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They did not just swap it, did they? Svi (everything) is also related to svit (the world), which is also in Russian as svet. This is why I say Serbian made more sense to me as a native Russian speaker.

Likewise Serbian sutra, which in Russian is zavtra, same idea (in the morning, i.e. tomorrow) but with seemingly more unnecessary manipulations (considering morning is still utro in Russian).




>Likewise Serbian sutra, which in Russian is zavtra, same idea (in the morning, i.e. tomorrow) but with seemingly more unnecessary manipulations (considering morning is still utro in Russian).

I'm not sure what the argument is here. Can you elaborate?


utro = morning, sutra = in the morning, zavtra = also in the morning but weirdly distorted for no obvious reason. There seems less etymological distortion in Serbian.


Zavtra <= za utra. What distortion are you talking about? That -u- became -v-?


s became za, u became v.


S- didn't become za-. It's just a different choice of preposition in Russian.

S utra = "starting from the morning"

Za utra (utrom) = "after the morning"

Both have a right to exist, just slightly different original meanings.


That's your opinion, let it be different from mine


That's not an opinion, that's how basic Slavic morphology/grammar works.

For example, some Russians say "v ogorode" ("in the garden"), while others say "na ogorode". We don't say "v" somehow got "distorted"/morphed into "na". Some dialects simply choose to use a different, unrelated preposition in the same context.


Are you trying to teach me Russian? Let your opinion be yours.


I'm not trying to teach you Russian. I'm giving an example in a language you're familiar with.

I can give an example from Germanic languages.

Old English: tōdæġ (modern English "today")

Swedish: idag "today"

Dutch: vandaag "today"

Same root ("day"), same meaning ("today"), but different languages chose different prepositions/prefixes (to-, van-, i-).

Just like with s- vs. za- in Russian/Serbian.


Pretty sure Serbian swapped vs- > sv-, the word is not related to "svit" (it's a folk etymology).

Russian vs'ak "everyone" = Serbian svak "everyone"


I cannot respond without looking into what grounds are there to believe svet in proto-slavic is not related to sve.

No one speaks proto slavic, so it is all conjectures based on languages that were spoken more recently.

I believe linguist academics are citizens of their countries, and their interpretations of things in the past are influenced by languages they speak.


There's an academic field called "historical linguistics" [0]. What laypeople believe about language is called "folk etymology" [1].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_linguistics

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology


>No one speaks proto slavic, so it is all conjectures based on languages that were spoken more recently

Not really. Written Slavic exists since 9 century and it was spelt vs- already back then. Serbo-Croatian is an outlier here because all other Slavic languages have vs-.

Baltic languages are related to Slavic and Old Prussian had "wissa" for "all" (not "siva")


Proto-Slavic vьśi => Serbian svi, Russian vse.

Proto-Slavic světъ => Serbian svet/svit, Russian svet.

It's two unrelated words which just happen to start with the same two consonants in Serbo-Croatian out of all Slavic languages, after the phonetical change vs- => sv-


Not pretty sure, absolutely.

Also:

  svak => svako
  svit => svet




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