Thl- vs. Fl-

[Guenther Ramm]

First, thanks a lot for drawing attention to D'Alquen and his idea of the Gothic digraphs. For me, the view on those “earlier” borrowings (where Greek /e/ and /o/ are “gothicised” into /i/ resp. /u/) as reflexes of phonetic peculiarities of the Wulfilan dialect (if I understood it correctly) was especially enlightening. I guess it would also help to explain why the loanwords of the Greek second declension with -os in Nom. Sg. so regularly go after the Gothic u-stems. Btw, is of any effect for the topic that old opinion that a good deal of these “narrow” spellings could be results of a pseudo-etymological interpretation? - that, e.g. -i- in Makidonja was seen as a stem vowel (popularly “dismembered” in Maki-donja), -i- in aggilus as a part of the suffix -il- etc.? Cf. the seemingly deliberate rendering of Greek bEthleem as bethlahaim, where the first epsilon > a (quasi a stem vowel of the first element in the compositum), and the second > ai (a diphthong after the Germanic
 place-names on -haim). What this bethla- could mean then?
  To the supposed confusion of the letters *faihu and *thiuth. Reading Jordanes long ago I noticed the name Safrac (Get. 134, one of Ostrogothic “primates”), mentioned also as Saphrax by Ammianus Marcellinus and Zosimus. The name itself is most probably of Alano-Iranian descent (as so many Getica names ending on -ac are). I am almost sure that I was not the first to make the following supposition, but evidently I had missed the proper literature. In short, I supposed that all the above-mentioned authors, successively or independently of each other, somehow took this name from a written Gothic source (maybe the same source where Gapt-Gaut came from), where it stood as *Sathrak(s) < Iranian *Xshathraka- “a powerful one” from Avestan xshathra- = Sanskrit kshatra- “power”, “strength” etc. If anyone knows whether this or some other etymology of the name has already been proposed I would greatly appreciate the reference. If this one is true, then here is another case of the
 involuntary letter replacement caused by graphical likeness (of course if we accept that Gothic [f] could ever be written with a phi-like sign).
  What concerns our fl-/thl-, so as I understood there are etymologies assuming both PIE pl- and PIE tl- for one and the same root, aren’t there? Rather typical situation for etymologists :) Apart from the graphical question I like most the idea that thl- be a later and limited (both temporally and territorially) development, and
  > that the assimilative change fl > þl was
  > conditioned by certain following velar consonants (Krause & Slocum
  > 2006), h, and in one instance q, though not k.,
  even though
  > the rule isn't consistently applied: flahtom `plaits', dat.pl.
   
  Ualarauans


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