Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, if not the best, he seems at least the most dynamic among the linguists of the University of Cagliari: respected by all, admired by many, envied by few. He’s especially admired by non-academics, and currently, in the wake of resurgent Sardinian language, has become - for internal dynamis, to overwhelming charisma - the engine of the many not-academic contributions on the Sardinian language today. In the Island non-academics, non-titled, have him as compass and metre. No non-academic research is printed without his imprimatur, which many aspire.
The rigor of his studies is such that in the book Paleosardo (page 53-54) felt compelled to put on the alert throughout the international intelligentsia questionable methods by some gentlemen, that for a long time now are interfering to muddy the waters. «I encompasse the review that follows to the best-known scholars, of course, ignoring all the work produced by pseudo-linguists totally devoid of the tools of historical linguistics ... Have been overshadowed (in Sardinian works) Sumerian, paleo Semitic roots, Mycenaean and even Illyrian (!), and more recently (in Spain) Georgian, though of course without the slightest shadow of linguistic jurisdiction, with terminological confusion, historical and reconstructive upheavals and total ignorance on the research in an international context (but at the same time with great ease and even audacious arrogance). I think the silence and the resulting damnatio memoriae imposed on those workers from the international scientific Community is the best deterrent to prevent further market operations». Blasco Ferrer, a man with an accomplished prose, between saying and not say he managed to extend damnatio memoriae at his colleagues Giulio Paulis and Massimo Pittau, of which in the same pages he brands the methods.
Academic temerity, if addressed to colleagues, if given to the others is a rebuke. In Sardinia the epithet of "pseudo-linguists” 'and the “slightest shadow of jurisdiction linguistics” is merited by various practitioners. Is valid then the exhortation for everybody to do their part (only his own!) in scientific research, without going over the limits of their culture. Should adhere to a sense of proportion and good taste; and it isn’t enough to proclaim that your level of erudition was raised in private. Who will judge how much you've raised the bar racing, if an inch or two meters? Jesus sent the redeemed in the Temple, to determine their recovery. Those who study in private and wants to pontificate, must be judged by the Board of graduation. Only then will not happen again to see a doctor offended because an architect robbed him the craft, engineer get angry because a barber is replacing him in the calculations of a cable-stayed bridge, a chemist scandalize for a lawyer giving lessons on polymer technology. It's time that graduates in linguistics to distance themselves from so many people often not even graduated. Even a degree in Modern Literature becomes spurious element in etymological investigations, which only can reach after very hard exercises upon the dead languages, for which only the specific university course gets ready, through the study of ancient history, archeology, and especially through endless translations of books of Greek and Latin languages, and readings of many other ancient languages. Mή ὀ σκῡτεύς ὐπέρ την κρηπῖδα.
If the personal knowledge was adequate to the task, would not grow the crowd of counterfeiters who claim to have translated the Stele of Nora. And then you go to find out that the translation - in the absence of preparation and even in the absence of the Phoenician Dictionary! - was conducted fantastic way, in a kind of shamanic flight.
All men ruled with arrogance on this Stele. The only thrush is a lecturer of Phoenician epigraphy with modesty of nun, a teacher at La Sapienza University of Rome, invited by his friend Eduardo Blasco Ferrer at Cagliari to give a lectio magistralis on the Phoenician language: its lack academic handed her a proper measure to establish the level of knowledge, and to affirm that the Stele of Nora is …untranslatable (sic). The result is the following: those who can not, would like to achieve, even false pretenses, but who can, cancel itself and block the advance of knowledge.
So I give help to Blasco Ferrer, because I am writer of linguistics, too, as a doctor in Linguistics; and after numerous jobs, of which I do an essay on this site, I also have an obligation to stem the mud. Enimvero est modus in rebus. In the presentation of a list of place names called "Logus”, EBF mentioned, without naming, a researcher of etymology, citing "mountebank from Satyricon”. Under the damnatio memoriae, EBF has withheld the name of the impostor, but it was tasty expose it to ridicule, as a negative example. The incompetent can not play with the etymologies, thinking to have the pass. Of course, that penalty should be extended equally to all non-titled, including those that Blasco Ferrer pampers and enhances as eagles, and to me, said with respect, look like mosquitoes.
So I would urge EBF to anathematize the damnatio memoriae only contra homines paucis libris, respecting those who have titles. Towards those would be better for a healthy debate inter pares, conducted in the light of the sun. To that aim, in fact, the brutal damnation, to delete a name (the height of humiliation!), when we find out that EBF appropriates the ideas of the damned? An example: in his recent book "Paleosardo" (p. 84) he aligns with what I am writing for seven years that the ancient Sardinian language was agglutinative. But aligns without mentioning me. This is incorrect, at least if we want to draw the necessary linearity in the advancement of research, without it being apparent by fits and starts, by jumps, by inappropriate and irrational gaps.
The use of the instrument of structuralism (see "Paleosardo") is a way to adapt to my way of proceeding. And I am grateful. But about it I would put EBF on notice: he, how do you see it in his book, is likely to make a prison of structuralism, in which the boxes are pre-designed according to user-friendly schemes, which only at first appear to be reliable. An army prepared for battle, must be able to change tactics as they clashed with specific cases. Who falls in the field of etymologies, how do you envisage a priori patterns, idealistically expecting that the reality of the individual terms correspond to their patterns then? The verification of this type should be made only after the event, basing them on real terms compared, one by one, without inhibitor schemes, and without the frequent subterfuge of the asterisk (*), which, in my view, is abused.
