Thread: Нарочно не придумаешь. (Юмор!)

Originally Posted by Anixx

"Slav" as a word is born of a nordic word for "slave". During a period of Scandinavian people's expansion, they invaded southward into Europe and enslaved the native tribes as "slavs".
Вкратце: слово "Славянин" произошло от скандинавского слова "раб".

I think this would come as a surprise to most linguists and lexicographers -- who seem to overwhelmingly agree that "slave" came from the Slavic self-designation "Slav", not the other way around. And it came by way of Latin, not any of the Scandinavian languages. (The ancient Romans conquered one of the Slavic tribes and Latinized the tribe's native Slavic name as sclavus, which later became a generic term for "slave" and lost the hard "c" sound, becoming slavus. If you can find any dictionary citations that disagree with this uncontroversial point, feel free to share.)

Scientifically, there is no such thing as "white" race. There are only three races, Mongolian, Caucasian, and Negro, or combinations thereof.
Slavs are not white, in the sense that they're the same race as Western Europeans.

If there's no such thing as a "white" race, then shouldn't you have written "Both Slavs and Western Europeans are non-white"? But at the same time, if there are only three races, then aren't Slavs and Western Europeans both in the same category ("Caucasoid")?

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

If there's no such thing as a "white" race, then shouldn't you have written "Both Slavs and Western Europeans are non-white"? But at the same time, if there are only three races, then aren't Slavs and Western Europeans both in the same category ("Caucasoid")?

These are several answers from the linked question. You can follow the link and see yourself. It seems nobody even suggested that "Slavs" could be the historical self-name of the people.

... It seems nobody even suggested that "Slavs" could be the historical self-name of the people.

This is what I had thought, that was self-name, related to
слава.