--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: mbikqyres
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 6:45 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Daci
>
>
> > [Alvin:] The difference is that Slavic *morje stood for 'a body
of water' and not for 'deep' (water). It is of no strange that *morje
was developed inland, because you find bodies of water almost
everywhere you go: lakes, rivers, pools etc. The deep water is only
to be found in sea and deep lakes. If P. Albanians where not living
beside the sea, they must have lived all around a big deep lake in
order to remember and develop the
> word 'deep water' <debët> into <det>.
>
> [Piotr:] But the only thing regularly called *morje in Slavic is
the sea, not just any body of water. The word is not applied to
lakes, let alone rivers or pools.
>
> My point is that first-hand experience is not always necessary in
such cases. Exotic things can be culturally important even if you've
never seen them yourselves. The Slavic languages have a common word
for 'lion' (*lIvU), an animal rarely seen on the banks of the
Pripyat. Even if the word is a loan from Germanic (*liw-o:n-, itself
borrowed from Latin), it's common Slavic nevertheless, and must have
diffused into the Slavic dialects long before their speakers actually
saw the fabled beast.
>
> In the case of the Proto-Albanians, it's quite possible that
the 'sea' word was part of their Getic heritage, and that they never
lost it during their inland wanderings. Trade contacts with the
coastal provinces would have sufficed to remind them that the sea
existed.
>
>
> Piotr
Toponyms for the sea passages between the North Friesian islands in
Denmark contain the Germanic cognate "dyb", ie. Lister Dyb, Juvre
Dyb. The passage between Bornholm and Sweden is Konge-dybet
(<konge> "king"). What is the source of the -t- in <debët>?
Now suppose Jordanes was right (I am a gullible Scandinavian and
believe everything people tell me) that the Goths were first on the
Getic coast (speking Bastarnian?), then in Moesia (speaking Getic?)
then at Azov (speaking Gothic). Then they would have changed language
twice. And those they left behind in the Balkans would have had some
residual subtrate words with *dH- > *d- (as in Germanic).
So: hello, family!
"The deep" used of the sea makes sense where there is also a lot of
shallow water, which not really the sea. Eg. in the mouth of a river?
Or some deep passage?
About the <morje> word: it still puzzles me that in Dutch <meer> is a
lake and <Meer> in German is the sea. Did it all start on a coast
with various lagoons?
Torsten