Re: It may pay off just yet

Barry Garcia wrote:
>Well, i was looking at a page of masculine names in Arabic (to look up
>what 'id meant (festival), and i found these words:
>
>bashir - bringer of glad
>bashshar - bringer of many glad tidings
>bishr - joy
>bushr - joy, happiness
>
Well now, that's interesting (a Hebrew form was also cited);  so now I'd
suspect the direction of borrowing was Arabic (perhaps via Persian) > India
> Indonesia, sometime in the period 1-800 C.E.   That would account for the
/tS/ of Old Jav/Indon. bicara, which seems odd as a direct reflex of Arab.
/S/.

Even in the days of the Roman Empire, there was a flourishing land/sea-trade
network, in which Arabs were the first/last link, reaching as far as SE
Asia, perhaps even to Chinese ports.