Re: onomatopoetic animal sounds

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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