Re: mora

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 17:39:22 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 02:07:24PM -0700, Emily Zilch wrote:
>> i have a linguistic-technical question: i learned that the plural of
>> mora is 'mora' - that it is a native japanese word - when i was
>> learning japanese. you could say 'moras' because that would be normal
>> english (though i'd be more likely, contrarian that i am, to say meren
>> or something similarly irregular - anyone know the cases of earliest
>> Middle English?).
>
> All my references say that the word "mora" is from the Latin word for
> "delay" or "pause".  Unlike the case with many other words, the AHD
> doesn't trace it back to a PIE root, but M-W gives at least one cognate
> in another IE language: Old Irish "maraid" = "it lasts".
The AHD's separate book of IE roots puts it under *merH2- "hinder, delay"
(Pokorny (s)mer-).


	*Muke!
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