Re: Velar Negatives

Many thanks,
I had wondered whether the Mod. German 'kein' was a contraction of
the OHG 'nih-ein', but having no access to a German etymological
dictionary, I couldn't confirm this, and the existence of velar forms
in Latin and Greek made me wonder if there was another derivation.
Thanks again,
Brian

--- In cybalist@egroups.com, "petegray" <petegray@...> wrote:
>
> Some of the words suggested are probably not connected. As far as
I know:
>
> Greek ouk is more likely to be ou + epenthetic /k/ before vowel.
The other
> form oukhi is ou + *ghi which is an emphatic particle (found in Skt
after
> "yes"!)
>
> Latin haud is from *ghawo meaning false.
>
> The Germanic words (kein, geen etc) are originally the same as Latin
> ne-que-unus, so the velar bit is the usual word "and".
>
> Hope that helps
> Peter
>
> > Latin - haud
> > Greek - ouk
> > German - kein
> > Dutch - geen
> > Icelandic - ekki
> > Gothic - ains-hun
> > Does anyone know the etymology of these forms? Do they all derive
> > from a common PIE negative particle? Did this root occur at all
in
> > Old English?
> >
> > Brian