Are there any experts in the Roma (Gipsy) language in this group? I've
come across their word kirmo or cermo meaning 'worm'.
Recently I've been doing some research on a Slovene word crm (only
dialectal) meaning a kind of a skin disease. This Slovene word is usually
interpreted as an old i-stem (like Sanskrit kirmih, Lithuanian kirmis etc. -
all meaning 'worm, snake...'). But I've also found a Lithuanian word kermuo
'worm' (Arumaa has it). This would indicate an old men-stem and might be a
second possible explanation for sln. crm. Now I wonder if someone could tell
me if the Roma word kirmo/cermo would also be a possible pie. men-stem?
My hypothesis is (partially after Georgiev) that there might have been a
pie. suffix -mon which would have given -m+jor (velar reducted vowel) in
Slavic, changing the word's gender to masculin. Slavic has a small number of
words that might eventually be explained in this way (Old Slavic um', usm',
slim' and some others, like maybe Slovene and Slovak crm). In flection of
this type, however, no traces of an old men-stem can be seen.
Lep pozdrav,
Simona
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