Купить?

[heresybythought.livejournal.com]

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!

Comments

[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".

[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.

[salexey.livejournal.com]

>>> For example, "купить" is "koop" in Dutch.
Errm, "kopen"? :)

[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".

[heresybythought.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[heresybythought.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[temcat.livejournal.com]

... and Norwegian "tolke" means "толковать" ;-)

[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)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

...which mightily resmebles "to talk" :)

[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".

[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.)