You Owe Us a Better Explanation

That even decent books are not immune to dumb reasoning (or lack of reasoning really) is proven by Saskia Pronk-Tiethoff’s “The Germanic loanwords in Proto-Slavic.”  The book, as I said before, is not half bad but it proves that knowledge of arcane linguistic reconstruction techniques is no cure for an occasional lack of perspective and immunity to basic logic.

Here is an example regarding the word dług (meaning “debt”):

“From a semantic viewpoint, it is much more attractive to regard the word as a loanword from Gothic because the meanings of the Slavic and Germanic words are identical and there are a large number of Germanic loanwords in Proto-Slavic relating to money, trade, etc… Because of the exact formal and semantic correspondence between the Germanic and Slavic forms, PSl. version is likely to be a Germanic loanword… Origin: Gothic; this is the only Germanic language in which the word is attested.”

To break this down:

• “From a semantic viewpoint, it is much more attractive to regard the word as a loanword from Gothic because the meanings of the Slavic and Germanic words are identical”

It is not the “Slavic” and “Germanic” words that are identical.  It is the Slavic and Gothic words that are identical.  In other words, the word appears in all Slavic languages but appears (as admitted by Prosk-Tiethoff a sentence later) only in Gothic and not in any other Germanic language.

• “…there are a large number of Germanic loanwords in Proto-Slavic relating to money, trade, etc.”

This is only partly true.  For example, the word targ (marketplace) is actually a borrowing into some Germanic language from Slavic.

But even if that were true (and it is not), so what? Does the  fact that some Germanic words related to commerce are borrowed into Slavic mean that every word with a Germanic correspondence must be too?

If that were the case, would we be automatically assuming that were a Slav to invent a word and (through an exchange in the marketplace) the same word was then used by one German, the word would become Germanic?

It seems the answer is “yes” according to Prosk-Tiethoff.  She goes on to say:

• “Because of the exact formal and semantic correspondence between the Germanic and Slavic forms, PSl. version is likely to be a Germanic loanword…”

Thus, by default, all that is Slavic is automatically Germanic.  But, of course, it does not go the other way.

The conclusion is charmingly disarming:

• “Origin: Gothic; this is the only Germanic language in which the word is attested.”

Now, if a word were present in one Slavic language and in all Germanic languages, no one would question the theory that it is a borrowing into Slavic.  It seems, however, that it is enough for a word to appear in one Germanic language to have its origin accepted as Germanic – even if the word appears in all Slavic languages.

Even Alexander Bruckner, the philo-Germanic editor of the Polish etymological dictionary thought this suggestion to be nonsense (Gothic etymology was also rejected by Vasmer):

But, all of this is a sideshow lead in to something even more interesting.