Albanian mend-

From: alex_lycos
Message: 18564
Date: 2003-02-08

There are several words with the beginning form "mend-" in Albanian but
I am not sure if this is a root too.

mend= intelect, spirit, understanding, etc
mende= spirit, understanding, intention
mendër= mint, peppermint (!)
mendësi= mentality
mendim = thinking, thought, oppinion
mendimtar= thinker
mendje= underastanding
mendjeflutur = lightminded
mendon= to think
menduar= thoughtful

There are several derivatives more , but all with the help of "mend-".
Except "mendër"= peppermint, the others seems to belong to the same root
and about this root I should like to know if this is our old Latin root
"mens, mentis".

Question: does a latin /t/ become an /d/ in Albanian?

The Romanian words with similar senses of "mens, mentis" are too made
with the root "mint-".
The problem which I see here is as follow:

-"mens" and "dens" have all long /e/ but the accusativ forms "mentis"
and "dentis" have a short /e/ and short /i/.

That means that the forms in PBR should have been *mEndE and *dEntE. It
seems that first /E/ did not dyphtongued and how Miguel said in the rule
2b, /E/ closed to /i/ ( 2b=Before /m/ or /mn/, /e/ (original or from /E/
is further closed to /i/). So the forms should have been in PBR *mintE
and dintE*.
And here is my problem.
Can it be we miss a rule more regarding the final position of /E/? If
not, then there is an irregular development since we expect forms as:
mintE > mintiea > mint,ea > mint,ã
dintE > dintiea > dint,ea > dint,ã
if in both languages the original word is the Latin "mentis" then we
observe that in Romanian and Albanian, the /d/ and /t/ became not
palatalised.
But there is indeed an word in Romanian which shows this phonetic form
"mintsã"= to lie , " a mintsi".This word is given as coming from Latin
"mintiri"
Since I do not find this word in my dictionary, I will be very
thankfully for knowing if this Latin "mintiri" has short or long /i/ in
both positions within the word.
I cannot say something about Romanian "mentã" = peppermint, cognate of
Albanian "mendër" because the etymology of this word is given as coming
from 3 languages: Slavic "menta", Latin "mentha", French "mentha".I don'
t believe it has a Latin or Slavic origin since the "e" remains "e" and
did not became "i" before "n". An another word for this plant is "izmã"
(Mentha piperita ) with unknown etymology.

Alex