Re: Island

At 5:37 am -0400 14/5/00, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Dan Sulani wrote:
>> or did "i" derive from some other source, and if so,
>> what?
>
>_i_ was native, from Old English íeg, not at all related to Latin
>_insula_.
Indeed, not at all.  And the word still survives, with a dimunitive ending,
as 'ait' or 'eyot' (both pronounced /ejt/) meaning "a small island".  Such
small islands in the Thames are still so called, either as a common noun -
"See that ait over there?" - or as part of proper names. Near the college
where I lecture is "Raven's Ait".

[snip]
>> (Modern German has "Insel" for island --- from the same
>> Old French source?)
>
>I don't know, but it looks like it *could* be from Latin _insula_, in
>which case it would be related to _isle_, but not _island_.
Oh yes, certainly a later borrowing from the Latin, which is a diminutive
from an earlier *insa, related to a word preserved in insular Celtic, cf.
Welsh: ynys; Cornish: enys; Breton: enez; Irish: Gaelic: innis (--> Scots
Eng. 'inch' = island, water-meadow).  Yet another Italo-Celtic isogloss.

[...]
>> (BTW, what was the Proto-IE for "island"?)
>
>As far as I know, it's unknown.  Each of the different branches has gone
>a different direction.
That's my understanding also.

Ray.





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A mind which thinks at its own expense
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