Re: Ligurian ending "-asco"

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:21:10 -0700 (PDT): Franz Gnaedinger
<frgn@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

Can it be that the place names on -ede mark ancient
trading ways? then the meaning might be AD DA ---
toward (ad) away from (da), going toward a certain
place, coming from another place, being on the way.

Impossible, because modern Portuguese
da < de a < de la.
The loss of intervocalic l (and n) was already fully effective in 1100
something (as both Galician and Portuguese display it), so it occurred
maybe in 800/900 CE or so. The placenames however are probably much
older, seeing Chaves < Flavius is from Roman times.

Sorry, but I don't understand you. I speak of
Magdalenian AD 'toward' and DA 'away from',
together AD DA meaning: going toward a certain
place, coming from another place, being on the way.

Yes, you do science fiction, I know. But I don't.

This would have become -ede in Portugal, [...]

Old Portuguese developed from Galician-Portuguese and from dialects of
Vulgar Latin, with possible admixtures of Arabic, Gothic and
Ibero-Celtic languages. If it has ever had anything to do with
Magdalenian, that could only be thousands of years before that, and
then the traces it left in today's names could never be so
superficially recognizable.

and as
many ancient trading ways followed rivers, it would
have become ada and also simply da for water,
the latter in Celtic. Why is the transition from
hypothetical Magdalenian AD DA to -ede not
possible?

Too many ages, too much change.

Speed of change varies, but general rules of thumb are:

400 years of language change doesn't impede understanding (cf.
Shakespeare with Modern English, Vondel with modern Dutch, Camões and
Modern Portuguese), 1000 years makes it harder, with 2000 or 1600
years you need careful study to understand anything (Old English and
Modern English, Latin and French), after 4000 years languages may
still have a common "feel" to them but are otherwise completely
incomprehensible, although the relation can be shown scientifcally
without any doubt (Hungarian and Finnish, Hindi/Farsi/Albanian and
English).

With anything beyond that, the changes are so great that usually
nothing can be proven anymore (Altaic language family,
Turkic/Mongolion/Korean etc.)

On the Google map I also found a place
name ending on -ade, so there are several stages
of transformation, of a hypothetical very ancient
compound having been polished.

I think so too. But if it is that old, it just won't be similar.

Yet, exceptions exist, e.g. English "name" and French "nom" are still
very similar after 3000 years of separated development, because it so
happened that nasal consonants were not often involved in sound
changes in IE.


--
Ruud Harmsen

http://rudhar.com
.

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