Re: The ur-/ar- language, correction

> > Sigh. Seems I have to translate another Kuhn article. This one's
> > gonna be long.

Correction (of course those fundamental vowels are /e/ and /o/, not
/i/ and /o/, since we are talking of the ablaut vowel)

> Translation:
>
> "15 years ago, I finally managed to track down a second large and
> old river name complex which gives itself away by similar
> characteristics as the Krahe hydronymics: the distribution over
> large spaces and the limitation to certain word stems and
> derivational elements occurring widely, and further an even stricter
> limitation in phoneme inventory. Above all it is the phoneme
> sequence 'ur', beside that also 'ar' and 'ir', in the stem syllables
> which characterizes this set of names and unite them. It is stems
> such as Ur-, Dur-, Kur- and Stur, further with suffix consonants
> Durs- and Murs-, Urk- and Burk- and more in that stile. With the
> Krahe system this new one is related not just in general in the
> limitation to a few stems and the use of certain types of
> derivation, but in particular in the lack or great scarcity of the

IE fundamental vowels /e/ and /o/. This draws them close together.

> However, in Krahes sets /a/ the most frequent by far and /u/ the
> least frequent of the three vowels, while in the newly discovered
> /u/ predominates; and /a/ follows somewhat distantly.

Torsten