On Thu, 22 Jul 2021 15:52:13 -0700 Denis Heidtmann <[email protected]> dijo:
>Time for John to contribute some information about the etymology. OK, I've mentioned this here before, but before I plunge in I must point out that not all linguists buy these etymologies, or at least not all of them. English 'black,' so the story goes, comes from a proto-Balto-Slavic word, 'beloc,' meaning light (daylight). Later it acquired the meaning of 'light from a fire,' e.g., campfire or fire in your fireplace if you were fortunate enough to have one. However, the word ended up in Rome, where it was pronounced [blanc-], the dash standing for over thirty suffixes that attributive adjectives could accept to indicate its syntactic function. But the Romans changed the meaning from 'light from a fire' to the color 'white,' not a huge change in word meanings. But on the road to English it acquired an additional meaning, the 'blank' that you need to fill in on a form. Meantime 'beloc' traveled to Old Church Slavonic, of which the only record we have is a bible from about 400CE. And there we find that 'beloc' had come to mean the source of the light-giving fire, that is, the wood, and most importantly, the color of the burned wood, that is 'black,' which ultimately became English 'black.' So, coming full circle, Spanish 'blanco' (white) and English 'black' come from the same word. Linguists who buy all of this are said to be language scientists who believe that black is white. Oh, and I never bothered to look up 'white,' so all I can tell you is that it is certainly a cognate for German 'weiß,' [βaɪs] or [vaɪs] (depending on dialect), and I'm sure there are more cognates throughout the ranks of the Germanic languages. That's enough for now. I'm recovering after a doctor ripped out my gall bladder on Tuesday, so time for bed. :)
