Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/bavьlna

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And what on earth would ba- be in Proto-Slavic? It's a half-calque, half-borrowing from German, like malžena, vęnoce, vrhcáby. 89.64.26.253 00:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

RFV discussion: February–April 2022
Don't know about other language sources — not that the entry provides any — but all Polish dictionaries I could get my hands on list German Baumwolle as the source of the word without mentioning any Proto-Slavic roots. Hythonia (talk) 12:09, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Two strikes against this: cotton wasn't really available in Europe until the latter part of the Middle Ages, and all of the reflexes are West Slavic. I don't know enough about the history of Slavic to categorically rule this out, but it certainly seems to be pushing the boundaries of what can be called Proto-Slavic. Chuck Entz (talk) 12:58, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes. Delete for this reason. The Old High German boumwolla was only a bookish term translated from the artificial Latin lana arborea. It was only found from translationist reception in cloisters in the latest time of the Old High German chronolect (while Proto-Slavic can borrow from earlier stages of Old High German, which starts with the in the 6th century: in the 6th or 7th c. then the vowel change that gave us the distinct Slavic  vowel took place which is found in the German-borrowed fish-name ); in this Germanist treatise I cannot access a more precise argument is made about such terms only known from translation of Roman literature to early medieval Germans, but we probably don’t need much precision here. Cotton, as this name of it, is said to have spread from about 800 from the Arabs to Europe (and even all the time before that it has been known via Arabs, as the term gossypium has its vocalism distinctly Arabic). From the 9th century individual Slavic languages are attested; though they were mutually intelligible up to 1200 and the more so if one takes only the Western group. Fay Freak (talk) 02:18, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

RFV-Failed. Most etymological dictionaries I see list it as borrowed from German, and also there are many other issues related to this as pointed out by Fay Freak. Vininn126 (talk) 13:58, 14 April 2022 (UTC)