I just hope your readers appreciate how highly speculative all that Nostratic stuff is. I am more skeptical about it than I was when I wrote that draft of "Distant Cousins." The original statistical study on Nostratic, done by Dolgopolsky in 1964, shows so many similarities among certain words with meanings that are rarely borrowed or changed (such as first and second person pronouns, and words for "lice") that I think there is likely to be something to the Nostratic hypothesis. However, as far as I can tell, more comprehensive collections of Nostratic roots, such as those in Illyich-Svytich's Nostratic dictionary which was my source for the examples you quoted, did not use any rigorous statistical test in choosing the words to include. So I suspect that the great majority of those Nostratic roots, but probably not all of them, are just coincidences. And this is even more true for my own speculations, which you quoted, about possible relations between different Nostratic roots listed by Illyich-Svytich.
Dave:-
In the Tanak, Yermiyahu 14:8 the word 'miq'veh' is rendered as 'hope'. In Bereshith 1:9 'yiqavu' means: "let them gather" in the context of water. The sages were no dummies when they coined the word 'miq'veh' meaning: "40 Seah of Mayim Chayim." Ritual immersion is the means by which the Northern House of Yis'roel would be gathered and enfranchised once again. In a similar pattern 'bul' meanis 'rain,' whilst 'mabul' is the 'great flood' caused by '40 (days) of rain.'
As to some other interesting cognates in your article--how about: cap, cappa, kappa, chief, chef, chieftan, captain, chapeau, kopf?
Mike -
I agree that there could be coincidence at almost every step here. It could be one that both IE and Semitic languages took velar plosive + bilabial plosive as the root for "to bend".
Of course if this is the case, that doesn't discount the possibility of influence from one language to another - as I think was likely with cove / alcove.
Bartalmei Limetree - There were plenty of related cognates that I didn't mention, including the ones you asked about. Let's just say that I reserve the right to write about them in the future...
Dave, have you considered using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)?
"As to some other interesting cognates in your article--how about: cap, cappa, kappa, chief, chef, chieftan, captain, chapeau, kopf?"
Not to mention: kapo
As far as the IPA, I admit that my spelling is less than standard. I'm mostly focused on making it easy to read for the average reader.
As long as I stay "amateur", I think it's OK. If I ever go pro, I'll need to come up with some standard spelling scheme...
Dave-
Your excellent comment on the comparison of encountering ambiguity when searching for the roots in geneaology, to that of the same in etymology, is reinforced in the Talmud, in the story of Abba bar Abba the father of Shmuel. And your Idea is repeated in the conclusion of the following article.
http://randysmusings.blogspot.co...-pat-
boone.html
Dave-
Have an interest in genealogy as well. One of my patriarchs was christened in ev. Kirche Hoff on the Baltic Sea. However the origial and ancient church that he was baptized in, now lies in ruins because of reclamation by the sea. Interestingly, the Kirche was built on what appeares to be a high cliff. And is today a tourist's attraction:
http://www.cammin-pommern.de/Kir...piel%
20Hoff.htm
http://www.ostsee-urlaub-
polen.d...rzesac_hoff.htm
" As far as the IPA, I admit that my spelling is less than standard. I'm mostly focused on making it easy to read for the average reader.
As long as I stay "amateur", I think it's OK. If I ever go pro, I'll need to come up with some standard spelling scheme..."
Dave,
There are sights that have the IPA with pronunciations for each symbol. You could provide a link for readers that don't know how to read it.
I have a B.A. in Linguistics. What experience do you have? You seem to be too aware of the errors of "folk etymology" to be considered simply "amateur".
The word Kupa in Hebrew is the clearly borrowed word you were referring to?
Yochanan -
Why don't you take a sample of something I wrote, and transcribe it with IPA, and I (and others) can see how readable it is.
My only experience is a long interest in both Hebrew and etymology. I hope that not only professionals can avoid those kinds of errors!
Mottel -
I was thinking of kubia, but kupah works as well.
on an unrelated topic, my websters traces cinnamon back to קנמן?
jɔxanan: or is it jɔħanan? johanan? Even someone with a BA in linguistics may be an amateur, and any linguist should hope that even amateurs have the sense to distinguish folk etymology. Since this blog opened, Dave has certainly increased his linguistic knowledge visibly, and gives some great insights, but I agree that he is still doing this as an amateur, and his audience even more so are not academics and should not be treated to something they'll run away from.
But I will also challenge you on a technical level. I am not certain what you want transcribed in IPA, but IPA is made for transcription of sounds. The language that we are discussing here is not one of sounds, and it would be very difficult to produce consensus on what IPA symbols should represent which letters in which contexts. The Society for Biblical Literature's (SBL) transcription standard is not IPA, partially for historical reasons, and yet largely because the concept of phonetic transcription is more or less irrelevant here. The Hebrew, at least, is best written and most widely understood when in Hebrew letters, except when a distinction is needed between variant early pronunciations of ח, ע, צ, etc, in which case SBL standards, IPA, possibly Arabic, or mere description of phoneme articulation are pertinent.
Nor is it Balashon's place to force its readers to learn IPA, especially when most readers won't know what "velar", "pharyngeal" or "plosive" mean.
Regarding the concept of transliteration: The very fact that transliteration is even possible at all--points us to a singular kernel Alef-Bet from whence sprouted most other (if not all) Alpha-Bets. Transliteration standards are moot at best. Transliteration is an art! Oft times Anglophones (myself included) use the German (Yiddish perhaps) pronunciation of the Latin Alpha-Bet, despite our english sprechen.
Commenting by HaloScan
