Talk:λέων

λέων
I do not see the reason for including several ancient languages and thus encumbering the etymology. Would it be acceptable to leave only Akkadian, the most ancient one? Especially when the Coptic was not explicitly written? Bogorm 22:15, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "Coptic was not written" ? I agree that ancient languages should have predominantly ancient cognates, and in this particular case linking to might be the most reasonable thing (as there are other equally "ancient" languages like Hebrew, Eblaite, Ugaritic etc.) --Ivan Štambuk 22:47, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * There was neither the original Coptic(~Greek) script nor transliteration. Amongst Semitic languages, Akkadian is the most ancient and I would opt for it to remain. Proto... are reconstructions by contemporary linguists and thus a theory, not a cognate. Bogorm 22:58, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Uhm, you are aware of the existence of Coptic and Demotic scripts, used to write the latest phase of the Egyptian language? :) Egyptian language is genetically parallel to the whole Semitic branch in Afro-Asiatic terms, so mentioning it would be very much relevant for comparison purposes of this very ancient word..
 * The most "ancient" (in meaning "the earliest attested") of Semitic languages is not Akkadian but actually Eblaite...but lots of these "languages" are actually collections of various dialect spoken for several millenia, so you can get e.g. Ugaritic or Hebrew word for "lion" attested earlier than Akkadian! And Akkadian was not the most conservative Semitic language (Arabic is).
 * Proto-Semitic reconstructions are valid scientific theories (not "theories" in the abused sense of the word ). It is doubtless that all Semitic languages have sprung from the same common source, and the fact that the reconstructions comparative method establishes were not attested does not mean that these terms did not exist in the shape the reconstructions predict them. Semitic languages are very conservative (much more than IE) due to their peculiar morphology (roots + transfixes), so these reconstructions have an aura of very great certainty around them. Just compare the reflexes of Proto-Semitic reconstructions in daughter languages on those Proto-Semitic appendix pages - in lots of cases they're retained unchanged, or with trivial sound changes a child could devise on sight. Common Semitic disintegrated approx. at the same time as Late Proto-Indo-European (4th millennium BCE), so you can get the picture in what "conservative" terms we're talking about --Ivan Štambuk 23:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Was Coptic written? Well, in one word ⲤⲈ!—Strabismus 00:19, 21 February 2009 (UTC)