[tied] substratum ( it was Re: Creole Romance?)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 24-06-03 06:53, alex wrote:
>
> > 2)one example here: the word, "mare"= great is considered to

belong to

> > substratum. In Albanian the word is "madh", in OF was "mare" and

you

> > will explain it trough celtic I suppose.
>
> Miguel has already noted the non-existence of OFr. *mare 'great'.

Alb.

> madh is an inherited derivative of PIE *meg^h2-. There's no way in

which

> it could be related to Rom. mare with any plausibility. "Is
> considered..." is an Alexian generalisation of "some people (e.g.

Russu)

> think so".

I was thinking actually at Decev and not at Russu about "mare"
Decev gives examples of severallanguages where "mar-"= great from Ie
*me:ro; m@...: mo:ro.
Thrakish "mar-", Greek "mer-", Rom. "mare", Old Irish "mar, mo:r",
Galic "maros".
Example for Galic should be seen in PN Nerto-maros , Santo-Maros.

> However, there is an age-old alternative hypothesis,
> according to which <mare> comes from Lat. marem 'male' (Class.Lat.

mas,

> maris). It has recently gained fresh support: Herman Seldeslachts

(1999)

> notes that "in Hungarian, words like <kan> 'male' and <fiú> 'boy'

can be

> used to qualify big objects, whereas on the other hand

<leány> 'girl'

> and <no"stény> 'female' can denote smaller objects (e.g., <fiúeper>

and

> <leányeper> for a big and a small kind of strawberries
> respectively...)". In Hungarian dialects <kan> may serve as a

synonym of

> <nagy> 'big', and <kanja> is attested in Transdanubia with the

meaning

> 'the best, the greatest'.
>
> Piotr

aham. Interesting. Once we will find in Swahilly a way to use a word
and I won't wonder if you will see an explanation there too:-)