It’s a posteriori that the granitic basis of a theory is created. So the process of segmentation that EBF is flaunting (p. 64 and passim) is not discounted in the face of an agglutinative language which was the old Sardinian, in the sense that often a segmentation of the type, say, ab-cd-ef, other Sardinian terms require singŭlārĭter, a cut of abc-de-f or a-bc-def or abc-def, or ab-cdef, or a-b-cdef. This is more true if one assumes as certain that such a Sardinian lemma has Basque roots, while another scholar not agrees at all. It goes without saying that certain distributional analysis may end in disappointment, especially in the frequent cases in which certain allomorphs (real or imagined) will reveal itself opaque. A fundamental law of structural segmentation of the Sardinian language is the bound form. On what I’m warnig the Academy (and indirectly Blasco Ferrer) by 7 years, because without the bound form some theories do not stand. The bound form is the indispensable key to understand and unravel all the Sardinian words that we sense to be an ancient compound.
To understand in the Sardinian compounds the existence of ancient bound forms, a scholar needs practice (grown with the use of essential Semitic grammars); but for the beginner there is a basic rule, which is to warn him whenever a polysyllable lemma contains in the median position an -i- (index of suture of two words). The phenomenon is also Italian, and even Latin. Hence the need to get to learn without blinders. Semitic influence in the Mediterranean see two, three, four, five, six thousand years ago, was very large. I understand the embarrassment of some linguists who still affirm categorically that not Semites but only Phoenicians they were, and that they appeared in the Mediterranean by 750 BCE, and that, moreover, they touched (just to stay in the topic) only Sardinia. This is one of the fundamental errors of research.
Appo unu fizzu cambirussu e conchimannu... Here we are within a bound form. In the first element (which acts as a complement of relation) it is significant the fixed output in -i-, which forms the seam-morpheme, and in the second element we see the variability of the adjective according to gender and number. In the Italian language we have many examples, such as capinera (blackcap), pettiroso (robin), in archaic Italian we have capirotto, collicorto, collilungo... I omit the minting such literary occhicerulo, occhinero, occhisanguigno ... In Tuscany we have several examples (codibianco...), and even more in Corsica (barbibiancu , bocchigrussu, capileggeri, cornirittu, nasitortu...). In southern Italy: anchitortu, capirasu, capiddijancu, cudilonga, manilestu ...
Massive is the presence of bond forms in the Romance areas, especially in Spain: aliquebrado 'with the broken wing', barbirrubio 'red-bearded', boquiangosto 'close mouth', cabizbajo 'with head down', cari-redondo 'a round face' , corniapretado 'horns close', cuellierguido 'stiff', dientimallado 'rotten teeth', labihendido 'from cleft lip', lenguicorto 'of few words', lomienhiesto 'upper back', 'arrogant', maniabierto 'prodigal', ojinegro ‘with black eyes', orejisano' ears with unmarked', boqui-abierto ‘with open mouth’, palmitieso 'from the hooh plane or convex’, patituerto ‘wrong-footed', pasilargo 'with leg outstretched', pechiblanca 'white chest', pelirojo 'red hair', piernitendido 'a straight-leg', rabicorto 'short tail', teticiega 'nipple clogged'.
As far as I know, the formations of bound forms are absent in the Catalan language, istead they are in modern Gascon: brassilounc 'arms length', cabiort 'strong head’, caminut 'bare-legged' (SGR 85-89). The Latin language has been full of bound forms, evidence of an archaic agglutinative language: armiger, pontifex, accipiter (< akk. akki-pitru 'fury of the steppe'), and so on. The bound form is ubiquitous in Logudoro, in Sassari, in Gallura, it seems less extensive in Campidano, but because are used here only other forms of bound forms (on which now no delay). And you can not really say that Corsica, which is full of them, have been influenced by Spanish bound forms! No. The Sardian bound form also extends to fitonimic formations (eg. fustialbu 'poplar').
Needless to say, the Meyer-Lübke and Spitzer put forth the hypothesis that these forms have learned patterns of Latin origin (eg. oviparus). Wagner and Rohlfs are inclined instead to a source from the vernacular Latin. But Latin is more! When a linguist will appare not at all accustomed to tolerate a Mediterranean world split in two, who lift the back and lengthen the glance, making room for all sides of the Mare Nostrum? He should find that the source of the phenomenon is Akkadian and it refers to all the Semitic languages, so even the old Sardinian.
This new way of searching the inter-Mediterranean relationships should encourage linguists to get back on their game and not see certain phono-semantic equivalences as an exclusive affair with only two peoples. For example, when Blasco Ferrer (P 24) writes that «the Catalan presence in Sardinia is witnessed by over 2000 Catalanism without fail in the Sardinian neo-Latin» (ie in the actual Sardinian language), he argues a thesis forcibly dried up, because he lacks the healthy vision inter-Mediterranean that would, if adopted, to see those terms as 2000 Sardinian-Catalan survivals (Catalan → Sardinian? not at all!) of an ancient Mediterranean language before and during the Roman Empire tied several riparian peoples.
So far, nearly 10,000 entries of the Sardinian language are analyzed by me (and submitted to etymology). With this huge amount I hope to be authorized to release the discovery that the "hard core" of Paleosardo was Semitic. EBF, with 49 terms Basques attempt to overthrow (unknowingly) my theories, and is unaware of the disproportion. One theory is scientific testing on the quantity, not on some exception. And why not find, at this point, even hundreds of words that the Basque language shares directly with the Sumerian and Akkadian languages? EBF may not know, but there are!: Basque aba 'father' < bab. aba 'father'; Basque iri 'city' < Sum. iri 'city'; Basque logi 'mud' < Sum. luḫum 'mud'; Basque obi 'natural hollows, ravines, gorges' < Sum. ub 'hole'; Basque soro 'open field or plowed' < Sum. šurum 'waste food, faeces, litter of beasts'; Basque ur 'water' < Sum. uru 'flood'; Basque korosti, gorosti 'holly' = Sardinian corosti, còstike < sum. ḫus 'plant' + Akk. ṭēḫ; Basque txakur 'dog', zakur 'big dog' < Sum. zaḫ 'move, drag' + ur 'dog', meaning ‘hunting dog'; Basque mokor 'peak, tip', anc. Catal. mugarón, moguró, muguró 'nipple' < Akk. makurru, makkūru, maqurru 'hump, hump of the Crescent Moon', Sum. mu 'grow' + kur 'mountain', with the meaning of 'growing mountain' (ie, which is still small).
