Re: New Conlang: Þrjótran

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?

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

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
    it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
    means "no"!

                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

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