Re: HRIM

English -ish derives from *-iskos.
(Richard)
<-ish> is from PGmc. *-iska-.
(Brian)

Fair enough, and thank you. But what was the origin - or at least the PIE
version - of *iska or *iskos? Second question is, please, what happened to
the *wo of PIE, or *wos, as a colours-suffix? Is it represented in modern
English?

As for the length of the -e- in *ghregh-, I did acknowledge in my post that
amateurs would be out of line expressing any certainty as to the
pronunciation of ancient words of ancient peoples. We are (or ought to be)
very wary of commenting except in the most general terms on such
pronunciations, especially of words following asterisks. Those, as I
understand it, are constructed words whose existence is deduced from later
words in later vocabularies. Speculating on how PIE words were pronounced,
and rendering those speculations in modern-English spelling-forms, is
something best left to academics. Only they can know for sure. An amateur
is ordinarily so familiar with the influence of dialects on the spellings in
written vocabularies that he or she will inevitably overlook the premise
that PIE (*PIE, I suppose) has by definition no dialects, and no variation
of accents from the pure *vocab as established. I say that to explain where
amateurs in general are "coming from". Anyway, *ghre:gh it is, and if I
cannot share the certainty, at least I can accept it as the consensus
opinion of those in the know. But does every academic in the world
pronounce that word the same, in practice? Same length of e:? Really?

Many thanks for all your comments. I have saved many of the List's Digests,
to study further when I am old and grey - and hoary, of course!

Gordon Barlow