Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"


me wrote:
Neeraj Mathur wrote:
"Holly" <noon_union@xxxxxxxxx> wrote ...

me wrote:
Holly wrote:
I read that the Dravidian word for fish "min" is the same sound as
their word for star; therefore they use the fish pictogram with other
pictograms when writing about a star.

Dravidians don't use pictograms and use [mi:n] only for "fish", not for
star. Star is [vel.l.I] in Tamil.

One of the places that I got my information was from here.
http://www.ancientscripts.com/indus.html

That doesn't say that Dravidians *currently* use pictograms. Today's
Dravidians typically use "abugida" scripts and don't use pictograms.

1) A proposed reconstruction for the Proto-Dravidan word for fish matches
that for star, giving *mi:n. (I suppose that Dravidianists will be able to
give us the evidence for these reconstructions; it is of course not nearly
good enough to say that because one particular langauge, Tamil, has no
reflex for *mi:n in the meaning 'star' that the word could not have
existed in that meaning in Proto-Dravidian, which me is suggesting.

I said it *is*n't *the* Dravidian word. With the meaning "star", [mi:n] is
used only as a morpheme; it isn't used as a word. That is, Dravidians use
words containing the morpheme [mi:n] meaning star but Dravidians don't use
[mi:n] as the word for "star". "vAnil mIn irukku" and "AkAs;attil mIn uNDu"
would invite quzzical frowns since they would mean ONLY "there are fish in
the sky" in Tamil and Malayalam, respectively.

Thanks for the explanation. I had not understood that from reading the
article.

I don't know of anything like this happening in Indo-European languages;

On vanity licence plates, 2 can mean "to", 4 can mean "for", etc.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"
    ... therefore they use the fish pictogram with ... other pictograms when writing about a star. ... That doesn't say that Dravidians *currently* use pictograms. ... Dravidians typically use "abugida" scripts and don't use pictograms. ...
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  • Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"
    ... therefore they use the fish pictogram with other ... pictograms when writing about a star. ... That doesn't say that Dravidians *currently* use pictograms. ... Dravidians typically use "abugida" scripts and don't use pictograms. ...
    (sci.lang)
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  • Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"
    ... therefore they use the fish pictogram with other ... pictograms when writing about a star. ... Star is in Tamil. ...
    (sci.lang)