Dear Pat,
My greatest sin is that I briefly trusted
the meaning you gave since it sounded plausible (Czech does, after all, have a
number of semantic calques from German). I couldn't verify it at the weekend,
but it was the first thing I did on Monday morning, when I could go to the
library. Please count it to my credit that I put an end to this comedy of
errors. Unlike you, and sooner than anyone else on the list, I realised
that there might be something amiss about Pokorny's "Gesicht" and did the
necessary checking. Some people never bother to verify their data.
I promise to be more conscientious in the
future and NEVER let myself to be fooled by notoriously unreliable sources. What
springs to mind in this connection is the Old Japanese Egg Hoax started by
Starostin in 1976 and still taking its toll in the Nostratic
circles.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 12:26 PM
Subject: Re: [nostratic] zrak
[PCR]
I admit that "Gesicht", the German word in Pokorny
from which I was translating "face", also means "appearance,
sight".
Since we apparently have no native speakers of Czech on the list
to tell us definitely if /zrak/ is understood by Czechs as "face", we all have
to rely on our dictionaries.
What is also instructive is that Piotr
confidently asserted:
"the Czech meaning 'face' is simply a
loan-translation of German Gesicht"
*without any knowledge* supporting
that proposition.
Had it not finally occurred to him that "Gesicht",
Pokorny's gloss for /zrak/, is slightly ambiguous, no doubt we would be
listening to a lecture from him on the niceties of
"loan-translation".
Pat