From: Rick McCallister
Message: 50824
Date: 2007-12-09
> On 2007-12-09 21:10, Rick McCallister wrote:____________________________________________________________________________________
>
> > An ignorant question -- could Celtic "doublets"
> such
> > as Gaelic sron vs. Continental Celtic *fron-
> (source
> > of Sp. fruncir, etc.) have come via *spr-
>
> The Brittonic languages have fr- here (MWel. ffroen,
> OBret. fron). This
> 'nose' word is etymologically opaque, but there are
> certain cases of
> *sr- becoming Goidelic sr- and Brittonic fr-, as in
> *sru-to/u- 'stream'
> (OIr. sruith, MWel. ffrwd). The latter resembles the
> Lat. development of
> *sr- > fr- (medially *-sr- > -br-), where the
> intermediate stage surely
> involved non-sibilant (inter)dental fricatives like
> [þ, ð], acoustically
> close to [f, B]. One can therefore suspect that
> something like the
> following happened also in Brittonic (or even
> Gallo-Brittonic): *sr- >
> *þr- > *fr-.
>
> > Also, how about English straw(berry) vs. Latin
> fraga
> > -could there have been an intermediate *spr- form?
> > Could Latin have borrowed fraga from Celtic?
>
> I've never given any thought to Lat. fraga. I'll
> have to go and check it
> up somewhere. But <strawberry> comes from OE
> stre:aw-berige, generally
> regarded as connected with stre:owian ~ stre:gan
> 'strew' < WGmc.
> *strawwjan, ultimately from *strow-eje/o- (the
> meaning of the first
> element was perhaps 'creeping, spreading' rather
> than 'straw'). I can't
> see a possible connection with fraga, barring the
> assumption of
> irregular developments and folk etymology applied on
> an immodest scale.
>
> Piotr
>
>