Names of Cereals in the Turkic Languages - Wydział Filologiczny UJ

98 kyzyl bodaj || Wheatflat’ 60 (> ‘lentil’, also ‘millet’), one can only guess that one of the species of wheat hascharacteristically flatter grains, or perhaps some similarity to ‘millet’.kyzyl bodajforms: kyzyl bodaj Tat.: Voskresenskij 1894 ‘wheat (with red grains)’etymology: as yet not discussedcommentary:This word is absolutely clear: kyzyl ‘red’ (from the colour of grains) + bodaj ‘wheat’.kyzyltasforms: kyzyl tas Tuv.: Dmitrieva 1972 || kyzyltas RTuwSetymology: 1972: Dmitrieva: < kyzyl ‘red’ + tas ‘bald; naked; with scarce vegetation’commentary:This word may be more complex than has been presented by Dmitrieva 1972. While the firstpart of her etymology seems to be highly plausible (cf. kyzyl bodaj), its second element andthe type of the compound are rather odd: 1. it is unclear why ‘wheat’ should be described as‘bald, naked’; perhaps the word in fact means not ‘wheat’ but just one of the species, whichcould be characterised as such? 2. to the best of our knowledge, in the Tkc. languages thereare no compounds with a nominal meaning, which would be made up of two adjectives 61 .Unfortunately, the second part 62 of this word remains puzzling for us, too.mejzəforms: mejzə Fuyü: Zhen-hua 1987etymology: as yet not discussedcommentary: < Mand. mai 4 zi ‘wheat’ (oral information from Prof. A. Vovin [Honolulu]).öjürforms: öjür OTkc.: Egorov 1964, Fedeotov 1996 ‘millet; spelt’etymology: see ügür ‘millet’commentary:The etymology of this word has not been fully ascertained. However, from the originalmeaning of ‘gruel, pap’, a semantic evolution to any cereal is possible. Given that wheat60 This meaning is most probably, though not definitely, simply a methodological support.61 Although this distinction can hardly ever be justified for the Tkc. languages, in this very casethe adjectival nature of ‘red’ and ‘bald’ on one hand, and the nominal of ‘wheat’ on the otheris exceptionally explicit.62 It cannot be discounted that the word is not in fact a compound but a borrowing whosesounding is by chance (or perhaps as a result of contamination or adaptation?) identical tothat of kyzyl ‘red’.