Hi Yetos
Thanks for this. It is good to get an opinion of a native speaker. The Balkan language i am talking about predates the arrival of Greeks to the Balkan. So I am not surprised to find these words in Greek.
I have this correspondence with someone regarding my last post on another thread. I believe it is worth posting it here as well.
hi Garry
Thanks for your help and suggestions.
I think you are indulging in a little etymological shoe-horning in order to forge a connection between Irish and Serbian words that may not exist.
I like how shoehorning sounds in this context
Just few clarifications:
péac ón áibhirseoir = 'limb of Satan'
This is not my interpretation. I found it in Focloir Gaeilge-Bearla/Irish-English Dictionary as one of the phrases where the word péac is used. Now from this i deduced, and maybe i am wrong, that péac can also mean a sheep or goat or cow limlb (cloven hoof). I hope this makes things a little clearer about this etymology. By the way i recommend the dictionary it is excellent.
This seems to be based upon MacBain again. His etymological dictionary refers to Scottish Gaelic, not Irish.
I try to consult as many sources relating to both Irish and Scottish Gaelic. I do that because some old (Celtic Serbian Irish) words were preserved better in Scotland than in Ireland. In Ireland they were sometimes gaelicised almost beyond recognition.
The Irish for sheep is caora or caorach. It has nothing to do with 'ba'.
Agreed, never claimed that the Irish word for sheep is ba. I said that it might have been. In modern Serbian the word for sheep is ovca, but in old Serbian we find brav or b(a)rav. The reason why i suggested the existence of word "ba" is because from what i have found so far all the major domestic and wild animals in Serbian have onomatopoeic names. So sheep would be "baaaa" or "baeee" or "beee". Why do i think that people originally used characteristic sounds of animals as their names? Because we are talking the beginning of the language. There were no words, yet people wanted to communicate and pass a message. In case of sheep, the message was simple: Look there is a sheep! Except that they did not have a word for sheep and even if someone decided to call a sheep a sheep, he had no way of explaining to the others what sheep is, because there was no language yet. But everyone have seen a sheep, and have heard a sheep. So if you imitate the sound of a sheep, everyone knows what you are talking about. So "baaa" or "ba" conveys the message: "look there is a sheep" perfectly and simply. Later on people invented other words for sheep, but that was much later when they had a language as means to associate these "sheep" words with "sheep" meaning.
In Irish and in Serbian we have similar onomatopoeic name for cow "bo". This comes from the actual sound of cows which is something between "mpbvooo", "mpbvoouu" "mpbvuuu". Here is a recording:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_EsxukdNXM
You can see that i have put "mpbv" at the beginning. "mpbv" it the undifferentiated sound created by opening your lips and blowing air out. You start with m then go to p then to b and at the very end you get v. This is exactly what you hear when you are listening to cows, and probably what people imitated when they wanted to tell each other that there is a cow somewhere around. Another reason why i put "mpbv" at the beginning of the word is because it is quite difficult to differentiate these sounds without proper training. This is why babies are "babbling", which means they are making "mpbv" sound until they acquire a sufficient control of their speech apparatus. Today this is relatively easy as we get a lot of this skill prepackaged in our genes through epigenetic inheritances, although not everyone gets the same genes and this is why we have languages that sound different. But at the beginning of the language development, people were still trying to learn how to control their mouths to make differentiated sounds and this is why i believe they used "mpbv" sound in "mpbvaaa" or "mpbvoo". This is also the reason why we have words like this:
bó (Irish) - cow
vo (Serbian) - cow, or castrated bull, or bull used for agricultural activities and not for mating (cattle).
but we also have all these other bo (vo) related words in Serbian which don't exist in Irish:
bo - stab
bosti - to stab
ubo - stabbed
bodež - knife
But also this:
A boyar, or bolyar (Bulgarian: боляр or болярин; Ukrainian: буй or боярин; Russian: боя́рин, tr. boyarin; IPA: [bɐˈjarʲɪn]; Romanian: boier [boˈjer] (help·info); Greek: βογιάρος), was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Bulgarian, Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes (in Bulgaria, tsars), from the 10th century to the 17th century. The rank has lived on as a surname in Russia, Romania, and Finland, where it is spelt Pajari.[1]
Etymology
The word is likely derived from the plural form of the Bulgarian title boila ("noble"), bolyare, which is attested in Bulgar inscriptions[2][3] and rendered as boilades or boliades in the Greek of Byzantine documents.[4][5] Its ultimate derivation is probably from the Turkic roots bai ("noble, rich"; cf. "bey") and är ("man, men").[4] Another possible etymology of the term it may come from the Romanian word "boi" (bulls); a rich man is an owner of bulls or "boier".[6] The title entered Old Russian as быля (bylya)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyar
Let me suggest alternative etymology which corresponds with already proposed romanian one. Tho word Boyar comes from bó + àire = cow (cattle) + lord. We actially find bó àire in Irish texts describing the Iron age proliferation of ring forts, where each ring fort was owned by a bóàire or a cattle lord. This title was imposed on the Eastern Slavs during the process of merging of the Central European Celts (Western Slavs) and the Rus (Eastern Slavs). Remember how Dumha means tumulus in Irish, but also a place of councils, parliament in Russian. In old Ireland tumuluses were used as places of tribal councils and parliaments where kings were elected for instance. In Brega one of the tumuluses was actually converted into a royal fort. This merging of Celts and Russ basically meant that Celtic (Serbian, west Slavic) military elite became ruling caste of the Russ. This process was described in "The book of Veles" a much disputed ancient Slavic manuscript, but which i believe to be based on actual histories because i found in it things that could not have been invented in 19th or 20th century as the knowledge necessary to forge these things did not exist at the time. From that period of merging we have these words as well:
Mol, Moladh (Irish). Meanings
commend(vt)
commend(vt)
hub(n m1)(of wheel)
nominate(vt)(propose)
propose(vt)
praise(vt)
recommend(vt)
suggest(vt)
Mol, Molba (Serbian). Meanings
Praise
Beg
Plead
Suggest
Mol-im te bože - I beg you, I praise you god
Mol-ba Pleading
Mol-io bih - If i could suggest
Moladjec (Molad je (e) - c) - recommended is - a commendation given to a someone
Badhan/badhún is derived from Medieval Irish for cattle (= ba) + fort (= dún). Your grassy hill (= cabhan) is based on the root word cab/cabha (= mouth/hollow/bend) which itself is related to Latin caberna (= hollow/cave/vault).
