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The Wiktionary quick summary of why it's disputed is one researcher's assertion that "slověne can't be formed from slovo because -ěninъ, -aninъ only occurs in d
by schoen 5y ago
The Wiktionary quick summary of why it's disputed is one researcher's assertion that "slověne can't be formed from slovo because -ěninъ, -aninъ only occurs in derivations from place names". (Maybe słowianin < slověninъ is an exception, but you can see where someone might be skeptical if it's supposedly the only* exception!)
Sometimes etymologies that feel super-logical turn out to be more complicated historically. In many of these cases, the later perception that two words were related influenced their subsequent meaning or spelling, even if they were originally not related.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paronymic_attraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paronymic_attraction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology#Productive_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology#Productive_forc...
As a non-speaker of Slavic languages, I'm pretty convinced about the "word" connection, especially with the example you mentioned about the Germans being called "non-talkers", since it's not very unusual for ethnic groups' autonyms to mean something like "speakers". But there are lots of etymologies that feel natural and straightforward and are later shown to have a folk etymological component.
- ajuc 5y agoIndeed I can't find in Polish any other singular -anin not derived from place, But słowianin in plural is słowianie, and there's lots of -anie words not derived from places. For example abstract nouns formed from verbs, like: pisanie (writing) from pisać (to write) palenie (smoking) from palić (to burn) śniadanie (breakfast) from archaic śniadać (to eat) jedzenie (food) from modern jeść (to eat) bieganie (running) from biec (to run) etc. There's easily hundreds of these. Then it would be słowianie (abstract noun for people who can talk) from archaic słowić (to express in words) The only weird thing would be that słowianie is plural and all of the other -anie nouns made from verbs are singular.
- schoen 5y agoThat seems pretty strong, but Wiktionary analyzes these two kinds of -anie as different suffixes https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-anie#Polish https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-anie#Polish without stating whether they're etymologically related. It would also be good to know whether both exist in other Slavic languages. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-anin#Polish https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-anin#Polish has another example in Serbo-Croatian, which in turn has a different suffix corresponding to Polish -anie: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-anje#Serbo-Croatian https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-anje#Serbo-Croatian I don't know any of these languages, so I don't have any intuitions about this.