Re: das Wort

--- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>> I just looked up the various cognates of "aware" (PIE *wer-) in
>> Falk & Torp. Seems the original meaning was (surprise) "aware of",
>> thus *war-jan, *war-nan "make aware", or in other words "point
>> out st. "to sby". That fits "speak" (as in govor-) much better.
>
> cf. German <gewähren> "guarantee" (v.), also with a noun in <ohne
> Gewähr> "without guarantee". The gap from "pledge, guarantee"
> to "speak" is not unbridgeable (especially since <govorit'> etc is
> imperfective, thus "saying several times" (my knowledge is shaky
> here, is imperfective aspect also frequentative?)).
>
> I believe I saw once an attempt to relate Rom. <a gazi> "to see" to
> German <Gesicht> "face" (> "view"), from which the Rom. verb would be
> derived by back-formation.

If Rom. stands for Romanian, then the verb is <a gãsi> "to find", with
a very probable Slavic origin. "To see" is Latin inherited (<a vedea>).
Regards,
Marius Iacomi