Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
> 18-10-03 11:38, alex wrote:
>
>> Thank you for these additional info. I wonder about an another word
>> for gander which is present in Rom. too. The regular forms are
>> "gâscã" for goose and "gâscan" for gander. The word I wonder about
>> is "gânsac" which beside the suffix "-ak" should look like the
>> Germanic form of the word: gans(+ak)> gânsac
>
> <gâscã> is of course Slavic (diminutive *go~s-Uka-, as in Pol. ga,ska
> , Ukr. huska [just mentioned here], SCr. guska, Blg. g&ska [the
> closest thing to the Romanian word]). Note also SCr. gusan 'gander'
> (hence <gâscan> with analogical /k/). <gânsac> looks Slavic too, and
> at any rate contains a common Slavic suffix (Ukr. husak 'gander' <
> *go~s-akU, Pol. surname Ga,sak; another variant is visible in Bulg.
> g&sok). The variable nasal simply indicates that the words were
> borrowed at different times from different Slavic dialects.
>
> Piotr
neither suffix "-ka/ke" nor suffix "-ak/ek" are special Slavic; there is
neither an "o", nor an nasal ( except in gansac) which will show any
doubtless Slavic tracess. I am afraid the mention "of course Slavic" is
not proved. The Bulgarian "g&sca" looks like a loan from Romanian,
unless Slavic "o~" yelded "&" in Bulgarian.
You expect probably a loan into Rom. as the /a/ was stil /a/ and not an
/o/; as control point one will think about the time as the /a/ was stil
an /a/ the nasal element was not lost in Slavic, was it? Remember that
in Rom. the nasal is still there if it was once in Slavic, thus an loan
from any Slavic is excluded. This is the reason why Rom. linguists
showed the Bulgarian "g&sca" as the loan source. Of course, nothing
speaks against of a loan into Bulgarian from Romanian. This is why I
showed the "cãsca" versus "gâsca".
It seems this paralel is in Slavic not to find; beside of this the
non-satem aspect of the word is a strong argument. And this should be an
argument more for a loan in Slavic ( the onomatopeic aspect for goose as
argumentum does not count since the reflexes for "yawn" in Slavic show
the Satem aspect).
Alex