Talk:საცობი
Which sense of cork is this? The material? The stopper in a wine bottle? — hippietrail (talk) 14:32, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Etymology[edit]
New editors, new luck. I have had a feeling that @კვარია could solve Ottoman Turkish سزو (sezü, sizü, “cork; cork-oak”), and here I see Georgian საცობი (sacobi, “cork, stopper”) after wanting to post a issue about English cork and cork oak not including any Kartvelian translations. I specify that I hold borrowing likely by reason that South Slavic has borrowed its term for cork плута from a Serbo-Croatian regiolect, not to speak of all other European languages west of Russian being Latinate even if not descending from Latin, and Arabic using a Grecism فِلِّين (fillīn) and for the tree at least in Spain the Latinate شُبَر (šubar). Fay Freak (talk) 21:54, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Fay_Freak: I've noticed that you not so secretly think/wish the Kartvelians were more influential than they were/are. :p This is just sa-cob-i where cob- is "to seal up". The root being just cob- reduces the similarity with Turkish and they weren't close to begin with. კვარია (talk) 10:35, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
- @კვარია: According to the usual vocalization rules (regularly rendering foreign short a as e, disallowed o and ö after the first syllable in favour of u and ü, preferrably either front or back vowel harmony in the whole word), this word would regularly have been given to Turkish as *sezübi. Now in the second half either the middle or the ending vowel becomes dominant, as the sequence goes against labial harmony, therefore we have both سزو (sezü) and سزی (sezi), where due to end stress contraction occurred as the repetitive middle after labial assimilation served little to distinguish the word.
- But I also ask an ethnological question, from which natural material did medieval Kartvelians make “corks”, or “seals” of bottles, being the suspected original winery? If you gloss an oriental word “cork, stopper”, it is legitimate to note old differences to the European understanding. Fay Freak (talk) 11:04, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
- Kartvelian borrowings into Ottoman and other big languages are indeed unlikely. There is no reason to suspect a Kartvelian origin unless the word is confined to the Turkish dialects of Pontus and Western Armenia. Since the cork oak grows in the Western Mediterranean, I would seek an origin from some derivative of Latin suber, for example Sardinian suerdzu, sueldzu (“cork oak”) from Latin sūbereus. Vahag (talk) 13:21, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Vahagn Petrosyan: This your proposal is better, depending on whether the original meaning comprehended a botanical reference to the cork oak or its material specifically or this reference is a later transferral from some Oriental analogue. We positively know that some plant-names have come to the Turks in consequence of their raids into Italy: fulya. Fay Freak (talk) 15:58, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
- To learn the original meaning we need someone who can do Turkish philology. Vahag (talk) 17:14, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Vahagn Petrosyan: This your proposal is better, depending on whether the original meaning comprehended a botanical reference to the cork oak or its material specifically or this reference is a later transferral from some Oriental analogue. We positively know that some plant-names have come to the Turks in consequence of their raids into Italy: fulya. Fay Freak (talk) 15:58, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
- Kartvelian borrowings into Ottoman and other big languages are indeed unlikely. There is no reason to suspect a Kartvelian origin unless the word is confined to the Turkish dialects of Pontus and Western Armenia. Since the cork oak grows in the Western Mediterranean, I would seek an origin from some derivative of Latin suber, for example Sardinian suerdzu, sueldzu (“cork oak”) from Latin sūbereus. Vahag (talk) 13:21, 14 July 2022 (UTC)