James: I used to think so, but a friend of mine, Leigh Cline, who lived in the Greek speaking areas of Asia on the Black Sea (legendary Colchis) says that tar is Persian, meaning string. Seh-tar is three stringed. I knew that, but the Greek Kithara is broken up as Kith-ara, which means that it has a differnt linguistic origin. On another note, there are some intersting instruments at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. I can't find any pics on their site, but if I get there sometime, I'll se if I can't take some myself. There is a cittern dated to the 1700s and stated to be either English or Dutch. It has 10 strings in seven courses..the top single, the next three in pairs and three single basses. It has friction pegs. I have a photo of it in one of three calendars of musical instruments that they produced in the early '90's. Brad
James A Stimson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Dear All: Aren't all of these words derivations of the Greek "kitara?" Guitar, guittar, gittern, quintern, cittern, cetra, citole, setula, zither, plus the Persion zetar, the Indian sitar, and probably many others all seem to come from one linguistic root. So it's no wonder there's some confusion about names here. Cheers, Jim To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- Access over 1 million songs - Yahoo! Music Unlimited Try it today. --
