作者： 发布时间：2017-01-10 关注度：243

I’ve observed that the Greek and Hebrew words for wine, oinos andyayin, are similar. Does this imply that there was a Mediterranean trade in alcoholic beverages?

我发现“wine”一词的含义与希腊语oinos和希伯来语yayin 是如此地相似。这是否意味着地中海沿岸曾存在酒精饮料贸易活动？

The making and consumption of grape wine (as opposed to such “wines” as date wine, rice wine, etc.) had spread all over the Mediterranean world and parts of Europe by an early historical period, and the similar words for wine that exist in many European and Semitic languages all point to a common source for both the beverage and its name. Thus, to take a small sample, besides Greek oinos and Hebrew yayin, we have Latin vinum, Russian вино, Lithuanian vynas, German Wein, Welsh gwin, Armenian gini, Georgian ghvino (ღვინო), and Amharic (the main language of Ethiopia) weyinina , to say nothing of such farther-flung cognates as Swahili mvinyo and Maori waina.

早期文献记载，葡萄酒（与之相对的诸如红枣酒、米酒等“酒类”）的酿造与消费已遍及整个地中海并蔓延至欧洲部分地区。欧洲众多语言和闪米特语系中描述葡萄酒的词汇都相似，这些词汇都可追溯到这种饮料及其名称的源头。在此，我举几个例子：除了希腊语 oinos和希伯来语yayin 之外,我们还有拉丁语 vinum、俄语 вино、立陶宛语 vynas、德语 Wein、威尔士语gwin、亚美尼亚语 gini、格鲁吉亚语ghvino (ღვინო)和阿姆哈拉语(埃塞俄比亚主要用语) weyinina， 更不用说再远地区的同源词，如斯瓦希里语mvinyo 和毛利语waina。

Many of these words are obviously borrowings. Ancient Russians, Lithuanians, Germans, and other central and northern European peoples did not grow grapes or make wine, and a widely disseminated word for it could not have originated in any of their languages, just as it could not have done so in Amharic, Swahili, or Maori. And although such a word theoretically could have originated in Latin vinum, Greek oinos,or Hebrew yayin, since ancient Italy, Greece, and Palestine were all grape-growing and wine-making regions, this, too, is unlikely, because the earliest grape cultivation and wine production that historians can point to took place in the Caucasus.

许多词汇毫无疑问都属于外来词汇。古代俄罗斯、立陶宛、德国以及其他中北欧国家的人们根本就不种葡萄，更别说酿酒了，这个广为传播的词语不可能源自他们的语言，同样也不可能源自阿姆哈拉语、斯瓦希里语或毛利语。虽然这样的词在理论上可能起源于拉丁语vinum、希腊语oinos或是希伯来语yayin，这是因为古意大利、希腊和巴勒斯坦都种葡萄，也酿酒，难道它源于这几个国家的语言？这当然也是不可能的，原因是历史学家早已确定葡萄栽培与酿酒的发源地始于高加索地区。

The oldest wine-making site discovered anywhere in the world thus far is in the Kvemo Kartli region of southeast Georgia, where clay vessels containing grape seeds and vine dust, dated to about 6,000 BCE, have been unearthed. It is probable, therefore, that it was Georgian, neither an Indo-European nor a Semitic language, that gave the world wine and a word for it, both of which spread in tandem.

迄今为止，世界上发现的最古老的酿酒场所位于格鲁吉亚东南部的克维莫-卡尔特里(Kvemo Kartli)地区，在那里出土的陶器中存有大量的葡萄籽和葡萄藤粉末，可追溯到公元前6000年。因此，它很可能是源于格鲁吉亚语，而不是印欧语或闪米特语。格鲁吉亚给世界带来了葡萄酒及“wine”这个词，两者共同传播于世。

This leaves us with three possibilities:

我们推断出3条可能的传播路线：

(1) Wine and its manufacture traveled from the Caucasus to southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean basin at roughly the same time, so that oinos and yayin are independently descended from an ancient form of modern Georgianghvino (ღვინო), either directly or through other, mediating languages.

（1） 葡萄酒和酿酒工艺大约在同一时期从高加索地区传到欧洲南部和地中海东部盆地，因此，oinos 和yayin这两个词应该是源自现代格鲁吉亚语“ghvino ”的古语形式“ღვინო”，可能是直接演化或通过其他语言演化而来的。

(2) Wine reached southern Europe from the Caucasus first and traveled from there to the eastern Mediterranean, so thatyayin may descend from oinos.

（2） 葡萄酒从高加索地区传到欧洲南部，再从欧洲南部传到地中海东部，因此，yayin 一词可能源自 oinos。

(3) Wine reached the eastern Mediterranean from the Caucasus first and traveled from there to southern Europe, so thatoinos may indeed descend from yayin.

（3） 葡萄酒从高加索地区传到地中海东部，再从地中海东部传到欧洲南部，因此，oinos一词可能源自yayin。

To the best of my knowledge, all of this remains an open question. Perhaps it will eventually be settled by the linguists and archaeologists, perhaps not. There’s really no rush to find out. Whether you would rather wash down your steak with a Greek agiorgitiko or an Israeli cabernet sauvignon doesn’t have much to do with it.

就我所知，这一切都还是待解之谜，或许语言学家和考古学家最终能解开谜团，也可能永远尘封下去。不过我们倒不急于求证这个问题。因为搭配牛排，无论是希腊的阿吉提可 (agiorgitiko) 还是以色列的赤霞珠，都跟它没太大关系。