Spanish/English Words w/Nahuatl Origin

[Joost Kremers]

At 05:15 1-12-99 -0700, you wrote:
>
>According to the diccionary of the Real Academia Espanola,  "gis" comes from
>the Latin "gypsum".
>
>On the other side, in Italian it is "gesso", and in the De Agostini Italian
>dictionary it says that it comes from the Greek "gypsos".

"gypsum" is certainly not originally latin: the letter 'y' is a greek
letter. the word was probably adopted in latin from the greek, as were so
many words. (i don't see why a greek word ending in -os should be changed
to -um in latin, though. but i checked the forms, and they are correct.)

>In Portuguese it is "giz", but I can't find the etimology.
>
>In French it is "craie", so no connection.
>
>so?
>
>As for Arabic, some of the words for "chalk" are "tabashir", "halak",
>"hawara" but also "karbonat al-kas" (charcoal cup).

(modern?) arabic also has the words `jibs' and `jaSS' (with emphatic ss)
for `chalk' or `gypsum'.

joost kremers

-------------------------------------------------------
Joost Kremers
University of Nijmegen - The Netherlands
Department of Languages and Cultures of the Middle-East
PO Box 9103
6500 HD Nijmegen - The Netherlands
phone: +31 24 3612996
fax: +31 24 3611972