Re: [tied] Sarmatians in Hungary

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 7360
Date: 2001-05-22

While we're at it, sometimes a few items are quite enough to identify a language accurately.
 
Modern Ossetic:
 
'your day be good'
Digor <dæ bon xwarz>
Iron <dæ bon xorz>
 
'water'
<don>
with the characteristically Ossetic semantic shift 'river' (*da:nu) > 'water'
 
'sheep'
Digor <fus>
Iron <fys>
with characteristically Ossetic sound changes:
PIE *pek^u > PIranian *pasu > Proto-Ossetic ("Alanic") *fasu > *fusu > Oss. fus/fys
 
The same umlaut can be seen e.g. in
PIE *medHu > PIr *madu > Oss. mud/myd 'honey'.
 
Moreover, we know that the rounding of Proto-Ossetic *a before nasals is rather late (the oldest texts still have <a>). This explains the archaic vocalism of <ban> and <dan> in Yas (Jász).
 
This evidence shows that the language of the Yas was not merely "Iranic" in some general sense, but unmistakably "Alanic", that is, in fact, a variety of what we now call Ossetic.
 
Piotr
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Christopher Gwinn
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2001 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Sarmatians in Hungary

daban horz (good day)
dan = aqua (water)
fus = oves (sheep)