Re: I'm back, and an 'ow' question ...

>From: Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
>I'm back from Berlin (where I had a very nice time) and nomail, and am
>having a little linguistic question:
>
>In and around Berlin, there's quite a few placenames ending in _-ow_. I
>asociated this with Polish _-ow_, Russian _-ov_ etc, and pronounced it
>[Of],
>getting corrected and told that it should be [oU] (or something like that).
>I was told it was from some local Slavic language, which I couldn't get
>specified stricter than "not Sorbian". Can anyone here give more
>information?
>
>                                       Andreas
There was "Kashubian", "Polabian" and maybe another. "Pomeranian"? Not sure.
"po Laba" means "on the river Elbe". "po mer-" means "on the sea(front)",
from which "Pommern".

You are saying the local Berliners said that e.g. "Pankow" should be
pronounced /'pANkoU/ not /'pANkOf/? I find that very strange. It's most
un-German. In fact it's most un-Slavic.

Mat


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