Friendly barter in the Gulf of Finland, and wandering meanings

Przyjacielski handel wymienny w Zatoce Fińskiej a wędrujące znaczenia Punktem wyjścia tego studium jest nazwa handlu wymiennego w Zatoce Fińskiej, dobrze znanego w historii relacji fińsko-estońskich. Nazwa tego handlu zawiera słowo, którym określa się przyjaciela lub znajomego w językach bałtycko-fińskich, kilku słowiańskich i jeszcze paru innych w Europie. Artykuł pokazuje możliwości poszukiwania źródeł słowa. Może ono pochodzić z języka staroruskiego lub greckiego albo nawet należeć do najstarszej warstwy słownictwa europejskiego. Słowo to jest tak stare i było tak szeroko używane, że sprawa jego etymologii pozostaje otwarta, ale bardzo ciekawe jest jego ewoluowanie znaczeniowe.A point of departure for this study is the name of barter in the Gulf of Finland, well known in the history of Finnish-Estonian relations. The name of this barter contains the word which is used to descibe a friend or a good acquaintance in Finnic, several Slavic and a few other languages in Europe. The article shows possibilities of survey of the origins of this word. It can originate from Old East Slavic or Greek or even it belongs to the oldest layer of European vocabulary. This word is so old and has been so largely used, that its etymology is still open, but the evolution of its meanings is very interesting

Ujfalvy’s place in the development of Finno-Ugrian language studies in the second half of the 19th century in France

The article presents the work of Charles Eugène de Ujfalvy de Mező-Kövesd [Hung. Mezőkövesdi Ujfalvy Károly Jenő] (1842–1904), still less known French-Hungarian researcher, who played an important role as an initiatior of the Finno-Ugrian language studies in France. His interests were very wide and he worked hard with a real scientific passion. He left behind numerous publications on linguistics, anthropology and ethnography, which contributed to the increase of the general knowledge about Asia’s many peoples in the second half of the 19th century

Factors influencing conservatism and purism in languages of Northern Europe (Nordic, Baltic, Finnic)

This paper shows common extralinguistic factors influencing conservatism and purism in languages of Northern Europe (Nordic, Baltic, Finnic). Users’ motivation, environment, culture, history and conscious policy are the keys to understand some tendencies in the slower rate of change of these languages

Assessing performance of conservation-based Best Management Practices: Coarse vs. fine-scale analysis

Background/Questions/Methods
Animal agriculture in the Spring Creek watershed of central Pennsylvania contributes sediment to the stream and ultimately to the Chesapeake Bay. Best Management Practices (BMPs) such as stream bank buffers are intended to intercept sediment moving from heavy-use areas toward the stream. The placement of BMPs on a farm is generally based on untested assumptions about flow paths. Most often, a straight-line distance from the heavy-use area to the stream is assumed to be correct. Our objective was to compare the straight-line path to hydrologic flow paths calculated from fine-, medium- and coarse-grained Digital Elevation Models (DEMs; 1m, 10m, 30m) for 471 mapped heavy-use points within 100m of the stream. The 30m DEMs are the most widely available and require the least processing time. We anticipated that the flow path distance would be longer than the straight-line distance in all cases, that the finest resolution would lead to the most accurate measurement, but that the difference might not be great enough to justify the increased costs. Understanding the changes in path length and direction calculated using more complex methods and higher-resolution source data will enable us to make recommendations on methods to be used in developing conservation management plans.

Results/Conclusions
The medium-(10m DEM) and fine-resolution data (1m DEM) had the smallest differences between the hydrologic flow path and straight-line path: median differences in path length of 20 m for both the 1m and 10m DEMs, and 51m for the 30m DEM. Hydrologic flow paths were significantly longer than straight-line paths for all three scales; BMP placement based on straight-line distances may not be the most effective. Although the overall difference was significantly positive, calculations on the 30m DEMs sometimes produced straight-line paths that were longer than the hydrologic flow paths, apparently due to inaccuracies in the data. Where fine-scale DEMs are available, BMPs might be more effectively situated by considering the corresponding drainage pathways. The very different results produced at the three scales demonstrate that using the finest-grained elevation data may substantially improve placement of BMPs intended to mitigate for heavy animal use areas. The use of 30m DEMs for this purpose should be avoided. Fine-grained data such as 1m-resolution LiDAR-derived DEMs are available for Pennsylvania through PAMAP, and can be incorporated in the planning stages of BMP placement ultimately resulting in reducing agricultural sediment and nutrient loadings into local watersheds and the Chesapeake Bay

ICT innovations from Finland, and Finnish digilect in electronic media culture

The article deals with ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) innovations that were entirely or partially invented in Finland (Nokia mobile phone technology, IRC, Linux, input to invent SMS). In the paper we discuss the current electronic communication that developed media culture and new codes, which combine pictural and language elements: emoticons and emojis as well as texting. Finland is the first country in the world to create its own national emojis (63 so far). Finally, we show characteristics of the Finnish texting, i.e. “cyberslang” (mainly in younger people’s communication), in other words “digilect” called after publications by a Hungarian linguist Ágnes Veszelszki

Reduplicative syllables in Romance languages

The article deals with the reduplications in Latin and in Romance languages. While in Latin there were only reduplications of monosyllables, Romance languages have a lot of polysyllabic (mostly disyllabic) reduplications. This development could arise due to a bigger expressivity of vulgar Latin mixed with vernacular languages and to their contacts with other languages: Germanic (mostly English and German), Celtic, Slavic, Turkic and Hungarian, in which the polysyllabic reduplication is the most common