Re: New Conlang: Þrjótran

Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
>
>
>>R A Brown skrev:
>>
>>>Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>R A Brown skrev:
>>>
>>>[snip]
>>>
>>>
>>>>>AE  became monophthongized in unaccented syllables in Republican
>>>>>times, i.e. during the 1st cent BCE. It spread to accented syllables
>>>>>during the 1st cent CE.
>>>>>
>>>>>The change was to [E]. i.e. as Philip says, it merged with short e.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>But strangely Germanic borrowed CAESAR as *kaisar, cf.
>>>>German Kaiser and Old English cásere, where á /A:/ < *ai.
>>>
>>>
>>>The retention of initial /k/ does strongly suggest that these are
>>>learned borrowings, or remodelings. We could also expect a "posh"
>>>learned pronunciation of this name/title to be used which was archaic by
>>>normal spoken standards. The initial sound of Russian Tsar' shows a
>>>derivation from spoken form (I am not competent to comment whether
>>>Russian -ar' would reflect /Eri/ or not).

OOOPSS!! The Russian -ar' has nothing to do with the change of AE to a
monophthong - it is derived from (Vulgar) Latin -are(m). Tsar' must be
from some form like /tse'sare/.

The German form is also odd in showing the reduction of either Classical
Latin /a:r/ or vulgar Latin stressed /ar(e)/ to unstressed [@(r)]. It
has all the appearance of a semi-learned borrowing from the Classical
Nominative (3rd decl. nominatives were normally remodeled on the basis
of the acc. in Vulgar Latin - a similar thing has happened in Greek) -
but see below.

>>It may be between six or seven centuries between the borrowing
>>of CAESAR into Germanic and into Slavic.  Moreover the Slavic
>>form -- I can alas not check right now what the form was in
>>Old Church Slavic -- may have been borrowed by way of Greek
>>rather than directly from Latin.
Umm - the Greek acc. /ke'sara/ - this would imply a nom. /kesaras/, but
I suspect the learned /'kesar/ was normal. However, that would surely
give a Slav form with initial /k/; also it does not account for the
palatalization of the final /r/. The Russian must surely be derived from
some form such as /tse'sare(m)/.

>>But what if Germanic *kaisar was borrowed even in the lifetime
>>of C. Iulius Caesar, would it need to be learned or posh all
>>the same?
See below:

> If AE > [E] in stressed syllables only in the 1st C AD, a loan in the very early
> Imperial period, say during Augustus's Germanic wars, would explain the
> diphthong of *kaisar too, or or am I missing something?
Certainly if it were borrowed during C. Iulius Caesar's lifetime, we are
still in the 1st cent BCE. The nominative would still have retained the
diphthong (tho in the oblique case, it would be unstressed and tending
towards [E:]). If the Germanic borrowing was as early as this, it would
certainly explain the retention of the diphthong. Also some of the Latin
borrowing in Old English were, we know, brought to this country by the
Saxon invaders/settlers and were early borrowings, retaining features
which had disappeared from spoken Latin well before the Saxons came to
Britain, cf. wall <-- uallu(m).

--
Ray
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