[Lexicog] A prototypical blessing

[Kenneth C. Hill]

Spanish provides another pair of examples with origins in blessings:
¡hola! for arrival and ¡adiós! for leave-taking. ¡Hola! comes from the
Arabic wa-lla:h 'por Dios' ['by God'] according to the Spanish Academy and
¡adiós! is transparently from a Dios 'to God'.

Uto-Aztecan languages generally seem to lack special greeting terms. In
both Nahuatl and Hopi a typical greeting is 'you've arrived'. In Serrano
(southern California Uto-Aztecan), the stereotype greeting seems to have
been hamina-t 'how?' and the people were sometimes referred to as haminat.
This would be sort of like referring to the French as the bon jour people.

Ken Hill

--- Wayne Leman <wayne_leman at sil.org> wrote:
> Etymologically, yes, but lexically (synchronically), no. It's just a
> leave-taking, of course, today, with no idea of a blessing or reference
> to any deity.
>
> Wayne Leman
> Cheyenne project
>
> > >
> > English "Goodbye" is of course a shortened blessing: "God be with
> you".
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Peter Kirk
>
>



	
		
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