Talk:սիսեռն

Not Indo-European

Distribution of the genus Cicer.

@Vahagn Petrosyan For perhaps later consideration, I feel compelled to remark that I don’t buy this etymology. Fay Freak (talk) 03:51, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

1. Armenian-Latin isogloss, really? How often does that happen? For such a word such an assumption is more easily avoided. We cannot create the alleged Indo-European; Albanian thjerë (“lentil”) which links at its page to the same (pseudo-)root as the Latin page means nothing and has other etymologies. Ancient Macedonian κίκερροι (kíkerrhoi) is nice but Hesychius.
2. Acquainted with the name of the chickpea in various languages, it appears borrowed everywhere, particularly the Latin name of it; it is consonant to believe that the same word in a different source language has caught Armenian somewhere. At the same time it is likely that the source language is defunct without hint; and that there is no hope but in cuneiform tablets.
3. The chickpea probably wasn’t cultivated in the Armenian or Proto-Indo-European Urheimat north of the Caucasus, as it wasn’t at the same latitude much later in Europe (e.g. the Alps) either (still uncommon in the Germanic cuisine), where one does not have the harsh continental climate, although it does grow in the Ural and the remotest Siberia if we believe modern Russian netizen horticulturalists.

Fay Freak (talk) 03:51, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

@Fay Freak, most modern sources indeed consider this a wanterword. The borrowing into Armenian must be very old for the *ḱ > s to operate. --Vahag (talk) 19:16, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Note that the Roman name Cicero comes from cicer (chickpea) and that Cicero is pronounced Sisero in English. As such, the k > s is not farfetched at all and has already occurred in English.Սէրուժ (talk) 00:45, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, a palatalization of k before e and i is a common phenomenon across many languages. --Vahag (talk) 09:06, 26 December 2019 (UTC)