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Re: Carthage?

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 1, 2004, 7:02
On Tuesday, November 30, 2004, at 02:25 , Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>: > >> ** Latin _Carthaginienses_ referred either to the inhabitants of _Nouua >> Carthago_ (New Carthage) in Spain > > Shouldn't that be "Noua Carthago" with only one 'u'?
Yes.
> Also, is it known what the 'th' is doing in _Carthago_? An aspirate? A > cluster?
I guess educated Romans pronounced it [t_h] or even [th] (if they were careful), but the common pronunciation of the Classical & post-Classical is more likely to have been [t]. Earlier spellings were in fact _Kartago_ and _Karthago_. The Greek version of the name was _Karkhe:do:n_. I imagine the Doric (and original) form would have been _Karkha:do:n_ but AFAIK it is not actually attested. There seems to have been a metathesis of dental~ velar sound in the Latin & Greek versions. Both the Latin & the Greek names were of course ultimately derived from the Punic name which simply meant "new city" (nea polis) which I think is something like q-r-t H-d-S-t (hopefully Steg and/or Isaac will put me right :) "istam urbem Carthadam Elissa dixit, quod Phoenicum ore exprimit Ciuitatem Nouam" (Elissa [Dido] called this town 'Carthada', which in the speech of the Phoenicians expresses 'New City') Gaius Julius Solinus - gammarian of the mid 3rd cent CE The observant will doubtless notice some words have changed their meanings a little since the Classical period (1st centuries BCE & CE :) =============================================== Wow - I didn't even have wait! On Tuesday, November 30, 2004, at 05:44 , Steg Belsky wrote: [snip]
> I don't know how the Romans pronounced it, but it seems to have > originally been a cluster, something like */k>art X\adaSt/ "new city", > cognate to Hebrew /k>eret X\adaSa/.
Thanks. So it would seem that the Latin _th_ was for /tX\/ - it would still be pronounced as I said above. It looks as tho the assimilation has occurred in the Greek: /tX\/ --> */kX\ / --> /kh/. But it does suggest I was right about the earlier Greek form being _Karka:do:n_. They seem to have given up on -aSt. But why they substituted -o:n I doubt even Zeus & Olympians knew. The Latin name I suspect is a conflation of Punic, Greek & confusion :) Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com =============================================== Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]