On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 23:43:22 +0200, Victor Sack wrote:

> Paracelsus > wrote:
>
>> Actually borch is just a Russian a word for soup!
>
> No, Bombastus, I don't think so. :-) First, borscht is of Ukrainian
> origin; second, it is said to derive from "borschevik" or "borschevnik",
> "hogweed", from which it is said to have been be prepared centuries ago,
> though some people maintain that it derives from the Old Slavonic
> "brsch", "beetroot", "beet". In any case, the name is not generic but
> means a particular kind of soup always containing beets.
>
>> Beet borch is usually eaten cold with sliced hard boiled egg
>> and/or sour cream, my mother used to make cabbage soup (borch)
>> with cubes of beef or oxtail (on a cold day in Brooklyn it was
>> wonderful).
>
> In Brooklyn, perhaps, not in Russia or the Ukraine. :-) The cold
> "borch" you are describing is actually called "svekolnik" there.
>
> The typical Russian soup with cabbage but sans beets would be "schi",
> but even they ("schi" is plural) have not really ever been generic, even
> if there used be many more versions in the centuries past. Schi always
> contain cabbage or sauerkraut (with the exception of "green schi" that
> are made with sorrel). The word that used to be closest to generic
> "soup", is perhaps "ukha", of which there used to exist many dozens of
> different versions prepared with many different ingredients. Now the
> word means a particular kind of clear fish soup only. In modern
> Russian, generic soup is called "sup" (pronouced "soup")... :-)
>
> Victor

My mothers family was from Belarus and my Dad's was Lithuanian.
My mom spoke Yiddish, English and Russian, my dad spoke only English.
In the Flatbush Ave. area of Brooklyn (in the 40's and 50's) the generic
Russian word used by ALL the older people for "soup" was Borch, although
some of them did pronounce it "Borcht", if you meant beet borcht, you said
"cold borcht", since I have never been outside the United States in my 62
years I can't say how people elswhere say things (Linguistic drift
perhaps) but older Russian Jews (from Brooklyn) do indeed use the word
"Borch" as generic for "Soup".