Italian as a "Pure" Language

[Douglas G Kilday]

X99Lynx at aol.com (22 Mar 2001) wrote:

>In their later confusion, they might wonder why "pizza" was not
>spelled "pete/sa," ("pete-" as in from the Aramaic "Peter") which it so
>often sounds like these days.

"Peter" is not Aramaic. It represents Greek <Petros>, lit. 'piece of rock',
given by John (1:42) as the translation of <Ke:pha:s>, the nickname bestowed
upon Simon by Jesus. This Aramaic name is cognate with Hebrew <ke:f> 'rock,
crag, cliff' found only in the plural <ke:fiym> (Jer. 4:29). This in turn is
referred to an obsolete radical *k-w-p 'to be high, crag-like' by
Davies-Mitchell, which looks dubious. I am more inclined to regard <ke:f> as
coming from pre-West Semitic substrate.

DGK