- Axayɛ. (ɑ́.xə.ʒɛ) adj. and n. Achaean. [Greek Ἀχαιός.]
- aʃɛ. (ɑ̀.ʃə) n. An ill, a woe, a calamity, a trouble. [Proto-Indo-European *agh-o-.]
- murɛ. (mù.ɾə) adj. Countless, innumerable. [Proto-Indo-European *muH-ro-.]
Axayɛ is a reborrowing from Greek. If it had been borrowed in the Kirumb era its Atlantic reflex would be *Ahvɛ—compare the Latin Achivus—but I don’t think it would be a high-enough-profile ethnonym to have survived in that form.
Murɛ is cognate to the Greek μυρίος of the same meaning. Unlike the Greek word, which can also mean ten thousand, it didn’t acquire a specific numerical sense in Atlantic.
Aʃɛ was built to parallel Sanskrit अघ agha; English ail is a cognate.
These are all for the next piece of the Iliad; I thought I might need to make up a word corresponding to ἔθηκε to finish it off…but on burrowing through my notes tonight, found out I already have one. So:
- təmme
- REL
- ʒitɔ
- put.AOR.3SG
- aʃɛs
- trouble.PLUR
- murɛ
- innumerable
- adə
- ACC
- Axayɛs
- Achaeans
- adə
- towards
that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans
The bit that gets me the most here is that the postposition adə is doing double duty here; I think the word order is functional here, and the proximity of the object to the verb disambiguates it from the reading *”that put Achaeans onto countless ills”—for which I suppose we would write “təmme ʒitɔ Axayɛs adə aʃes murɛ adə“.
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