🚀 go-pugleaf

In-Reply-To: <1993Jan12.015709.23457@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)

> In article <memo.854872@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix (Peter Christian) writes:
> >In-Reply-To: <1993Jan8.002108.20583@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@cisco.com (Rich 
Alderson)
>               .
                .
> >Also Latin lupus, though the Oxford Etymological Dictionary says this is a
> >dialect form. (I thought they *all* were!)
> 
> Ah, but Latin has clearly borrowed from one or more dialects and languages in
> its surroundings:  Compare, for example, the expected ruber "red" < *Xrudhros
> (cf. Skt. rudhra-, Gk. eruthros) with the personal name Rufus "red-beard."

That wasn't what I was getting at. I was trying to draw attention to
the ideology of this (very august) etymologist (Onions), who was
using the idea of a dialect form in a way that is appropriate to a
modern standardized language, but less obviously so to Latin -
particularly since the centrality of the wolf in Roman mythology
suggests the borrowing occurred in an early period when Latin had a
status barely different from neighbouring dialects.

Peter
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Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
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