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

Ray Brown wrote:

> On Wednesday, November 24, 2004, at 01:21 , Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
>> Ray Brown wrote:
>>
>>> . Their Norse language
>>> was one of the ingredients that contributed towards the development of
>>> Middle English and hence modern English. The almost universal use of
>>> -(e)
>>> s
>>> as the plural suffix, for example, is thought to be due to old Norse
>>> influence.
>>
>>
>> How could that be?  There are no -s plurals in Old Norse.
>
>
> 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.

Well, the English wasn't /z/ - it was /s/, pronounced [z] (though I
think this actually varied dialectally)

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