On the history of the word verbl’ud
Abstract
In the fonetical history of the word verbl’ud ‘camel’ in Russian, the reasons for softening /l/ in the stressed syllable remain unclear. The hard /l/ in this word is expected both in terms of its etymology and its supposed association with the root blud‑ ‘fornication’. The article presents the earliest (11th century) examples of writing this word through the letter ю, which is not noted in the historical dictionaries of the Russian language — as a вельблюдъ, while the syllable лю here is a spelling variant acceptable for the early period to spell /u/ after a solid /l/. A hypothesis is put forward that the pronunciation with a soft /l/ originally arose as a result of a misreading of the name of an exotic animal
in a spelling that early left the Old Russian orthography.
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