I just discovered that the word “Maidan ” means the exact same thing in India and in Ukraine. In Russian, this word doesn’t exist, just in Ukrainian. How fascinating is that?
I’m a philologist, so I’m aware if Indo-European languages but, still, it’s strange to see a word that is used exactly the same in such different countries.
Clarissa's Blog 
That is fascinating, thanks for pointing it out.
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afaik, it’s a word of Arabic origin. So not really Indo-European but I wouldn’t be surprised if it spread to the Balkans via the Ottoman Turks, or even earlier through Turkic/Mongol invaders. But why it’s there in Ukrainian and not Russian….beats me!
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Russian and Ukrainian are quite different.
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sure I wasn’t clubbing them together! but since it’s a foreign loan word, there could be some “reason” why it’s in one and not the other.
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a quick look at the map of the Ottoman empire tells me that the Crimean peninsula could be a possible interface between Turkic and Slavic cultures/languages. 🙂
– Kinjal.
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Half of the words in Slavic languages come from sanscrit.
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Or is it Proto Indo-European, a common ancestor language from which Sanskrit as well as European languages derive? But this particular word “maidan” is not of Sanskrit origin. It’s one of the many Perso-Arabic words that entered the sub-continent with the waves of Islamic conquerors in the Middle Ages.
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Ah, really? I had no idea.
I also discovered another word that’s the same : khurta. It has the same meaning as the Russian khurtka.
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