Re: Odp: IE Lithuanian-Mediterranean connections

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

From: Sergejus Tarasovas

To: cybalist@eGroups.com

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 6:24 PM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: IE Lithuanian-Mediterranean connections

> Just a comment on 'amber'. Both 'amber' words (amber proper and ambergris, or the sperm whale secretion) are the same. They are derived from Mediaeval Latin ambar < Arabic 'anbar 'ambergris', hence 'brownish-yellow'. The technical Polish word is bursztyn (a German loan), but the mineral is also known as jantar (ultimately an East Baltic word, cf. Lithuanian gintaras, Latvian dzitars). I've no idea if an etymology has been proposed for it. The Old Prussian word was still different, gli:sis, cf. Latin gle:sum (in Tacitus' report of the Aestii). The etymology of Greek e:lektron is obscure (at least to me at the moment), but it looks IE, with the 'instrument' suffix *-trom. Two notes. 1. The Baltic origin of 'jantar' has not been proven so far. In fact, the only proof is that it was the traditional Balts trade (still not proven that Tacitus' Aestii were the Balts, BTW). It's not surprising that you have no idea about it's etymology - all the attempts to give the BALTIC one have failed. Considering the fact that Lithuanian dialects have 'jintaras/jentaras' along with 'gintaras', as well as the fact that the formant -tar- is a very typical one for the Indo-Aryan languages (I mean those to the North of the Black sea, their presence is attested by hydronymy), we can suppose that Lithuanian and Latvian words were borrowed from Eastern Slavic (cf. Russian jantar'), which with a help of some mediators eventually borrowed it from the speakers of some Indo-Aryan language. 2. Tacitus' 'gle:sum' is not Latin, it's rather a Latinised German word, a cognate of 'glass' and one of the many descendants of PIE root *gel- 'something round and/or smooth and glossy' 1. Yes, the suffix looks as if it could be Iranian, but what about the Slavic intermediary? A vowel-nasal sequence would have given a Slavic nasal vowel which should have survived in Polish and be denasalised to a in Russian, so we would have something like Polish *jętar and Russian *jatar. Both the Russian and the Polish words as actually attested look rather like borrowings from Lithuanian (variation between je-/ja- is common in northern Polish dialects), and I'm not aware of anything that could be interpreted as a trace of the putative Iranian loan in Slavic. The word may have been borrowed to and fro between the neighbouring Baltic and Slavic dialects, but I still find no clue as to where that game began. Perhaps you could provide more arguments in favour of Iranian origins, e.g. suggest a meaning for the *jVn- (*gin-?) part. The whole question is worth further discussion.   2. It seems very reasonable to connect gle:sum with Germanic *glas-, whatever the technical details.   Piotr