Re: Pablo is back, Job, Argentina, Relay, Lord of the Rings

On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 01:34:30AM -0500, Elliott Lash wrote:
>  Stephen Mulraney <ataltanie@...> writes:
>
> > "fiach dubh" /f'ax duv/ , '=palatalisation x=velar fric. voiceless.
I think that ought to be /f'i@x/ -- as /f'ax/ would be written <feach>

It's <fiach> /f'i-ax/ with two syllables in OI, and SG keeps the
hiatus writing it with an unhistorical (and silent) <th> : fitheach.
PIE /wisa:kos/ ??? -- That's a totally off-the-wall guess :)

> > Actually 'fiach' alone seems to mean 'raven', as in the phrase "comh
> > dubh leis an bhfiach"
I seem to remember a (Gaelic?) proverb along the lines of "Although the
raven is black, she still thinks her children beautiful"
Ged is dubh am fitheach ...

> > >  What language does
> > > Tolkien make this word come from?
>
> Why would he make it from any language? Although there are instances
> of INFLUENCE, he didn't MAKE his languages from any real world source.
> (Nit picking words I know! :)). Anyways, I'm going to ask the etymology
> of crebain (plural of carban? corban? anyone?), on the Elfling list,
> see if anyone over there knows. I can't find it in the Etymologies.
FWIW JRRT often used the form (but not the meaning) of Welsh words for
Sinderin words. There's a verb _crebachu_ meaning to shrivel up or wrinkle.
One way  of getting plurals in W. is by i-affection. This would give the
pair *craban ~ *crebain (< **krapani- or **krapanj-). I won't persue this
devrivation any further, although the words "from a great height" come to
mind for some strange reason ...

Ah, this might be relevant, ON hrafn, OHG hraban, so the Protogermanic
form would be something like /xraBnaz/ < PIE /krabnos/ or /krabanos/ or
if you fiddle the PIE accent so that Verner's Law applies then /xraB(a)naz/
could be from PIE /kra'panos/. Shunt that back up the track leading to
Welsh and you have _craban_ pl. _crebain_. In other words, assuming that
"raven" came from IE (which it may not, Germanic has a lot of non-IE
vocabulary), and assuming a certain position for the PIE stress, and
assuming the same word had survived in Welsh, then it would have been
_craban_. Quite a lot of "what-if-ing", but it feels Tolkeinesque to
me. What do the experts think?

> Elliott
Keith Mylchreest

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