But there are several other Basque terms. With a little good will, we can find at least five hundred Basque-Sumerian equivalences. From this we infer that the Basques also conquered the land of Sumer? What authority can we recognize a scholar who insists on seeing a “colonization of Sardinia” in the 49 Basque terms shared with the Sardinian vocabulary, compared with 90,000 not-shared Sardinian words? What authority deserves a scholar who advocated 49 lemmas Basques as "clear sign" of a Basque colonization of Sardinia? EBF does not understand that certain terms Basques, including those shared with Sardinian language, are relics of an archaic language of the common euro-Mediterranean area.
There are tens of thousands of words of current European, Italian, Sardinian (also some Basque) language, rooted in the archaic Linguistic Primary Koiné, what I call the Paleolithic-Neolithic Koiné, whose roots are found mostly in Sumerian and Akkadian language, fortunately preserved under the ground, intact, after the sudden fall of those empires. Those languages are the true Garden of Eden from which the study of (non-existent) Basque-Sardinian relations receive light. My teacher, Giovanni Semerano, had begun to die a long list of German, High German, Angle, Saxon, Frank, Basque words, before his death. I do not have the strength to keep that huge work, which was extended to Latin and Greek languages, whose words, more than half showed Semitic origins.
He, with a sens of modesty, not investigated the roots of Italian language, and it was my turn to lift the shroud of etymological research on the Italian language. I'm just alone, I do not have to train students, and therefore I have no strength, no time to go ahead, then add an occasional rare brick to etymologies of the individual Indo-European and Romance languages, especially of Greek, Latin, Italian. And the discovery that even the old Italian language is based largely on Semitic, rather than the Latin, has torn all the certainties that I had on Battaglia (Great Dictionary of the Italian Language) and on Etymological Dictionary of the Italian Language of Zanichelli. I do not even want to outsource the audit opinion on Corominas about the etymologies of the Castilian language.
Well, my Master, who was the first to report the status of myopic etymological research in the Mediterranean, has also suffered the damnatio memoriae by many academics. This is not a good thing. He was convicted by a cowardly wrath and hatred by a pack of wolves-soldiers, although he was the only Italian scholar to collaborate on CAD (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary), a work of 30 volumes. It just started my adventure with CAD. I looked in all the best libraries of Sardinia, starting from the University of Cagliari and from the Faculty of Arts. I found that in the whole island there were no books like that, even the Hebrew dictionaries (not to mention those Egyptian, Phoenician), since no linguist was interested in such studies. I had to buy them by mail together with their grammars and other books of history and philology, a price for the release of my culture from the straitjacket of Indoeuropean and Romance Linguistics, by which I was trapped for decades, until 7 years ago. It's like a forced of Neurodelirium hospital which, in a glimmer of lucidity, understands the atrocity of care suffered. I escaped from the clutches of professor Max Leopold Wagner and from the clutches of his still kicking followers.
I am not the only one to have discovered the Semitic basis of Sardinian language. Needless to shore with Spano, a man of great knowledge and no method. Imports, however, say that already in 1863 Rudolf von Raumer and in 1864 Graziadio Ascoli argued that the Indo-European and Semitic were related. At that time the convincing evidence was waited in vain. Hermann Möller, Semitisch und Indogermanisch, tried again. But no matter how beautiful, his work was limited to the comparison of the consonant system. In 1969, Linus Brummer published a detailed comparison of the Semitic and Indo-European vocabularies, followed in 1980 by a wider comparison of languages taken by Kalevi E. Koskinen. As well as in the Soviet School had made great efforts in this direction.
But the hunger for knowledge never ends. For a century goes on, boldly, studies on Nostratic and Proto-Nostratic. The coinage of the term dates back to Holger Pedersen, but liked it, and now there are numerous studies that attempt to envelop in a single system almost the Euro-Afro-Asian languages, including Japanese. Imagine if they were not let the languages of the Fertile Crescent! But the worm usually prevents these scholars to undermine certain theories which clipped the wings of any flight.
These scholars, for example, leave intact all the prevailing theories about the Romance languages and about the Sardinian language. And do not realize that in doing so, they are homines dimidiati. The same Allan R. Bomhard (Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic: Comparative phonology, Morphology, and Vocabulary, Brill, 2008) argues, with unbearable lightness: «Finally, mention Should be made of Sumerian, which I had investigated in previous works as a possible Nostratic daughter language. I now believe that Sumerian was not a Nostratic daughter language but that It is distantly related to Nostratic». She says this because, exhausted from the long-list comparisons between all Indo-European languages and their flexible system, he realizes, stunned, that the Semitic languages are not inflected, as he came to realize that even the Dravidian was an agglutinative language, and in spite of worthy of "Nostratic". Moreover, Bomhard claims that are only verbal and nominal suffixes to be less compatible between Indo-European and Semitic. What a discovery! He is silent on the enormous stock of words common to the two groups (say: huge store of words).
