Re: New Conlang: Þrjótran

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).
>
> 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.
>
> 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?
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?

                                                             Andreas

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