non-IE/Germanic/m

[Rick Mc Callister]

[snip]

	I was also thinking of Spanish muro, Latin murus [sp?] "wall" or
Spanish moro'n "hillock, rise of land" except that the double /rr/ of murru
screws things up --and then there's Spanish morro, "a small promontory on a
neck of land jutting out into the water [where forts were often built]"
	Maybe Celtic offers more clues [or enigmas] to this set of words

>> moraine, Moräne "moraine",
>> Mur[e] "pile of rocks [Bavarian]
>> [?< Vasconic;
>> see Basque murru "hill"] [tv97]

>The form <murru> can hardly be ancient in Basque.  There exists a
>sizeable number of severely localized Basque words of the form <murru>,
>with very diverse meanings, but `hill' is not one of them.  The most
>widespread sense (throughout the French Basque Country) is `wall'.
>The closest to `hill' in sense is `pile, heap', reported nowhere but in
>the Baztan valley.

>Larry Trask

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
MUW
Columbus MS 39701
rmccalli at sunmuw1.muw.edu