Re[2]: [tied] Velesu/Volosu

At 12:20:21 PM on Thursday, July 24, 2003, alex wrote:

> What seems strange to the celtic "volcae" is the rendering
> in German. If the germans got the name from the celts,
> then this must have been "*wolhai".

No. PIE *o and *a had merged in Gmc. as *a, so Celtic *o in
*wolk- was borrowed as *a. The *k was lenited in the Celtic
word, so it was borrowed as *x (or *h, if you prefer). The
Latin inflexional ending <-ae> is irrelevant.

> It is not easy to explain the rendering of "o" in "a" then
> in Slavic.

Yes, it is.

> Normaly we have an "a" > "o" in slavic not "o"> "a".

And that's exactly what we have here: Gmc. *a was borrowed
as Slavic *o.

Piotr explained all of this in Message 1167, to which I
pointed you just a few days ago.

Brian