Re: Etymology of Ossetic "Nart"? (the suffix?)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson" <liberty@...>
wrote:

>
> [...]
> > Abaev's suggestion that Nartæ derives from Mongolian nara "sun"
> > (with -tae as a pluralizing suffix with a genitival sense -- the
> > [in]famous Indo-Iranian -ta collective suffix?) is interesting,
> > though it's not clear to me whether the vowel in nara is, or was
> > originally, a long /a:/ of the sort Abaev says must stand behind
> > the form Nartae.
>
> I don't know how the 'a' of 'nara' is pronounced either, I'm
> afraid.

The /a/ in _nar_ "sun" is a short one (long vowels are written with
double letters in the Mongolian Cyrillic script).