Re: Odp: IE Lithuanian-Mediterranean connections

Hello,

I wander how amber translates in Chinese since, in ancient times, the
Chinese used to burn amber for its fragrance during ceremonies. I am sure
they were buying it from Russia. And Russian paganism has strong roots in
Buddism. I think it should be translated as 'a stone burning white(flame)'.
AK

----- Original Message -----
From: Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@eGroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 5:52 AM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Odp: IE Lithuanian-Mediterranean connections


"ivanovas/milatos" <ivanova-@...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=1740
> Hello,
>
> Sergej writes on the subject of the Russian word for amber that its
meaning is:
>
> " 'a burning stone of white', which can hardly be explained on a
Russian basis and may well be a semantic carbon copy."
>
> Well, if you are looking for a 'Lehnuebersetzung' (sorry don't know
the English word), tell us if you find one.
> The ancient Greek 'ηλεκÏ"ρον' is connected to
'ηλεκÏ"Ï?ρ', meaning shining, radiance, glare (cf. 'ηλιοÏ,'
sun which in its ancient form seems to be cognate with Lat. 'sol' :
'ÏfαFελιοÏ,').
> So the Greeks named amber 'the bright shining one'. Did that come
from the same source or were they all only describing the stones they
saw?
>
> Sabine
>

Dear Sabine,

Something funny has happened to the Gk characters in your message, but
I guess from the context that you regard hElios and Elektron as
related. I don't think they can be related, even though ElektOr
"beaming sun" is an obvious cousin (and presumably the etymological
source) of Elektron. Note that Homer has ElektOr but (very
consistently) hEelios; the latter is from *sa:welios with loss of
intervocalic *w and aspiration of initial *s (cf. also Cretan a:velios,
spelt abelios), and of course IS related to Latin so:l, etc. Dialectal
h-dropping occurs in Old Greek, to be sure (there are "sun" words like
a:elios or even a:lios), but for Elektron we don't find alternative
forms like *Eelektron, *a:lektron or *hElektron anywhere. Nor do we
find such variants for the other words of the Elektron family
(Elektris, Elektri:nos, ElektrOdes, etc.). ElektOr and Elektron are
morphologically Elek+suffix. Whatever the meaning and origin of *Elek-
(?*Eleg-, ?*Elekh-, presumably "beam, scorch"; any ideas from other
Cybalists?), it's something different from the IE "sun" word.

Piotr


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