“Shagi / Steps” the Journal of the SASH

SHAGI/STEPS 7(3)

Keywords: etymology, Inter-Slavic language contacts, migratory loanwords, Proto-Slavic, history of words, Russian стараться, Ukrainian старатися, Polish starać się

Abstract: In etymological literature, the Russian verb стараться ‘to strive, to do one’s best’ along with equivalents in other Slavic languages (Belarusian старацца, Ukrainian старатися, Czech starat se, Slovak starať sa, Polish starać się, Upper Sorbian starać so, Lower Sorbian starаś se, Bulgarian старая се, Serbian стÄрати се, Croatian stÄrati se etc.), is usually considered a continuant of the form *starati sę, which allegedly already existed in Proto-Slavic. At the same time, it is overlooked that this verb is completely absent in Old Church Slavonic, it is absent in Middle Bulgarian and Old Serbian; the verb старая се is atypical for Bulgarian popular dialects. Moreover, стараться in the Russian language itself has been noted only since the second half of the 17th century in translated documents from the Foreign Chancellery. The Russian verb seems to be borrowed from Old Ukrainian or/and Old Belarusian, where старати ся was used from the middle of the 16th century and it certainly comes from the Polish. It is possible that the Polish word, in turn, was borrowed from Czech. The article suggests that at present this verb has a common Slavic distribution not due to its Proto-Slavic antiquity, but as a result of its migration from one Slavic language to another much later than the disintegration of the Proto-Slavic language.
See the preliminary publication of this paper in Hungarian [Zoltán 2020].

To cite this article: Zoltán, A. (2021). On the fictitious Proto-Slavic *starati sę. Shagi / Steps, 7(3), 82–96. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.22394/2412-9410-2021-7-3-82-96.