From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 21031
Date: 2003-04-16
----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: bake
> Finnish both borrowed 'puu-' (I think it was) "tree" (cf.
German 'Baum') and apparently the "bake" or "roast" word (though the
former looks like a Swedish loan).
Fin. puu < *puxI is actually a Uralic word found practically everywhere in the family, including the Samoyedic languages, which makes borrowing from Swedish somewhat unlikely (:-)). Koivulehto thinks it may be a _very_ ancient loan from early IE, namely a derivative of *bHeuh2- 'grow', and since Gmc. *baumaz is tentatively assigned to the same word-family, there might be a connection, albeit an indirect one.
Whether Koivulehto is right or not is a completely nother question. Most his good-looking Uralic/IE correspondences involve reconstructions that are Proto-Finno-Ugric or younger. He has, however, a few Proto-Uralic items that are vaguely like PIE words, e.g. PU *näxi 'woman, wife' (cf. PIE *gWn.ah2) and -- guess what -- PU *pexi 'cook, prepare (food)', which he compares with *bHeh1-je-. It's a small world.
Piotr