Post by tufta on Aug 26, 2010 8:05:57 GMT 1
Looking for ancestors in a Polish Culture Forum? They must have been Slavic, then, at least partly.
And what does the word 'Slavic' mean?
The word 'Slav' or 'Slowianin' derives from the Slavic term for word; 'Slowo'. Thus, to the Slavs their name testified to their mastery over spoken words. It could be put as 'the ones we understand'. The Slavs called themselves 'Slovjeni' or 'Slaveni' do to the fact that their people 'understood' one another. Their neighbours to the west, in particular the Germans who spoke a different tongue, were not understood, and thus the Slavs came to call them 'Nijemcima' meaning mutes, dumb, speechless and silent. It could be put as 'the ones we do not understand'. The name has stood the test of time; Germans are still called 'Niemci' today by the Slavic peoples.
Language is "the defining factor in the formation of a particular culture type and world view" - Herder.
In 1833, the Slavic languages were identified and categorised as an Indo-European language by linguists. Language and ethnicity go hand in hand, as language is one of the quintessential aspects of ethnicity. The Proto-Slavs spoke the same language of Proto-Slavic, which later evolved, from the result of latter migratory separation of the Slavic people, into the Slavic languages of today.
One way of determining where the original homeland of the Slavs is to undertake linguistic palaeontology. Polish botanist J. Rostafinski for example, pushed linguistic evidence even further. He argued that the original homeland of the Slavs was devoid of beech, larch and yew trees, because in all Slavic languages, the words for those trees are all foreign loan words of Germanic origin. On the basis of distribution of those trees, Rostafinski was able to locate the ancestral homeland of the Slavs in the marshes along the Pripet River in Polesie, generally in the south-eastern Poland and north-eastern Ukraine area, as this area was devoid of such trees.
www.andrzejb.net/slavic/
And what does the word 'Slavic' mean?
The word 'Slav' or 'Slowianin' derives from the Slavic term for word; 'Slowo'. Thus, to the Slavs their name testified to their mastery over spoken words. It could be put as 'the ones we understand'. The Slavs called themselves 'Slovjeni' or 'Slaveni' do to the fact that their people 'understood' one another. Their neighbours to the west, in particular the Germans who spoke a different tongue, were not understood, and thus the Slavs came to call them 'Nijemcima' meaning mutes, dumb, speechless and silent. It could be put as 'the ones we do not understand'. The name has stood the test of time; Germans are still called 'Niemci' today by the Slavic peoples.
Language is "the defining factor in the formation of a particular culture type and world view" - Herder.
In 1833, the Slavic languages were identified and categorised as an Indo-European language by linguists. Language and ethnicity go hand in hand, as language is one of the quintessential aspects of ethnicity. The Proto-Slavs spoke the same language of Proto-Slavic, which later evolved, from the result of latter migratory separation of the Slavic people, into the Slavic languages of today.
One way of determining where the original homeland of the Slavs is to undertake linguistic palaeontology. Polish botanist J. Rostafinski for example, pushed linguistic evidence even further. He argued that the original homeland of the Slavs was devoid of beech, larch and yew trees, because in all Slavic languages, the words for those trees are all foreign loan words of Germanic origin. On the basis of distribution of those trees, Rostafinski was able to locate the ancestral homeland of the Slavs in the marshes along the Pripet River in Polesie, generally in the south-eastern Poland and north-eastern Ukraine area, as this area was devoid of such trees.
www.andrzejb.net/slavic/
