[gothic-l] Re: Reconstructing "Breath"

[Anthony Appleyard]

  Manuel Gutierrez Algaba <algaba at gmx.net> escribió:-
> ... BTW, in Spanish we have the word :"alma", somehow "ahma" seems
> closer to it  than  the Latin "anima". 

That word {alma} likely comes from Latin {anima} via *{anma}, with a euphonic 
change of consonant to L, as in Spanish {arbol) = Latin {arbor} = French 
{arbre} = "tree". Not from Germanic.

It seems a bit strange that Common Indo-European couldn't settle on a standard 
word for something as vital and basic as breathing: OE {braeth}, German 
{Atemluft}, {Atmungsgerät}, Latin {spirare}, Greek {pneu-}, Sanskrit {an-}. 
Perhaps the IE root for "breath(e)" was {an-}, but many of its descendant 
languages decreed that it was too confusingly like the preposition {an} = "on" 
and changed it.


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