Re: [tied] karam

> > *****GK: Are these not in fact "pan-slavic" words?
> > "kara"=punishment, penalty. In Ukrainian, "karaty"
> > "pokaraty" = to punish. Is there an IE root at work
> > here or must we look for other sources, e.g. Altaic
> > perhaps?******
> ************
> No, there are all chances to be a loan from Albanian <kar> 'penis'.

You probably mean SCr. karati? The Bulgarian /karam/ has no such
meaning (karam kola "drive a car", karam ja taka "go on like this, do
like this", zakaram "give s.o. a lift", etc), but there is a Bulgarian
word similar to /kar/ that means the same and contains the same number
of letters, the consonants coincide with the Alabanian :-)

> It's natural behavior of all languages to loan words of alternative
> dictionary from other languages, because they look less obscene.

The Bulgarian version of "kar" is very obscene :-)

> We have also in Persian <kar> 'tool',

This is probably a derivative of the same root kr.-. It is very
productive in Indo-Iranian languages.

Eva