txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....

[Mate Kapović]

There was a discussion some time ago about relation of the words like Bask.
txakur, Logudor dzhagaru, Spanish/Port. cachorro... I was just lurking but now
I must add something to the subject because I think it could be interesting to
those who participated in that discussion earlier.

I accidentally came across a sizeable amount of information about words I
mentioned and others similar to them in a Croatian etymological dictionary by
Petar Skok. The starting word is Croatian ogar which would be something like a
hound. There is version of it - zagar. It seems as if those are two words with
a same root and different prefixes - o- and za-. There is also a mention of the
form bigar.

The autor says ogar > Magyar agár, Romanian ogar. Other Slavic languages -
OCS and Old Russian ogar7 (7-jor), Czech ohař, Polish oharz.

There is a claim that the form zagar is a Balkanic word: Bolg. zagár, Alb.
zagá:r/za:r, Middle Greek zágaron, Modern Greek zagári/zagarós, Turkish
zagár. All have the meaning "Jagdhund".

And the author goes outside Balkan and Slavic languages:
Avarian (Caucasus) - eger
Ossetic - yegar
Logudor (as mentioned here) - gˇagaru; Corsica - yakaru/gˇakaru "shepherd
dog"

Then already known here Bask txakur and Port./Spanish cachorro "young dog".

Also Georgian dzagli; all-European words like jackal (Eng.), çakal (Turkish)
(i would add) etc. which comes, as he says, from Sanskrit šrgala "canis
aureus".

In the end he staits that Oštir was surely right when he put it with Alarodic
elements and that it could be a part of pre-IE substratum as an old hunting
term.

As I have already said, these are not my claims, there are those of the author
of the dictionary which was written about 3 decades ago. These example are, if
not all correct and related, surely interesting and could point to some
consclusions.

Thanks,
M. Kapović