Re: [tied] Scythian Cognates

You are sure to provoke historical linguists if you use
anathematised descriptions like "vaguely similar". Old Irish
áram means neitiher 'one' nor 'single' but 'number'.
Accidental similarity is a common phenomenon: English beat,
Slavic biti and Latin battuo are similar and have almost the
same meaning but are genetically unrelated. Neither Thracian
nor Iranian show sound changes that would allow one to
derive "spu" from *spek^ or "oior" from *wih1ros.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: "george knysh" <gknysh@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2001 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Scythian Cognates


>
> --- Claudius Salix Davianus <davius_sanctex@...>
> wrote:
> > Can you say what are the avestic and old persian (or
> > other) cognates of the scythian words, that
> > Herodotus gave:
> >
> > pata ' to kill' < IE pet- (?)
> > spou 'eye' < IE. *ok_w (?)
> > arima 'one' = old irsh arám , greek arithmos
> > (?)
> > oior 'man'
> >
> > David Sánchez
>
> ****GK I remain convinced that these words are from
> the "Thrakoid" Scythian lexicon. At the risk of
> eliciting the ire of our professional linguists, I
> still think that there is a relationship between
> "oior" and "vir", and between "spou,spu" [=eye] and
> words such as Lat. "specio" Sskr "spasati" and OHG
> "spehon" (=to see, observe, keep an eye on). Does Old
> Irish "ar*a?*m" mean "one" or "single"?== And as for
> "pata" I can think of Slavic words which seem vaguely
> similar (with or without a stretch) such as "biti"
> (hit, strike, kill)or "batog, batih" (whip)****
> >