Re: Amber

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

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@> wrote:
> >
> > --- 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).
>
> In what sense similar? Sanskrit has jatu "resin".

The second part is what would be most similar: Skt hiranya-, Av
zaranya-. Since Hungarian arany 'gold' also is borrowed and also must
come from *(h)aranya- that figured into the proposal.

I said "similar" and not "identical" since there might have been no
g(W) > j before front (or mixing (including possibly between *gWixYwo+
and *gWetu+) among related words preserving gW).

> And why would anyone
> choose to characterize amber as "golden resin" when they are
> practically the same color?

I wouldn't say all sap, pitch, or resin (whatever the original range
of meanings) was golden. Even if the language somehow _only_ used
*gi:tu to describe golden amber/resin, there is no rule against
redundancy in language and such forms are common.

> The -ar- suffix, which doesn't occur
> outside the Baltic names, is probably that found Pre-Saami and
> placenames too

You have no evidence on how the word should be divided or that -ar-
is a suffix. Even assuming a straight line in borrowing with no odd
detours there's no reason to think that *gyantra couldn't become
*dYanta just by the phonotactic rules of H. at the time.