Re: Think, thank, thunk (was Re: Unicode character pickers)

Hi!

Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> writes:
> Henrik Theiling skrev:
> > Hi!
> > veritosproject@GMAIL.COM writes:
> >
> >>I've even heard 'brang': [brejN]
> > That'd be the normal form in used in dialectal German here in the
> > Saarland!  (I.e., if the local dialect had a simple past...)
> > Standard High German has:
> >     bringen  brachte  gebracht   (pretty much like English).
> > But Saarlandian (and Western Palatinian) has:
> >     bringe   --      gebrung
> >
>
> In Swedish the verb "to melt" is weak
> _smälta, smälte, smält_ when it is transitive
> but strong _smälta, smalt, smultit_ when it is
> intransitive.  AFAIK the only similar case in
> Standard English is _hang_.  I wonder if there
> are any such cases in German, Dutch or Norwegian?
I think this is a common pattern in Germanic and it happens in German
as well, e.g.:

  vi:   hängen       hing         gehangen         ~ to hang
  vt:   hängen       hängte       gehängt          ~ to hang

  vi:   erschrecken  erschrak     erschrocken      ~ to be scared
  vt:   erschrecken  erschreckte  erschreckt       ~ to scare s.o.

The latter one makes for a pair that many Germans fail to do right
colloquially, especially since it means almost the same:

     Ich bin erschrocken.
  =~ Ich habe mich erschreckt.
     I was scared.

And in Dutch:

  vi:   jagen        joeg          gejagen          ~ to scud
  vt:   jagen        jaagde        gejaagd          ~ to hunt

(Both verbs (also 'jagen') are weak in German, btw.)

> There *ought* to be more of such niceness, but unfortunately the
> trend among young Swedes is to inflect _smälta_ weakly even when
> it's intransitive.
As you can see, this happens in German, too, for some words.

**Henrik
--
Relay 13 is over:
http://www.conlang.info/relay13/

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