some terms for George ( it was Re: Historical ...)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Lisa Darie wrote:

>>> Hram is the annual celebration of the patron saint of an orthodox
>>> church as St George on April 23 or St. Mary on August 15. The name
>>> hram might derives from heram, an ancient festival and a banquet
>>> celebrated in Samos in honour of the goddess Hera. The Thracians
>>> used to offer to their gods and ancestors huge lavish public
>>> feasts. The word zestre, meaning dowry is one of the 165 Romanian
>>> common words currently accepted as Thracian.

[...]

>> "165 common Romanian words are currently accepted as Thracian."
>> Accepted by whom? And published where?
>> If this has been posted on Cybalist before, I apologize for
>> missing it, but would still like to know.

It wasn't (yet). I might find some time one of these days to
compile a civilized list of words accepted by real linguists.

> In his book In Search of the Indo-Europeans J.P. Mallory mentions
> that the Thracians "left no modern descendants of their language...

Basically right.

> Recently, various history books and articles mention that some
> linguists (without to give any name or book title) identified in
> Romanian vocabulary only 165 common words that are not
> Latin-related and are of Thracian origin [...]

"recently"? That's fun. FYI, the first guy to have inferred the
existence of substrate words in Romanian was Dimitrie Cantemir,
more than 280 years ago. Incidentally, his examples were bad (but
the idea was still good). During the second half of 19th century,
Romanian linguists already had some picture about substrate words
and Albanian link. So much about your "recently".

> such as buza 'lip' and zestre 'dowry'.

If the first one is OK, the other one is not. Only I.I. Russu
considers "zestre" as substrate word, hinting to some Albanian
correspondent. Latin "dextrae" proposed also by DEX is by far a
more plausible etymology.

> The problem is that I need myself to find out what are the words,
> who are the linguists and based on which studies they reached
> this conclusion.

I think the answer is already given. But not all the words proposed
by I.I. Russu are to be taken as 100% proven. In fact, he proposes
these terms, scientific community agrees or disagrees with him.
I believe you should raise somehow the level by learning how to
quote from varius authors. Simply exposing "numbers" like yours
is no valid method.

Cheers,
Marius Iacomi