On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 14:26:47 -0300, João Simões Lopes Filho
<
josimo70@...> wrote:
>How did the Avestan name Zarathustra become Zoroaster in Greek?
>What's the intermediary path? Why not Zarathystros or alike?
Avestan <th> does not equal Classical Greek <th>, an aspirated
dental/alveolar stop (it equals Modern Greek <th>, a dental fricative). In
Persian (and Western Iranian in general), /T/ was eventually lost, by way
of /T/ > /h/ > /0/ [as can be seen from Middle Iranian borrowings in
Armenian, with /h/ from Old Iranian /T/]. I don't know enough about the
development of Iranian vowels to be sure whether the vocalism of Greek
Zoroaster is also due to Persian developments of Old Iranian Zaraþus^tro:,
but that would seem to be likely.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...