Re: men, elves, wolves, and robots; was: man, etc.

Sally Caves wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
>
>> Quoting Andreas quoting Sally:
>>
>>> In writings contemporaneous with Wulfstan's and afterwards, the term is
>>> wer/ver- as in NG Werwolf, also Wehrwolf.  Wulfstan's spelling is
>>> interesting and piques my curiosity, which is why I'm blatting on.  For
>>> instance: we have middle Dutch weerwolf, MHG werwolf, West Frisian
>>> waerul,
>>> Danish and Norwegian varulv, and Swedish varulf.
>>
>>
>> Act'ly, a spelling reform of about a hundred years ago made the Swedish
>> spelling
>> |varulv|.
>
>
> I was quoting medieval spellings, Andreas, but this is interesting!
> Obviously to reflect pronunciation, right?
>
>> This spelling reform managed to cause some phonetic splits; the (now not
>> much
>> used) cognate of "wolf" became |ulv|, but the men having it as their
>> given
>> name
>> overwhelmingly retained the spelling |Ulf|, which soon enough acquired
>> the
>> pronunciation [8lf]. We also got the doublette |alv| "elf" and |Alf| masc
>> name;
>> you also see |alf| with reference to beings in Norse mythology.
>
>
> Yes, indeed.  So are you saying that with the change in vowel pronunciation
> that the names Ulf and Alf threatened to become confused with one another?
> That would be something!  Forgive my asking what [8] sounds like.
No, he is saying that with spelling reform the proper name
_Alf_ became differentiated from the common noun _alv_,
and similarly the proper name _Ulf_ became differentiated
from the common noun _ulv_ (the latter is however largely
obsolete in favor of _varg_, which does not occur as a
proper name.)  The reason is that proper names were exempt
from the spelling reform.  People could, and would most
often, keep the unredformed spellings of names.  In time,
as the pre-reform spelling faded from memory people started
to mispronounce these proper names with /f/ while the common
nouns kept the etymological /v/.

BTW Swedish surnames bristle with |w|s and |f|s in place
of |v|, and silent |h|s with no counterpart in the spelling
of non-names.  In fact you would expect someone to spell
his name Wahllöf /'va:l2:v/ rather than the "regular" Vallöv.
My first and second names are also cases in point, where |c|
and |Ph| in place of |g| and |F| is mere bravery -- though
it makes life easier when abroad! :)

And [8] is more or less a rounded schwa -- the normal
pronunciation of |u| in Swedish.

--

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)

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