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Old Church Slavonic and the origin of Fampyrs, discuss!

Lacrymas

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Вампир. The etymology is not Serbian, it's from old Bulgarian "ВѪПИРЪ" (Vonpir, Вонпиръ) which is presumed to have come from the even older word for "dangerous water/water inhabited by an evil spirit" from the Avestan language. The English and French versions are loaned from Hungarian.

Anyway, yeah, the whole language they invented sounds cringey, with a few exceptions.
 
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Iznaliu

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it's from old Bulgarian "ВѪПИРЪ" (Vonpir, Вонпиръ)

According to Wiktionary, it comes from Proto-Slavic *ǫpyrь with a front yer.

The origin of the modern vam- form is interesting:

Mel’nyčuk further proposes that the forms with initial vam- were derived by way of Old Church Slavonic *вѫпиръ (*vǫpirŭ) with prothetic *в-, borrowed into Byzantine Greek as βαμπύρος(bampúros) and then borrowed back into the South Slavic languages.
 

Lacrymas

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According to Wiktionary, it comes from Proto-Slavic *ǫpyrь with a front yer.

The origin of the modern vam- form is interesting:

Mel’nyčuk further proposes that the forms with initial vam- were derived by way of Old Church Slavonic *вѫпиръ (*vǫpirŭ) with prothetic *в-, borrowed into Byzantine Greek as βαμπύρος(bampúros) and then borrowed back into the South Slavic languages.

What we call old Bulgarian is Old Church Slavonic, they are synonyms. It's essentially the first Slavic language developed by Cyril and Methodius. Proto-Slavic doesn't "exist" as a language, as no writings have been found, it's just the language comparatively derived from the common roots of all the Balkan languages. Where they even found a Proto-Slavic word is an interesting question to ask.

EDIT: Even the source you provided states that it's not a "real" word, it's just comparatively derived. In any case, it's still not Serbian.
 
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AwesomeButton

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According to Wiktionary, it comes from Proto-Slavic *ǫpyrь with a front yer.

The origin of the modern vam- form is interesting:

Mel’nyčuk further proposes that the forms with initial vam- were derived by way of Old Church Slavonic *вѫпиръ (*vǫpirŭ) with prothetic *в-, borrowed into Byzantine Greek as βαμπύρος(bampúros) and then borrowed back into the South Slavic languages.

What we call old Bulgarian is Old Church Slavonic, they are synonyms. It's essentially the first Slavic language developed by Cyril and Methodius. Proto-Slavic doesn't "exist" as a language, as no writings have been found, it's just the language comparatively derived from the common roots of all the Balkan languages. Where they even found a Proto-Slavic word is an interesting question to ask.

EDIT: Even the source you provided states that it's not a "real" word, it's just comparatively derived. In any case, it's still not Serbian.
Historically, Cyril and Methodius didn't concern themselves that much with Bulgaria ;) Bulgarian does happen to be the first Slavic language with its own literature, though there are texts in Slavic written in other alphabets that precede the Glagolitic, and also it first saw use in Moravia, not Bulgaria. This isn't that important though because at the time of the appearance of the Glagolitic script, Slavic is assumed to have been intelligible between its native speakers from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Cyril and Methodius were most probably fluent in the variant of Slavic spoken in the vicinity of Salonika, and after the Glagolitic script was adopted in Bulgaria, that particular variant of the Slavic language became the literary norm. There is also a body of Glagolitic texts in Croatia, where they kept the Glagolitic script long after it was superseded everywhere else.

You're correct that Proto-Slavic is a reconstructed language, so everything preceded by an asterisk designates a reconstructed form, which has never been written in that way and is what scientists suppose are the phonemes of which the word would have been composed.
 

Lacrymas

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Historically, Cyril and Methodius didn't concern themselves that much with Bulgaria ;)

Oh, I'm perfectly aware of that, it's just that I'm used to calling it old Bulgarian, because in Bulgaria they are synonyms. Old Church Slavonic is more proper to say in international contexts.
 

