RE: [Cz-L] On Euromaydan

We used a lot the Romanian ( very urban ) word Maidan in Bucharest ( Of
Turkish origin, of course).

Look:

http://dexonline.ro/definitie/maidan

Irene

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-111109818-3499296_at_list.cornell.edu
[mailto:bounce-111109818-3499296_at_list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Charles
Polak
Sent: Friday, December 06, 2013 7:12 PM
To: 'Miriam Taylor'; Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu
Subject: RE: [Cz-L] On Euromaydan

'Maydan' is of Persian origin (cf. the famous Maydan [or: "Maidan"]-e Shâh,
"King's Square" in Esfahan, Iran), and, related to the fact that in medieval
Persian culture people played polo in such large city squares AND that polo,
like chess, was regarded as a stylized version of a battlefield. Persian
"maydan" also means "battlefield".

Every Persian word is also potentially a word in older, non-purist Ottoman
Turkish and the related languages, like Azerbaijani, Tatar and Uzbek, and in
Kurdish or Pashto (non-Persian Iranic languages) and in Urdu (original
Muslim as opposed to later Hindu version of the Indo-Aryan language Hindi).
(Every Arabic word is also a potential Persian word, a relationship very
like that of Hebrew and Aramaic to Yiddish.)

As far as I know, the presence of "maydan" in Ukrainian is unique within
Slavic (though with their background of Turkish occupation, Serbs and
Bulgarians may inform me otherwise), and is presumably due to Ukraine's
having been for generations on the "frontier" (which is what "ukrajina"
means) with the Ottoman Turkish empire as well as with the Tatars dominated
by the Crimean Khanate (the last dynasty descended from Chinggis/Genghis
Khan, the current heir being a New York interior designer).

Charles Polák
mailto:charles.polak_at_bbc.co.uk

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Received on 2013-12-06 17:01:49