Appendix talk:Slavic Swadesh lists

Could I recommend a romanized alphabet to be added to the Russian and a pronunciation key to be added for the transliteration systems of the others? - Brettz9 13:07 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)
 * I think romanization and pronunciation key can be given for every word on the respective entry pages. Youandme 20:31 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Russian for "person"
I have never heard the word "особа" used for "person" - it ought to be "лицо". "Особый" means "special" and is definitely close in meaning.


 * There definitely is the noun "особа" with precisely this meaning. It is a bit dated but still in use. For example, "особа государя императора". 85.140.42.179 19:45, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * As a native Russian speaker, I do confirm that "особа" is an accurate translation for "person", and it is used in modern Russian. Though it does not mean "face", it is used in exactly same contexts as "person" in English. The root meaning of "особый", "особа", "особенный", "обособленный" is basically of something or somebody that is lone, standing out. Compare also "себя", "себе" - which essentially means "oneself". A synonymous word is "личность", which also translates as "personality". "Лицо" indeed has the meaning of "person" only in some specific cases, e.g. in linguistics or in procedural terminology.


 * Yes, both Proto-Slavic and Proto-Slavic  are Common Slavic words, with respective meanings of "person", "face, cheek". *osoba indeed evolved from preposition *ob ("about") + reflexive pronoun *sebe. Funny thing that from Russian source the meaning of "lice" as a grammatical person ended up in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.. Figurative meaning of *lice as a "person" is even recored in Old Church Slavonic! However, this list is not a list of cognates (see Appendix:List of Proto-Slavic nouns and others in that category for that - please contribute!), but the list of the most commonly used terms. If the meaning of особа as a  is indeed so rare that some native speakers wouldn't recognize it, it might be a good idea not to mention it.. --Ivan Štambuk 01:48, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Russian for "skin (of a person)"
The list incorrectly has "шкура" in addition to the correct translation "кожа". Humans have "кожа", animals have "шкура". The latter is applied to humans only in sarcastic sense.

Serbo-Croatian
This column should be split since standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian differ in quite a few entries. It's not just yat reflexes (standard Croatian is based on ijekavian dialect) - entries such as 'tačan', 'suv', 'ko' etc. follow morphological rules of standard Serbian (in Croatian it is "točan", "suh", "tko"..).

On the other hand, adding two more columns could disfigure article's appearance, as Swadesh template clearly suggests, so I'll linger in silence until someone makes the brave move. --Ivan Štambuk 13:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I completely agree on both points. The three languages should be listed separately, however the partition of the table to create more columns would disfigure the page considerably.  Plus, the section also lacks Cyrillic spellings (which would most likely require a separate column).  Until some other resolution is presented, it should not be messed with for now.  Ivan, if you want, do add the Croatian standards somewhere in there.  As a temporary solution, I think it might be OK to separate the yat reflexes and different standards with semicolons.  --Dijan 01:10, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


 * You should make a separate Swadesh list just for the Western South Slavic languages. I would include in it Standard forms of Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Bunjevac, and Slovenian. Possibly Torlakian, but this one almost does not fit the description. Or you could include Bulgarian and Macedonian and then it would be "South Slavic", not just Western South Slavic. —Stephen 09:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I've tweaked table layout a bit so that the addition of two new columns doesn't distort article's general appearance. I think it would really be a shame to split entries into separate tables for East, West and South Slavic languages, as it would defeat the purpose of making such a list in the first place - a common view of cognates in the languages of the same family. If necessary, table can grow to the right beyond the window margin with the horizontal scrollbar at the botom.

