Re: Spanish and Arabic for 'duck'

Dušan Vukotić wrote:

On Jul 19, 2:35 pm, Italo <ola...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Is there any possibility that Spanish <pata> 'duck' may
be connected to 'boat', O.E. <bat>? (reminds me of Vogelbarke type ships, btw.)- Hide quoted text -


Italo asked a very interesting question. Indeed, is it possible that Spanish pata is related to English boat? In
Slavic languages duck is derived from the noun voda (water) or the verb plutat/ploviti/plivati (swim, float; Russ. плавать; Cz. plavit; OSl плавати float). Russian утка/utka (duck) is a water animal (Russ. водяной); i.e. utka could be v-utka similar to the Russian diminutive of
voda (vodka/votka; Serbian vodica/votkica /a small water/
=> patkica /a small duck/).

Lithvanian antis (duck; cf. Sp. ánade, Ger. Ente, Lat. anas) sounds very close to the Lithuanian word v-anduo (water), where the initial sound v is omitted. Old Hindi ātíṣ ("the water animal") clearly corresponds to Russian utka (duck) and to the Sanskrit noun udaka (water; Skt. udaka <=> Russ. utka).

English duck appeared to be related to the second syllable of the Serbian word patak (drake; cf. Ir. bu-dhaigir ducker, puffin); i.e. it might be related to Serbian tonuti (dunk), from po-tonuti or po- tanjati, po-tanja (immerse into a liquid, plunge).

In Serbian duck is called either plovka or patka. Both words are clearly related to the verb "float" and IE root
*pleu-, *plud-. It means that Serb. patka is derived from *plut-; i.e. from plutka => platka => patka (an animal that floats on water;

The Slavic inherited lexicon at www.indoeuropean.nl says:
---
Proto-Slavic form: pъtъka
GRAM: f. ā
PSLMEAN: `bird'
Russian: pótka `bird' [f ā]
Old Russian: potka `bird' [f ā]
Serbo-Croatian: pȁtka `duck' [f ā]; #SCr. Čak. pȁtka
(Vrgada, Orbanići) `duck' [f ā]
Latvian: putns `bird' [m o]
Indo-European reconstruction: put-
---

*put doesn't seem to be in Pokorny's dictionary, though.
I'm curious if that Persian word for duck, bat, is
considered to be of I.E. origin.

Serb. plutati / float/). In the similar way was formed the Serbian word potok (brook), which is a stream of water shallower than river, and therefore Serb. plitak (shallow).

Russian лодка/lodka (boat) is also floating on water in the same way as a duck does- p/lotka (Serb. lađa; Ita. battello boat; Serbian plovilo/plutalo /floating object/). Of course, the etymologists believe that Eng. boat (OE bat) is derived from the IE root *bheid- (bite, split, cleave), but I think it is more plausible that boat is also related to water and float (Eng. floating = Serb. plutanje).

DV

All the 'boat' words seem to be of Germanic origin.
Yet it was typical for Roman merchant ships to have a
swan's head on the stern.
<http://www.marsatqueens.co.uk/images/MARS%20Mosaic.JPG>
This tradition is much older, there are many bronze age
depictions of bird-headed boats (which due to their
construction often already resemble some waterbird).
<http://ina.tamu.edu/library/tropis/volumes/4/Wachsmann,%20Shelley%20-%20Bird-head%20devices%20on%20Mediterranean%20ships.pdf>


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