Iznaliu

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What we call old Bulgarian is Old Church Slavonic, they are synonyms. It's essentially the first Slavic language developed by Cyril and Methodius. Proto-Slavic doesn't "exist" as a language, as no writings have been found, it's just the language comparatively derived from the common roots of all the Balkan languages. Where they even found a Proto-Slavic word is an interesting question to ask.

EDIT: Even the source you provided states that it's not a "real" word, it's just comparatively derived. In any case, it's still not Serbian.

I know that Proto-Slavic isn't an attested language, but the reconstruction accounts for forms such as Czech upir. What I was stating is that the final back yer (ъ) in OCS (в)ѫпиръ is weird since the Old East Slavic form (упирь) has a final front yer (ь). This is probably since it wasn't pronounced, meaning it was easy to confuse the two forms.
 

Lacrymas

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I know that Proto-Slavic isn't an attested language, but the reconstruction accounts for forms such as Czech upir. What I was stating is that the final back yer (ъ) in OCS (в)ѫпиръ is weird since the Old East Slavic form (упирь) has a final front yer (ь). This is probably since it wasn't pronounced, meaning it was easy to confuse the two forms.

That's a distinction I never found very good information on. What I do know, however, is that OCS words never end in ь, it's always in ъ. OCS is still used in churches even to this day, so that kind of thing would've been known if there was something interesting about it. Words ending in ъ were actually still used in modern Bulgarian up to quite the recent past (1945 to be exact, when we became a socialist/communist state in '44 the authorities demanded Bulgarian be simplified). Where that Old East Slavic form comes from I don't know.
 
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Lacrymas

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I don't think that's right. Maybe later forms of OCS (when it was/is used as a liturgical language) eliminated ь though.

Yeah, I looked it up a bit more now because I got intrigued and there are indeed some words which end in ь even in "modern" Church Slavonic. They are pretty rare, though. There was a list of differences between Old Church Slavonic and ...plain Church Slavonic and all the words ending in ь were changed to ъ. I couldn't find a rule that explains this change, however, or which words remained with ь. I think it has something to do with Russian being intermingled with it, the most common modern version is Russian in general.

Here's a sample of Church Slavonic -

Oldchurchslavonic.jpg
 
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AwesomeButton

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In the late period of development of Proto-Slavonic, a phonetic law came into being, known as the law of open syllables. Every word had to end on an open syllable, which means a syllable ending on a vowel. Hence those suffixes in Nominative like ъ, ь, ы, even for masculine nouns.

In Old Bulgarian/Old Slavonic, masculine nouns may end on -ъ, and -ь, very few end on -а/-я/-и, and very few end on -ы. Many nouns in masculine end on , in fact even the word for "man" - "мѫжь" does. Fun fact - the modern Russian and Polish words for "man" are of feminine gender but the reasons are unrelated to the Old Slavonic noun suffixes.

What I was stating is that the final back yer (ъ) in OCS (в)ѫпиръ is weird since the Old East Slavic form(упирь) has a final front yer (ь). This is probably since it wasn't pronounced, meaning it was easy to confuse the two forms.
The `р` (r) in the Russian упырь is a syllabic consonant. Syllabic consonants r/l could be either soft or hard, and are marked by an ь or ъ at the end, respectively. With time, the soft versions gave way to hard ones - hence in texts you can see сръдьце instead of срьдьце, съмръть instead of съмрьть, etc (those are Old Bulgarian examples though).

The ъ in the unattested "*вѫпиръ" probably designates that the ъ was being pronounced in the hypothetical *вѫпиръ, and doesn't merely deisgnate a palatalization of the р. I'm not really sure.
 
