed, but it may be from the tree itself (people still carve initials in them).

So just like we have the word “paper” because of “papyrus”, the word “book” comes from the “beech” tree. So let’s see some parallels:

1. ENGLISH: BOOK – BEECH
2. GERMAN: BUCH – BUCHE
3. SLAVIC: BUKVA – BUKVA

Well, it definitely seems that the English were not the first to write on a beech tree. Was it Slavs or Germans who brought it on the island is really the question. So let us have a look at the words for writing:

The German “Schreiben“, to write, originally meant “to scrape”

From Proto-Germanic *skrībaną, a late borrowing from Latin scrībō (“write”), meaning “to scribe, to scrape”.

The Slavic equivalent is “grebati“, or “zgrebati”, to be more precise.

So it’s a draw again. What about the English word?

write (v.) Old Saxon writan, Old Norse rita “write, scratch, outline,” Old High German rizan, German reißen “to tear, pull, tug, sketch, draw, design”), outside connections doubtful.

“Outside connections are doubtful?” How about the Slavic riti, meaning “to carve, engrave, dig”?

But Etymonline continues:

Words for “write” in most Indo-European languages originally mean “carve, scratch, cut” (Latin scribere, Greek graphein, glyphein, Sanskrit rikh-); a few meant “paint” (Gothic meljan, Old Church Slavonic pisati, and most of the modern Slavic cognates).

In conclusion, it is still hard to say who was the first to master writing, but what is for sure is that only the Slavic lexicon has the full specter of words – from the word for the beech tree, to book and the same words for the process of scraping and carving the letters, whether it was German or English language. Moreover, they have a bonus word, meaning to paint, relating either to walls or manuscripts.

In short, the words in this article show that Slavic languages are indeed ancient Indo-European and that in many cases they still preserve the oldest, original forms of words. But to have such linguistic similarities with Germanic languages simply means that Slavs had to be in Europe much longer than generally assumed. Perhaps, they were there even before the Germanic people arrived.

https://cogniarchae.com/2015/11/11/latin-and-slavic-cognates-top-15-actually-almost-30/