FW: [SEELANGS] pronun. of "Medvedev" (cont.)

[Martin Votruba]

> closest hand tended to adopt euphemisms.  Hence the Indo-European
> form doesn't show up in Slavic (honey-knower) or Germanic (various
> relatives of 'the brown one', such as English 'bear') and much of
> Celtic.

I remember reading this on several occasions.  There's a difference, 
though, between the Celts and the separate-parallel Baltic, Slavic, 
and Germanic development.  The Celts who don't have the ancient 
hrtko- (Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Manx) borrowed the Germanic word 
(as bearach/berach, bear) rather than develop a symbolic name of 
their own.  The non-Indo-European Ugrics did the same in Central 
Europe -- Hungarian has _medve_ from Slavic.

Welsh (arth), Breton (arzh) and some of what Celtic can be traced in 
Spain, I think, use the Indo-European root for "bear."


Martin

votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu

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