Here, we got to the point. The catch that causes the non-scholars to understand each other, it's all the syllables in Sumerian, which as such can never be compared with the most advanced two-syllabic Semitic words nor with the same two-syllable Indo-European words. When some scholars stop to camp on primitive patterns, pelleted by indolence? They do not consider that a correct approach with Sumerian has need to work-in-progress. Let me explain: it is absurd to look for in Sumerian language the Sardinian noun nanu 'dwarf' (Latin nanus, gr. νᾶνος); the base is certainly Sumerian, but we can show only if, looking at that Vocabulary made up of simple syllables, we work ourselves, and not others, due agglutination between na 'man' + nu 'no,' (na-nu), giving it the meaning of 'not-man'.
So you make comparisons with the Sumerian language, word for word! The same procedure is demonstrated that the Afghan burqa: just make the agglutination of Sumerian bur 'dress' + ku 'hole, cavity': bur-ku, which receives the meaning of 'dress-hole' (a whole program). Should be more courage on the part of the Academy to bring together Indo-European, Romance, Semitic studies in a single bed. If this happens, there wouldn’t be scandal to say that the substrate (see EBF, Paleosardo, p. 1 and passim) in Sardinia there is not.
From 7 years I'm saying that the Sardinian language is the oldest in the world (or at least the oldest in the Mediterranean-Eurasia: along with Hebrew and Arabic). I say the oldest in the sense that what we speak today in Sardinia has a living-hard-plinth of at least 60% of the Sumerian-Semitic words, words that were spoken in the Fertile Crescent over 5000 years ago, that there are dead, and instead survive by us as if nothing had happened, with absolute vitality, after overcoming all sorts of stress and having preserved language sometimes intact, sometimes almost intact, sometimes in an shape easily traceable to note roots. If those words are almost identical to themselves, in form and meaning, for over 5000 years, how can one speak of substrate? Would not it be better to Sardinia, to talk about stratum, and have the courage to say - before all the academies of the world - the Sardinian language is not neo-Latin?
Just for the sake of benefiting from a common epistemological basis, I would also bring back on track a different cultural attitude of the Academy, which is what makes you believe that the archaic phase of a language (the paleo-language, as it is called by EBF) can be traced only by place names. This is a huge deception. The paleo-language, if you really want to research and study, is found (at least in Sardinia) using all the words that still retain the knowledge of the past: names relating to religion, to family names, to bread, flora, fauna, disease, economy, society, and also to place names. But the place names can not ever become a privileged field of investigation, much less exclusive. In doing so, it uses a fraction of the knowledge, however, just the most vicious, the most difficult to analyze with method and expertise.
There are people who know me as an expert on agriculture and pastoralism. Others know me as a tireless hiker of mountains, as a former president of the Sardinian Italian Alpine Club. A degree in Linguistics, the original luggage, it still always put in a position to understand that a place name is an untamed beast. Anyone (among titled people), contact a place name, knows that he can get away with broken bones. The non-titled man, instead, act on the place names like a man without amygdala, people without fear that can vilify a place name without receiving in exchange a vulneration. Lucky them! It is quite another thing to investigate (if you have a title!) flora, breads, family names, religion, disease, socio-economics, human knowledge and all the rest of Sardinia. But the place names, make my veins and pulses tremble.
In my previous book "Toponomastica Sarda" I pointed out the qualities which an investigator of place-names must be equipped with, in addition to the necessary degree in linguistics and university studies in archeology and ancient history. They are: well-educated in geological science, in soil science, flora, landscape systems. Does not hurt to have good knowledge of micro-history and socio-economics; and should be important to know whether the land is encumbered by civic uses (communistic customs). Mainly be able to read the land use in its layers, its diachronic making, also to understand why such an abandoned monument, that Nuragic road, that way of transhumance, that village, the high-pasture born there and nowhere else. And the old ways (which are of eight kinds), should know how to distinguish, because no one will ever be specified, and then, one thing is that you attribute it to Nuragic People, other is that they are Roman, other is that Judicial road, other is that marquis way, or mining, or livestock, or coal, or hunting.
And if you're wrong classification, you have the wrong name. Sardinia is a mine: do we need to know the linguistic stratigraphy. Help from those who know, is welcome. It was in this spirit that I asked the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage of Cagliari to let me see the network of Roman roads in Sardinia. Answer: it has never been written. Then I asked them to at least know the route of the Roman road connecting the Logudoro to Bosa, because I suspected that Piero Meloni in his Sardegna Romana, was mistaken. They did not know the path. Well, with the boots I had to check step-by-step the issue by showing that Meloni made some blunders. Today the old road is still intact. I discovered myself. I described in a book.
Now, surprising that in the book Paleosardo EBF write generically about "slate" in Monte Genziana, while this is the Postgotlandiano quartz phyllite (something a bit different); I wonder that there is talk of the domus de janas normally built in "limestone, granites and basalts”, while it was better to explain that the domus de janas were built within a single limestone: the Miocenic (the limestones belong to three eras, are profoundly other from Period to Period, and the hardness is also different between coeval limestones: how say, that Sardinia has dozens of types of limestone). As for the granite and basalt, it aren’t rocks for domus de janas: basalts are virtually unaffected by the instruments of the period, while very few granites receive domus de janas, apart certain domus created between the rotting due to the acceleration of anisotropic processes. Embarrassing fact, that is not written in Paleosardo the domus de janas built in volcanic areas are only in Trachite, Thrace-andesites, in phonolites in tuffs, never in the basalts. This a hunter of toponyms must know.
Is linked to the geological history the question of genetics, too. It appears, but is not conclusive to have noticed the links between the genome of the mountain dweller of Sardinia and ancient Iberians and "Protobaschi”. It should be put firmly into account the fact that genetics proceeds from more ambiguity and unspeakable folds (for instance, are unpresentable the genetic studies conducted up to date on the Jews). And it's bad that EBF has concluded that the colonization of Sardinia by Iberian began in the Paleolithic, and that «during the Neolithic period there were no migration than those from ancient Iberia. The formula España en Cerdeña is already valid for the Neolithic Sardinia» (Paleosardo 46-47, and also read the final rush of the volume).
