Re: question - Turco-Japanese (British Vikings, 400 AD)

Ray Brown wrote:

> I think this is another example where we must not be led astray by
> spelling. The French feminine plural was /s/, as was the nom. masculine
> singular & the oblique masc. plural. What we are concerned with in
> English
> is /z/.
>
> The sound denoted by the Rune usually transcribed as -R is thought to
> have
> still had a sibilant pronunciation at the time of the Viking/Danish
> settlement in Britain. In other words, your -r plurals were still
> pronounced something like -z.
>
Hm, the plural was /z/ by then? I thought in OE voiced fricatives were
only found intervocalically and in any case was an allophone of the
unvoiced so the early Middle Angles, only just overrun by the French,
wouldn't've known that the French /s/ was any different from their own.
(Not that I'm arguing against you, mind, just that your supporting
evidence seems wrong to me.)

> The older Germanic word for 'uncle' is preseved in Dutch _oom_ /o:m/. It
> just about survived into early modern English as _eme_ (<-- Old English
> _éam_) which is now AFAIK entirely obsolete.
When'd it die? or rather, what are some recent uses of it?
(Incidentally, 'eam' looks like a more English spelling than 'eme'.)

--
Tristan