CHAT: Citrons (was: Danny Wier's PIE (was: Vocab #5))

On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 23:54:21 -0000 Lars Henrik Mathiesen
<thorinn@...> writes:
> That site also claims that the original Sukkot fruit was that of
> the
> cedar tree, and that its name (Hebrew hadar > Greek kedros > Latin
> cedrus) was changed somehow to give Latin citrus, presumably
> because
> of this identification. Not implausible, but I would want to check
> that with other sources before I trusted it too much.
> Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour
> NOT marked)
-

That doesn't make sense....
"cedar" in Hebrew is |erez|
"citron" is |etrog|, referred to indirectly in the Torah as |pri `eitz
hadar|, "fruit of the beautiful tree".
And the claim that citrons are only used by European Jews is factually
incorrect... etrogim are used by everyone.  Yemenite citrons may be twice
the size as everyone else's, but they're still citrons and not whatever
fruit grows on cedars - if cedars have fruits at all.
So unless that website is claiming that the Greeks and/or Latins couldn't
tell the difference between a citron tree and a cedar tree, it sounds
like pretty shady research.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "meep."

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