Re: USAGE: Dutch v or f (was: Grimm's Law)

--- Maarten wrote:

> > fokken 'to breed (animals)',
>
> Origin unknown to me
Maybe the old joke ("Do you fok horses?") has more
truth in it than you would expect. If "fokken" would
have been a word of ancient Germanic origin, its
spelling would definitely have been: "vokken". So, it
must be a loanword, probably from English "to fuck".
The similarity of both the words and their meaning is
just too striking to be a coincidence.

The fact that your etymological dictionary does not
mention it could very well be an example of the bad
habit of many dictionaries to omit "naughty" words. A
great mistake, I believe, since those words form a
very important (and frequently used) part of almost
every language!

Jan


=====
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought,
wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that
happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great
comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." --- J.
Michael Straczynski

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