Re: etruscan

--- In cybalist@egroups.com, "Torsten Pedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@egroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>

wrote:

> > No, perhaps I didn't express myself clearly enough. The only area
> where *da:nu- still meant 'river' about the time when the Germanic
> languages were formed was the Iranian-speaking or Iranian-

influenced

> lands. The historical river Tanais was of course the Don, and
> Danastris was the Dniester, both running where expected. If the

Danes

> were to have received their name from the Don or the like, you'd

have

> to explain how they ended up as one of the North Germanic tribes.
> >
> > A new thought: the river name Tanew in SE Poland MIGHT suggest

that

> the earliest Germani preserved the IE term *da:nu- (VERY

speculative,

> this, but not impossible); on the other hand, Tana(w)i- can't be
> their translation of the Iranian name of the Don -- it's simply too
> old (Herodotus, ca. 440 BC), and the vocalism doesn't quite work.
> Germanic is not the only group with a Grimmian phonation-mode shift
> (Armenian is another, and some people think Thracian

or "Cimmerian",

> whatever the latter really was, had something like it too).
> >
> > At the other end of Indo-Europia, *da:nu- occurs as a river-

naming

> element in the parts of Europe settled by the Celts; *Da:neu-jo-
> s 'the (Upper) Danube' is of course the most celebrated example. No
> matter how old this element is, it would't work as the etymological
> source of *Dani- -- a badly matching root vowel, a different stem-
> termination -- not enough substance for an argument one might wish

to

> invest much enthusiasm in.
> >
> > Piotr
> >
> >
>
> Well, you wouldn't want to invest too much enthusiasm in it unless
> you were Danish, of course.
> One reason why they might end up on the Danish islands would be

that

> they had to, because they were driven out. If you are driven out of

a

> country and you have a boat, because that is the tool by which you
> live, you sail to an offshore island where you are safe, and try to
> continue your business there. That's what the Venetians did.
> On an experiment made recently, a reconstructed Viking boat
> (continuing a long boat tradition) had a draft of 1.5 meters with a
> 50 ton cargo, That is the perfect instrument for coast hugging- and
> river trading).
> Probably as well you stopped me here. Then I won't get into the
> account (I forgot from where) that when the Trojans were defeated,
> they went to the sea of Azov and founded a place named Asgard (*as,
> cf Old Norse and Etruscan/Lemnian, *gard, cf. Slavic, Old Norse and
> Semitic). Also that one of the sea peoples was named d-n- or
> something. (And I haven't even gotten to the Dani tribe of New
> Guinea;-)). Me and linguistics is like Beavis and cappucino.
> BTW, aren't the Iranian languages Grimmian-shifting?

fshumans, "rich"?

>
> Torsten

I looked up Danes in my little NuDansk Ordbog. It says O.Ic.
pl. "danir", Old Danish "dan". So where does the *-i of your *dani-
"Dane" come from? Old Icelandic has dönsk "Danish" where ö is an u-
umlauted a (if that's not part of the inflection). North Germanic
forms of "danish" or "Denmark" (Danmark) do not show umlaut.
If the wovel of *da:nu- is long, whence the Dn- of Dniepr and Dniestr?
What shortened that wovel in Don and Danube? If it is silly for a
people to call themselves a "river people", does "sea people" make
sense? If "river people" a designation for a people that has settled
on a river, does a "sea people" live by the the sea to enjoy the
view? If naming yourself by *da(:?)nu- makes no sense, how about the
Tuatha te Danan? If you can't lump Celtic and Germanic etnonyms
together, how about Cimmerians, Cimbri and Cymru?
I need another cup of coffee.

Torsten