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

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.

> Middle French is a much liklier source of influence in this case.
Wrong sound - and not always clearly plural - see above.
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On Wednesday, November 24, 2004, at 01:24 , John Cowan wrote:
[snip]
> But English did not *borrow* its grammar from Norse.  The similarities
> that exist are a result of the common descent of the two languages
> from Proto-Germanic, or in some cases are due to parallel but independent
> developments.
Yes, it does seem that at the time of Norse settlements (8th dent CE), the
two languages had not drifted so far apart as to make mutual understanding
difficult. Contacts between the Saxons & Norsemen must have soon led to
the sort of simplification that Sally refers to below.
[snip]

> Vocabulary, though, is a different matter.  English borrowed thousands
> of words from Old Norse: such ordinary words as "uncle" and "sky" are
> of Old Norse origin.  In some cases, the cognates of these words
> already existed in English, as in the Norse borrowing "skirt" next to
> the native word "shirt".
...and "kirk" next to "church" .

But Uncle!?
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On Wednesday, November 24, 2004, at 04:42 , Sally Caves wrote:
[snip]
> There are "s" plurals in Old English, notably the Masculine A stem nouns.
> Stan, stanas.
Yep - undoubtedly the springboard.

> It was exposure to the Scandinavians, however, that produced
> a kind of pidgen or simplification of Old English plurals in favor of the
> huge class of Masc. A-stem nouns. As Tom Shippey said on "The Story of
> English," it was simply easier to say "stone/stones, horse/horses,
> ship/ships, and book/books" instead of "stan/stanas, hors/hors,
> scip/scipu,
> and boc/bec."
Yes, and particularly helped along the way with the Viking/Danish -z,
which this simplification stopped from becoming the later Norse -r    :)

Yes, I am sure the spread of -es /-ez/ was had become widespread long
before the Normans (who spoke French, not Norse!) invaded our island in
1066.
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On Wednesday, November 24, 2004, at 03:32 , Sally Caves wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Elliott Lash" <erelion12@...>
[snip]
>> Agreed to all the above, except "uncle". Isn't "uncle"
>> a French word  from Latin  "avunculus"?
>
> Elliott
>
> That's what my American Heritage Dictionary says.
..and it's correct   :)

French _oncle_ is a perfectly regular development from Latin _auunculu(m)_
.

> But the word in German is Onkel, which is either a borrowing from OF
> oncle (or vice versa), or
> similarly derived.
It is a borrowing from French (not Old French either) in exactly the same
way as German _Tante_ (aunt) is borrowed. The Old Frenc for "aunt" was
_ante_ which is derived regularly from Latin _amita_ (short vowels,
stressed on first syllable). Our word is derived from Old French. The form
_tante_ developed later in French and the German words were borrowed at a
later date than our borrowings from Old French.

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.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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