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Greek barbaroi from Latin barba?
Greek barbaros is taken to be, like Hebrew babel (for Babylon), a reduplicative, onomatopoeic word indicating the impoverished linguistic skills of non-Greek-speaking peoples (or non-Hebrew in the other example). At least that's what I'd been told. Took a look at Pokorny, and here's what he's got: *balbal- (*babal-, *bambal-). Skt balbalA-karoti 'to stammer', Latin babulus 'chatter, babble', English babble. Latin balbus 'stammering, babbling' ... also with r: Skt barbara 'stammering; non-Aryan', Gk barbaros 'barbarian, non-Greek', etc. So, it was more complicated than I'd been lead to believe.
Latin barba, OTOH, is from *bhardha- 'beard' which also is the source for beard. Barba in Genoese (my grandmother's dialect of Italian) means 'uncle'. --Barba Zazbò
Entire Thread Subject Posted By Posted barbarous code maverick 01/30/04 03:20 PM Re: barbarous code Faldage 01/30/04 03:28 PM Re: barbarous code maverick 01/30/04 03:47 PM Re: barbarous code Jenet 01/30/04 05:49 PM Re: barbarous code jheem 01/30/04 06:20 PM Re: barbarous code Faldage 01/30/04 06:23 PM
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