Some questions for you who might know

Sat May 13 06:13:32 UTC 2006

Hails, Frithureik!
  Don’t you forget aiza-smitha which translates Greek CALKEUS with a certain reference to a metal?
  About “period”. I don’t know whether Koebler had sufficient reasons to postulate *era and *stunda as possible existent Gothic words. The first could easily be a misspelling (and a typical one for Middle Latin) in the Latin-written Lex and Chronica Regum Visigothorum (I must confess I did not see these primary sources) of the ordinary Latin aera and so have nothing to do with Gothic. If borrowed maybe it would rather look like *aira (cf. kaisar < Caesar, but at the same time there is Kreks < Graecus)? Btw, is there any rule of reflecting Latin –ae- / Greek –ai- in Gothic depending on chronology and the way (oral or scribal) of borrowing? I wonder if it could be connected with that discussion on the phonetic value of Gothic digraphs we had here lately.
  The second (*stunda) is based on Provencal estona, but are we quite sure that all earlier Germanic loans in Provencal and Ibero-Romance are unexceptionally to be ascribed to Visigoths? Could not some of them come e.g. via Old French ultimately from Frankish or Old Low German?
  If I were asked about a word for “period”, so of the attested words I would prefer hveila and, if constructed, something like *hveilalaggei “a definite length of time” – we have these stems used together in a sort of a stable combination Mk. 2:19 swa lagga hveila swe mith sis haband bruthfad, ni magun fastan – in a sense “in the period of the presence of the bridegroom
”, Rom. 7:1 s<wa> lagga hveila swe libaith – “in the period of his life on earth”.
  Another word-monster of mine is *hveiladrauhsna, but that must be a very short period:)
  To say “in the period of the cold war” could be something like: swa lagga hveila swe waihun inuh wepna, lit. “as long as they (who? – *Airminareiki and *Raudareiki?) fought each other without (using their) weapons” (pity we have no dual in the 3rd person). Or, with a more modern syntax, “[at] hveilalaggein waihjons thizos kaldons”.
  Here I’d like to ask what would be a Gothic word to precisely denote “war”. I mean “war” (bellum, polemos), and not a fight (waihjo) or military service (drauhtinassus). Maybe it could be *unfrithus (after ON ófriðr) or even ungawairthi (with implicit hue of something un-worthy). How they called a period (hvaiwa tho hveilalaggein haihaitun) when their current peace treaty with the Roman Empire expired or was broken and there was again time to cross the Danube, to rob and rape? And how we would call now, for example, the WWII? Anthar Unfrithus this Airmingrundaus (just to keep the vowel alliteration, for *airmingrundus cf. OE eormengrund et sim.)? And, is Alabrunsts really an appropriate word for the Holocaust?
  The problem with the Rhine, I think, is its gender: masculine in German and neutral in ON. Latin Rhenus comes perhaps not directly from Gaulish, but through Greek to which it owes initial Rh-, or maybe it’s a later orthographic influence (like in English and German). The fact is that the Celtic and the Germanic forms are two independent developments of the same PIE river name *reinos (Celtic regularly has long [e:] for PIE diphthong [ei]): *Renos and *Reinaz, later *Riinaz respectively. The proto-meaning could be something like “flowing (water)” (the same root PIE rei- “to flow” in Lat. riuus > NE river, the difference is only in suffixes: *reinos - *reiwos).
  Still, *Rein or *Reins? I would vote for the latter (masculine).
  Of other rivers in Europe we can with some grade of certainty reconstruct *Donawi F. -jo (Gen. Donaujos) for the Danube proceeding from OHG Tuoniouui and Common Slav borrowing Dunavъ. Btw it also seems an originally Celtic word, and in this case Germanic forms seem to be borrowed from Celtic *Danuvios, where long [a:] of the first syllable goes regularly to long Germanic [o:], and the suffix –uvio- is adopted as a typical Germanic river name *agwjo.
  As you know, the Rhine and the Danube were two principal rivers that divided Pax Romana and Barbaricum. Notice that the Rhine is (most probably) male and the Danube female – could there be some mythological background of this gender distribution? A myth of brother and sister running away from parents home (their sources are comparatively close to each other) and from each other after having committed incest (an Indo-European mythological pattern)? Well, that’s all my fancy, but we have here experts on mythology, maybe they know some about it?
  Another German river is the Elbe, which is Albis in Latin < Celtic and *Albiz in PG, literally “the white (river)”. In ON we have quite a common noun elfr “river” and a lot of hydronyms in Sweden ending on –aelven. In fact, that’s a perfect “river-word” for reconstructed Gothic. The form would be Alfs F. –i (Gen. Albais) and in compounds like *Austradalalfs for Swedish Oesterdalaelven (-en is a reflex of the post-positive article?).
  Jordanes has uiscla alongside with Vistula and it is supposed to be corrupted Gothic. Is it *Weisla, or *Weihsla (to the stem weih- “holy” or weihs “village”)?
  “Dan ok Danpr” of the Edda (Rígsþula 48) allow us to speculate what Gothic names of Don and Dnepr were. *Danus jah *Danaprus? Both have the same IE root as the Danube.
  The river flowing through Prague (Czech Republic) had a German name Moldau (Chech Vltava). Could it be *Muldawi (the same word which you proposed for Moldova, this latter was also called Moldau in German). Or maybe *Wulthawi “a glorious river” (see Vltava)?
  To continue I must get a map of Europe at hand.
  Still thinking on “China”

  Ualarauans

Fredrik <gadrauhts at hotmail.com> wrote:  So what you're saying is that the only attested meaning is 'money'.
And only by comparison with other languages we can suppose the 
meaning also could be brass, bronze and copper.
Is the meaning metal not an option?

I was in a hurry before so I forgot some of my questions so here are 
some of those:

I need a word for period, and have a suggestion.
I know there are some attested words already but maybe not in exactly 
this meaning.
We have mêl, hveila, stunda and era.
Era btw semms to be cognate to ore, aiz and aes.
I don't wanna use era coz it's a loan word.
Some of the other might work but what about teiþs (i-stem).
The pgcm word tîðiz I think means 'division of time' or 'point or 
portion of time'. This is similar to the meaning period I think.
What I mean by period is a specific part of the time. Like the cold 
war was a period of the 20th century.

I also wanna know if there are any attested word for the rivers in 
Europe. Especially any for Rhine?
If not attested could it have been smth like Rein?
The word comes from gaulish Renos so the extra h, is that from the 
latin form Rhenus?

What about the word watô in compound words?
Some one gave a suggestion for nominative as namnadrusts.
If namô makes namna- then watô should make watna-.
So e.g. lack of water = watnawan (or wan watins).

/Fredrik

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