But meanwhile, I’m asking EBF what the Catalan language has been reduced in Sardinia after 700 years, dating from the famous invasion of 1323. EBF p. 24 states that survive in Sardinia 2000 Catalan words. Exaggerated! They corresponded to 10% of the Sardinian language spoken, but in the meantime, EBF does not calculate that they must incorporate the Castilian. In my books I thoroughly explain that overall 10% is only slightly Catalan-Castilian (which actually falls to 1-2%), while the rest is shared (Sardinian-Catalan-Castilian) based on Sumerian-Semitic-Sardinian Koiné (or Nostratic) to which the whole Mediterranean succumbed before the Romans.
As for geology, the ice ages do not say anything? Würm ended 10,000 years ago, that’s in the 8000 BCE. And what did the people of the north and the Pyrenees, in full ice age, if not to seek "a place in the sun”? Sardinia was not subject to glaciation, was the "Promised Land", of course. The Corsica, our close island, since it is whole mountain, suffered because his little ice age. But the Sardinians (the Paleosardi) have always absorbed (ie disappeared) any kind of language input (if it was that those people "icelanders" were originally also outside the Great Paleo-Neolithic Linguistic Koiné - ie the Nostratic - and that their language was not comparable with the Sumerian-Akkadian language).
It should be noted
that Sardinia, whether you agree with the Basque few tens of terms,
it shares many with several European nations, without a watermark can
be read to authorize the invasion of Germany, or Celts, or Venetics,
or Normans.
I would ask blandly EBF to take account of this phenomenon. And with
regard to his fieldwork, I urge him to rule out first of all the assistants
who do not have a degree in linguistics; in secundis, I urge
him to never trust the transcription-translation of place names by an
aider, as cultured he could be. With all modesty, I warn him that without
having covered the whole island on foot, if you traveled without a load
of notions such as those listed above, the results aren’t noticeable.
Otherwise we are reduced to accept the translation of Serramanna
(a town of the completely flat Campidano, at the center of the big plain)
as a 'big mountain yoke', as has been written in the Dictionary of place
names, (Dizionario di Toponomastica), Utet, p. 619, at the suggestion
of Paulis.
And not to be trusted even if one is to say that the place name Su ‘e Nicòla means ‘the Nicola’s holding'. It must be checked: if there is a forest of Quercus ilex, and if the territory is included in the civic usages (communistic customs), then it is certain that the name is a corruption of ancient + hypercrinism of an ancient Su Elicòne 'the forest of oaks'. This example informs what it's worth, in the etymologies, even extra-linguistic research, the environmental one. In fact, if there were properties or possessions (ie outside the areas for communistic customs), clearly prevails name-surname of the owner or possessor, eg. Antiógu Bòe, without that typical "su", which besides being article, is a demonstrative pronoun identical, in the function too, to the corresponding Assyrian-Babylonian šu.
And I don’t admit, about Su Elicòne, the possible objection that the forest of oaks could be gone for centuries, resulting in garrigues, and then making the site unintelligible. Objection methodologically inadmissible. In fact, those who can "read " a landscape, who knows "slice" it in a diachronic scanning, he also can scrutinize the territory and the terrain, and instantly he realizes, from several aspects, mainly from bonsais sprouting among thorns everywhere, two to three centimeters high, which was the flower arrangement of one hundred or five hundred years ago. Because bonsai resists the barbarism of fire and overgrazing over the centuries, and they give valuable informations about the true nature of the topsoil in the past.
In the search for place names should also be wary of some local "wises", whose prophecies seem to flame out of the bush in the Sinai, while then they are hilarious as those of Nostràdamus. Here are some "spirits", distilled liquors of the territory of Ballao: Arcu de Genna 'e amòri ‘the pass of the door of love', Accu bedida 'the blessed valley', Arcu de pesu 'the pass of a load', Atziada de cagamiddòi 'the steep slope where I shit myself', Baccu de Luxi 'the ravine of light’, Baccu marcasua 'the ravine of the land of his fate’, Bau orbaxi ‘the ford of rough woolen', Bolla Pirastu 'desire for wild pear', Braca 'boat', Cadeddus 'the dogs'.
But apart from this, I was saying that the place names, at least to me, they shake my veins and pulses, despite the fact that I possess excellent Basque language dictionaries, as well all the Mediterranean dictionaries, ancient and recent. Even the Barbaricians place names make me tremble, although their archaic candor reveal them as fossils that is enough a brushing from dusting to be revealed. Revealed, then, on the basis of what? On the basis of a handful of Basque roots? And who is the recipient of this gasconades? In Sardinia, no intellectual is equipped to familiarize himself with such nonsense.
I have not observed that EBF, within its "bridgehead" of 49 entries, with which he claims to demonstrate the Basque colonization of Sardinia, has amassed well several terms with asterisk (*), ie terms whose existence is assumed, but is not recorded from any Dictionary. With one of these he will demonstrate the etymology of Cagliari from *KAR(R)A 'rock' (P 14). So, here I am forced to enter arena prepared by EBF, in order to indicate a more scientific method of research.
Cagliari was formerly Karalis/Karales. Even in ancient Pamphylia existed a town named Κάραλις, Κάραλλις. The name is repeated at least three more times in central Sardinia (Aùstis, Sorradìle and elsewhere). For instance, the shape Karále is found at Austis, in maquis area. But there is a strong difference in the etymology of the two names (see Etymological Dictionary).
