Re: Odp: girls (P.S.)

----- Original Message -----

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, October 18, 1999 9:46 PM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: girls

"ivanovas/milatos" <ivanova-@...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=88
Hello,
Pjotr, you wrote:

Hyacinth (huakinthos), however, has been suspected of belonging here by serious scholars. It is derivable from *xjuh@... = Latin iuvencus, English young /.../ The semantic match "hyacinth : boy-flower" is impeccable...

Don't you think the Etruscan 'acathur' for 'boy' exactly fits and gives us another proof for the fact that Etruscan may be an IE language? And as 'acazr' is given as 'offers' could it be acceptable to suspect a connection between these words and the fact that young men could have been sacrificed ('offered' to the god(s)) at the time the 'hyakinthos' - root came into being?
Greetings from Crete
Sabine

---

Dear Sabine,

 

It would take some explaining, but I don't think the Etruscan word fits here. It's just vaguely similar to huakinthos, but the similarity doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If indeed the etymology of huakinthos involves the root meaning "life, youth, vigour,...", then the root part of the word is represented by huak-, which continues PIE *xjuh@... (syllabic n, transcribed @n here, changes into Greek a; the initial xj- gives Greek h-; the medial -h- leaves no trace in Greek; all these developments are perfectly regular).

 

Now, if the Etruscan word were related, it would have to be cut morphologically thus: ac-athur = huak-inthos. In other words, ac = huak and athur = inthos. The only thing the latter have in common is that they both contain "th", but even so you must remember that despite our identical transliteration the Etruscan consonant was pronounced differently from the Classical Greek theta sound (aspirated t, not yet a fricative), and that the two had different histories. As for ac = huak, the equation is far from impressive; you'd have to account for the mysterious disappearance of *xju- in Etruscan (what a shame: this is actually the historical "life" root!) as well as the change of @n into a, which would be OK in Greek or Sanskrit, but completely ad hoc in Etruscan. So ultimately the equation boils down to k=k plus the troublesome rest. This is too tenuous a basis for proving anything about the genetic relationships of Etruscan.

 

As for the connection between acathur and acazr, I'd have to look at Etruscan morphology more closely before giving an opinion. The words look as though they could be derived from the same base, but only careful analysis could tell if the similarity is real or coincidental. Alabaster and Alabama sound alike but have nothing in common etymologically. I'll try to find something about the Etruscan aspect of your story.

 

Piotr

 

Second thoughts:

 

First, a self-correction. According to Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan theta WAS pronounced as in Classical Greek (an aspirated stop), which doesn't save the etymology, however. Secondly, acazr (a plural form of acaz-) means 'offerings placed in a grave' and is said (also by Bonfante) to be connected with the verb root ac- 'perform, offer'. Whether this may be related to acathur (a word I couldn't find, so I'd be grateful for more information about your sources) depends on how -athur is interpreted and how you connect ac- with ac-athur semantically. In my opinion, phonetic similarity to a two-phoneme root doesn't qualify as strong evidence, and an explanation along the lines "X is called ac-suffix because X could be sacrificed (offered to gods)" could in principle work for any X, which means that it's of little value. (But I'm absolutely sympathetic to the idea that Etruscan may have had Anatolian/Aegean connections.)

 

Piotr