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From: weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Derivation of `Moscow'
Message-ID: <12564@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sun, 23-Mar-86 00:35:05 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.12564
Posted: Sun Mar 23 00:35:05 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Mar-86 03:22:53 EST
References: <337@aero.ARPA>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@brahms.UUCP (Matthew P. Wiener)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <337@aero.ARPA> solomon@aero.UUCP (Steve Solomon) writes:
>About Moscow, the Russian name is `Moskva' in the nominative singular. I
>think I know how we got `Moscow' and my argument is based on the
>genitive plural. Here goes. Somehow the name was declined in the
>genitive plural, which is in cyrillic MOCKOB.

Somehow?  That is the expected declension.  Feminine gender drops the
trailing 'a', and if the resulting word has too many consonants in a
row, they stick a vowel in to help.  That cracked us up in our Russian
class, since they don't seem to mind doing that elsewhere.  VZGL'OD,
for example, is fun to pronounce.  And vowelless prepositions!  Yikes.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720