Re: YASPT

At 12:43 11.12.2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
>
> > At 13:50 9.12.2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> > > > >My mother's West Gautic dialect has it too.
> > > >
> > > > You mean the ...
>...snip...
> >... they failed to notice she's saying
> > >[fEm]
> > >and [hem], he's [fEm] and [hEm].
> >
> > Actually they both have /e/ [e] for me.
>
>Happen to know what they etymologically should have?
Well, Icelandic has _fimm_, which is [e] or [I],
and _heim_, which is [Ei], but should correspond
to e: in Old Swedish.  Nasals do funny things to
vowels though (lengthening, lowering, backing),
and then you have the quantity shift mucking up
things as well, so these particular words can and
do end up differently in different dialects.
E.g. Värmländska is well known to have [f&m:]!

>An old textbook I used to use back in high school listed _fem_ as a word that
>ought to be spelt with "ä", which kind of supports my mother's usage, but that
>book's been proven wrong on other points, so I don't trust it particularly
>blindly.

/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__
                A h-ammen ledin i phith!                \ \
     __  ____ ____    _____________ ____ __   __ __     / /
     \ \/___ \\__ \  /___  _____/\ \\__ \\ \  \ \\ \   / /
     / /   / /  /  \    / /Melroch\ \_/ // /  / // /  / /
    / /___/ /_ / /\ \  / /'Aestan ~\_  // /__/ // /__/ /
   /_________//_/  \_\/ /Eowine __  / / \___/\_\\___/\_\
Gwaedhvenn Angeliniel\ \______/ /a/ /_h-adar Merthol naun
  ~~~~~~~~~Kuinondil~~~\________/~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~
|| Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda kuivie aiya! ||
"A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)