Raíces Etnográficas y Estudios Etnolingüísticos de las clasificaciones Modernas de Suelos

Seguimos abundando en las aportaciones de la etnoedafología a la edafología actual. Hablamos con anterioridad de las clasificaciones de los pueblos Maya y algunas culturas indígenas de Brasil, así como de la representación y percepción espacial de los suelos y asociaciones de suelos. Sin embargo, tal tema ha sido, consciente o inconscientemente, reconocido por los edafólogos, por cuanto numerosas denominaciones con vistas a designar distintos edafotaxa aun se mantienen en las taxonomías nacionales, e incluso en los de la propia WRB (FAO). Es decir abundan las raíces vernáculas, como bien nos recuerda Tatiana Volkova. Y como nadie discute (ni los anglosajones, aunque los yanquis siempre añadan a la lista alguno de sus héroes, más o menos inmerecidamente) que la Edafología nació en Rusia, es lógico que los estudios etnolingüísticos de la terminología de las clasificaciones revele la patria de los primeros edafólogos. En los años 60 la USDA Soil Taxonomy trastocó todo creando una terminología de nuevo cuño. Empero quedaron vestigios (por ejemplo “Rendnoll”). Analicemos hoy un poco más el tema.

Con el tiempo, los nombres vernáculos van siendo reemplazados por otros más asépticos. Sin embargo, son muchos los edafólogos que se niegan a reemplazar las denominaciones de ciertos tipos de suelos, por cuanto forman parte de su vocabulario, y no siempre se encuentran buenos sustitutos terminológicos, Por otro lado son parte de nuestro patrimonio cultural como colectivo social. Digámoslo también, algo de actitudes nacionalistas impregnan el tema.

No hay razones para discernir entre aborígenes o indígenas del continente europeo de los de los restantes continentes. En otras palabras, la nomenclatura actual refleja influencias etnológicas. Lo mismo ocurre en las taxonomías biológicas. Tal hecho lo considero personalmente más positivo que negativo. Es acervo cultural y punto.

No debe extrañarnos pues la abundancia de raíces eslavas y de pueblos colindantes en las taxonomías de suelos, mal que les pese a los defensores del imperio. Como recuerda Tatiana, el único vocablo de origen anglosajón es “soil” (suelo), por lo que su aportación habría que ponerla en duda.

El resumen de la contribución de Tatiana en forma de “Poster Theatre”  (póster más breve presentación oral) para el Congreso Mundial de Suelos de Filadelfia, es suficientemente ilustrativa para que siga escupiendo estupideces. Reitero que se trata de un verdadero patrimonio cultural digno de ser preservado. Os dejo con Tatiana y el enlace correspondiente. Obviamente, como siempre, el coloreado es mío. En esta ocasión, los rusos ganaron a los americanos.

Juan José Ibáñez     

Etymological Study of English Terms for South Russian Soils (from World Reference Base).

Etymological Study of English Terms for South Russian Soils (from World Reference Base).

Tatyana Y. Valkova, Rostov State Univ, B. Sadovaya str., 105, Rostov-on-Don, 344006, Russia

Soil science originated in Russia. Its fathers – V.V. Dokuchaev and N.M. Sibirtsev – developed the nomenclature of soils based on Russian folk words, describing the peculiarities of the surface layers of local soils, the most frequent being color characteristics: black soil, red soil, brown soil, yellow soil. The color of surface layers being identical for the soils of different quality, the names became more detailed: brown forest soils, grey forest soils, brown desert soils. Russian nomenclature was later enriched by terms from other languages, not necessarily Slavonic: takhyry (Bashkir), rendzina (Polish), gley (Ukranian), etc. Soon soil science acquired international scale and became a world-wide discipline. The international nomenclature was enriched by several ways. First, there were Slavonic borrowings proper (chernozem, zheltozem, burozem, podzol, solonetz, solonchak, solod, gley, rendzina). Another point was literal translation of Russian terms into English. This featured some drawbacks, such as scientifically imprecise translation, e.g. black soil. (The main characteristic feature of black soil is its fertility, not the color. Not any black soil is necessarily fertile). The third way is usage of Latin words and roots, which is nominal and is used in the World Reference Base correlating with the UNESCO’s Soil Map of the World. The subject of this study is the origin of not all terms for soils spread world-wide, but the nomenclature only for South Russian soils. Here 212 English terms were studied, 66 of them included into WRB; others being adequate translation of Russian terms, are widely used by soil scientists all over the world and fixed in special literature, dictionaries included. It should be noted here that it’s impossible to speak of purely Russian, English or Latin origin of this or that term, as most soil names are compound, and each term-forming element may have its own etymology. That’s why as a minimum indivisible unit of analysis a meaningful morpheme is taken, not the whole word. E.g. epigleyic phaeozem* is constituted of a Latin prefix epi-, Ukranian root -gley-, Latin root phaeo-, Russian root -zem and the English word-forming suffix -ic, which isn’t considered a term element as it possesses no semantics of its own (it bears only grammatical meaning, showing the part of speech). The 66 terms from WRB are formed by 33 term-elements and their combinations. The linguistic study shows that the bulk of these term-elements are Latin roots, e.g. alb- (from albus – fair, white), implied in such terms as albeluvisol* (podzolic soil), albi-luvic phaeozem* (grey forest soil), etc. The root -calc- is of Latin origin too (calx, calcis – limestone) and enters such terms as calci-glossic chernozem* (southern black soil), luvi-calcic kastanozem* (brown carbonaceous soil), etc. Other Latin roots are -lix- (lix – leach ash, leach) in the term lixisols* (yellow soils), -moll- (mollio – to soften, to loosen) in the terms molli-gleyic solonchak* (meadow solonchak), mollic gleysols* (meadow soils), -plan- (planus – plane, flat) in sodi-gleyic planosol*, -sal- (salio – to salt) in the terms salic chernozem* (solonchak black soil), molli-salic solonetz* (chestnut solonetz), etc. All in all, there’s the total of 25 Latin term-elements, that makes up about 76% of all term-elements under analysis. There are only 5 Russian roots here. These are -chern- and -zem- in chernozem* (black soil), -solonchak- and -solonetz-, and nominally Russian -kastan-. Actually the word ”kashtan” (chestnut) came to Russian in the 17th century from Polish (kasztan). It originated from German Kastanie, which is traced back to Latin castanea, which, in its turn, is of Greek origin (kastanon). Thus, the etymology of the term-element -kastan- is quite ambiguous. However, it is considered nominally Russian, as the term kastanozem* is rather based on the Russian word ”kashtan” than on the Polish or German ones. So, the portion of Russian roots in the group under analysis is 15%. In the WRB there are very few term-elements of Ukranian, Polish and, strange as it may sound, English origin. Each of these languages makes up a share of only 3% of the total number of the term-elements. Among Ukrainian units there is the root -gley-: it was translated into Russian as “sticky clay”, but then lost its original meaning. Among Polish units is the root -rendz-, which enters such terms as, for example, rendzic leptosol*. According to Vilensky, the term rendzina came from Polish rzendzic, meaning jitter, shake (thus is the way the plough goes over stony lime soil). English is represented here by only one term-element, soil, that is the basic notion of the whole soil science. The conclusion is: Latin language is the most important WRB-forming factor. Although it is called a dead language, it is fairly considered the language of science and is widely used in natural studies. The etymological study of the soil science terminology is of great linguistic interest, involving the trace of the origin of the terms themselves as well as the historical overview into the development of the whole soil science and its evolution.