[identity profile] heresybythought.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] learn_russian
Does anyone know the etymology of Купить? I learned in my Danish class the other day that the word for "buy" is køb (with a very hard b that sounds almost like a p) and I was wondering if there was any relationship. Possibly a loan word from the Swedish Rus'?

Спасибо!

Date: 2006-10-10 01:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] spiderhood.livejournal.com
It is used in other Scandinavian-like languages as well. For example, "купить" is "koop" in Dutch.

My etymology dictionary maintains it's all due to Old English "су́раn".

Date: 2006-10-10 01:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] salexey.livejournal.com
>>> For example, "купить" is "koop" in Dutch.
Errm, "kopen"? :)

Date: 2006-10-10 01:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] spiderhood.livejournal.com
Ok, you got me. I was trying to come up with something close to "køb" and got carried away ;)

"Покупать" is "kopen", "я покупаю" is "ik koop". "Я купил" would be already something like "ik heb gekocht".

Date: 2006-10-10 01:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] edricson.livejournal.com
Yes, it is an old Germanic borrowing in Slavic (much earlier than what you're referring to) that goes back to Proto-Germanic *kaup-, cf. German kaufen, Swedish köpa (the Danish -b is a complicated later development). It is also found in lots of Slavic languages, like Bulgarian купя (I) buy. It is not known whether the loan is from Gothic kaupon of from *kaupjan, whence the already mentioned OE cypan. The Germanic word, in its turn, comes from Latin caupo "cobbler". The word also made its way from Germanic to Finnish.

Date: 2006-10-10 04:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] temcat.livejournal.com
... and Norwegian "tolke" means "толковать" ;-)

Date: 2006-10-11 10:32 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wolk-off.livejournal.com
...which mightily resmebles "to talk" :)

Date: 2006-10-11 10:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] temcat.livejournal.com
Well, "å tolke" is "толковать" in the meaning "истолковывать", not "беседовать". It is also means "переводить (устно)".

For "to talk" Norwegian has "å tale", though "å snakke" is what is normally used for "говорить".

Date: 2006-10-11 11:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wolk-off.livejournal.com
There are differences in meaning, mo doubt, but aren't they quite negligible, regarding some 20+ ceturies of separate development of each of those languages? It is obvious that some kind of a proto-stem must lay behind "å tolke", "to talk", "толковать" (which has BOTH meanings: "to interpret" and "to talk," like in "пойдем потолкуем" (let's go an have a talk,)) Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian "толковати", and Pan-Slavic толмач/tolmač = translator, interpreter? (compare: tolmačenje is Slovenian for "translation", tlumočník is Czech for "interpreter", tlumočit "to translate," etc.)

Date: 2006-10-10 08:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com
You can try Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary (http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/query.cgi?root=/usr/local/share/starling/morpho&morpho=0&basename=\usr\local\share\starling\morpho\vasmer\vasmer)

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