Wednesday 29 July 2020

And those who lie


"And those who lie (break promise), may a dog f*ck their wives and their mothers"...


Here is the original part from the original text 


According to "Slavonic Letters in Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Centuries" by D. J. Deletant, it seems that "Slavonic" was the language of choice in Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania during medieval time...Why? And which Slavonic, Medieval Serbian or Medieval Bulgarian which was pretty much indistinguishable from Medieval Serbian? 

Only a person who spoke Serbian and was brought up as Serbian could have used the curse from the above letter. This is still one of the worst curses you can utter in Serbian...It comes from the deepest and darkest part of the Serbian culture...I talked about ritual and ceremonial cursing in Serbian culture in my post "Prokletija":  

Do Bulgarians have this curse?

2 questions: 

1. Why would Wallachian (Romanian) ruler be called Voivode (Serbian Voj, Boj + vodja = war+ leader) which is what all the early Wallachian (Romanian) rulers were called? 
2. Why would a Wallachian (Romanian) ruler write the letter in Serbian to German burgers of Sibiu?

Maybe the reason Voivode Alexander wrote his letter to the citizens of Sibiu in Serbian and used the above mentioned Serbian curse to emphasise that he meant business, is because both him and the recipients of his letter spoke Serbian and knew how serious the curse was...

That this was probably the case can be seen from huge number of Slavic (actually Serbian) toponyms all over Romania...I talked about this in this article about Romanian national hero Iovan Iorgovan, who according to Romanian legends came from Serbia... 

All in all a very interesting subject...Oh by the way, Alexander's half brother was Vlad II Dracul, father of The Vlad Dracul, The Impaler...And here is a letter by Vlad II to the citizens of Brașov, another German city in Transylvania. Again in Serbian... 

2 comments:

  1. I listen to modern conversations - when I look at our press, the "Old World tradition" seems like a dream when it comes to curses. Now everyone is enjoying their freedom to be rude

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  2. Im from Bulgaria, and yes we have those swear words in todays speach though it would sound like 'do koito lyje, pes da ebe jena mu i maika mu'

    I was also reading the texts in middle bulgarian and its almost 100% understandable, so probably serbian and bulgarian were basically the same languages. As to why Wallachia speaks slavic - Uprising of Asen and Peter 1201 - they make kingdom of Buglarians and Wallachs or Second Bulgarian Empire

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