--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:> What we get from these comparisons
is the following puzzle: if the word > is IE at all, then either PIE
had *mari-, and PCelt. *mori- is aberrant, > or PIE had *mori- and
Lat. mare is aberrant. Perhaps the word was> borrowed into Italic as
*mari- from a language that had merged *a and *o > as *a (like
Germanic).
Thanks, Piotr for the fascinating analysis.
I can think of one language which merges *a and *o as *a in
thousands of etyma.
It is Bengali. And, Santali, Assamese to some extent. If we listen
to a Bengali speaking, it is difficult to find a distinction between
a and o. In fact the very first alphabet of the language is the
merged *a
This language also replaces consonant v with b.