Lemma Karalis befits a fascinating etymology that shows the semantics of Olbia (greek 'Όλβια 'happy, lucky'). It comes from Bab. karallu 'jewel', but above all 'happiness'. This same name is also mentioned in Ptolemy's map of Sardinia (Kαραλλι), formed with the suffix on the greek -i. Karallu is the etymology of the word coral, that linguists have so far left vague. And what makes you think. It is note the enormous importance of red coral reefs encircling almost the whole island and that attracted in every age fleets of urinatōres.
The fact that the first name appeared in the history, before the Ptolemaic Kαραλλι, was Karalis, with one -l- and the suffix -is, is an indication of an ancient trend of the southern Sardinia of doubling of consonants, duly recognized by the Romans who also believed that Karallu was a local phonetic habit, that they simplified (-l-) by hypercorrection.
An age-old charm involves many linguists, that persuades the to indicated for Cagliari (see Paleosardo 14, 70, 124) that the «huge mass of limestone rocks of the Castle and of Mount St. Elias, visible from anywhere in the Gulf, convey the unanimous recognition of the base *KAR(R)A 'rock', which is also found in Nuraghe Carale to Austis and Carallai at Sorradile, as well as a vast array of place names scattered throughout the Mediterranean basin, always with explicit reference to the appearance rocky places (from Carrara to Caraglio in Corsica, Caralis in Pamphylia)».
I do not know whether they have been verified rocky sites mentioned, because, at least in Sardinia, they do not exist (except in Càgliari). For example, at the site Carále at Austis (Nuraghe Carale do not exist) is in a flat, pastoral, non-rock site, which marks the border between the territory of Austis and that of Teti.
Moreover, the usually pathetic asterisk (*) is a proof of the defeat of the etymologists, who are reduced only to supposed Indo-European roots, their "pass" (in the case of the book Paleosardo, we are even reduced to supposed “Paleobasque" roots), from which they often distill only fantasies. I leave to the reader the pleasure of tasting the pages 124-125 of Paleosardo where *KAR(R)A is included in the roots of “uncertain or unknown origin”, while EBF proceeds in an ambiguous but gentle manner, and per subliminal way he turns upside down the proposition and induces to believe that the root is historically determined and means 'rock, rift'.
Oh, is not that - with a little good will - we can not give a (half) right to EBF. But this is only possible by inverting the investigation and expunge that delicious asterisk, and provided they do accept kar (without an asterisk!) as the Sumerian-Akkadian word meaning 'port', 'jetty' (and, by extension, 'steep wall', 'precipice').
In this regard, it seems a mystery (but it is not) that the quite sure kar root has become the uncertain *KAR(R)A, handed down ex cathedra from an academic to another academic. This asterisk form has a lot of drunk people, and who knows how long?; it seems of little interest to many academics the unveiling of this busillis, as eis non licet vitia in aliqua re vidēre. Among them, even the mysteries remain a deep and …true fascination: it is important thing is handed down from professor to professor, closed circuit, in sepulchral silence, in dumb knowledge like that of the Eleusinian Mysteries. And to be strictly attributed to the North-West Indo-European field (... and to the Basque field). So still no Indo-Europeanists (nor any Romance philologist) feels the need to ensure that kar is a Sumerian-Akkadian word meaning 'port', 'jetty' (and, for metaphora 'steep wall', 'precipice').
Clearly (and cleverly), there was an "unknown" initiator who, upon learning of the Sumerian root, seized it, but changed the features, touted as Indo-European and - in any event – endowed it with an asterisk, so the ivory tower of the Indo-Europeanists not explode inside. An exemplary scientific dignity!
Transeamus! Going to another, now I would like to repeat my rule of the variable segmentation of ancient words (ab-cd-ef, abc-de-f, a-bc-def, abc-def, ab-cdef, a-b-cdef...) to face the hypothetical radical *KUK (Paleosardo 125), which EBF gives arbitrarily "unique value" of 'hill, top', taking it to totem of claims of spread roots in Sardinia, France, among the Dravidian languages. In reality, things are different: each of the terms mentioned (kukku, kúkkuru, kúkkuru nieddu, Cuga, Cugui, Riu Cugada, Mela Kugada, Mela Kuka, Monquq, Cuq, Le Cuq, Cumont, Juxue, Jokoberro), excluding the obvious derivatives, it has a root peculiar to (moreover with a different segmentation), not shared by the other terms mentioned.
For the roots of Sardinia I refer to my Etymological Dictionary, which have the basis for kukku in the Sumerian kukku 'black', 'dark places' (superlative doubling of ku 'hole, cavity'): cf. Dravidian kaka 'crow, raven'; for kúkkuru you find an Akk. qaqqadu, Ugaritian qdqd, Hebr. qōdqōd 'head, top' (cf. Sanskrit kāhra 'hard') < Sum. kur 'mountain', with doubled word; from this Sumerian root it is clearly understood as in Sardinia, very often, we have the direct filiation (in this case the Sum. kur which is doubled kur-kur), no intermediate steps between Semitic languages that instead have dentalized the Sumerian / r / (reverse process). As for the riu Cuga, the term has the etymological basis in Sum. kug 'pure' (referring to the goodness of water).
I refuse (the reason is obvious) to deal with the French terms cited, since it is already "fat that runs" - as the rigor of my methodology – if in this book I can deal with the 2500 place names, hydronyms, oronyms, phytonyms so far by me investigated visually, in the environment that I attended. I let other linguists exercise their rumination, in their own territory, since already only the Sardinian place names, to know how to translate, are a great victory. If I had to translate me with a shamanic flight on foreign territory, without even a small historical and environmental responsibility, nor imbued with the indispensable assets of the local patois, I should generate a very deafening academic cachinnus.
