Island

Hi all! I seem to be cut off from the List since
Friday.(problems in the phone-system --- they're on
strike and not fixing breakdowns. This, in turn, is
affecting my ISP. :-P) Anyhow, I've twice
tried to get this posting to the List. This time,
I'll try from a web-based address. Maybe I can get
out. I really _am_  interested in knowing the answer
if any of you know of it.


Anyhow, on Friday, 12 May, John Cowan wrote:

>John Mietus scripsit:
>
>> How did it become {island}, anyway?
>
>Contamination from "isle". Despite appearances,
"island and "isle"
>are not closely related.   "Island" is native
>English, "isle" is from Latin "insula" via Old
French.  Originally
>the English word was simply "i"; when that got
confusing, the
>suffix "-land" was added for clarity, literally
"island-land".
>Then an unhistorical "s" was added to make "iland"
look more like
>"isle".
I'm still confused( :-)  ). Is "i" a maximal
shorteneing
of the Old French, while "isle" was a less drastic
version,
or did "i" derive from some other source, and if so,
what?
(Modern German has "Insel" for island --- from the
same
Old French source?)
    The reason I ask, is that the word for island in
Hebrew
is also "i" (spelled aleph-yod). My (Hebrew)
dictionary says that
ancient Egyptian (Hamitic, not Semitic) had "Iw" (or
something like "aleph-vav" and that ancient Phonecian
(Semitic)  also had something like "aleph-yod".
    That English also had "i" for island is probably a
coincidence
and not a borrowing from the Mediterranean world.
(No?)
(BTW, what was the Proto-IE for "island"?)

Thanks.

Dan Sulani

=====
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.

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