Dutch Treat (1885)

[Mark A Mandel]

On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, James A. Landau wrote:

#(Incidentally, I'm not saying that the Arabic word BRBR is from Greek, but
#Arabia had Greek-speaking neighbors in the Fertile Crescent from the days of
#Alexander the Great until the Islamic conquest of the Fertile Crescent, which
#was nine or ten centuries, so the Greek word could have travelled into Arabia
#during that time.)

Is "babble" < Greek? How about "Babel" in Genesis, as an assonance or
folk etymology with (the city-name we know as) "Babylon"? The prima
facie evidence for onomatopoeia seems fairly good. How widespread is
this one worldwide?

-- Mark A. Mandel