bishop

[Eduard Selleslagh]

At 15:43 20/07/01 +0800, you wrote:
>Leo Connoly wrote:

>> To which I say: The vowels are still all wrong, which renders the rest
>> of it moot.

>> Leo Connolly

>1. Not exactly true: the I- of Istambul corresponds perfectly to the i- in
>'is tin poli'.

>2. Cf. anc.-gr. propolis 'bee-glue' > mid-gr. ke'ropoli > turk. dial.
>girebullu:  The vowels are all wrong, but the word is Greek, believe it or
>not.

>R. Piva

[Ed Selleslagh]

I thought I showed (in an earlier contribution) that it is not just a
matter of vowels, but also of stressed syllables/prosody:

A derivation of [istim'bolin] would place the stress on the <o> (shifted to
[u]), whule it is on the <a>.The initial <i> is prothetic.

Even if you insist on the vowels, your argument, invoking 'girebullu', is
still weak, actually irrelevant, because it only alludes to the common
shift of e > i and o> u, which also means that the vowels are NOT 'wrong'
(the -ro- > -re- is an effect of the tendency in Turkish to make words of
not readily recognizable foreign origin conform to vocal harmony rules, i.e
with the first syllable). But THE vowel problem in 'Istambul' is the <a>.
It cannot possibly be derived fron 'is tin bolin', only from
'Konstantinopolis' where the <a> has a secondary stress.

Ed.