Re: Gypsies again

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Grzegorz Jagodzinski"
<grzegorj2000@...> wrote:

> Richard Wordingham wrote:

> > But _Doma_ has a very un-Tamil initial letter:
> >
> > 1) It's a voiced stop - a mark of a foreign word.
> >
> > 2) Unlike Indic languages, Tamil does not allow words to start with
> > retroflex stops.
> >
> > Richard.
>
> Perhaps it is not Tamil but Dravidian - why not? See Dravidian

words, ex. on

>

http://ehl.santafe.edu/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=config&morpho=0&basename=/data/drav/dravet&first=281

> with both voiced stops and cerebrals/retroflexes in initial position.

Maybe the retroflexes are strangely encoded, but I could find just two
Dravidian roots starting with an underdotted d or t - and that was by
using LATIN LETTER CAPITAL D plus COMBINING UNDERDOT. In fact, the
retroflex initials are very rare (no more than 2 instances) for any of
the proto-levels. (I can do just as well for Thai spellings showing
an initial retroflex stop in a Thai-English dictionary - one of them's
a doubly unetymological spelling and the other is from Pali _Tha:na_
from PIE *steh1.) A Munda origin does seem more plausible.

Richard.