Teutscher, und Russischer, DICTIONARIUM (Dictionarium Vindobonense). Das Wienerdeutsche-russische Wörterbuch (Cod. Conv. FF. Minorium Vindobonensis XVI) by GerhardBirkfellnerReview by: H. LeemingThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Oct., 1987), pp. 617-618Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4209633 .

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Reviews Birkfellner, Gerhard (ed.) Teutscher, und Russischer, DICTIONARIUM

(Dictionarium Vindobonense). Das Wiener deutsche-russische Wirterbuch (Cod. Conv. FF. Minorium Vindobonensis XVI). Akademie Verlag, Berlin, I984. xxxviii + 932 pp. i6 plates. DM 195.

THE importance of foreign sources for the history of the Russian vocabulary has long been recognized. To the dictionaries and word-lists of RichardJames, T6nnies Fenne, Andre Thevet and others already available in modern editions, students of Russian lexicography can now add a compilation richer than any of these, numbering 24,000 entries. This is a manuscript book from the second half of the seventeenth century preserved in the Central Library of the Minorite Convent in Vienna, its home for the past two hundred years. Gerhard Birkfellner tells us in his introduction that a probable candidate for authorship of the Russian material is a certain Fr. Georgius ab Angelis from the diocese of Przemysl, a member of the order of the Most Holy Trinity, founded in the late twelfth century for the redemption of Christian captives in Saracen hands. In the aftermath of Jan Sobieski's victorious campaign a number of Trinitarian foundations were set up in Eastern Poland, as also in Vienna. In order to prepare members for their missions to Tartary and the Crimea, some acquaintance with the Russian language was desirable. Hence the need for a comprehensive German-Russian dictionary.

The German register comprises original and supplementary entries by two hands; Fr. Georgius is the putative translator of the former, while the latter may have been rendered into Russian by a Slav or even the German interpolator of the supplementary material, which in this edition is marked by an asterisk. The editor's introduction covers the cultural and historical background, German lexicographical models, sixteenth- and seventeenth- century East Slavonic lexicography with most valuable bibliographical notes, a careful description of the manuscript and an explanation of editorial principles. The dictionary itself has a generous lay-out in parallel columns; an index to the Russian material is supplied, which preserves the various quirks and errors of the eccentric scribes. Here is rich material for a study in error analysis. Which deviations reflect uncertainty of the German meaning and which an unsure grasp of Russian morphology? Which unorthodox spellings of Russian inflections should be interpreted as phonetic representations of unstressed vowels?

An interesting problem is the reason for the lacunae in the Russian word- list. Sometimes this seems to imply ignorance of a particular terminology, be it musical (Discant; pauBle, stillhaltung Im singen; pausieren; pedal einer orgel), zoological (pelican; paradiB Vogel), botanical (distelbaum); mineralogical (petreolium), military (pastey, Bastion; patron, Biuchsen ladung; pedarde), culinary (pickelhering, Citronen ipffel) or even religious (albe; pater Noster; g6ttliche Eigenschafft). While a number of these expose an undoubted deficiency of the contemporary Russian vocabulary, others are well attested in seventeenth-century sources, for example, deskant, pausa in Dylecki's treatise on polyphonic music.

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6i8 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Another aspect is the early attestation here of words ascribed by historical lexicology to the Petrine epoch or later: avangardie, akcii, anatomist kotory mertvyx rozrezyvajet, armeja, baginet 'bayonet', batalia, buksirovat' and so on. Although the confused spelling invalidates this material as evidence for other aspects of historical grammar, it retains great interest for the growth and development of the Russian vocabulary. No library catering for Slavists should be without a copy of this most valuable source. London H. LEEMING

Nosovic, I. I. Slovar' belorusskago nare7cija, SPb. I870. Nachdruck and Nachwort in zwei Bainden von G. Friedhof and P. Kosta. Specimina Philologiae Slavicae, Supplementbiinde 2 and 3. Verlag Otto Sagner, Munich, I984-86. Original pagination (x + 796 + 22 pp.).

NOSOVICH's dictionary, one of the most important contributions to the nineteenth-century study of the Byelorussian language, was for many years a bibliographical rarity. In I983, however, the Byelorussian Soviet Encyclo- pedia publishing house in Minsk produced (in a print-run of i ,ooo) a complete facsimile edition with an introduction by M. R. Sudnik. At approximately the same time appeared the first half of Professors Friedhof and Kosta's long- planned facsimile and this has now been completed by a second volume with an editors' postscript. Both reprints include Nosovich's supplement to the dictionary published in i88 i.

Ivan Ivanovich Nosovich (1788-i877) was not only a linguist but also a keen amateur ethnographer and folklorist, which interests he combined with his work as a teacher and inspector of schools in the Mahiloui, Viciebsk and Hrodna regions. His dictionary of the 'Byelorussian dialect' (and it must be remembered that it was forbidden to refer to Byelorussian as a language until the I917 Revolution) was written entirely after his retirement, on a com- mission from the Section of Russian Language and Literature of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Partially a straightforward defining dictionary, and partially using Russian and classical languages for comparative purposes, Nosovich's richly illustrated lexicon is based mainly on the folkloric materials he had collected, words he had noted on his travels and particularly in his native Mahiloiu region, and partially from the list of words he had compiled from the ancient 'West Russian' acts (i.e. the legal and chancery documents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania). Thus, although there is a strong bias towards the north-eastern Byelorussian dialects, Nosovich's dictionary was plainly intended to be of wider geographical and chronological significance. Its value as an original source of rare linguistic data is far from lost today and deserves analytical attention. It may be hoped that a conference planned to mark the centenary of Nosovich's birth may throw further light on the life and work of one of the more interesting scholars of the Russian Empire. Meanwhile libraries and individual linguists who missed the I983 reprint will be glad of another opportunity to acquire this pioneering lexicographical work. Department ofRussian ARNOLD MCMILLIN University of Liverpool

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