Corinna Leschber

Beekeeping in the Balkans: Mythology and etymology

In Southeastern Europe the bee played a central role as a mythological being in ancient times. Very old traditions connected to beekeeping have been preserved right up to the present day. This applies to the material culture as well as the domain of popular beliefs. After tracing the roots and history of beekeeping in Ancient Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, using examples of words belonging to the semantic field of beekeeping we show its etymological complexity, while commenting on word origins, derivational processes and semantic developments.

Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der Untersuchung der Lehnwege von Wörtern, die im Rumänischen und seinen Nachbarsprachen nachgewiesen werden können, und die orientalischer (osmanisch-türkischer, arabischer, sowie persischer und seltener kurdischer) Herkunft sein können. Andererseits werden Lehnwege einiger rumänischer Wörter angeschaut, die aus nordöstlicher Richtung auf das Sprachgebiet gelangt sind, wobei es sich zuweilen um durch das Ukrainische übermittelte turksprachliche Wörter, zum Beispiel tatarischer Herkunft, handelt. Der jeweilige Lehnweg beleuchtet stets Gesichtspunkte aus der historischen Epoche, der er zugeordnet werden kann. Ausgangspunkt sind rumänische mundartliche Wörter, die auf den Sprachkarten des Sprachatlasses ALR S. n. II nachgewiesen werden können. Zur Einordnung ihrer Herkunft und ihres Lehnweges stehen sprachgeografische, lautliche und semantische Kriterien zur Verfügung.

Borrowing paths of some orientalisms and words of Eurasian origin in Romanian and other Balkan languages
The present paper attempts to track the borrowing paths of some words in Romanian and neighbouring languages, which are possibly of Oriental (Ottoman, Arabic, Persian and rarer Kurdish) origin. In addition, some Romanian words of Turkic (e.g. Tatar) descent are investigated which have come from North East, via Ukrainian. The starting point are Romanian dialectal words found in ALR S. n. II. For the classification of origins and borrowing paths, linguistic geographical, phonetic and semantic criteria have been used.

Generally, we can observe in European languages a high percentage of plant names among the words with unclear etymology. Many designations for plants – like for trees – derive from pre-Indo-European languages. Latin tree names are in most cases far from an unambiguous etymological assignment.

Semantic developments in Turkish loanwords in Bulgarian.

Using the example of Bulgarian colloquial words with a Turkish origin, we trace their semantic development, taking the semantics of the etymon as a starting point and analyze the meaning of this loan in Bulgarian and in some of the neighbouring languages, such as Rumanian, Greek, Albanian and Serbian. For this purpose, we look at the following Bulgarian words: bakšìš, beljà, bìča, bimbàec, brakmà, čarăkčìja, čaršilìja, češìt, džumbušlìja, fukarà, gèle, git, kušìja, manàf, mušamà, siktìr, tajfà, and their derivatives. Besides written lexicographical sources we also use authentic material from sociolinguistic interviews (using the methodological approach, as described in Leschber 2007: 42f.). In doing this, we can show the embodiment/ rootedness of these words in traditional customs, in the history, slang, and complex loan history of every single word, as their semantic development is often rather independent from the original meaning of the lexical loan.

Bulgarian čalga and Romanian manele “ethno-pop” or “pop-folk” are loanwords from Turkish. Besides the etymology of these words, the features of pop-folk will be described from a linguistic, historical and sociocultural point of view. It is a phenomenon rooted in the local Romani cultures, which are characterized by multilingualism and linguistic creativity. At the same time, pop-folk in the Balkans is based on a long tradition of Oriental music.