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AwesomeButton

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Linguistics is a science for prestigious and rich people with too much free time. Like RPGs, except for the "rich" part.
 

polo

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If you're going to be like that, I'm going to come to your lore thread.
Hey, don't be like that. Im positive lore in PoE will be much better. Just taking away all those backer added text walls, and shite its a step forward. :greatjob:
 

Iznaliu

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and very few end on -ы.
ы was originally a ligature (I haven't figured out how the sound was written beforehand), but confusingly, ы comes from ъ+і, not ь+і.

The ъ in the unattested "*вѫпиръ" probably designates that the ъ was being pronounced in the hypothetical *вѫпиръ, and doesn't merely deisgnate a palatalization of the р. I'm not really sure.

ъ indicates lack of palatalisation, and it probably wasn't pronounced because the word etymologically should end with ь; the loss of yers and the subsequent merger of palatalised and unpalatalised r/р in the South Slavic languages meant that the two letters could be confused.
 

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ы was originally a ligature (I haven't figured out how the sound was written beforehand), but confusingly, ы comes from ъ+і, not ь+і.
ы has always been a ligature, not just originally. The ligature still represents a sound, like any other of the graphemes which correspond to a phoneme. ы represents one of 11 vowels in Old Slavonic (11 if we count the two syllabic consonants r' and l' ). It corresponds to a discrete phoneme, not to two separate phonemes pronounced one after the other.

More details after some research:
The sound ы is a "harder" variant of the `н` (not the "N", but the "I", it used to be borrowed from the Greek `Н` sign, see here). It's not 100% established how it was pronounced. In both Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts, it was represented by a ligature of two other letters. In Cyrillic texts, the combination is more often ъ+ι - `ъι` but in many texts it can be encountered as ъ+и - `ъи`. This second writing is used as an argument for theories that it may have been pronounced as a diphthong. The general opinion among slavists however, is that given the circumstance that Proto-Indo-European diphthongs transformed into monophthongs in the Proto-Slavic period, ы was a monophthong and it sounded about the same as the ы in modern Russian. I guess this is still a subject of debate though, so you may see arguments for it being a diphthong.

In Old Bulgarian ы is used in suffixes of words, and before consonants - ты (you), сынъ (son), мышлѭ (they thought). In front of vowels ы transforms into ъв. This transformation happened in Proto-Slavic where the long Proto-Slavic ū transformed into ъв before a vowel.

Now regarding ъ and ь:
Both had a weaker and shorter pronunciation than the other vowels. Whenever ы and н were replacing ъ and ь respectively in certain forms of words, they were also pronounced more weakly. This reduction of their pronunciation was the reason for their transformations. It is not clear how exactly they sounded in Old Slavonic. It is assumed that ъ sounded like a short o or short u, and ь like a short е or short i.

According to their position within the word, the ъ and ь could additonally be "strong" or "weak". They were in a strong position when they were in front of a syllable which itself also contained an ъ or ь. For example, the first ъ in вънъ, сънъ, or the ь in подобьнъ, старьцъ. They were weak in any other position, for example in the endings of words - градъ, гладъ, народъ, властъ, or in the middle of words, where they were not superseded by another ъ or ь -- мъногъ, посълахъ, прилежьно, чьто, тьма правьда, дъва. When an ъ or ь was found in numerous consequential syllables, then the one that was in an even-numbered spot counted from the back would be the strong one, the others would be weak -- пришьльць, дьньсь. (You could pronounce that by softening the syllables ш, д, с, and pronouncing the ь as a short e).

With time there was a process of the weak-position yers falling out of use, with time people stopped pronouncing them (in Old Bulgarian that is). As they stopped pronouncing them, the yers which were in strong position found themselves in closed syllables, not in open ones, and their pronunciation became more clear, to the point where they became "full-fledged vowels" - In the 10th-11th centuries the ь transformed in to е, the ъ into о, and then later, after the 11th c. into the present day Bulgarian "ъ". Examples are дъждь -> дождь, дьнь -> день, коньць -> конець seen in medieval texts.

