Talk:нарды

Etymology

It's strange that Persian نرد (nard) would consistently yield Russian нарды, Armenian նարդի (nardi) and Georgian ნარდი (nardi), all with an -i at the end. Perhaps those are borrowed from an inflected form of نرد? --Vahagn Petrosyan 09:14, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea. It would be much more likely that it was borrowed as nardi in one language, and from it spread elsewhere, than it was borrowed as the same inflected form (if it is an inflected form in Persian?) in all languages. Perhaps -i was added simply to ease pronunciation: it's much more easier to pronounce is as two-syllable nar-di rather than nard with this strange consonant cluster at the end (which I presume the phonotaxis of the language that originally borrowed it wouldn't tolerate). --Ivan Štambuk 09:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Possibly through Georgian. Georgian can have very complex consonant clusters at the beginning of syllables, but the end of syllables is always very simple. Only a few simple consonants can end a word, but usually it ends in a vowel. When a word that ends in a consonant is borrowed from another language, Georgian typically adds an -i at the end to make it pronounceable. —Stephen 18:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I too immediatly thought of Georgian and their maniacal urge to stick -i to everything, but then figured we wouldn't borrow a Persian word via Georgian, being located between those two. However, just now I found there was Old Armenian նարտ (nart), borrowed directly from Persian. My dictionary confirms Georgian ნარდი (nardi) is from Persian and modern Armenian նարդի (nardi) was borrowed again from Georgian. Too bad we can't confirm the same for Russian, though I'm sure it too is from Georgian. --Vahagn Petrosyan 18:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

@Vahag, It is not a "maniacal urge". It is much the same inclination as Latin's -us and Greek's -os and Russian's -ыи and so on.

P,S, It must have gone through Georgian. Even more, the transmission was brought about verbally because of its last letter being ы rather than и, which would have yielded the soft d - a much more different sound than ordinary d (present in the Georgian form).--Dixtosa-wikified me 21:08, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Gender incomplete?

Currently displaying as "на́рды (nárdy) m ? pl". Mouse over "?" says "gender incomplete". How is this different from ворота, which works fine? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:38, 20 October 2013 (UTC)