I've also put all adjectives into indefinite (gender-agnostic) form, and added synonyms for (un)commonly used Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian words of Proto-Slavic origin. --Ivan Štambuk 18:09, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Languages lacking infinitive
For most of the languages in this list, infinitive form of the verb is used. But there are no infinitive in Bulgarian and Macedonian. The Bulgarian column uses 1st person, but Macedonian column uses 3rd person. In many cases this gives the false impression that the two languages use different words. For example пия/пие, ям/яде, смея(се)/смее(се), зная/знам/знае, мисля/мисли, живея/живее, умирам/умира and so on. Is there a valid reason to use 1st person in Bulgarian, but 3rd person in Macedonian? Should we change both to 1st/3rd person, no matter which one we choose? --Sharkb 20:35, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The only reason that Macedonian sometimes choses the 3rd person is because that is what the Hungarians do. Macedonian dictionaries also commonly use the 1st-person just like Bulgarian. Change to 1st person. —Stephen 22:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, Macedonian 3rd person is used as a substitute for the infinitive, since that is absent. Change the Bulgarian to third person.


 * You do not seem to understand what we are saying. We are not talking about the infinitive, we are talking about the lemma (citation form). In Bulgarian, it is far more common to use the 1st person as the lemma, and that is the standard that we have adopted for Bulgarian here in the English Wiktionary. That will not change. The only question is whether to use the 1st person also for Macedonian, as many Macedonian dictionaries do, or to use the 3rd person like Hungarian and some other Macedonian dictionaries. Since we will continue to use the 1st person for Bulgarian, we should also use the 1st person for Macedonian (especially here in a Swadesh list, which attempts to directly compare and contrast Bulgarian and Macedonian). —Stephen 23:28, 30 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually it aims to directly compare and contrast all the Slavic languages. It makes it needlessly hard with a 1st-person lemma for 2 languages and the infinitive for the rest (as opposed to 3rd-person for the two, which is closer to the infinitive and other lemmas, therefore slightly better).
 * No it doesn't. This list should contain lemma forms with the most common translations of the English terms on the left. There are other appendices for comparison of cognates in Slavic languages. --Ivan Štambuk 11:26, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Order of languages
Is there a way of ordering the language columns based on their subgroups: West, East and South? That way we could see the similarities between the languages in the subgroups, as well as the evolution of the slavic languages as they travelled eastward. Maestroukr 16:50, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * You would have to change the order of the columns. That means reordering all the languages under each numbered term, from #1 to #207. —Stephen 17:28, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Eastward?


 * I can use a grep search 'n' replace to reorder the columns relatively painlessly (but what is all the “c=xx” business?). We just have to choose the order. —Michael Z. 2009-03-11 05:27 z 


 * I assume it means "cell=languagename". As for order, I would put west to east (left to right: cu, sl, bs, hr, sr, bg, mk, cs, sk, pl, hsb, dsb, be, ru, uk). —Stephen 19:40, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Adjectives or Adverbs
Oftenly south slavic words are given as adverbs, and eastern as adjectives, for exmaple in serbian it’s writted широк and in russian широкий, serbian is adverb and russian is adjective, if use only adjectvies it’ll eb широки and широкий, or if adverbs it’s be широк and широк. So it must be standartised somehow. Tat1642 19:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)


 * They are all adjectives, not adverbs. Anatoli 02:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I have reversed your edit - only long (full) form of adjectives are used in the list. Short adjectives, like "краток" have a more limited usage than "краткий". --Anatoli 02:37, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * But in sebrocroatian it's writted Кратак (adverb), not Кратки (adjective) as it must be. Tat1642 11:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Точно также широк, велик и прочие Tat1642 11:09, 25 November 2009 (UTC)


