Re: [tied] Re: Oltak

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 20857
Date: 2003-04-07

On Mon, 07 Apr 2003 15:52:17 +0200, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>
>> Ah, now we just need to know on which day of Creation God created
>> Pokorny. Check your Bomhard. 'dan' meaning "level surface" or "the
>> sea" is found also in Austronesian and Basque (early Cybalist).
>
>I have no idea what Basque word you mean (surely not <ur> 'water' or any of several compounds that involve it, <itsaso> 'sea', or <ibai> 'river'; perhaps <edan> 'to drink' for lack of a better lookalike?).

edan ~ eran "to drink" can be reconstructed as *e-dan-i, where the
root is *dan-. I have argued that variants of the same root appear in
a number of other words:

gaztai ~ gaztae ~ gazta ~ gazna "cheese" (*gaztane < *gaz-dane), where
gaz- (gatz) is now usually "salt", but sporadically still "sour".
Fresh white cheese is known as gaztanbera ("bera" = soft) or zenbera.
The element zen- in the latter word can be connected to esne ~ ezne
"milk" and if, as I believe, pre-Basque *d- gave z-, the root is
*dVné- (> *zVné- > *zne > ezne).

The words for wine, beer and cider are ardo ~ ardao ~ arno (*ardano),
sagardo (sagar = apple) and garagardo (garagar = barley). The element
*-dano can plausibly be connected with the "drink / milk" root. I
have no idea what ar- stands for. Just a crazy thought: sagard(ã)o
and garagard(ã)o are usually taken as haplological contractions of
*sagar-ardano "apple-wine" and *garagar-ardano "barley-wine", but
perhaps (given that cider and beer likely predate wine in the region),
it was *ardano "wine" that was itself abstracted from *sagar-dano
"apple-drink" and *garagar-dano "barley-drink", in what may have been
an early example of the "workaholic" ~ "telethon" recipe for
neologisms.

In any case, the Basque roots *dan-, *dane- and *dano- do not mean
simply "water", but rather "drink ~ milk".


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...