5 ms·

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"

• throwaway290 5y ago
  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.
  • kgeist 5y ago
    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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_linguistics [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology
  • kgeist 5y ago
    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-
  • kgeist 5y ago
    >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")
• wheelerof4te 5y ago
  Not pretty sure, absolutely. Also: svak => svako svit => svet