From: tgpedersen
Message: 43329
Date: 2006-02-09
>So, all in all, this looks like material for Vennemann's 'Atlantic'.
> At 11:39:39 AM on Wednesday, February 8, 2006, g wrote:
>
> > On 08.02.2006, at 07:48, The Egyptian Chronicles wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> Further, this is not an isolated case where a Classic
> >> Arabic term made its way into a European language (from
> >> the Indo-European group). I cannot give a better example
> >> of this transmission than its direct synonym `unuq
> >> (`nq), the Arabic term for "neck" found in the Germanic
> >> group, hnakki, hneccaand hnac in ON, OE and OHG
> >> respectively.
>
> This is implausible: the word had to have entered Germanic
> too early. The OED (2003) doesn't even mention it as an
> outside possibility.
>
> > In modern standard German Genick, in Southern
> > (Bavarian/Austrian) German, G'nack.
>
> Originally a collective formation, like <Gebirge>.
>
> It is an interesting word, though: it's found throughout NW
> Germanic, there are no clear connections outside Germanic,
> and there are two variant types within NW Germanic. OE
> <hnecca>, OFris <hnekka>, and MDu <nec>, <necke> clearly go
> together (and with with MHG <genicke>, Ger <Genick>) on the
> one hand, while OHG <hna(c)ch>, <nach> (MHG <nac(ke)>, Ger
> <Nacken>), OIc <hnakki>, and MDu <nac(k)(e)> also go
> together but from a slightly different starting point.
>
> A connection with OIr <cnocc> 'lump, protuberance; hill,
> mound' looks possible, if not semantically wonderful. The
> OED notes that Toch. A <kñuk> 'neck, nape' is semantically
> attractive 'but presents phonological problems'; from the
> little I know about Tocharian, the vowel is definitely
> wrong.
>