Re: Basque mendi 'mountain'

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

>
> Fairly late Latin, at that. In the earliest stratum of loans, before the
> sixth century, Goidelic *kW was regularly substituted for Latin /p/, as
> in planta > *kWlanda > cland (and panna, pascha, purpura, Patricius >
> cann, caisc, corcur, Cothriche, etc.).
>

I'm afraid Latin isn't the only source of p- > Goidelic *kW-. For example, Middle Irish céite 'hill, eminence, open space, assembly' < Goidelic *kWantjo- 'hill', which corresponds to the substrate root *pant- I mentioned before.

Also interesting is Old Irish imm-cella 'surrounds', from Goidelic *kWal-na 'to go around', a doublet of Celtic *Fal-na 'to approach, to drive' (Old Irish ad-ella). Of course, there're more cases of doublets in PCeltic which in the traditional model are unrelated words.