Dear Gunnar, Jacques and Ardavarz,

thanks for highlighting the words of contention. This is not exactly my area of interest, and I do recall now that we did discuss about "serpent" and Pali "sappa" many moons ago on this list.

I believe the sources, which I refer to, include English words which have common Indo-European roots or are inherited indirectly from India. Just like what you have already discussed.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Jacques Huynen wrote:

"serpens" probably comes, in all Indo-european languages, from a root SRP meaning "creep".

> * father
> * mother
> These are common Indo-European stems, perhaps used already in Original Indo-European somewhere north of the Black Sea, and found in Teutonic languages long before England had any contact with India; also in Ancient Greek, in Latin (pater, mater) and in the Romance languages. I don't know about the Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, and Iranian languages.
>
> * serpent
> Borrowed from Latin (serpens), probably through French.