[Avodah] Choshen

[Simon Montagu]

> In any case, even if there were traces of Hebrew left here and there in
> other languages, that would not help Rashi's (Chazal's) etymologies of
> "avrech" and "totafos."  In these two cases we do not see foreign languages
> retaining traces of Hebrew, but the opposite -- the Hebrew language seeming
> to contain traces of foreign languages.
>
> You can't say that in the Caspian language they retained the original Hebrew
> word for two, "tat," since tat is not the original Hebrew word for two!  Nor
> can you say that Africi retained a trace of Hebrew in its word for two,
> since "pat" also is not the original Hebrew word for two.  And "rech" is not
> the original Hebrew word for king, so you can't find in Latin a trace of the
> original Hebrew, either. (Not in the word avrech, anyway.)

Maybe "tat" and "pat" were archaic pre-haflaga Hebrew words for "two"
which were retained in other languages, and in "totafot"? Something
like this can happen - for example the Classical Greek word for water
is "hydor", which survives in English words like "hydraulic" and
"hydrotherapy", but the Modern Greek for water is "nero".

I don't necessarily buy this, but it's not impossible.