Latin perfects and Fluent Etruscan in 30 days!

petegray petegray at btinternet.com
Tue Jun 29 19:34:39 UTC 1999


Ed connected Latin amicus and ambo, and suggested a derivation of them both
from Etruscan.

Max and I both pointed that ambo has a good PIE pedigree, so this can't
work.

Ed then said:

>And I don't see why any relationship with 'amicus', 'amare', etc. should be
>excluded a priori: ....  Couldn't it be a double
>transfer: early Lat./IE 'amb(i)-' > Etr. 'am(e)-' > later Lat. 'am-'?

Anything's possible!  But it's easier to take the word we know to be IE as
IE, and leave open the possibility of an Etruscan origin for amicus, if you
want to explore that.   Don't be mislead by the initial "am-".   In ambo it
derives from syllabic /m./, which cannot be the case in amicus.

Peter



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