The norwegian word "ild" means "fire". Is there a connection with
albanian (h)yll?
(The norwegian word for "sun" is "sol" of course)
Morten
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
Date: Fri Mar 2, 2001 9:38pm
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Albanian connection
I have to correct what I said about <(h)yll>.
The opinion that it derives
from PIE *sh2ul- (or rather *sh2u:l- to get the
right vowel quality) was
cautiously supported by the great Albanologist
Eric Hamp in an article
written some time ago, which is why I accepted
it, but there are problems
with it. The initial *sh2- should have been
reduced to *s-, but the
expected Albanian reflex of that is <gj->. (Note
by the way how
strange-looking the regular Albanian
developments are. For example, PIE
supnos 'sleep' > gjumë).
In order to obtain <h-> or zero (there is some
dialectal variation in
Albanian in this respect) one would need to
assume a special (and
hard-to-verify) development of the rare cluster
*sh2- (perhaps an early
merger with *sk-, which does yield Albanian
<h->) or irregular loss of s-
in the onset (very suspect). Then, there are
semantic difficulties (the
semantic shift 'sun' > 'star' via a generalised
meaning like 'light in the
sky' is not impossible but too ad hoc to be
accepted without reservations).
However, the most problematic aspect of this
etymology is that the Albanian
"sun" word <diell> is regularly descended from a
PIE form -- in fact, it
derives from *sh2wel- (the full-grade variant of
*sh2ul-) > *swel- > diell.
Believe it or not, PIE *sw- is regularly
reflected as <d-> in Albanian --
e.g. *sworg-eje-ti > dergjet 'lies ill'. The
diphthong <ie> is the regular
development of stressed *e before a sonorant,
not a contraction of *-ihy-
or *-ihe-. It looks, then, as if the "sun" root
had already been taken. (As
for your question whether <diell> survives
outside Albanian, nearly all
words for the sun in the various IE languages --
sun, Sonne, so:l, soleil,
su:rya-, he:lios, haul, saule:, slUnIce, etc. --
are derived from the same
protoword as <diell>.)
For these reasons alternative etymologies of
<yll> must be considered. One
often-mentioned possibility is that it derives
from the PIE root *h1eus-
'burn, singe', found in Latin (u:ro: < *eus-o:,
u:stor 'burner of
corpses'), Germanic (OE ysle < us-l-j-o:n-
'glowing ashes', ON ysja
'fire'), Greek (heuo: < *euho: < *eus-o:) and
Old Indic (os.ati 'singe' <
*eus-e-ti). The "ashes" word represented by the
Germanic derivative
*us-l-i- would work rather well as the prototype
of <yll>. The semantics
(stars = "glowing embers") is perhaps
parallelled by the PIE "star" word
(*h2ste:r) itself -- see the Cybalist discussion
of this word a few months
ago.
[A tantalising thought for Glen and others:
Etruscan usil 'sun' could have
a rather straightforward (non-metathetic)
connection with an IE root:
*h1us-el-, *h1eus-elo- 'the scorcher'? If no-one
buys it, I won't insist
:)]
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
From: Alvin Ekmekciu
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 6:14 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Albanian connection
As what regards the deriving of <Hyll> from
<Diell>,<Di-hell>, <Di-hyll>
(Sun) it is not the first time I hear that
suggestion but what makes me
wonder is much a philosofical question:
How did these anscient people know that the
stars were nothing more but
Suns? Keeping in mind that this knowledge is
very recent and in Middle Ages
nobody would dare to think it.
And another thing I wonder about is:
Has <hyll> or <dihell> survived in any other
language but Albanian ??