Re: R: Re: English oddities

On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> Mangiat wrote:
>
> > German has 'schön', Dutch 'schoon' (?). Where's the English cognate?
> > Shouldn't it be 'shoon' (beautiful is from French)?
>
> The absence of an English cognate is hardly surprising, considering the amount
> of lexical replacement that has taken place.  Among the Germanic languages,
> English is by far the odd man out when it comes to vocabulary.  One could
> almost think of English as being a creole, with a Germanic substrate and a
> French/Classical superstrate.
Watkins has 'sheen' from Germ *skauniz, and 'scone' from Germ
*skaunjaz; both Germanic roots are ultimately from PIE *keu- 'to
perceive, hear'. He lists Dutch 'schoon' as also from Germ *skaunjaz,
so I suppose that 'scone' is cognate with 'schoon'. But the only scone
I know of is a pastry, which doesn't seem to fit into the set.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu