Re: [tied] Other IE language with initial /w/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 12:21 PM
Subject: [tied] Other IE language with initial /w/


> Okay, I have got to be the biggest fool among linguistically-interested
> people. I told you all about how I asked the Kurdish hairdresser what the
> Kurdish word for "water" is, hoping to have a descendant of IE *wodr/n,
> and she replied with a word that sounded exactly like the North American
> English pronunciation of "water". Well, that's because she was merely
> repeating what I said. She was just confirming that I asked for the word
> "water" -- and then proceeded to forget to answer me, being very busy at
> her counter. She did not say it in the intonation of a question, which is
> why I thought she was answering my question, not repeating me. I said "So
> the English and Kurdish words are the same", but when she answered that
> "many words are the same", it was a misunderstanding of what I was saying,
> she wasn't really sure of what she was saying and was not really paying
> attention. I asked her today what the Kurdish word for "water" is and she
> replied /aw/, which is /av/ in Iran. I
> asked her if Kurdish had /w/ and she said yes (but said that it is /v/ in
> the north), but when I asked her for examples in initial position she had
> none, so maybe she was thinking of medial and final position. So I tried
> to think of other words of IE that had initial *w that might be preserved
> in Kurdish, so one that I asked was the word for "see", to which she
> replied /bi:nim/ (/dabi:nim/ or similar in the present tense). I
> suspected that perhaps this is from *weid- and that Kurdish has /b/ for
> initial /w/. I'm sure some of you know the answer to this, so I'll wait
> for your replies before looking it up myself.
> So I apologize for misleading you (albeit completely unintentionally, I
> misunderstood her because her reply sounded deceptively like an answer,
> not a request for confirmation which it was). I actually laughed my head
> off as I was coming home thinking about the gross misunderstanding.
>
> Andrew


***
Patrick:

Following what I believe would be Anttila's position, I believe the original
PIE sound was <w> because it is the natural fricative corresponding to the
bilabials <b>, <p>, and <m>; and, of course, Arabic retains it where we can
see PIE-Arabic cognates.

***