Talk:नील

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Latest comment: 1 year ago by Vindafarna in topic The Sanskrit etymology is bananas-level wrong
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Nila also means indigo in Tagalog, a language in the Philippines. The capital city Maynila means "there are indigo plants". The English name of Maynila is Manila.

The Sanskrit etymology is bananas-level wrong

[edit]

Setting aside the fact the sound correspondences don't even line up. How do you get a semantic drift from 'to lead' to 'dark blue'?! The LIV2 states *neyH means 'führen, leiten' 'to lead, to lead/head' (LIV2: 450 s.v. *neyH). How does one get 'to shine' from that? I propose removing that etymology entirely unless there's actually a good citation for it, because it's just so beyond wrong I can't believe someone even wrote it down here...

EDIT: I see what happened, whoever typed the etymology in confused two entirely separate roots... That's what happens when you use something as outdated as Pokorny, but even in Pokorny, they're two separate roots. There's *neyH which is what the etymology on this page references, but there's also (maybe, it's not in the LIV2) *ney. Regardless, they're entirely different, and the one with a laryngeal is the only one which is securely reconstructible. But the fact remains that the Skt etymology on this page is plain wrong. Vindafarna (talk) 23:11, 31 August 2022 (UTC)Reply