Re: "Kauderwelsch" (was: LUNATIC SURVEY: 2005)

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 13:31:05 -0500, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:

>My copy of Kluge's Etymological
>German Dictionary says that Kauderwelsch, "jargon," was first used in early
>modern German, and that "kauder" comes from a verb of unattested origins:
>kaudern, "to talk unintelligibly"--hence "strange, unintelligible, foreign
>tongue."  So the meaning might actually have meant in an earlier century
>"non-German," in much the same way that "barbarous" meant "non-Greek."
The Duden provides a different etymology: It says that originally, it was
_kaurer-welsch_ from _Kauer_ (that is, from the corresponding adjective
_kau(e)r-er_), the Tirolean version of the city name _Chur_ /xu:r/ in the
Swiss Rhine valley (compare e.g. standard German _sauer_ /'saw@r/ to
Alemannic _suur_ /su:r/ 'sour' or _kaum_ /kawm/ to _chuum_ /xu:m/ 'barely').
In the region of Chur, they originally spoke a Romance dialects of which are
still spoken in some remote regions and is nowadays known as Romansh,
Rumantsch or Rhaeto-Romance. The modern form is said to be influenced by the
vernacular verb _kaudern_ ('babble', but also 'peddle').

>The
>second element in the compound is welsch: "foreign and outlandish" (of
>course; the OE cognate was wealh, weallas, "foreign, foreigners," i.e., the
>Welsh.)  Old High German was "walhisc," MHG: "walch"--these words according
>to Kluge were variously applied to the Romance languages and peoples.  So
>Kauderwelsch may mean "gibberish" now, but it may have meant "weird foreign
>language" in previous eras.  Do you think the title of the series is a
>reference to that older meaning?
>
>I think Kauderwelsch is an excellent application to what we do, here, and
>I don't find it uncomplimentary at all! :)


On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 15:41:44 -0500, Damian Yerrick <tepples@...>
answered:

>Perhaps for those artlangers who share Tolkien's love for Welsh
>patterns of phonology and morphology :)
There's an interesting essay by Tolkien ("English and Welsh") where he
states that _welsh_ didn't mean 'weird foreign language' but involved a
statement on the beauty of the sounds of the foreign language: Only
nice-sounding languages rich of vowels were called _welsh_, that is,
Romances and Welsh.

kry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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