--- In cybalist@..., "Girts Graudins Zadins" <girts1@...> wrote:
> Balts, in latvian means the color white. Balta is the adjective use ofBsalts
> to decscribe thecolor of an oblect, IE '...balta maize....'which means white
> bread.
> Girts
My apologies to Girts and other members of the list. By the reasons which are obvious I don't consider it possible to answer his postings.
Just some final notes for Girts.
I speak fluent Lithuanian, read a little Latvian and am aware of Baltic comparative studies.
I never stated Dauguva is a 'Slavic river'. Vise versa, I stated that probably the Danes adopted it's Slavic name (*Dvina, eventually of Baltic origin). Proto-Baltic form was not Daugava (as in Latvian, because Latvian is by no means Proto-Baltic), but rather *Daugva: (-au- circumflexed), from which Latv. Dauguva regularly developed.
There's a hypothesis that Proto-Slavic *bo'lto 'marsh etc.' (' for an ald acute) might be etymologically connected to the Proto-Baltic root *ba'lt- 'white' (because sphagnum marshes are often whitish, cf. one of the Baltic roots for 'marsh' - *pel-k- < *PIE *pel- 'grayish etc'.). But this is a hypothesis, and it's not fair of you to trade Latvian words for Proto-IE (as you did with white loaf).
We never stated Romanian is a Slavic language. They do NOT use Cyrillic alphabet now, you might have kept Moldavian in mind writing this (but even Moldavian variant of Romanian adopted Latin alphabet recently).
One philosophic note.
I think ethnocentrism is somewhat helpful in political terms, but it's a false friend in science, as the history of science shows.
Sekmes,
Sergei