Re: R: Re: A funny linguistic subway experience + some questions about nouns of days and months

Mangiat <mangiat@...> writes:

> > The 'pure' German for "Saturday" is _Sonnabend_ which is still, I
> > understand, the normal word in northen Germany.  The southern 'Samstag' is
> > a deliberate adaptation of from the French 'samedi' when all things French
> > were imitated by those who wanted to appear fashionable and wordly-wise.
> > Presumably it appeared at the same time that the fashionable southerners
> > started imitating the French uvular /R/ which has now, by and large I
> > believe, replaced the older trilled apical /r/.
My `Kluge' etymological dictionary of German says `Samstag' is older
than 9th century in German and was `sambaztag' or `samiztag' in Old
High German.  It further says it's origin is Latin `sabbatum' from
Hebrew `sabbat'.  So German and French words have the same root, but
the German word was not taken from French.

There also seems to be `Ergetag' for `saturday' in southern Germany,
but I do not know that word.

`Sonnabend' seems to be as old as that, `sunnunaband' in Old High
German.  Its meaning (still) is `evening before sunday'.

Today, they mean the same. :-)

HTH,
   **Henrik