On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 02:57:42PM +0200, Carl Mäsak wrote: > Note how close to Finnish it is. > > Portuguese: cebola > Finnish: sipoli > > Might be a coincidence, but might also be a borrowed word.
(This is extremely OT for the list.) That's 'sipuli', actually. I'm not sure (I'm not an etymologist), but there might be a common root in the latin name - Allium _cepa_ Linnaeus. It seems to have had multiple common latin names in the past, most of them based on 'cepa'. 'Cepae' is remarkably close to Finnish, although the ending is different. (Finnish in general has some _very_ old forms of words that have degenerated ages ago in other languages.) -- wolverian
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