Derivation of `Moscow'

[Matthew P. Wiener]

In article <3...@aero.ARPA> sol...@aero.UUCP (Steve Solomon) writes:
>About Moscow, the Russian name is `Moskva' in the nominative singular. I
>think I know how we got `Moscow' and my argument is based on the
>genitive plural. Here goes. Somehow the name was declined in the
>genitive plural, which is in cyrillic MOCKOB.

Somehow? That is the expected declension. Feminine gender drops the
trailing 'a', and if the resulting word has too many consonants in a
row, they stick a vowel in to help. That cracked us up in our Russian
class, since they don't seem to mind doing that elsewhere. VZGL'OD,
for example, is fun to pronounce. And vowelless prepositions! Yikes.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720

[Dave Seaman]

In article <12...@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> wee...@brahms.UUCP (Matthew P. Wiener) writes:
>In article <3...@aero.ARPA> sol...@aero.UUCP (Steve Solomon) writes:
>>About Moscow, the Russian name is `Moskva' in the nominative singular. I
>>think I know how we got `Moscow' and my argument is based on the
>>genitive plural. Here goes. Somehow the name was declined in the
>>genitive plural, which is in cyrillic MOCKOB.
>
>Somehow? That is the expected declension.

Why is genitive plural the expected declension? It is much more normal
to use nominative singular for importation into other languages. I assume
that was the reason for the "somehow."
--
Dave Seaman pur-ee!pucc-h!ags