Latin and Slavonic for `moon'

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Just about everywhere Gothic is discussed you'll find references to the
>attestation of East Gothic being spoken in the Crimea

-- true, and you'll also find that the period of Slavic-Gothic contact
leading to loan-word deposition is prior to the 5th century CE.  The loans
were into Proto-Slavic, not any of the later Slavic languages.

>already in Greek *gno-, possibly before German was invented.

-- invented is not the word you're looking for.  "Developed" or "evolved".
Not even Mallory would place the emergence of a distinct proto-Germanic any
later than 1000 BCE or so.  Late isoglosses indicate that Proto-Germanic and
Proto-Slavic (and Baltic) were in continuous contact as they emerged from
PIE.  The Balts were to the northeast of the earliest Germans, the Slavs to
the east-southeast.

>After all, if you follow Mallory or Dolukhanov the proto-Slavs were the
>Agricultural Scythians in 500BCE and therefore had contact with the Greeks
>before the Germans.

-- take a look at the map.  The Greeks sailed to the Black Sea coast, which
was inhabited by _Iranian_ speakers, the Scythians proper.

Beyond the _Iranian_ speakers were the Slavs, and beyond them -- and
therefore in contact with them -- were the Germanics.

ie., the "Agricultural Scythians" were the southeastern fringe of the
Slavic-speaking area, not the whole of it.

>And of course if the P-slavs were IE

-- this is not in dispute.

>they should have had a *gon/*gnu or *kon/*knu and i-stems quite before they
>met the Goths.

-- they probably also had words for "house" and "stable" and "loaf of bread",
but all these words were replaced by loans from Germanic in the Proto-Slavic
period.

Just as English adoped words for "mutton" and "beef" French, replacing
perfectly adequate native terms.  We retained the native sheep-cow names for
the animals and used the French ones (which are simply the names for the
animals, in French) for their products.