What's more significant regarding our *вѫпиръ is that there was a process of substitution of ь with ъ when a consonant gradually became pronounced harder. In texts there are instances of "ножъ" instead of "ножь" (knife), "мечъ" instead of "мечь" (sword).

So, the explanation could be that the unattested *вѫпиръ assumes that the р was hard in Proto-Slavic before becoming soft in the later упирь (and other variants).

BTW, in wikipedia articles in various languages there are different forms given for the word, sometimes вѫпиръ is marked as unattested, other times it's not, and it's just claimed it's the Old Bulgarian form. I can't check their sources and I myself don't know where and how the word is attested in Bulgarian, Russian or Czech. So in the end, I know as little as I did in the beginning. If we can find it in some text we can think on why it has an ь or ъ. :)
 
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Lacrymas

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Like I said, ъ and ь at the end of words were dropped in present-day Bulgarian due to the communist regime in 1945, so none of that matters now :p The only words that end in ъ (never in ь) are Chinese words (mostly names) that are written in Cyrillic. The дъждь -> дождь thing is weird because it's дъжд in modern Bulgarian, not дожд, so that's either wrong or people really liked changing the rules for ъ and ь lol.
 

Efe

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what do you mean by that? as far as i know ъ and ь at the end of words are still in use today.
 

Lacrymas

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what do you mean by that? as far as i know ъ and ь at the end of words are still in use today.

Only in Church Slavonic (this isn't "Bulgarian"), which we already went over, not in "normal" Bulgarian. They were dropped in '45 due to the authorities' insistence that Bulgarian be simplified.

Here's an example from a famous poem -

Като черна гробница и тая вечер
пуст и мрачен е градът;
тъпо стъпките отекват надалече
и в тъмата се топят.

Глъхнат оградите, зловещо гледа всяка
с жълти стъклени очи,
оскрежената топола — призрак сякаш —
в сивата мъгла стърчи.

Странни струни са изопнатите жици,
посребрени с тънък пух,
и снегът, поръсен с бисерни искрици,
хрупка с вопъл зъл и глух.

А в мъглата — през безплътните ѝ мрежи
мълком гаснеща от скръб,
младата луна незнаен път бележи
с тънкия си огнен сърп.
 
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Like I said, ъ and ь at the end of words were dropped in present-day Bulgarian due to the communist regime in 1945, so none of that matters now :p The only words that end in ъ (never in ь) are Chinese words (mostly names) that are written in Cyrillic. The дъждь -> дождь thing is weird because it's дъжд in modern Bulgarian, not дожд, so that's either wrong or people really liked changing the rules for ъ and ь lol.
The -ь/-ъ endings were dropped in 45, but the sounds were already not being pronounced. I'm not sure when exactly they fell out of use.

Western Bulgarian variants use дожд today, it's just not the literary norm.

what do you mean by that? as far as i know ъ and ь at the end of words are still in use today.
No, in present day Bulgarian there is no word that "legally" ends on an "ъ", except transliterated loan words like Lacrymas said. It's common that people not very familiar with the written Bulgarian would write a reduced a at the end of a word as an ъ but this is a writing error -- радостта ("the happiness") -> радосттъ. Russian has ь at the end of words, to signify the soft preceding consontant -- радость (radost').

BTW I keep reading incredible bullshit regarding "upir" in wikipedia, including the misconception that there was a Novgorod priest in the 11th c. named "Упир Лихий", which if it were true, literally translates as "Evil Upir". Anyway, at least I know what I'm naming my evil priest. :lol:
 
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Lacrymas

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At the end of the day, I think we should ask Sawyer what the in-universe etymological justification for Fampyr is, lol.
 

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I've asked him about etymology once or twice, it was about if "dyr" and "hyl" are written with an "y", shouldn't some other word be written in some way, I don't really remember. I tried to deduct a phonological rule. Fampyr would also follow that btw.

I was thinking we should petition him to change fampyr to (f)ąpyr. This way people would mostly read it as "fapper".
 

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