Richard Wordingham wrote:

>
> An Iranian Azebaijani told me that Azerbaijani man 'I' was a loan
> from Farsi; Turkish for 'I' is van. I am not sure how true this
> statement is - it may just be coincidence.

Unlikely.

Common Turkic has men/ben. Bolgaric (Chuvash) has epe.

Co Tu Bo Tu
1st men/ben epe
2nd sen ese
1st pl biz epire
2nd pl siz esir

It is pretty clear to me that (1) -Vr was a collective suffix and (2) the
protoform was something like *epen, and *esen. The sound changes that
separate CoTu and BoTu are lr vs sh-z. e.g. l>sh and r>z and one can
see that here.

Sumerian had mae, and sae. So these are old.

Furthermore, and it is easy to see epe>eke.

And here is the word from Akkadian

ana:ku NA also annuku, NB also anaka "I, me". [Bogh GA.E] ... dat. ana
II; anuki.

ana I "to, for"

ana II "I" OB (lit) by-form of ana:ku.

It looks like a compound word ana-ku or an-aku, or *panaku. "ana" is likely
a demonstrative, and so is "ku".

And look at the Boghazkoy version; it could be AGA.E e.g. eke/ego etc.

>
> Richard.
>
>

--
Mark Hubey
hubeyh@...
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey