Re: Not "catching the wind " , or, what ARE we discussing?

> > > There is supposed a Nubian form qadis (vel sim) but it
> > > makes you wonder why no similar forms in Coptic or Berber
> > > Your explanation seems as good as any.
> > > Who knows, perhaps Messapia was where cats first
> > > arrived in Italy from Egypt
> >
> > I ran across the "Nubian" word cited in an old paper, and I don't
> > know what I did with the reference, but it seemed to me like a
> > mere chance resemblance. The author didn't say whether this
> > "Nubian" word was dialectal Amharic, or from some non-AA language,
> > or what.
>
> Nubian is a Nilo-Saharan language from Sudan, very likely the same
> language as that spoken by the ancient Nubians, just south of Egypt.
>
> > It seems highly unlikely that Europeans would go beyond Alexandria
> > for cats, and highly unlikely that they would adopt a word for
> > 'cat' from distant Nubia, rather than whatever Alexandrians
> > called them, if indeed they needed to adopt a new word at all.
>
> Given the lack of a similar Egyptian word, I agree

Isn't the standard explanation with a geographical distribution like
that to assume the word disappeared in the middle?


Torsten