Miguel:
>It is generally assumed that the word was borrowed from some other
>language. A possible candidate is PIE *dhabhros "carpenter, smith" (>
>Lat. faber, Arm. darbin).
On an alternative note, if we work back and presume a Mid IE antecedent
of *dhabhros, we would obtain **dabere, with accent on the first schwa.
Since the IE speakers could never have been smack dab in the middle of the
Neolithic revolution, it makes tonnes more sense that the IE word was
borrowed from elsewhere, from Anatolia perhaps. Perhaps there is some
Semitish word **dabiru-... Is there perhaps a reasonable Semitoid root to
account for it?
>After all, one cannot exclude that Sumerian <urudu>, "copper", was borrowed
>from a PIE name for the red metal, *h1reudhos (Skt. loha-, Slav. ruda, Lat.
>raudus/ru:dus, OHG aruzzi > Erz [borrowed from *aruti in some other IE
>lg.?]).
Or alternatively, we might theorize that a hypothetical go-between, spoken
in Western Anatolia, used the term, let's say, **waru:-?arDu- "earth metal"
to refer to "copper" (with accent on *u:). This term would enter into Mid IE
as *?ereude and could also enter Sumerian as /urudu/. Tada!
- love gLeN
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