From: tgpedersen
Message: 54967
Date: 2008-03-10
>These must be it
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen
>
>
> EDWIN G. PULLEYBLANK:
> Central Asia and Non-Chinese Peoples of Ancient China
>
> IV The Chinese and Their Neighbors in Prehistoric and Early Historic
> Times, p 451
> "
> The few Hsiung-nu words transcribed in Chinese characters for which
> semantic glosses are supplied show a number of striking contacts
> with Kettish or with recorded items of vocabulary from the extinct
> Palaeo-Siberian languages.
> ===================
> Do you have these words ?
> or a reference ?
> =================Pulleyblank's been there too:
>
>
> XIII EARLY CONTACTS BETWEEN INDO-EUROPEANS AND CHINESE, p 15
> "
>
> In my 1962 article, following a suggestion in Ligeti (1950),
> I proposed a connection between the Xiongnu language and the
> Yeniseian languages now represented by one sole survivor, Ket, but
> formerly more widely spoken in southern Siberia. Though some of the
> etymological connections I proposed between Yeniseian words and
> Xiongnu words in Chinese transcription still seem to me quite
> plausible, I never regarded this idea as more than an interesting
> hypothesis for further research.
> ===============
>
> If the identity proposed between the Huns and the Hsiung-nu/Xiongnu
> holds, perhaps we should look for unexplained Germanic words in Ket?
>
> Torsten
>
> ============
>
> There are at least four clear words :
>
> Germanic *skip-am "ship" = PY *qa?p
> Germanic *dannwo "fir-tree" = PY *dinje
> Germanic *laub "leaf" = PY *jeep
> Germanic *sku:ra "rain" = PY *xur
>
> and PY *sir "summer" is interesting
> in connection with *ya:r "year".
> http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE597.html
> A better reconstruction is *zar.
>
> The word *laub is probably a loanword
> as Chinese has *ngap and Algonkin has niip.
> This word does not look like a possible cognate.