Talk:очень

Etymology scriptorium convo
--Barytonesis (talk) 12:11, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Etymology_scriptorium/2017/February

Borrowing from a Finnic language
"Alternatively, proposed by Lehrman (1987) to be a borrowing from a Finnic language. Compare Finnish oikein and Ingrian oikiin." Sounds too far-fetched and almost marginal even despite it's said by a linguist. I might've said as well like it's borrowing from a Turkic language, cf. Kazakh "öte" (very), Volga Tatar "oç" (end, edge), Turkish "uç" (extreme point). I would like to learn more about the reaction on this theory by another linguists. I am not sure that the majority of Russists would accept it as a valid theory (especially in Russia where such hypotheses are most probably seen as politically biased). --Wolverène (talk) 10:06, 19 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Please read the reference, it explains in detail why the author proposes this and dismisses the earlier etymology. Thadh (talk) 11:52, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, only the first page of the article is available, I failed to find another web links. All I see from the extract is the a linguistic philosopher questions the fact that the semantic shift of 'evidently' to 'very' is normal for Indo-European languages. Of course, I admit that it may not be typical for the majority of IEL, but in a colloquial speech among Russian speakers, the adverbs like явно or очевидно may have the meaning 'very/too'. If he was a real Russian speaker (I mean, of course he was), he might've noted this. Again, I am here not to argue, I just want to learn more about the later development of this theory, was it supported or rejected by other Russists. Alternatively, I'd like to read here more information based on the extracts from the article by Lehrman (again, I am not able to read the rest 5 pages). Looks somewhat sensational if such fundamental lexemes were borrowed to the literary language from the Baltic Finnic languages whose speakers typically had smaller contacts with Russians/Muscovites than Turkic, Slavic people, etc. --Wolverène (talk) 13:03, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I could not find any other reference of this. To sum up the article (since you cannot access it):
 * - No attestations of the word очень show any sense other than "very" and "justly" (thus there is a missing link "apparent" > "straightforward/just" and no parallel in other languages)
 * - Earliest attestations (16th/17th c.) show the forms очунь alongside the later очень, оченно; This form is still found in northern dialects.
 * - The derivation of очунь from the verb очунуться (the previously proposed etymology for that form) cannot be regularly explained: Both the accent shift and the stem change (*очут- > очун-) are not explainable.
 * - Lehrman considers the alternative proposal of the development of очунь under influence of воочию unsubstantiated.
 * - The е > у shift is characteristic of the Pskov dialect area, pointing at a borrowing from Pskov dialect into the Moscow dialects where очунь is first attested.
 * - There are no Slavic cognates other than in dialectal Belarusian, fitting a loan, as does the fact that this word replaced earlier synonyms like вельми and зѣла. Together with the earlier proposed origin in the Pskov dialect area, the Finnic languages are the most likely donor of a loanword (as the native inhabitants of that area).
 * - The Finnic forms oikein, oikiin and similar (all regularly formed from the stem *oike- "straight") fit semantically. Together with the Votic regular change *k > tš before front vowel, this gives an almost perfect match, were it not for the fact that no such word is recorded for Votic (only a borrowing from Ingrian).
 * - The lack of the word in Ukrainian points at a borrowing after 1242; This excludes borrowing from (South) Estonian and Karelian, assuming these had voiced stops at that point in time already. The author does go on to say that they do not feel competent in narrowing this down as they aren't a specialist of Finnic historical phonology.
 * Thadh (talk) 14:30, 19 October 2023 (UTC)