Janhunen, Juha

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JUHA JANHUNENPORSA _ A SIBERTAN CULTURAL TERMOne of the charâcteristic types of food of many Siberian peoples is driedfish, sLiced into strips, pressed into plates or ground into fishmeal Cobe rnixed with waÈer and fat. l'or this dish tr¡o standard internationalnames exisÈz yukola (esp. the sliced or Pressed variety) and por"sa (esp.the ground variery), both terms deriving frour the special lexicon of theSiberian Russian dialects. Obviously, neither of Chese r.rords is ulCinate-ly of Russian origin, both illustrate the cultural and linguistic con-tacts between the Russian prisheltsy and the native Siberians.Russian ¡óro¡a t'BEreHaE, npoBecuas ¡{ HeMHoro KBaueHaE B qMaxpyHHar pÉ¡6a'r and its parallel form toxá¡a ttBE¡eHaE pH6a HJru 6oqKapb¡6bur cgarue c Kocreü (o¡ra c¡exee u Jlyr{u¡e þKoJrt¡)tt were record-ed by Daf in the Kamchadal Russian dialects. The r¿ord icself is, how-ever, as shown by Steinitz, of l"lestern Siberian origin, being a borrowingfrom lhe Ob-Ugrian languages, cf. Vogul (Szilasi) ioæi:l'szárítoÈt hal',ostyak (Steinitz) Ni. S o jöxal, raz, iöxa! "nogi!¡¡ (er¡egas npogec-Haff pu6a, þKo¡a)" (see Steinitz, Zeitschrift für Slawistik V:4, 518-519). Quite naturally, it was in hlestern Siberia that many local termswere originally adopred by the earty Russian setclers, although many ofÈhese words subsequently spread with the colonists as far as the Pacific.From Russian, either direccly or through intermediaÈe idioms, the Èermyukola became known to several Siberian peoples, cf. Nganasan (Popov-Ristinen) yukkala 'sundried fishr, (Mikola) d'ugalí- 'szárÍtott hal,roKona', Yakut (Piekarski) gjira¡a, r¡$xäaä, rJyoxaJta "B gb[rly ron-qeHaa pb¡6a[, Evenki (cpasHurenbHun c¡oBapb ryHFyCO-MaHbqX(yp-cr¡¡x ags¡roB) n-T Ar Har jyxe¡3 [¡oKo¡a, BqJreHaÍ pb¡õa[, Lamut(ibid.) O¡ n r¡'Ír9¡a, e¡n Slxg¡a' ApM jfra.rra etc. id., Yukaghir(Angere) í1a& tJvchala; an der Sonne getrocknetes Fischskelett mitFleischresten, das als Hundefutcer dient'. On the other hand, the Ob-104Ugric word vas borrowed without Russian incermediation by Nenets' (Lehti-salo) O iQgòL 'kleiner, mit den Gräten in der Luft geÈrockneter Fischr. -The ultimate origin of the Ob-Ugrian term for yukola (Steinitz: Com¡onOsÈyak *jõka|) is no! known; however, attention might be directed (assuggesLed in Cpasunte¡bHb¡ñ cnoBapb ryHryco-MaHbr¡)ÍypcKHx fl3b¡KoB)ro a fairly similar term in Tungus, cf. Evenki (ibid.) M Tt jar "roroaa,BfiJIeHaÍ pb¡6a" etc. (? Common Tungus *jaku - tjãku), which t¡ord also oc-curs as a borrowing in Yakut, (Piekarski) qãrn "cytrteHan Ha poxue H3areM TotrlleBaE pHóarr.The question of the etymology of ponsa presents many unsolved problens.Again, Russian nópca ttpu6Haa Myxai cyuenaq !I To¡r¡enag ph¡6art' iscited by Dal' from the Eastern Siberian Russian dialects. The word has'however, a more rarely occurring nonosyllabic variant nopc (nopcb) t re-corded (by Karjalainen and Donner) in the Ob-Yenisey regionr and it isindeed in I'lestern Siberian languages that native terms' both mono- andbisyllabic, exist which seem to come nearest to the Russian word: Ostyak(Karjalainen) Trj. pcòyceà, pco'r,csg rkalajauho (katat survolaan ruotoi-neen), nopcr, Kaz. ppr.csø'c id., selkup (Donner) Tau pörèsV 'jauhoksijauheÈtu kuivattu kala', R po"B, Ty Oo pgrè, té,a poièe id., (Erdélyi)porea' nopca, Fischnehlt, poreíL' (adj.) tc nopcoür, Nenels (Lehti.