Etymology of Prague? - maybe responses to this should go off the list - maybe to the ...

[Robert Orr]

Indo-European list ....?

>Am I correct in understanding that you propose that Cz Praha would
>have been borrowed through a Germanic intermediary? ("...if Slavic
>borrowed it at a later stage after the Germanic consonant shift...") I
don't
>think this is what Paliga was suggesting, nor would I propose such a
>thing. And since we don't know anything about how the "Old European"
>initial consonant was pronounced, we can only surmise that it eventually
>came to be pronounced as *p- by the time the Slavs heard it (from
>Celts?).

But before we do move the discussion, Celtic would have gone through an IE
*p-less phase (Slavic *p- Germanic  *f- Celtic zero, cf.  Russ plyt'
English flood Gaelic luath, to take a simple example, and therefore
attributing Celtic influence to the modern form "Praga/Praha" should be done
with great care.  Discussion taking this "great care" could move to the IE
list)


Robert Orr

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