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 Post subject: Re: Altan
PostPosted: Wed 14 Aug 2013 8:44 pm 
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CaoimhínSF wrote:
Quote:
I don't think Turkish is Indo-European, but Indo-European languages were to be found in what is today modern Turkey


Turkish is part of the Turkic family of languages, from Central/East Asia. It made its way to modern Turkey long after Roman times, where the Turkish speakers came up against (and eventually overwhelmed) the Byzantine Empire and supplanted the Greek language there (though not finally until the 1920's, when most of the last Greek speakers were driven out by the Turks). "Turkish" is used to refer to the language of Turkey itself, and "Turkic" for the language family of which it is a part. Most of the Turkic languages are still fairly close to one another, even though they are spoken from Turkey all the way to China. They separated from one another much more recently than many of the Indo-European languages did.

There were Celtic-speaking tribes who made their way east about 3 centuries BC, through Greek-speaking territory (which is when the Greeks gave them the name "Keltoi", based on what the Greeks heard them call themselves). Some of them eventually made their way to what is the central part of modern Turkey, where they founded a kingdom eventually called Galatia, with its capital at Ancyra (the modern day Turkish capital, Ankara, is its successor).

These were the people to whom the Apostle Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians, found in the New Testament, and they were apparently still speaking a Celtic language at that time (the epistle was written in Greek, of course, and most of them would probably also have spoken Greek by then). There are records of their Celtic language surviving into the 4th or 5th century AD, but not after that. They would probably all have become Greek speaking before the Turks made it to the area, though some of them might have been absorbed into other language groups, such as the Armenians or the Kurds who lived further east in what is now Turkey (both Armenian and Kurdish are also Indo-European languages). There would have been little or no continuing contact between the Galatians and Celts much further west, mainly because the Slavs later came into the Balkans and cut them off from the west, so there would have been no conduit for transferring Turkish/Turkic westwards through Celtic channels.

There are theories which might tie the Indo-European languages to the Turkic languages, but they are disputed and the break would have happened way before 5,000 BC, presumably somewhere in Central Asia. One theory posits that it happened after the ice started to melt in the last ice age, and related peoples in Central Asia were separated by a huge lake which developed, with the people on either side of the lake having separate language development from then on, until coming back into contact in modern times. It's just a theory, though.


Very interesting Caoimhín, thanks for the clarification!

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 Post subject: Re: Altan
PostPosted: Thu 15 Aug 2013 5:43 pm 
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An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

Aer Lingus is Old Irish, lingus comes from the verb lingid meaning to jump/ leap. Aer Lingus means "sky jumper"


'Lingus' is supposed to be an anglicised form of 'loingeas' (= fleet), to make it more user-friendly for non-Irish speakers. I must say I prefer your version, Cian :D


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 Post subject: Re: Altan
PostPosted: Thu 15 Aug 2013 7:12 pm 
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Errigal wrote:
An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

Aer Lingus is Old Irish, lingus comes from the verb lingid meaning to jump/ leap. Aer Lingus means "sky jumper"


'Lingus' is supposed to be an anglicised form of 'loingeas' (= fleet), to make it more user-friendly for non-Irish speakers. I must say I prefer your version, Cian :D


Hmm that puts a different spin on things. I should have checked my facts first, sorry 'bout that Errigal :) !

According Aer Lingus's website "Its name is derived from the Irish 'long' meaning 'ship' and is therefore translated as 'Air Fleet'." http://corporate.aerlingus.com/companyprofile/history/

and wikipedia has

"The name Aer Lingus is an anglicisation of the Irish form Aer Loingeas, which means Air Fleet. The name was proposed by Richard F O'Connor, who was County Cork Surveyor, as well as an aviation enthusiast. Aer Lingus was originally pronounced 'air ling-us' (as the Irish Aer Loingeas is pronounced) and only later did the pronunciation change to the 'air ling-gus' used now."

I previously heard that Lingus was derived from lingid as you can see there is a derivative:

http://www.dil.ie/results-list.asp?mode ... =10&bhcp=1

I did not question it as it seemed to fit the context but Aer Loingeas seems to make more sense. Regardless, I am sad to see the Anglicisation/ bastardisation of the Irish version.

Cian

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 Post subject: Re: Altan
PostPosted: Thu 15 Aug 2013 11:52 pm 
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But lingus would mean "I jumped", right? not jumper. Btw I don't think the founder of the company would have chosen an Old Irish name :)

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 Post subject: Re: Altan
PostPosted: Sat 17 Aug 2013 11:52 pm 
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Thanks for the information, especially An Cionnfhaolach's last contribution, which contains lots of referenced info.

An Cionnfhaolach: "These words are probably related to Lat. altus 'high', OHG alt 'old'"

So it is present in similar forms in all three languages - Irish, Latin and Old High German and it is "probably related" to them, rather than necessarily descended directly from either of the others. You've shown that it has other related Irish words, so it does appear to be a truly Irish word, rather than a recent loan word from another language. Thus it is possible that the word predates all three languages, yes?

CaoimhínSF "the break would have happened way before 5,000 BC"

That would fit with an earlier shared origin of the word. So far everything's lining up with that.


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 Post subject: Re: Altan
PostPosted: Sat 17 Aug 2013 11:55 pm 
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I mean An Cionnfhaolach's etymology post. Ugh, is there no way to edit these posts?


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 Post subject: Re: Altan
PostPosted: Sun 18 Aug 2013 3:20 pm 
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horseman wrote:
I mean An Cionnfhaolach's etymology post. Ugh, is there no way to edit these posts?


Once you get to 10 posts you will have editing privileges. New members are on a trial period, but you're almost there! ;)

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 Post subject: Re: Altan
PostPosted: Sun 18 Aug 2013 4:55 pm 
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Thanks Pennyrat!

@An Cionnfhaolach, thanks again for the Old High German connection. I looked into that and found that altan does indeed trace back to a pre-Latin Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root word shared by many, perhaps all, Indo-European languages: altós. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alt#German)

"altós = high" (Proto-Indo-European dictionary-translator, http://indo-european.info/dictionary-tr ... alt%C3%B3s)

I'm satisfied with the accuracy of that, as it fits with everything else we've found thus far and my hypothesis.

There are 2 remaining questions:

1) Does altós trace back even farther to Proto-Eurasian aka Eurasiatic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasiatic_languages, http://www.dw.de/indo-european-language ... a-16796900, http://www.pnas.org/content/110/21/8471) and could that explain the existence of "altan" and "altai" in Altaic languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages) like Turkic and Mongolic?
2) Why did this word survive for so many thousands of years in many languages? Is it just that high and its variants are common root words, or is there any more to it than that?


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