Should avoid hitting the ecstasy of St. Teresa. The phonetic similarities may produce trance, hypnosis, and who is not awakened is in danger of falling into the abyss, like my friend archaeologist-sleepwalker, fellow of crazy treks over the abysses of Supramont, who by night tied the ankle to the tree not to make ...Pindaric flights, pendant sa promenade à la belle etoile. If we persevere to roam freely in the Basque dictionary, we will be seduced as soon as possible to see, among many other wonders, the identity of the Basque word lupa with Latin lupa, and even with the Lupu Sardinian surname, Italian Lupo, although they are not reciprocal. In fact, both names have the basic Akkadian luppu 'leather belt'; the Basque lupa is the 'mud', while in Latin is the 'whore'. Be careful then not to fall into another trap, that is to believe that this lupa is a Latin metaphor of the female wolf, otherwise you would have to demonstrate why the female wolf has risen to the model of prostitutes.
About the identity of many Latin words with Sumerian-Akkadian words, I would ask EBF from is derived the Latin Suburra? I say: from the Babylonian burra 'prostitute'. That Su- is identical to the Sardinian pronoun in Su 'e Musinu ‘the land owned by Musinu' from the Babylonian šu ‘the one belonging to'. Then in ancient Rome Suburra meant 'That (the place) of the prostitutes'. I return now to lupa, connecting it to lupanar 'house of harlots', a term that the ducts connect again with lupa, while the second member -nar undergoes a dismissive reference to -nal of Baccha-nal. But why to connect -nal to -nar? In short, they want to understand, gentlemen linguists, that -nar isn’t a suffix but a Sumerian word (nar), which means the 'musician'?
And what were
the musicians, ie the flutists, 5000 years ago, even though the Greeks
represented them nude in bas-relief, posing clear? (see the "Ludovisi
Throne"). Lupa-nar then pointed to a refined "brothel",
where the rich man could go to find sex-and-music, a mixture of bunga-bunga
and Folies Bergéres. But of the lupa-who-is-not-the-wolf-
In Latin we have various words related to the pleasures of man. For example, gana was the 'home game', not comparable with the Sp. gana 'desire' nor with the Basque gan 'junk of flax'; lūdus was not representative of the Sardinian ludu 'mud' but pointed to the 'game' (verb lūdō, -is, -si, -sum, -ere), by Akk. elēṣu 'to jubilee', Hebr. ‘lṣ ‘cheer'. The Basque popin 'nice, beautiful’, or popiña 'doll, stupid woman' did not match with the Latin adjective popīna 'tavern where you cooked some food', related to popa 'landlady' < Sum. pu 'mouth' + pa 'branch': pu-pa 'branch of eating' (remember that in Sardinia we put the leaves on the door to indicate to the traveler a place of temporary rest, the casual restaurant; still we do, but only for wine).
But why dwell on some examples, when we don’t take much to realize that to involve strictly homophones, without method, is like to make the flight of Icarus? So do not try to make the comparison of Basque root batikor 'patient, submissive' with the root of the Lat. name Vāticānus, which has Semitic bases. Vāticānus also requires an approach far from trivial, as we face Assyrian bātiqānu 'informant' < bātiqu 'postal messenger'. But the term more appropriate is an adjective in -anus from the Assyrian base batqu(m) 'neatly cut', 'stopped' < batāqu(m) 'cut off, split, tear off', 'separate (land) ' (is the Tiber original separator element from Rome). The Vāticānus began to be popular with the construction of the Milvio bridge, and in time also became implanted the vineyards, but they produced a bad wine (Martial).
But before the vineyard, what was there? Which is the very first reason of connecting Rome to Vāticānus? You can understand it giving you back to bātiqānu 'informant', which regards the lat. vates 'prophet, seer, fortune-teller, prophetess, sibyl', whose semantics is comparable with Assyrian bātiqānu 'informant', of which it’s a back-formation. It is to imagine that in the Vāticānus there was, apart for sacred reasons, a site where giving in to receive prophecy. So, there were the Etruscans! It is easy to use reason in the etymological analysis, instead of a cold phonetic comparison, too risky just over a few dozen of Basque roots.
Just not to bore the reader, I submit only the last name Rome, which has a Semitic base from Hebr. romem 'height', for the fact that the village originally was born on the Palatine (extended then on the other hills) to defend against flooding from the Tiber. You say too much!: are you bearing even a Jewish story!? Oh, yes. As well as the Jews were part of the great Semitic family, together with the Sardinians, and their words were interchangeable with the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Sardinians ones. Were or were not all one big family? So I may quote from the Hebrew language, when I can not find the corresponding Sumerian or Akkadian word. Pray, is not the same way that linguists use with the composite Indo-European family, mentioning at random to nail us to a demonstration?
Of course, the technique of the quote at random is used only for the cases just mentioned, while in other situations the same linguists (and semitists) using reversed criteria: in other words, the same weight and two separate measures! For example, we know the nihilistic pretensions (I'd say myopia of mole) brandished for the dating of the Stele of Nora, the oldest written document of the West. They say to be by 750 BCE instead of 1000, because the Stele, while having the exact same spelling of the Stele of Ahiram (which is recognized by 1000 BCE), it has one less character, being not enough characters to write. It was simply the absence of a character to order the Stele in a "rejuvenation" of 250 years. The contagion of madness, when it parts by a professor, goes around the world, and imprints on the culture the pockmarks of smallpox.
Back to Hebrew, we must not in any way think that we should do less of it to demonstrate the Semitic roots of the inhabitants of Latium (including the lemma Latium meaning in Semitic 'one who divides', again referring to the Tiber. The same holds for the Sardinian Monte Lattias, which in fact is the eminence of a mountain chain visible from Karalis, which separates the eastern from the western Sulcis).