-salo) o S,i. põ"ú?g'in Fischfett gekochter Fischr, TIZp:orç/, (ForesÈdialects: ) Lj. púrxçf¿, Nj , p6ncgç!, v põtt'Ççãçi id. some of these datacould, of course, be regarded as relatively recent Russian loans, and inany case it is likely Lhat the fairly comnon use of Ehe term in localRussian has somehor¡ affected che starus of the word in Ehe naEive lan-guages. Nevertheless, as no acceptable original for the term seems coexist elsenhere in Siberia, it might r¡ell be vrorth srhile examining thepossibilities of deriving this word, too, from the Western Siberian 1an-guages.Considering fhe dialectal distribution of the term as well as Ehe generalethnolinguistic situation in the area, nothing contradicts the assumPtionalready proposed by Donner (manuscripts, for Selkup only) that the r¿ordis indigenous in Samoyed. The Nenets and Selkup data might r,¡ell derivefrom a cormon Samoyed stem *porså. The bare sten is found today in TundraNenets lporcá/ and Selkup /pors, porsi/; in Forest Nenets /pürqsi, pôrqsI,põtsãj/ and setkup lporsa/ (if rhis has not come abour through Russianinfluence) a derivative suffix is present: *porsåjô. the semanÈic andt05phonological correspondences are regular. If the assumptÍon of a Samoyedorigin holds true, Russian nopc must derive from Selkup (as has beenproposed by Donner, manuscripts). As for the other data, the exact routesof borrowing are difficul! Eo unravel. Ostyak lporsa/ has obviously comeeither from Selkup (esp. to Èhe Eastern Ostyak dialects) or from TundraNenets (esp. to the Northern diatects). Russian nopca, in its turn,could derive from any of the three possible sources: Nenets, Selkup, orOstyak.It is only the somewhat sparse distribution of the EerÃ parsa in Sanoyedthat night make Èhe Comon Sanoyed origin doubÈful: no data have been re-corded fron Enets, Nganasan and Sayan Samoyed, and, as a måtter of facttno phonologicel detail would contradict an assunption of a parallel bor-rowing by Nenete and Selkup from Russian or some other source, either.Nevertheless, although the noun *porså has not been attested in the otherSanoyed languages, an interesting verbal stem recorded in the now extinctSayan Sanoyed idions seems to belong here: (Klaproth) KoibaI hormøn (aor.sg.1), Karagass (t'Karassen") chonwin, Taígí horsu, Motor oruotøn (probablyhabitative sg.1) 'essent. Indeed, the spirant h- (eh), often lost or leftundenoted in the sources, regularly represents an earlier *p- in KaragasstTaigi and Motor, the stem thus being reconstructable as'!pot- rto eaEt(the Koibal form with /¡- is not regular but must be a Motorism). Nor.r, itis most natural to regard the noun *porså as a derivative from the verbalstem. The original meaning could thus have been tsomething to be eaten,foodt. The verb *por- does not have verbal cognates in Èhe other Sårnoyedlanguages, buÈ iÈ seens to be an ancient indigenous word, almost totallydisplaced by its synon)¡os. The standard verb for rto eaÈr is fâo-, at-Èe6Èed in all Samoyed languages except in Karagass, Taigi and I'locor (evenin Koibal a parallel q¡tlø¡t pres.sg.l was present). Interestingly enough,fron this synon)m an analogous derivative exisÈs, liker¡ise in a special-ized rneaning: *ámså tfoodt + tmeaÈr, reeorded almost everywhere inSamoyed (also in Taigi and Motor apea), The suffix *-så ( - *-sä) isan element, earlier obviously productively used for forming verbal nouns,but nov¡ only rudinentarily attested in this function (anoÈher use of thesuffix which is productive today is to form Èhe preÈerite sten in thefinite conjugation of verbs). - As for the wider connections of theverbal sten *por-, attention should be payed to a verb in Finno-Ugric ¡¡ithvery sirnilar form and meaning: Finnish punra tto biter, Lapp bornãt 'to106eatr etc. (see suomen kiel.en et¡mrologinen sanakirja III). The vowel cor-respondence is, however, not quite regular (normally Finnish ¡¿ - Samoyed*ã); furthermore, an alternative Uralic etymology, though r¡ith a lessevident Samoyed cognate 1*pârå- 'to burn') survives in handbooks.The situation appears more complicated when other Siberian linguisticareâs are considered. Russian ngpga has been directly borrorved by Yakutt(Piekarski) nyopca "nopca, cnapeHnañ B Bo.qe, npocyuenuag