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From: bruck@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck)
Subject: Re: Latin ALBVS, Semitic LBN [was Re: albino
Organization: ACTCOM - Internet Services in Israel
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 1995 20:10:49 GMT
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Peter Schumacher (peter@statsci.com) wrote:


: Forgive my naivete, but I find it difficult to accept that the Romans
: didn't have a perfectly good native word for "white" before they
: encountered non-Indo-European cultures, or that they should have changed
: it once they had. How can this be? I'm being serious, here.


: Peter Schumacher
: peter@statsci.com

The occurence is quite quite common.
When two cultures meet they often adopt words from each other.
Look at any dictionary - especailly an English ones and see how 
many English words have foreign origins, some as recent a s acouple of centuries
ago. And surely many of them had Old English equivalents that had dropped
since out of use.
Uri Bruck 
bruck@actcom.co.il

