Dear Piotr and Nostraticists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <nostratic@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 4:28 AM
Subject: [nostratic] zrak


> --- In nostratic@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> > ... The Polish word for 'sight' is wzrok < *vU-zor-k- (the same
> *zork- that gives Czech zrak; the Czech meaning 'face' is simply a
> loan-translation of German Gesicht). ...
>
> It's actually something even more trivial, though quite instructive.
> I have consulted all the dictionaries of Czech I could find to see
> if "face" is an authentic by-meaning of <zrak>, and it turns out that
> <zrak> means ONLY "sight, vision", just like the corresponding Polish
> word. The meaning "face" is Patrick Ryan's figment, most likely a
> mistranslation of Pokorny's German gloss.
>
> Let me add that in Serbian, for instance, <zrak> means "ray, a beam
> of light".

[PCR]
I admit that "Gesicht", the German word in Pokorny from which I was translating "face", also means "appearance, sight".

Since we apparently have no native speakers of Czech on the list to tell us definitely if /zrak/ is understood by Czechs as "face", we all have to rely on our dictionaries.

What is also instructive is that Piotr confidently asserted:

"the Czech meaning 'face' is simply a loan-translation of German Gesicht"

*without any knowledge* supporting that proposition.

Had it not finally occurred to him that "Gesicht", Pokorny's gloss for /zrak/, is slightly ambiguous, no doubt we would be listening to a lecture from him on the niceties of "loan-translation".

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE@... (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE: http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)