2) As a second thought, how did this verb become so irregular? I can't imagine it being only phonological changes that have occurred since IE. I imagine it may be something to do with the way many of the modern Romance languages have fused IRE, AMBULARE, *AMBITARE, VADERE into their various paradigms.
3) The proposed *AMBITARE as a vulgar form of ambio, ambire, ambii was an etymology for the Italian andare that I've read somewhere on the net. However, I found, a few months back on Wikipedia, another possible etymology and I don't know which to trust and which has gained acceptance among modern scholars today:
Classical. Lat. vademus < Archaic Lat.*vandiymus > Vulgar Lat. *vandyemus > It. andiamo
What do you think? How plausible is that?
Another etymology I've read is thus:
It. andare < *adnare < Lat. adnatare "to swim up to"
This one is interesting because in Elcock's definitive, "The Romance Languages", I read an etymology for French's arriver:
Fr. arriver < Vulgar Lat. *adripare from the ad "to" + ripa "river bank"
And I remember reading somewhere that the Fr. aller may have some kind of sea-based etymology other than AMBULARE:
Fr. aller < Vulgar Lat. *ad-iterare
I've also heard:
Fr. aller < Lat. allatus (from SURPRISE!: affero, afferre, attuli, allatus) and with paradigmatic levelling, created the Vulgar form *allare.
... and...
Fr. aller < Vulgar Lat. ad "to" + illa(c) "this" + are
Although this has been thought to be phonologically impossible.
I don't remember my sources but I just wanted to take it to this community to see what they thought about it all.
Any other weird forms of "to go" in the lesser-known Romances, the majority of which I am not familiar?