Linguist Forum
Languages => Language-specific analysis => Topic started by: Dori on October 02, 2017, 10:15:54 AM
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Hello
Why do many words (names of places etc.) of the language Slovene end with the suffix - j(e)?
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The only one I can think off on the top of my head is "morje" (sea). You won't get answers to such questions here.
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If you could give a list of examples we might be able to figure out the pattern. Or you could try an etymological dictionary.
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My guess would be that the ending "-je" corresponds to the PIE y-stem. "Morje" obviously comes from *mory and is cognate to Latin "mare" (stem being "mari-"). I don't know much about Slovenian though. In Croatian, "rje" gets monothongised into "re", so the Croatian word for "sea" is "more". This sound change is productive even today. For instance, the genitive singular of "vrijeme" should be "vrjemena", but is actually "vremena". Daniel, what are your thoughts on this?
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I'm not familiar enough with Slavic etymology to comment on a specific suffix. What you said sounds reasonable. With more data I might be able to make a better guess, but I'm not sure.