Re: [tied] Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.

I'd say that it is most unlikely. Greek <z> could certainly be used for a _voiced_ fricative or affricate, but I've never seen it used for [s^], [s'], [ts'], etc. Depending on whether the sound in question was a fricative (as in Skt.) or an archaic affricate in hypothetical Pontic Indo-Aryan, I'd expect the "red" word to be Hellenised as *<sauna-> or (possibly) *<tiauna-> (cf. Teïspe:s for OPer. Cis^p(a:)is^), or something similar, but certainly not <zona->. I forgot to tell you that the Skt. <o> of <s'on.a-> comes from earlier *au (< PIE *eu), and that the monophthongisation of this *au was "sub-historical", characterising the Indian variety rather than Indo-Aryan in general. Mitanni IA retained the Proto-Indo-Aryan diphthongs (e.g. in <aika-> 'one' vs. Skt. <eka->), and they should probably be assumed for Pontic IA as well.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: george knysh

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 3:00 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.
--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote: > If you got "red" from searching the Cologne > dictionary for "zona" (coming up with <zoNa> 'red'), > forget it. The dictionary uses the Harvard-Kyoto > spelling convention, whereby various ASCII > characters are arbitrarily assigned to "exotic" > letters to enable the exact transcription of > Sanskrit in ASCII terms. <zoNa> stands for <s'on.a>, > with a voiceless palatal initial, unlikely to be > represented as Greek <z>. > > Piotr *****GK: How would you expect this to appear in Herodotus? Can you say that a rendition via a "z" is impossible?*******