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Re: onomatopoetic animal sounds

From:daniel andreasson <daniel.andreasson@...>
Date:Friday, April 13, 2001, 11:03
Andreas Johansson mælti:

> A thing on Nordic "gala" tho: in Old Norse it seems to've > meant "sing" . You could "gala" a magic song on somebody to > place a curse on him or her. Modern Swedish _galen_ "crazy" > originally meant "sung" or something like that. "En galen > man"="A sung man"="A man who've been cursed by a song"="A > crazy man".
Interesting! I haven't thought about that before. We were in such a hurry when we wrote this together that we didn't have time to look bits like this up. Then it turned out our teacher weren't there anyway. So we don't have to turn it in to her until Tuesday. I looked up _gala_ in my etymological dictionary and it says "croak, screem, chant spells". I suppose that English _crow_ could go into this class as well, but it's hard to know if _crow_ comes from an onomatopoetic sound or if it had some original value "sing, chant" as well. Anyone knows? A search on Merriam-Webster doesn't give much info. I suppose _gala_ has been used for "chant" in the first place and then has become transferred to the crowing of the rooster. This means that _gala_ could be incorporated into the "transferred" or "music" verb class. Speaking of this, does anyone know the origins of Spanish _graznar_, Italian _starnazzare_ and French _caqueter_? These are supposedly used as verbs for the sound of the duck. ||| daniel -- <> Qheil rynenya alandea! <> daniel.andreasson@telia.com <> <> Rinya lawea! <> Daniel Andreasson <>

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Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>