Re: Pita [was *(H-)p/bh[-r/l-] again again]

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "S & L" <mbusines@...> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: altamix
> Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004
> ...
> Rom. "pitã"= bread
> cf DEX pitã is a loan from Bulgarian "pita" . Meaning and etymology
> of Bulgarian "pita" is unknown to me.
>
> Alex
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> PITÃ is the Romanian regionalism [in Banat and Transilvania] or

obsolete for

> PI^INE [coming from the Latin PANEM]= bread.
> I do not understand why DEX is listing it as having Bulgarian

origin at all;

> the word is quite spread: Greek, Albanian, Serbian, Hungarian,
> Jewish-Spanish, Calabrese dialect and also in Arabic PITTA [bread

stuffed

> with meat and spicy sauces]; Turkish PITA (pitta, pide) [flat hollow
> unleavened bread which can be split open to hold a filling].

This hugely widespread item is rather suspect. It could be a
Wanderwort and bear no realtion at all with IE *p(e)it-.
I don't have sufficient knowledge about this PITTA.
I only can say that in Arabic it must be a very recent loanword,
because Arabic doesn't tolerate /p/: in Semitic words it changed
to /f/ in remote times, in loanwords from Latin and then from Italian
it changed to /b/: Arabic /bala:t/ "country" < Latin /pala:tium/,
Arabic /basta/ < Italian /pasta/. Correct me if I quote some item
wrongly.

Are there some useful hypotheses about ultimate origin of PITTA?

Regards

Marco