Re: ach y fi (was: CHAT Starbucks (was: Hymn to Ikea etc.))

On 2 March, Paul Bennett wrote:

> My theory, such as it is (and it is not much of one at the moment, the
> research being exactly the sum total of what I've read in this thread), is
> that the phoneme sequence had a Proto-meaning (probably Proto-Centum,
> especially now I know the origin of Yd. |vey|), that has been
> folk-etymologised, with terms like Eng. |my|, Nor. |fy|, Wl. |fy|. Ger.
> |Weh| being taken by the speakers of various languages as what is meant by
> the underlying /Bi:/ sequence, and things like Eng. |oh|, Wl. |ach|, Yd.
> |oy| being taken by speakers of various languages as what is meant by the
> underlying /aE_^/ or /aE_^x/ sequence. This allows for the Scandanavian
> data, which IIRC has something like a "the Devil" morpheme, where Germanic
> looks to have "pain", and Celtic/English ("British"?) both have "me", as
> well as accomodating expressions like |cacapfui| (source lg forgotten
> (Swiss German?)).
>
>
>
> Paul
>
> ... OTOH, like I sugested in another of my posts, this could be phonetic
> convergence rather than semantic divergence, which would be a much sweeter
> pill to swallow.


   Interesting theory.
    FWIW, upon reflection, I remembered that the Yiddish |Oy Veh|
is actually a shortened form. The full phrase, AFAIK, is
|Oy! Veh iz mir!|, sometimes shortened to |Oy! Veh'z mir!|
And from there to |Oy! Veh!| (Although I have also heard |Veh'z mir|
without the |Oy|.)
    The |veh| is obviously related to the German |Weh|, and the full meaning
is, of course, "Woe is me".
    Who knows where the |oy| came from! Like I wrote in a previous post,
|Oy|, in Hebrew, is attested to in the Bible. The phrase |Oy! Veh iz mir|
could thus be a mixture of the Hebrew |oy| and the German |veh iz mir|.
      Does anybody know how many different cries of pain/sorrow are
used by the natlangs of the world? They are probably few in number
and simple in structure. The following come to mind: [oy, aj, yaj, au, Ow,
autS].

Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.