But let’s back (and end) with Rome-romem 'hill, mountain', a term also referred to the Romano cheese, the classic cheese of Sardinia. Sardinian Academy welcomes to troop itself in the chorus that from a long while is squawking and pontificating that the cheese "Pecorino Romano" is copyrighted by Rome, which would teach the technology to enemies Ilienses. Instead, derided romem is the same Hebrew root, indicating the "heights", the "mountains" where our Barbagia dwellers have always done this Roman cheese: that is the "mountains Pecorino”.
In the very few examples of ancient Rome and our Barbagia I submitted a short essay on how you should do the etymological research. For this you do not need 49 little stones, serving mass, method, reason, intuition, interpretation, and the deep knowledge of the environment. So no need to isolate a handful of terms of Barbagia (and similar), using them as a crowbar to jake off the hinges of Sceae Doors and bury Troy. Moreover, no one suspects that the villages of Sardinia - now reduced to 377 - have names that, in general, are the most archaic island phenomenon. So, in addition to Càgliari, why not investigate – by the "Basque" method - the remaining 376 names of villages? Their birth is really archaic, coeval with any other place name, which resemble the place names of Barbagia. So why not try also with the names of the village in order to find (if any) Basque roots? Do you can not? Do you not know?
So here EBF goes in Barbagia, where he isolate himself, he make "scorched earth" of the rest of Sardinia, in order to find the archaic place names, which then can never infer the meaning! He fails for the simple fact that blindly believes in a derivation of the Iberian and Pyrenees, under which the Barbagian names could not receive other light except those already by ones just translated into Gascony. It seems only a gasconade! And so, if such a name Basque-Iberian means, just supposing, mountain, it should also be translated as ‘mountain’ the Sardinian homophone, despite evidence that the environment (which do not lie) prove that the name indicates, just supposing, a vast, flat, irrigated area.
But where is the internal consistency of the methodology? I still remember the translation of Serramanna as 'big mountain coast', but instead is from Ug. ṭrr (pronounced tzerra) 'water-rich, well irrigated' + Sum. maḫ 'great, powerful' = '(a city) great, rich and well irrigated by water' (just let’s visit the area to understand the issue). But in my Etymological Dictionary there are many other examples. If the Sardinian people should regularly read etymologies, with Serramanna keeps the more explosive joke of the century, to be handed down to posterity. Well, I would avoid that joke of Serramanna is flanked to the inexhaustible bundle of jokes can be taken from the book "Paleosardo”.
In that book EBF has dared everything, even dealing with familiarity and nonchalance (pp. 124-128) "roots uncertain or unknown" (I've already mentioned). But it was obvious to them it could not say a word. The roots are only "exposed" (only invented), because EBF know that some scholars would have been won over by sweet and dark and mysterious aura. Just to name one, at *Osa he not say anything, and yet he write to have said everything and still having to report in subsequent pages, where instead he keep a dark silence.
Unexpectedly, then, the "uncertain or unknown roots" have part with other roots which are not unknown, as the asterisked *Sala (P 128). Here's what EBF distills about: «The root *sala is counted between the roots of contention between supporters and proponents of a Paleoindoeuropean substratum and a Mediterranean substratum. The hydronymic value commonly accepted is 'stationary water' ... but in Sardinia this morpheme blends with Anindoeuropean elements, which the Semitic maqom (Salamaghe [ɣ] or the suffix –é nnoro (Salaénnoro)».
Leaving aside the mundane intuition of -mage = maqom (dreamlike equivalence to be served at the cocktail and left, as it happens, without etymology), for the umpteenth time EBF put an asterisk to a term that should not have, since is well known and has a very clear etymology, unknown only to dimidiati homines, only to certain professors, who are used to investigate only half of the vegetable, the Indoeuropean one.
This Sardinian term of damp sites, never investigated by those who break the Mediterranean world in half, has a base in the Akk. salā'u 'sprinkle, spray, wet', salû, šalû 'to flood'. From this water archaic verb derived a set of Sardinian hydronyms often compounds. Just a list of names of wet sites is as follows: Salatzái (Urzulei), Salauna (Tempio Pausania), Salapému (Morgongiori), Sallai (Ardaùli) Canali Salai (Gonnosfanadiga), source Sall'e mengiánu (Gesturi), Pauli Salamardi (Gesturi), Mitza Solomardi (S. Basilio), Riu Salamárdini (Villaurbana) funtana Salamattile (Scano Montiferru) Mitza Salamessi (Tuili), río Salamida (Décimomannu), rio Salamitánu (Villaspeciosa). The term however is not shared by the Basque language.
How can we conclude? Well, its findings are by Eduardo Blasco Ferrer (P 161-163), who writes: «I believe, in essence, that the reconstruction framework summarized here to give a logical sense to the hundreds of micro Iberian-Basque-Baricians toponyms, and of high-Baronia and Ogliastra, of all Sardinia in some cases, and consequently returns a very long chapter of prehistoric island ... This long timeframe is prominently marked by a global isolation of the island, which ensured that independent evolution of the roots, especially of the roots imported from the old Iberia ...
The pattern of structural analysis used in this paper has allowed, for the first time, to identify certain readings in the enigmatic structures of Paleosardian place names, and give them a meaning through juxtaposition with the ancient languages of Iberia… Is needed to create an international team of scholars and specialists in the Sardinian and Basque and Iberian languages: only with their unanimous advice you can confirm or correct the alleged links between the two regions of the Mediterranean».
Not bad! These
findings are a "Open, Sesame!", dropping gold; EBF open the
coffers of State and regional funding for this kind of research. Today
we have the certainty that cultural facies "Blasco-Ferrer"
will dominate the island for the future 50 years. There was good reason:
this student is a strong son of Aesculapius, born in good health.
Sardinia has many focus of culture, but if EBF continues on this
line, I predicts that he there will splash about immune from contagion.
At most, he will become a healthy carrier.