CHAT: Beck (was: Humpty Dumpty (was: con-childish taunts))

At 4:08 pm -0400 22/5/99, John Cowan wrote:
>Tom Wier scripsit:
>
>> Hmm, that's interesting, because I was expecting it to be more
>> West-Germanic than that.  Modern German has "der Bach", which
>> underwent the expected soundchange /k/ --> /x/.
>
>Yes, but you're ignoring the vowel.  Old Norse had "bekkr", with
>nominative ending "-r".  The OE word was "baec", with expected
>fronting a -> ae compared to OHG "bah" /bax/.  This is one of those
>cases where the North Gmc. word completely replaced its native
>equivalent in (dialectal) English.
Yes - no doubt about that.  But Scandinavian borrowings didn't always stay
in the north.  Some migrated south.  The most obvious examples, I suppose,
are 'give' which replace the southern, Saxon-derived 'yive' and 'they',
'them' etc which replaced the various southern forms 'hie', 'hem' etc (Yes
- I know 'hem' still survives as "'em' :)

'Beck' is/was certainly used in northern dialects but was/is also used in
East Anglia (where Colchester is) and in east Sussex, right in the very
south.

Ray.