Re: Asian Migration to Scandinavia

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

> On 2008-10-16 23:49, Francesco Brighenti wrote:
>
> > Serbian vatra 'fire', Ukrainian vaìtra 'fire, stove', Polish
> > vatra 'straw cinder' are borrowed... from Rumanian vatra 'stove',
> > [this] again from Albanian (Geg votrë, votër with v-suggestion
> > before Albanian ot- from *a:t-, perhaps Iranian loanword).
>
> The Polish gloss is as strange as the Ukrainian one. In the
> highland dialects of southern Poland, where it occurs, <watra>
> (sic) means 'a fire (out in the open air), bonfire'

This, too, results from Starostin & Lubotsky's (the diabolical duo!)
machine-translation of Pokorny's German text! In this case,
Pokorny's "Strohasche" was translated as "straw cinder" because:

German Stroh = straw

German Asche = ash, cinder

Thus, Strohasche = straw fire?

> _Of course_ it's a Romanian loan (and Romanian has it from
> Albanian). However, an Iranian loan in Albanian, of all languages,
> would be a strange thing to find, and I would like to see some
> justification for such a claim.

This claim is made by Pokorny himself (not by Starostin & Lubotsky,
who only machine-translated it):

"(Geg votrë, votër mit v-Vorschlag vor alb. ot- aus *a:t-, viell.
iran. Lw.)."

Good night,
Francesco