abarca/abarka/alpargata

[maher, johnpeter]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Compare:

“... in October 1913, the Balkan League of Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and
Monte Negro, encouraged by Russia, declared war on Turkey. 
 In Belgrade,
Trotsky watched the 18th Serbian Infantry marching off to war in uniforms of
the new khaki color. They wore bark sandals and a sprig of green in their
caps
.”

Barbara W. Tuchman. 1966. The Proud Tower. A Portrait of the World before the
War. 1890-1914.Page 536.

Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> >> abarca "sandal" s. X < pre-rom. [c]
> >> rel. con vasco abarka; raíz de alpargata [sandal] [c]
> >> pre-Romance, Basque origin [abi, wje]
>
> >Basque <abarka> denotes a kind of rustic sandal, traditionally a soft
> >leather moccasin held on by a cord passed through holes in the sandal
> >and wrapped around the calf.  The word is very probably native, but
> >cannot be monomorphemic, with that plosive in the third syllable.
> >The favorite guess sees it as a formation involving <abar> `branch(es)'
> >and a noun-forming suffix <-ka>.  This is semantically awkward, and
> >seems to require that ancestral abarkas were made of foliage -- not very
> >comfortable, I would have thought.
>
>         maybe from cord made from pliable bark of branches? would that work?
>
> >Words of somewhat similar form and sense are found in Ibero-Romance and
> >in Iberian Arabic.  There has long been a debate as to just how all
> >these words are related.  Spanish <alpargata> appears to show the Arabic
> >article, but the Arabic word itself might be borrowed either from
> >Romance or from Basque.
>
>         The problem with <alpargata> is the /p/ which, of course, doesn't
> exist in Standard Arabic--but I don't whether Andalusian Arabic may have
> allowed it or not. There are words, though, with al-p- associated with
> Andalusian toponymy,etc.; e.g. the Alpujarras [sp?] and others that escape
> me now.
>         Maybe someone else can help explain this