Aiwropais Ahvos

Mon May 15 05:39:31 UTC 2006

Hi Ualarauans!

With the "long river" Volga there are two aberrations, 
both spatial and temporal. The name Volga related initially 
only to the upper part of the river and was etymologically 
close to the name of another river of that region Volhov. 
However, the etymology is not defined exactly. The most 
probable supposition is a Finnish word with meaning moisture, 
which was also borrowed by Russian as _vlaga_. Extension of 
the name Volga to the downer river named earlier Itil took 
place somewhere in the 16-17 centuries. Hermanaricus and his 
subjects had to be very sagacious to foreknow this for 
thousand years ahead. Anyhow, the origin of the name Volga 
is not Slavic.

Btw. I seem _Albs_ should be pronounced [alfs] with declension 
changes to [alvis] etc.

Regards,
Vladimir

-----Original Message-----
From: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com [mailto:gothic-l at yahoogroups.com]On
Behalf Of ualarauans
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 11:31 AM
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [gothic-l] Aiwropais Ahvos

In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:
> the final
devoicing rule (Auslautsverhдrtung) doesn't apply when 'b', 'g', 'd'
follow another consonant, so my guess for the nominative singular
would be *Albs.

Yes, of cause. Thanks. Hence a question - how you pronounce this: 
[alvs], [albs] or maybe even [alps]? Intervocalic -b- I like most to 
have as [v], but what I like or dislike that's no argument. We have 
Naubaimbair for November and a lot of Latin renderings like Liuva, 
Erelieva etc., but what about -b- in the position you described, 
i.e. after a consonant? And what is Silbanus for SILOUANOS - leaning 
on Gothic silba? But this happened to be written by Romans as 
Silva... Does the rule work only when -b- stands between two 
consonants? And what is then the pronunciation? I guess it could be 
again a question of chronology.
Talking about rivers I think we should not at once translate or 
transliterate their present name, but to look first if there's any 
possible evidence of how the river was called at the time the actual 
Goths could reach, or hear of, it.
For example, French Seine was Lat.-Celt. Sequana. Was it still so in 
the 5th century when Alareiks sa Fruma and his Visigoths came first 
to the West? Or maybe it was already some compromise late-Latin / 
early-Romance form (*Seghwana?) which could be adopted by them 
undergoing some folk-etymological changes? Or perhaps there had been 
a West-Germanic name of the river which the Goths received from 
their Frankish and Alemannic cousins and rivals? I'm tempted to call 
it *Saihvana F. -o (with a consonant shift), but firstly, if my 
Latin dictionary doesn't lie, the -e- in Sequana was a long one; 
secondly, the time of the shift was long over; and, thirdly, wasu so 
ahva bi sunjai SAIHVANA? (was this river really SEEN by them?). So, 
*Seqana, *Se(g)wana or something like?
Here's another question. As you know continental Gaulish was mostly 
a p-Celtic language (i.e. every PIE kw- turned to p- unlike q-
Celtic). The PIE stem *sekw- "to follow", represented by Lat. sequor 
and Goth. saihvan (lit. "to follow with the eyes"), as it is 
commonly held, was additionally borrowed by Goths from some p-Celtic 
dialect as siponeis "a disciple" < "a follower". Is Sequana of the 
same family? And why not *Sepana? I see it's Gothic not "Celtic" 
list, but if this name belongs to the same stem, it could perhaps be 
possible to postulate some parallel, not borrowed, form in Germanic 
and, thus, Gothic.
Let's travel over to another side of Europe and consider Volga. It 
seems to me very probable that the Goths, this time the Ostrogoths, 
had all chances to see it or at least to know about it at the time 
of Ermanaricus' Greater Gothic Reich (((smile))). Maybe the trace of 
it is ON Dylgja (Hlöðskviða 26, 28) < Goth. *Dulgjo F. -on, which 
could be a phonetically correct borrowing of a supposed Old Slavic 
alternative name *Dlgaja (l is vocalic), lit. "the long (river)". 
The actual Russian Volga is sometimes supposed to be borrowed from 
Baltic *Ilga with the same meaning ("long"). Well, that seems rather 
complicated... As a variant we could use a partly etymologized 
loanword from Russian like *Wulgi F. -jo (cf. ON ylgr "she-wolf").
Ualarauans

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