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

Mat McVeagh wrote:>>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"?
There used to be a such language, but that's all I know about it.

>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.
I shan't swear to the exact pronuncation, but it certainly sounded
diphthongized to me. And there certainly was no [f] in it.

                                                           Andreas

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