 * kratak is the standard lemma form of that word in Serbo-Croatian (indefinite positive masculine). kratki, on the other hand, is the definite positive masculine. See the Wiktionary entry: /. We lemmatize languages on Wiktionary according to the most widespread norm. --Ivan Štambuk 11:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Ivan, you forgot to confirm that these are adjectives. In Russian, "краток" is also an adjective but the short form. Russian adjectives don't differ in definite/indefinite but long (full)/short forms. The long form is the standard lemma for Russian adjectives. Tat1642, please don't change the list, if you are not sure, you can always ask. --Anatoli 18:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic words
I'm not sure what the "traditions" in presenting Swadesh lists here are, but having reconstructed Proto-Slavic words for comparison would be really great! Oleksiy.golubov (talk) 22:22, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Redicule!!!
I want to ask why Moderators are allowed to list Swadesh degenerates. Because of this, it turns out that the Polish language is the language of East Slavic, and later separated from the OES language than the Belarusian !!!!! And then people read these lists and claim Belarusian language, Ukrainian language, Polish language are the dialects of Russian language !!!! I demand block all those people who abused Swadesh list! Švarn Lvovič (talk) 15:32, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * This list never claims that Polish is East Slavic, or that Belarusian and Ukrainian (or for that matter Polish) are dialects of Russian. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:57, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * , you can always edit entries. I guess you mean someone in internet shows someone's Swadesh list to claim that Polish is dialet of Russian. Well, i also have seen other lists claiming that Russian is dialect of Polish or far from being Slavic. But i don't know why wrote your message here on wiktionary. —Игорь Тълкачь (talk) 20:52, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Russian words
Big isn't translated "великий" in Russian, only "большой". Švarn Lvovič (talk) 07:58, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

The Big Slavic Dictionary
A new project from the slavic discord server: https://slavic.world

Individual Swadesh lists

 * re : I still think it's useful to have that list, though perhaps not so conspicuously. At least people will think of adding new words or corrections to both places (it shouldn't work like that, and I hope we'll one day have the means to invoke individual Swadesh lists in comparative Appendices, but in the meantime...). --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 10:48, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Pan / pani / państwo etc. is =/= you
What's even the purpose of writing the Polish pan/pani ("sir, mr") polite forms as equal to "you"? So why not to put the same exact Czech and Ukrainian "pan" or Russian "gospodin"? Is the Enlish sir = you?

Let's take a normal Polish phrase "Zobaczyłem tego pana, gdy kupował warzywa" - "I saw this sir as he was buying groceries". I think it's pretty clear that with a meaning of "you" it would make no sense. Have a nice day. Asank neo (talk) 07:23, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Polish is unique on this. Although pan / pani / państwo has equivalents in other Slavic languages in the sense "Sir/Madam/Ladies and Gentlemen", it is also used as the equivalent of e.g. Russian  or Czech . Modern Polish  has no politeness in it, it's just a plural form of . So, you can use it to address friends or children.
 * More context:
 * The phrase "Do you speak English?" is translated into Polish as "Czy pan mówi po angielsku?" - this is a polite form of addressing a man. "Czy mówisz po angielsku?" is informal and "Czy mówicie po angielsku?" means "Do you guys speak English?", also informal but plural.
 * In contrast to e.g. Russian, has two usages. It is 1. polite (formal), 2. it can be used to address a group of people (as Polish "wy"). I hope it helps.
 * A better place to discuss this is WT:TR. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:36, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
 * If Polish is your first language but you're less familiar with other Slavic languages, anything like "Czy pan mówi po angielsku?" is not normally used in other Slavic languages. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:44, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late reply, still not accustomed with this wiktionary notification system. I know that Polish has an unique way of expressing politeness, but my point is that the Swadesh list here has a different purpose, imho.  As we can see in "you" you can see clearly the 2PL mark, not "Polite" or something similar.  The purpose of Swadesh list is to compare linguistic similarities. If we put pan, panowie, panie, państwo in that way it could create confusion, especially without any additional markings, and make other Slavs think, that Poles say sth like "*Pan chodzicie często do kina" which in Russian would be something "*Господин часто ходите в кино." which is obviously wrong. See for example the Romance Swadesh list. Following that reasoning the Italian language should have also the form "lei" (she) in the "you" section as they use it as a polite way, for all sexes. For some reason it's not there. Imagine yourself seeing this form while not knowing anything about Ialian. Asank neo (talk) 15:35, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Also the striking incoherence of this reasoning is clearly visible in the 2SG. Why the Polish language only has the polite form "pan, pani" there? Why not to add "vy/vi/vije" in all the other languages, as it's the polite form used? Asank neo (talk) 15:43, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It can be used as a psuedo-second person pronoun. It makes sense. The English you presented above is very unnatural. Vininn126 (talk) 16:11, 22 June 2024 (UTC)