HaÃoqar.oM n ToJrrregas pbl6a, pu6gaf, MyKa (r¡agntn¡ o6pa3oM H3 Koc-teü) r, (Afanas'ev & voronkin & Alekseev) Ey.rr. eÈc. óyopca. Anotherterm for porsa, however, also exists in Yakut: (Piekarski) 6apqa ttpaS-Hafi MeJrKaß pd6a, cnepBa cBapeHHas, a noToM npoKonqeHHaF A Te-qeHue l0 ,qxeü sa,q tpy6oü KaMHHa" ¡ óa'lva "cBapeHHaF ¡4 3areMBb¡CyU¡eHHaf B AbtMy Me¡Kal O3epgaf, ptl$att. Imediate cogna¡es arefound in Evenki, (vasilevið) o¡rtr A¡¡Ã vt¡p vp¡,t qMK 6apqa "gs¡eHa8pu6a; MyKa Lr3 cyu¡enoü pb¡ób¡", also as a verb: A¡t¡ V¡¡p ypM qMK6apqa-Mfr ,,BqJ¡HTb pb¡6ytt. In Tungus, sone irregular phonological vari-ants have also been attested: Evenki (Romanova & Myreeva) TK napr¡a, B¡E I,t n-T C nypt¡a; also in Nanai (CpaasntenbHblü c¡oBapb TyHryco-Manb¡¡xypcKr,rx ñsb¡KoB) Hx óoprú "KyüIaHbe r¡3 pn6b¡, On¡e (p¡¡óHoe)".Although noÈ far in form and meaning from Russian nopca, Yakut-Tungus6ap'¡a is most likely of different origin. It seems natural to relate theÈerm to another Yaku! wordr (Piekarski) 6apt¡a tt¡oMKa rrero-¡¡{6o ue-JrAfO B MeJIK¡,re KyCK¡.t, npeBpaü¡eg¡e qefO-¡U6O B MeJIblIaRU¡¡'rE qag-Tr,rqKHl . Bot,h piekarski and Rllsänen have considered the latter identicalwith Turkic paf,óa tpíecer, ultimately deriving fron Persian pãrða. Thus'the Tungus data must be regarded as borrowinge from Yakut. some of thevarianÈs of the word in Tungus may, however, be due to secondary influenceby Russian nopca - it is indeed extremely difficult to distinguísh be-tween prioary connection and secondary contaminative influence. As anexample of how easily even totally accidental similarity can arise, aword may be cited frour Qstyak, which comes very near to the YakuÈ 6at¡r¡abut is obviously quite unrelated to it: ostyak (Karjalainen) v pz¡üðâ etc.rkuivattu kata, no3eMr .As is exemplified by Yakut-Tungus 6apva, native terme have often inÈer-ningled wit,h Rueeian n6pga to form a scale of phonological variation.To the llestern Siberian poreq tyqe and the Yakut-Tungus barða tyPe yet athird fanily of words should be added, further complicating the analysis'107The Mongols do noÈ eat fish, but in their languages a v¡ord exists fordried neat vhich is cut up in striPs: Literary (Lessing) borea tmeaÈcut in strips and dried', Khalkha (Luvsandêndév) óopt¡ "Bfrenoe MEco,HapeSaHHoe ToHKHMH KycKaun", Buriat (ðerenisov) óopco id., Kalmuk(Ramstedt) borteo I in der sonne geÈrocknetes (oder gesalzenes) , in langesÈreifen geschnittenes fleiech (r¡ird in die suppe gel'egt)r; cf. also(Lessing) borcala- rto cut meat in strips for dryingr. The Mongol wordhas been borro¡¡ed into Turkic (as suggested by Ranstedt and Räsänen), cf.Kazakh (Shnitnikov) 6op¡¡a rjerked meatr, 6opu¡a¡a- tto cut meat intopieces for jerkingr, but the parallel influence of paröa, banóa tpíecetis again ptesent, cf. e.g. Kirghiz (Judaxin) 6Opr¡O "rpynr¡uü KycOKrrtóopqo¡o- ttpa3pe3atb rIa Kpynnb¡e KycKu (r¡. o6p. Maco 6eg Koc-Teü) t'. I{hether the Mongol dats, too, could ultinately be connected r¡ithPersian-Turkíc parêa, remains unclear. However, in view of the distri-bution of Che word, an indigenous origin of the r¡ord in Mongol ¡¡ould seemlikely (according to Ranstedt: c. *bor rhart, steifr). On the other hand,even mutual influence of Mongol borêa, \aktt batða and Russian pansar¡ould not be quite out of the queetion in some regions of Siberia.complicated though the routes and origins of the nigrating terms forfishneal and related dishes are, Russian nopca (or nopc) with itsinternational pendants is ulti¡nately of Sanoyed'origin (< *por-så). To-geÈher with the r¡ell-known panka tftr-coaÈr, porea is thus anoÈher Samo-yed contribution to the comton Arctic and Siberian jargon.

Porsa – A Siberian Cultural Term

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Porsa – A Siberian Cultural Term

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