>>>>*tieÅ- vs. *dieÅ-
Note that the 1st vowel in those variants of TANGRA is rather
[a] and [æ] (spelling it tängra, tängri would be better); it seems
that > tengri is a Turkic "habit" (this a > e tendency is very
strong in Turkish; perhaps similar in Mongolian and other
neighbor languages, e.g. Tibetan, I don't know, but I hear
"om meni pedme hum" instead of "om mani padme hum". :))
>cf. the thread starting at
>http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/63872
Well, but if "thraïn" (with its initial cluster) is supposed to be the
"egg" for what has become tängri > tanrı/tenrı, then this might look
as a way different world, a different... man*tra*. :) (Why didn't the
borrowers"solve" _thra-_ *ataran, *atran, *eteren, *etirin, *itrin,
*itırın, *ütürün, *ötörön or *taran, teren, tirin, türün or so? Such
creations would've sounded more "turkic", "mongolian" and "uralic".
By the way: is there indeed any semantic link betw. tängri and
the Sumerian _dingir_?)
And then: _thraïn_ becomes _tharn_? If, so, again, why tangr-?
(No wonder that Turks and Mongols "solved" that as tan_rI and
ten_ger, and Chinese as tcheng-li. But even if the initial unknown
word was non-PIE, non-Uralic, non-Turkic, --NGR--, seems usual
for "indoeuropean" languages (cf. Tancred, Pancratius, mangrove,
mongrel, encre, increase, synchro- ..., although -NKR-/-NGR-
aren't abundant).
George