Re: 'dyeus'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "t0lgsoo1" <guestuser.0x9357@...> wrote:

>
>
>
> > It isn't. I don't know where you get that from.
> > Early Middle Chinese thraïŋj-li according to Pulleyblank
> > http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/63872
> > is a loan from Xiongnu, ie Yeniseian to Chinese, not the other way
> > around.
>
> I only underlined that if that thraing had had that initial cluster,
> then no wonder that it became tanr-/tenr-

Here's a clue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Chinese#Reconstructed_phonology
'Sinologists now generally believe that Old Chinese - or an early state of Middle Chinese - had consonant clusters such as *tr which became retroflex sounds.'
Which means either that
1) Pulleyblank's *thr- is wrong, which would cast doubt on the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Chinese
(OC) and Early Middle_Chinese (EMC) *tr- type reconstructions of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Chinese
retroflexes, or that
2) Turkic/Mongolian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengri
(earliest attestation in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkhon_inscriptions
) and Yeniseian *thıŋ(g)əl are both from Chinese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian
which however may itself have a western origin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian#Origins

> (if they were indeed akin).

Akin as in "cognate"?
What do you mean?

> >> (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".

Because it was a loan from Middle Chinese?

> >Erh, what?
>
> I only expressed here my expectation that a Turkic/Mongolian
> adaptation of thrain would have been "better" solved by such
> phonetics. But even so, tanrı and tenger show well the fact that
> Turkic and Mongolian need such adaptations, they hardly can
> accept a thr- cluster. (The question will be then whether the
> initial, foreign, -r- moved to the end or whether the -r- in the
> Turkic/Mongolian is the rest of something else, some additional
> lexem.)
>
> > That sounds like an interesting suggestion, given that Etruscan
> > also
>
> This is not my own suggestion, I read about dingir in the tängri
> context, but the Sumerian meaning of dingir wasn't mentioned.

Google is your friend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingir

> > It seems you can't rid of the idea that anything complicated must
> > be loaned from a Hochkultur. Give it up.
>
> I won't. Lexical and language creation/mutations aren't haphazard,
> aren't scrabble-like plays, they are the result of necessity
> (religion, politics, everyday's real life). It doesn't suffice to
> see that Etruscan has such words as tin "day", ten "height", mani
> "underworld", tata "granma" in order to ... jubilate because such or
> similar words with similar semantics also occur in Siberia,
> Ouagadougou or near Rio de la Plata.

Here's what: A gun to your head creates necessity. Dumb nomads can force any religion onto their smart pacifist neighbors if they're determined enough to use deadly force. And the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiongnu
was once a Hochkultur, whatever the status of the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ket_language
speakers of today is.

> > As it stands, the word for the highest god seems to have been
> > loaned from Siberian squirrel hunters. Live with it.
>
> Of course I live with it, as I'd live with a possible official
> statement in which you'd inform me that the object possessed by the
> tengrist female deity Yer (the thing we call the earth) is a disc
> and by no means a ball. And even if you'd add "it's fix, it doesn't
> move", I won't veto with the wording "eppur si muove". :-)

You got that backwards. Gallileo said that, not the pope. G. had no power to veto.

> > Erh, and the PIE credentials for those are ...?
>
> "Credentials", aha, urplötzlich, all of a sudden! :)
>

Erh, what?
I don't do sudden things, regardless of what impression you and the other George might have.



Torsten