Re: Albanian vras (and Romanian rãu)

From: tgpedersen
Message: 42187
Date: 2005-11-21

>
> As for vras, I'd take into consideration the fact that the
> cluster vr- either stays as such (as in those words which are
> almost all Slavic loanwords) or has the [v] replaced by the
> vowel [o] or the diphtong [oa]/[wa]. One of the most interesting
> phonetic and semantic occurrence: the "doublette" oare and
> vre (in vreun, vreunuia, vreunii; vreo, vreuna, vreunei, vreunele).
> Oare in composita: oarecum, oarecine, oareunde, oarecare etc.
> (Look them up in the DEX: the same etymology's been proposed
> for both.)
>
> This vowel happens to also replace the [v] in the Hung.
> loans vár "burg" (TemeSvár > TimiSoara, SzegeSvár > SighiSoara)
> and vároS "town, city" > oraS; Nagyvárad > Oradea Mare (but
> in some cases the [v] has been preserved, e.g. Vãrãdia).
>
> And one more morcel of food for thought (-: the Hungarian
> particle vala ['vOlO] fits the Romanian oare in the composita
> oarecare, oarecine, oarecând... as well as their synonyms build
> with -va: careva, cineva, cândva, undeva, cumva... (Hung. valaki,
> valamikor, valahol, valahogy etc. / In some situations,
> Hung. vala is translated into English as "ever").
>


It's not *wr-/*war-? Cf *warthing > Oringe/Vordingborg on South
Sjælland (*wa > /wo/, dialectally > /o/).


Torsten