As for grassy hill (cabhan) i would suggest another etymology:
bán - white (like wool, or milk). Here i think you can see the old word bá + n as meaning that color which looks like things we get from the thing that says "bá". The word bán could have even been used to denote sheep as wee see here:
àire - attention, care, care, minister, lord
banair - sheep fold. Probably comes from banaire - place for caring, owning, keeping sheep.
Now these two words:
Cabhan = grassy hill
Gabhan - cattle pond. In serbian shepard is čoban, but shepard's hooded rain gown is kabanica (gabanica). Was the original word for shepard in Serbian Gaban?
I believe that they come from the same root: ga + ban = stick, spear, stake + sheep. This perfectly describes sheparding: you go to a grassy hill with your sheep and your stick or spear (ga) where you mind the sheep while they graze. Then you bring them to gaban or sheep, cattle pond where you milk them and protect them during the night. The person who carries a stick (ga) and is minding sheep (ba
) is gaban (shepard) and he wears gabanicu (hooded rain gown). Speaking of Badhan/badhún being derived from Medieval Irish for cattle (= ba) + fort (= dún), in Serbian we have another interesting word: katun (gadun). This word means shepards settlement in the mountains during summer grazing period. This comes from Ga (stake) and dun (which actually does not mean fort but enclosure). so Gadun is an enclosure made of stakes, ring fort.
We also have this word
Baodhan, baoghan - a calf.
http://archive.org/stream/gaelicnamesofbea00forbuoft/gaelicnamesofbea00forbuoft_djvu.txt
I actually believe that this word used to mean lamb as well or any cattle (cows, sheep) descendant. This comes from:
ba, bo (sheep, cow)
+
ogha - grandchild, Irish ó, ua, g. ui, a grandson, descendant,
http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb28.html#MB.O
so ba(o)oghan - a child of a sheep or cow
We also have this cluster of words:
Irish
bleagh - milk
bleachdair - milk man
bleoghainn - milking
agh - field, meadow
le - with, by
leagh (Scottish Gaelic) - melt, thaw, dissolve (in liquid) (make liquid)
leacht (Irish) - liquid
àire - attention, care, care, minister, lord
bleagh = ba + leacht (leagh) = ba + leak = baleak = (pronounced) blek (milk) - literally a liquid you can squeeze from this thing on the meadow which says ba.
bleachdair = ba + leacht (leagh) + àire = (pronounced) blek(d)ar - literally someone who cares for getting liquid squeezed from this thing on the meadow which says ba.
http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb04.html#blàthach
and
Focloir Gaeilge-Bearla/Irish-English Dictionary
Serbian
bleko = "mpbv"aleko = mleko (milk)
blekar = "mpbv"lekar - mlekar (milk man)
blekan = "mpbv"lekan - mlekan (made of milk, to milk)
Interestingly in Serbian we call sounding of sheep "ble". This probably comes from ba + le = sound produced by sheep...
Here we have another interesting word probably related to cattle (sheep, cows) but also women, which were in the olden days considered to be a property in the same way as cattle.
Ban, Bana - woman, girl, female. I think it is interesting how similar this is to Ba, Bo, Ban for sheep and cow. By the way in Bosnia there is a word "bona" which means woman.
Now in the olden days (I like this expression, i got it from Peppa pig which i watch with my son), bands of warriors used to go into cattle and women raids. The aim was to steal as much cattle or women from the enemy tribe. In Irish a group of men is called dáil. From this word we have gardáil from ga(r) (spear) + dáil (group of men) = men with spears.
So from ba
cattle, women and dáil (group of men) we have bandáil which is in modern Irish used to mean assembly of women (what ever that means) but originally probably had the meaning of "gang of men going to steal cattle and women". This is probably where word Vandal (bandail) comes from. Vandali, Bandali were probably just gangs of men from Central Europe on gian cattle and women raid. In Serbian and other languages we still have the word "banda" which means exactly that (a gang):
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/banda
This is just one of the words that entered Latin from this central European "Celtic" (Serbian, western Slavic) language.
While we are talking about cattle here are few more words which are the same in Serbian and Irish and is related to cattle:
tuar (Irish) - dung, manure, cattle field, sheep run
tor (Serbian) - sheep run
gùn (Irish) - gown, Irish gúna; from the English gown, from Welsh gwn (*gwun), from Celtic *vo-ouno-
gunj (Serbian) - gown made from wool (vuna is wool in Serbian)
http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb22.html
I think you are indulging in a little etymological shoe-horning in order to forge a connection between Irish and Serbian words that may not exist. I would be more amenable to your argument if you showed a better knowledge of the roots of Irish words.
How's this?
