Re: About Turkish

[Mark Perakh <perakh@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In response to Dennis' question, Slovo o Polku Igoreve (The Tale of
Igor's gang") was written about 1185-1187, in Old Slavic.  I revived now
in my memory some verses from that epic and there are no articles. Here
is the beginning of that poem (from my memory) which I transliterated
into Roman characters: "Ne liepo li ne byashet bratie nachati starymi
slovesy trudnykh povestej o pleku Igoreve, Igorya syna Svyatoslavlya. 
Nachati zhe toj povesti po bylyam sego vremeni a ne po izmyshleniyu
Boyanyu. Boyan bo veshchi ashche komu khotyashche pesn tvoriti to
rastekashetsa myslyu po drevu, serym volkom po zemli, shysym orlom po
oblaku...." etc. It translates as follows: "Wouldn't it be nice,
brothers, to start, in old fashioned words, (the) tale about Igor's
gang, about Igor, son of Svyatoslav. To start that tale according to
(the) real events of our time, rather than following Boyan's fantasy. 
When prophetic Boyan wished to create (a) song, he would let his
thoughts wander all over (the) forests, roam like (a) wolf over all
(the) lands, fly like (an) eagle in clouds."  No articles in the
original text. Its vocabulary and grammar is quite different, though,
from both modern Russian and Bulgarian. 

Dennis wrote:
> 
> "Rafal T. Prinke" wrote:
> 
> > Yes, that is true - at least about Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian,
> > Belorusian, Russian and Polish.
> 
>     Katzner's *Languages of the World* says "Bulgarian also differs from
> the other Slavic languages in that it makes use of articles, both
> definite and indefinite , the former being suffixed to the noun."  He
> also notes "Old Bulgarian, or Old Church Slavonic, as it has come to be
> called, long served as the literary vehicle of all the Slavic
> languages."  Did OCS use articles?  If it did, I suppose that some of
> the other Slavic languages might have during the Middle Ages.
> 
> Dennis