[tied] Re: PIE's closest relatives

From: tgpedersen
Message: 29295
Date: 2004-01-09

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Alexander Stolbov" <astolbov@...>
wrote:
> Torsten:
> > It so happens that *arud-/*raud- > German Erz "ore", Finnish
> > rauta "iron" etc (and in this case Sumerian <urudu> "copper" is
one
> > of the glosses of Schrijver's North European substrate 'language
of
> > bird names' with cognates in Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Baltic
> > Finnic.
>
>
> What made Schrijver to conclude that this stem is not-IE if it is
met in
> such a wide (both geographically and genetically) range of IE
languages?

North European languages.


> The "ore" meaning is also presented in Slavic languages - *ruda.
This word
> doesn't look like a loanword from Germanic (at least for me, perhaps
> professional linguists have another opinion?). Besides, there is a
bunch of
> Slavic cognates (I give here only Russian variants) - rdet' 'to
shine red',
> ryziy 'of red hair, of orange color', rumyaniy 'ruddy', rzhavchina
(Fe
> oxide - Fe2O3) etc.. The origin from IE "red" word seems obvious.
Cognates
> can be easily found everywhere.
>

The relationship is obvious, true. The direction of derivation isn't.
The alternative explanation is that PIE *h1roudh-ro- means "copper-
colored" and not that copper is "the red metal". The color red is not
very common in nature.

Torsten