From: Anatoly Guzaev
Message: 64166
Date: 2009-06-13
On 2009-06-11 10:00, Anatoly Guzaev wrote:
> Russian семя [simya] 'family' appeared to be related to Gothic sibja
> 'relationship, adoption'; cf. Russ. усвоить [usvoit'] 'adopt, assimilate'
Slavic *svojI is a distand cousin of Gmc. *siBjo:, since both contain
the pronominal element *swe-. But Slavic *se^mIja has zilch to to with
either. It's usually regarded as related to Germanic *xaima- 'home' <
*k^oimo-. Your phonetic transcription seems to show that you have
confused two different words, but if you really meant what you wrote,
i.e. <semja> (rather than <sem'ja>) < PSl. se^meN, its primary meaning
is 'seed' and it reflects PIE *seh1-mn., a widely attested word (also
unrelated to *siBjo:).
Piotr