--- In cybalist@..., "Ash" <equinus100@...> wrote:
> > I was talking of Indian words borrowed by English.
>
> I had got that right. But was a point being made of all/most
English having come from Sanskrit? I thot you implicitly rebutted
that.
The abstract effectively says things while 'preserving deniability'.
There are two interpretations, namely that (1) some English words
come from Sanskrit, or (2) most English words come from Sanskrit.
The abstract seems a clever joke, because you would assume from the
title that it meant (2), and the author could claim he was the victim
of a biased attack, and if need be insist he meant interpretation
(1).
> > > Kome on! The 'c' in cing/cyning was a guttural nevertheless.
> >
> > Aha! A hypercorrect desatemisation! (I jest.)
> >
> > Late OE had both 'cing' and 'cyng', so only the one slip-up.
Again,
> > note that there is no explicit claim that the 'c' is softened,
let
> > alone to a hiss.
>
> My understanding was that the author was correlating "simha"
to "cing" because he wrongly thot the 'c' to have been representing a
sibilant, as 'c' is in such circumstances in Modern English. Am I
wrong?
Deniability is preserved again!
> > > [You would know, of course, that "cyning/king" is a cognate
> > of "jana/gent-"]
> >
> > I can't see how the etymology of 'c[yn]ing' is relevant here.
And
> > the semantics are debated by those who accept it.
>
> It was to establish that the cing-simha connection was devious,
since cyning/king has another etymology altogether. Are u saying the
king/kin-jana etymology is disputed?
I am sure I have recently seen 'king' on a list of Germanic words
without a known IE origin. I was startled, for I have long known
this etymology. Also, there does appear to be some debate as to
which kindred is meant - the royal family or the tribe. I plump for
the royal family.
> > > But, the budh-equivalent root has historically come in to (Old)
> > English as "bid."
> >
> > 'Buddha' is the past participle in '-ta' from the Sanskrit root
> > derived from PIE *bheudh. I was thinking of 'Buddh-' as a now
> > English root for certain matters spiritual,
> > yielding 'Buddha', 'Buddhism' and 'Buddhist'.
> >
>
> True. But I was just pointing out in addition that IE root has come
in to/thru Old English as "bid." Correcto?
I didn't object at the time because the American Heritage Dictionary
derives 'bid' from 'bheudh', though the phonetic development puzzled
me. When I checked in the Oxford Etymological Dictionary (by
Onions), I saw a different story. Old English had two different
verbs, strong verb beodan < Common Germanic beudan < PIE bheudh-,
meaning 'offer, proclaim, announce', and mixed verb biddan < Common
Germ bidjan (where Common Germanic 'd' is the voiced fricative),
meaning 'ask, entreat, demand'. 'Biddan' was already taking over the
meanings of 'beodan'. The forms got more similar in Middle English,
and a complete merger appears to have occurred. This is not
uncommon. However, the upshot is that to derive English 'bid' from
PIE 'bheudh' is dubious!
> But in the modern context, isn't "buddha" the root, strictly
speaking? (But no big diff anyway!)
Possibly. I hesitated long between 'buddh-' and 'buddha'. The
question boils down to how to analyse the difference between lama ->
lamaism and buddha -> buddhism.
Richard.