At 11:39:39 AM on Wednesday, February 8, 2006, g wrote:
> On 08.02.2006, at 07:48, The Egyptian Chronicles wrote:
[...]
>> Further, this is not an isolated case where a Classic
>> Arabic term made its way into a European language (from
>> the Indo-European group). I cannot give a better example
>> of this transmission than its direct synonym `unuq
>> (`nq), the Arabic term for "neck" found in the Germanic
>> group, hnakki, hneccaand hnac in ON, OE and OHG
>> respectively.
This is implausible: the word had to have entered Germanic
too early. The OED (2003) doesn't even mention it as an
outside possibility.
> In modern standard German Genick, in Southern
> (Bavarian/Austrian) German, G'nack.
Originally a collective formation, like <Gebirge>.
It is an interesting word, though: it's found throughout NW
Germanic, there are no clear connections outside Germanic,
and there are two variant types within NW Germanic. OE
<hnecca>, OFris <hnekka>, and MDu <nec>, <necke> clearly go
together (and with with MHG <genicke>, Ger <Genick>) on the
one hand, while OHG <hna(c)ch>, <nach> (MHG <nac(ke)>, Ger
<Nacken>), OIc <hnakki>, and MDu <nac(k)(e)> also go
together but from a slightly different starting point.
A connection with OIr <cnocc> 'lump, protuberance; hill,
mound' looks possible, if not semantically wonderful. The
OED notes that Toch. A <kñuk> 'neck, nape' is semantically
attractive 'but presents phonological problems'; from the
little I know about Tocharian, the vowel is definitely
wrong.
[...]
Brian