Proto-Slavic borrowings

Numerous lexemes that are reconstructible for the Proto-Slavic language have been identified as borrowings from the languages of various tribes that Proto-Slavic speakers came into contact with, either in prehistorical times or during their expansion when they first appeared in history in the 6th century (the Common Slavic period). Most of the loanwords come from Germanic languages, with other contributors being Iranian, Celtic, and Turkic. The topic of such loanwords in Slavic has sparked numerous sharp debates in the 20th century, some of which persist to this day.

According to Matasović (2008), "solving the problem of Iranian loanwords in Slavic, their distribution and relative chronology, is one of the most important tasks of modern Slavic studies". Slavs in the era of the Proto-Slavic language came into contact with various Iranian tribes, namely Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans, which were present in vast regions of eastern and southeastern Europe in the first centuries CE. The names of two large rivers in the centre of Slavic expansion, Dnieper and Dniester, are of Iranian origin, and Iranian toponyms are found as far west as modern day Romania.

For a long time there have been investigators who believe that the number of loanwords from Iranian languages in Proto-Slavic is substantial. For example, Gołąb (1992) maintains that all Slavic words with unexplained initial *x- are in fact Iranianisms. However, there have been other Slavists who have claimed that confirmed Iranianisms in Slavic are in fact surprisingly few, and Matasović has raised broad objections to the body of past Iranianist research. Meillet and Vaillant cite the Slavic word *taparu, axe (Russ. , Pol. , Sr-Cr. ), which came from Iranian *tapara- (cf. Persian ). (Gołąb, noting the etymological connection with Slavic *tepǫ, I hit, holds that this word is in fact a loan from Slavic into Iranian.) Meillet and Vaillant explain the alleged lack of Iranianisms in Slavic with the argument: "the civilization of warrior and partially nomadic tribes, like Scythian and Sarmatian, could have exerted only a cursory influence on the patriarchal civilization of Slavs."

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