While we're at it, sometimes a few items
are quite enough to identify a language accurately.
Modern Ossetic:
'your day
be good'
Digor
<dæ bon xwarz>
Iron
<dæ bon xorz>
'water'
<don>
with the characteristically
Ossetic semantic shift 'river' (*da:nu) > 'water'
'sheep'
Digor
<fus>
Iron
<fys>
with characteristically Ossetic sound
changes:
PIE *pek^u > PIranian *pasu >
Proto-Ossetic ("Alanic") *fasu > *fusu > Oss. fus/fys
The same umlaut can be seen e.g.
in
PIE *medHu > PIr *madu > Oss. mud/myd
'honey'.
Moreover, we know that the rounding of
Proto-Ossetic *a before nasals is rather late (the oldest texts still have
<a>). This explains the archaic vocalism of <ban> and <dan> in
Yas (Jász).
This evidence shows that the language of
the Yas was not merely "Iranic" in some general sense, but unmistakably
"Alanic", that is, in fact, a variety of what we now call Ossetic.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2001 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Sarmatians in Hungary
daban horz (good day)
dan = aqua (water)
fus = oves
(sheep)