Re: Amber

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

>
> from Endre Bojtár:
> Foreword to the Past,
> A Cultural History of the Baltic People. p. 31-33
>
> 'The Baltic terms for amber are the following: Lith. gintaras
> (dialectal gentaras); Latv. dzintars, dzitars; Pruss. gentars

> It is related to the Hungarian word
> gyanta 'resin', which is "a loan-word in Hungarian, but neither its
> direct source nor its direct transmitter is sufficiently clear" (Benkö
> 1967, 1120).

> Let's propose *gWentá-/gWantá(-r)- "resin". The poor Aestian probably
> said that this was gelled resin, but that the Aestian's didn't know
> from where it was washed onto their shore. That earned him a
> condescending lecture from Cassiodorus (its tone is modern alright).
>
> So *gWentár- glasó- "jelled (frozen) resin" (approx.!)?

I'd rather suppose an origin from an IE language similar to Indic,
with *gi:tu(h)aranya- 'golden resin' undergoing dissimilation and
metathesis (and probably some V>0 would be regular, but now unknown).