Horses

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Wolfgang Schulze <W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:

>By the way: Why is it so difficult to accept that Sumerians used to term
>horses 'donkeys (that stem from / of) the mountains' and that they might have
>used the term ans^e-kur(r)a as it appears ('phonetically' speaking)?

It's not difficult to accept, it's just that the Sumerian word
apparently (according to Miguel Civil) *was* <zizi> (usually
written <ans^e-kur.ra>, just like <tabira> "smith" was usually
written <urudu-nagar>, to quote Robert Whiting on ANE).  It's of
course the same word as Akkadian sisu^ "horse", but the Akkadian
is also borrowed from an unknown source.  Given the phonetic
shape (*tsitsi-), one might think (just a thought) of some
reduplicated form *dzidzei- connected with Skt. hayah. "horse"
and Arm. ji, jioy ([dzi]) "horse" < PIE *g^hei- (satem *dzhei-).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl