Caveat, ye Etruscanologists!

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 7551
Date: 2001-06-11

MrCaws states:
>There is also a site that actually mentions wanax in connection with Vanth.
> (www.muw.ed/~mccalli/EtruscanV.html. ) This site also
>connects Vanth with a verb meaning to turn or spin.

I've already seen this connection, which is what got me thinking
in the first place. Of course, the only way that such an Etruscan
name could be connected to the ancient /wanax/ is through early
interaction with Greek... hence my EtruscoLemnian *wenakte (which
then merged with Ned's idea of a Hattic origin).

Be forewarned that etymologies or translations marked with [az96]
are 99% garbage. If you take a look under "Bibliography" you will
learn of a Mr Adolfo Zavaroni who "posits that Etruscan /z/ in
most cases corresponds to IE /st/ at the beginning and in the
middle of a word"... which is nonsense since the earlier stages of
IE could simply not have had initial consonant clusters, clearly
only later caused by heavy stress accent. It would almost seem that
Zavaroni has a vested and antiquated interest in making Etruscan a
language *within* the Indo-European family - something that can no
longer be taken seriously without radically redefining the word
"Indo-European". I ignore Zavaroni altogether since his opinions
are often at odds with educated consensus. Examples include
cautha "the sun" (Zavaroni: "the god of heat"???) or cerine "built"
from cer- "to make, build" (Zavaroni: "image, vision"???!). I
honestly don't know where he gets this all from and I don't care.


- gLeN


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