From: tgpedersen
Message: 58966
Date: 2008-06-02
>In what sense similar? Sanskrit has jatu "resin". And why would anyone
> --- 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).