Latin perfects and Fluent Etruscan in 30 days

[Steven A. Gustafson]

Adolfo Zavaroni wrote:

> 3) My interpretations starting from the hypothesis
> "Let's suppose that the Etruscan words are borrowing
> from archaic (Indo)European languages and viceversa"
> match many Germanish lexemes, but also Celtic
> (certainly 3 years ago my knowledge of Gaulish
> and Celtic language was lower), while the comparison
> with Latin and Osco-Umbrian is vitiated by the fact that
> in general scholars are inclined to think that the direction
> of the borrowing is the direction from "already-known"
> (Latin, Umbrian)  to "unknown that has to be explained".

There is one big target for hunters of Celtic-seeming roots in Etruscan,
in the form of -clan-, -clenar-, and a number of other variant
spellings, meaning "son."  This seems easy to relate to *planta or
*kwlanta, a widely attested Celtic word meaning "descendant," as
attested in OIr. -cland- "descendants," and Welsh -plant-, "child."  And
it has arrived in English from Gaelic as well.

I have never found the derivation of -cland- from Latin -planta- wholly
convincing for several reasons.  Unless the Latin word is itself a
Q-Celtic or Etruscan loaner, if this is apparently a case of the p/q
variable distribution, my suspicion is you'd expect to se a q- or a c-
form in Latin rather than a p-.  It also strikes me as relatively
unlikely that the Celts would have borrowed what was in CL a technical
term of horticulture, (the original meaning was "slip for grafting")
given it a broadened metaphorical sense, and then applied it to a
fundamental aspect of their family life that carried a large weight of
native cultural baggage.  If -cland- isn't from -planta-, it may be
unique to Celtic.

--
Steven A. Gustafson, attorney at law
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