Re: Clueless roolz...

----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 6:50 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Clueless roolz...



> Nice idea
>
> For example
> Germanic *sajwa "sea, lake"
> Cf. Kartvelian zGva "sea, lake"
>
> Or
> German Igel "hedgehog"
> Cf. Kartvelian zGar
>
> Arnaud
>
> ==========
>

>Dansk Etymologisk Ordbog
>igle ["leech"], MDa. egel, igel, No. igle, Sw. igel, MLG egel, OS, OHG
>igil, Germ. Igel "hedgehog" (really "snake eater"), OE igel; from Gmc.
>*eGila-, to which sideforms with i: like ON ígull, OHG i:gil, OE
>i:gel: deriv. in *-ila, *-ula to IE *eg^hi- "leech", to which eg. also
>Gr. échis "snake", Lith. ez^y~s, Gr. echi~nos "hedgehog".
>Any similar "snake" words in Kartvelian?
>
>What are your "translation rules" for loans from Kartvelian to
>Germanic? Eg. for zG- ?
> Torsten

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To start with,
I can see nothing obvious about :
leech, snake and hedgehog being *one* root.
and I might have mis-understood from a previous mail
that ON igull was Urchin,
So it makes a lot to deal with within one proto-root.

As regards Kartvelian words,
which I boldly and crankly (Brian says) consider possible LWs into Central
PIE,
(Piotr says this does not mean anything but I disagree of course)
I think *z or *dz is most often reflected in Central PIE as H2, sometimes
*s, very seldom H1 or *d,
G is reflected as kh (*gh) in Greek, *gh Balto-Slavic,
Germanic has either *gh or *-j-

I think the most intriguing point is that Germanic very often is closest to
the original Kartvelian word structure.
I cannot help thinking this tells us something about Germanic.

We have at least two options :

1. Germanic got in contact with a Kartvelian-related language in Northern
Europe,
because such a substrate existed in Northern Europe,
this is possible, but unproved,
It means that (para-)Kartvelian is the original family spoken in Eastern and
Northern Europe before IE spread around there.
I don't know, It remains to be substantiated,
It's not my preferred hypothesis.

2. Germanic got in contact with Kartvelian because it originates in a place,
where such contacts are possible, namely near Caucasus, and
Germanic is a Central/eastern IE language.
You know I think 2 is my preferred answer.
I made no secret about that.

I will add that the word *sajwa "sea" displays -wa- Erweiterung
This Erweiterung exists in Germanic, KArtvelian (zGva), Chinese (cuo2),
Tibetan (chwa).
I can't help thinking this tells us something about Germanic.

There *always* is some strange feature about Germanic that relates it to
Kartvelian or Eastern languages like Yenissei, Uralic, Tibetan, Chinese,
Mongolian, etc.
There is no smoke without fire.
And there is a lot of smoke, not just a couple of fuzzy words.
There must be something about Germanic that explains why these oddities
exist.
Non PIE words in Germanic always are Asiatic-look-alikes, that is definitely
intriguing.
This does not happen with Latin or Celtic.

Arnaud

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