Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 454 pages of information about Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic.

Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 454 pages of information about Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic.

[Footnote 12:  By Kopitar; see the Wiener Jahrbuecher, 1822, Vol.  XVII.  Kastanica, Sitina, Gorica, and Prasto, are Slavic names.  There is even a place called [Greek:  Sklabochori], Slavic village.  Leake in his Researches observes that Slavic names of places occur throughout all Greece.]

[Footnote 13:  The affinity of the Slavic and Greek languages it has recently been attempted to prove in several works.  Dankovsky in his work, Die Griechen als Sprachverwandte der Slaven, Presburg 1828, contends that a knowledge of the Slavic language is of the highest importance for the Greek scholar, as the only means by which he may be enabled to clear up obscure passages and to ascertain the signification of doubtful words.  Among the historical proofs, he furnishes a vocabulary containing 306 Slavic and Greek words of striking analogy.  “Of three sisters,” he observes, “one kept faithful to her mother tongue—­the Slavic language; the second gave to that common heritage the highest cultivation—­the Greek language; and the third mixed the mother tongue with a foreign idiom—­the Latin language.”  A work of the same tendency has been published in the Greek language, by the Greek priest Constantine, Vienna 1828.  It contains a vocabulary of 800 pages of Russian and Greek words, corresponding in sound and meaning.—­That these views are not new, is generally known; although they hardly ever have been carried so far, except perhaps by the author of the History of Russia, Levesque, who considers the Latins as a Slavic colony; or by Solarich, who derived all modern languages from the Slavic.  Gelenius in his Lexicon Symphonum, 1557, made the first etymological attempt in respect to the Slavic languages.  In modern times, great attention has been paid to Slavic etymology by Dobrovsky, Linde, Adelung, Bantkje, Fritsch, and others.  An Etymologicon Universale was published in 1811, at Cambridge in England, by W. Whiter.—­Galiffec, in his Italy and its Inhabitants, 1816 and 1817, started the opinion, that the Russian was the original language, and that the Old Slavonic and all the rest were only dialects.]

[Footnote 14:  Or rather some writers in Lusatia and the Austrian provinces comprised in the kingdom of Illyria.]

[Footnote 15:  The t’ signifies the Yehr, or soft sign of the Russians in addition to the t.  This letter not existing in the English language, we have endeavoured to supply it in the best possible way by the aspirate of the Greek language, which when it follows [Greek:  t], is not very unlike it; e.g. [Greek:  nukht emeron], written [Greek:  nuchthhemeron].  The real sound, however, is more like the German soft ch after t, as in Staedtchen, Huetchen.]

[Footnote 16:  They are to be compared with the Latin verbs frequentative, as factitare instead of facere, cursitare instead of currere, etc.]

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Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.