[tied] Re: Sarmatian eggs

That makes sense, since fowl can't be herded, can they? I
also have wondered about the apparent lack of Slavic loan words
in the E.Iranian languages. It makes no sense that borrowing
would take place in one direction only. I wouldn't be supprised
to find that many words of Slavic origin have been overlooked in
the same way due to the similarities in Iranic and Slavic and
parallel sound changes. It seems that Slavicisms should be sought
in the names of products specific to agriculture and the settled
life. Of course I'm assuming that the Scythians and Sarmatians were
100% nomadic and that the ancient Slavs were 100% sedentary, this is
bound to be an oversimplification. Oh, by the way, I was looking
through the back log of messages and I wonder if I shouldn't have
used the word Aryan. I personally use the word to refer to the
Proto-Indo-Iranians since I think that it's pretty clear that this
is what they called themselves, but correct me if I'm wrong and some
other term is preferred.
-David

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Benveniste says more or less this: "Perhaps it is also an old long
diphthong that one ought to posit in the original form of aik, Digor
aikæ 'egg', which would be *a:ikka-; I do not know if the Khwarezmian
form ya:k can support this reconstruction, among the variants where
*owyo- underwent differentiation in Iranian."
>
> In other words, the Ossetic form is a little enigmatic and doesn't
yield itself to historical analysis very easily, and Benveniste's
Iranian reconstruction is only tentative. The thought that has
crossed my head is that perhaps, to put it parabolically, when the
Iranians would have omelettes, they bought eggs from their Slavic
neighbours. At the time of Slavic/Iranian contacts the "egg" word was
approximately *a:j-ik-a in Proto-Slavic (this diminutive formation is
extremely popular throughout the branch). There are many loanwords
borrowed in the other direction, but I've never heard of any
suggested Slavicisms in Iranian. This might be an interesting example.
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: WtsDv@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2001 10:09 AM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Sarmatian eggs
>
>
> To tell the truth, I'm not completely sure. "Etudes" is written
> in French which I don't speak. I used a French dictionary and
> struggled to make out what little I could. Here's the sentence
> from the book if you speak French or can have it translated:
> "Peut-être est-ce aussi une ancienne diphtongue longue qu'il faut
> mettre à l'origine de aik, dig. aikæ <<oeuf>>, qui serait *a:ikka-;
> je ne sais si la forme ya:k du khvarezmien peut appuyer cette
> restitution, parmi les variétés où *owyo- s'est différencié en
> iranien."
>
> I wonder why there are so few traces of the word for "egg".
> Didn't the Aryans eat omelettes?
>
> -David
>
> --- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> >
> > By the way, the PIE "egg" word has left surprisingly few traces
in
> Indo-Iranian (none in Old Indic, as far as I know). How does
> Benveniste explain *a:ikka-?
> >
> > Piotr