Basque and other relationships

Jim Rader jrader at m-w.com
Tue Jun 6 17:03:36 UTC 2000


> > ... the influence of Mongolian on at least one Uralic language, namely
> > Hungarian: it comes to the mind the word *bator* meaning *brave* which
> > apart from being  a fairly common word in Hungarian enters in the very
> > name of the capital city of Mongolia (Ulaan Baator, I think).
>
> The Mongols under Batu Khan (he was Genghis's son, I think) overran
> Hungary. It is no wonder a stray loanword got across. The word also got
> into Hindi as "bahadur".
>
>

WAY off the topic of this list, but this etymon probably originated
in Turkic and was borrowed into Mongolian.  Gerard Clauson thought
<bag^a:tu:r> was itself a loanword into Turkic from a Xiongnu
personal name.  From Turkic the word was borrowed into Persian and
hence into Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi, and back into some
Turkic languages from Persian.  Hungarian <ba/tor> was borrowed from
Turkic, not Mongolian; direct Hungarian contact with the Mongols was
slight.  Also from Turkic, directly or indirectly, are words for
"hero" in various Slavic languages (Russian <bogatyr'>, Polish
<bohater>, etc.).  To correct something said in an earlier post:
Hungarian has a number of loanwords from Slavic, but the Slavic
influence on Hungarian is not at all comparable to the French
influence on English.

Enough--let's get back to Nahuatl.

Jim Rader



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