Re: [tied] barba, farfeche, bãiat

----- Original Message -----

From: alexmoeller@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 8:04 AM

Subject: [tied] barba, farfeche, bãiat

> outgoing point: *bhardha < lat. barba , yes or not?

 

 

No. PIE *bHardHah2 > Lat. barba. Reverse the arrow.

 

> I supposed the latin barba and implicitely barbatus cannot derive from IE *bhardha because -bh- and -dh - went both -f- in latin. Piotr and Miguell argued there is another rule so I have to forget my supposition .
> Regarding the word barba, let us have an explanation:
> Ernout-Meillet -Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine, Paris, 1959, page 66 supposes that initialy there must have been an italic "farfa" which became in latin "farba" and afterthis became "barba".

> If my source of information agrees with the first part, with the second part "farba" changes to "barba" has some troubles. There is no need in latin from iteslf to change from farba to barba so there it must be an influence from somewhere else .

 

 

"The need" in question is called assimilation at a distance. Such a need is not in principle irresistible, and its effect, a sound change, is more typically sporadic than regular, but it happens (I gave you a couple of examples from Latin and Italian).

 

 

> If we will have to look at the today gallic where for barba they use "barfau"...

 

 

Gallic?? I suppose you mean Modern Welsh barf (pl. barfau) 'beard, whiskers'.

 

 

> which has to come froma  "barba" because PIE dh could not chenge directly to f but trough an intermediate proto-celtic form which must be "barba", the change of "d" (from PIE dh in gallic) in "b" must have took change for avoiding the omonimy with the word *barde ( ax for fighting) which was in use in the old french until the XV century.

 

 

To begin with, there is no Proto-Celtic "barba" and the Welsh word is simply a loan from Latin. The part about avoiding homonymy is totally incomprehensible. Why should Proto-Celtic (??) speakers have avoided homonymy between a word in their own language and a Germanic loan in Old French? Even Gaulish was dead by the time that the 'broadaxe' word was borrowed into Romance. Anyway, the words would not have been confusible in any real-life context, so why should the homonymy have been inconvenient in the first place?

> Outgoing puint: farfechie
> Miguell & Piotr did not say they do not belive , but they could not find this word . Let us see: In the Grand Dizionario della Lingua Italiana of Salvatore Bataglia ( in 20 volums) published begining with 1961, in the 5-th volume pag 685 we will see:
> farfechia ( ant. ) - baffo ( moustache)

 

 

What's "(ant.)"? "Antico?" As Miguel said, for all we know the word could be anything, even a dialectal loan of Osco-Umbrian origin (more likely if it isn't modern). But one cannot divine its history from simply looking at it, without examining its attestation and historical background (including dates and places). Does the dictionary provide any such information?

> outgoing point: rom. bãiat, bãrbat,bãtrân
> bãiat
> if for Miguell souns OK that bãiat could be from imbalneatus, there is in no romance this word , but we cann agree, maybe the ancient romaninas have had much phantesie. Of course we can agree something else. For instance the english "boy" is the samy dacian form of bãiat if we things about some dacian cohortes which are to find in British insels at that time.

 

 

_What_ time? (see below)

 

 

> I do not have an etymologycal dictionarie of english, so I will like to beg someone to take a look at english "boy" which looks very like to rom. "bãi" and with "bãiat" for seeing what an ethymology is there. I know it sounds crazy but it doesnt cost too much to take a look. Maybe is a celtic form or so which gives another dimension of all stuff

 

 

"Boy" appeared in written English about 1300, most likely as a slangy term of Dutch and/or Frisian origin. The details are disputed (some trace the word back to Anglo-Norman, but the proposed source form is not attested). It cannot be an inherited Old English word (or a pre-Middle English borrowing), since there is no native source available for the diphthong /oi/.

> bãtrân:
> supposed to be very clear to every romanist from lat. veteranus. ...

 

Yes, that's clear enough.

 

Piotr