The only thing I agree with is maybe I should chill
out,
But quite obviously I won't be able
to,
For the rest,
I am afraid on the Richter Scale of Beat-Ruhlen
fancies,
you are scoring very high.
The highest among current active mail-senders on
the spot
==========
You wrote : Etymology of Bitumen
"the Arabic word btm for bitumen
appears to be a straightforward candidate, pointing to
a definite Semitic source for the word."
========
LOL !
The root btm is an obvious recent loanword
from French,
that has less than a half century of existence in
Arabic.
It's not even listed in LArousse Dictionnaire
an-nasil de l'arabe.
You advised to look in Lisan al Arab in a previous
mail,
So why don't you go get B_t_m in Lisan
!
B_t_m is described as being j_b_l : a mountain
!!
Arabic native word for bitumen is
zift.
Your Beat-Ruhlen score : 9 / 10.
=========
Now when it comes to the word "tree",
and its fancy connection with "true",
something IE comparatists believe in.
Chinese zhen1 "true" from *dar-in
shows than the root of true is *d_r
with a voiced dental stop.
The word "tree" is from *?_r
a verb meaning "to stand upright"
LAtin ar-bor < *?er-dh-or "the one that
stands upright"
Tokharian ore
The verb of medio-passive meaning can get an
extra
pleonastic #t?- addition, becoming
#t?-?_r
fused as t?_r hence *d_r in most PIE
languages
BUT
North caucasian has t:aru with a long
initial
in some languages !
And
Greek dendron is to *d_r
what pimplemi is to *p_l
The conclusion :
the fancy connection between *d_r "true" and
*?_r
is bad.
This time you perform bad
but you have been lured by
orthodox PIE fancies
Your Beat-Ruhlen score : 2 /
10.
Arnaud
=======================