On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, Mangiat wrote:
>SOME OTHER QUESTIONS
>
>English has 'it', German 'es', Swedish 'ett', Latin 'id'. Where's Dutch
>'het' from? Perhaps analogy with 'hij' (male)?
I think cognate with "it" (used to be hit) in English.
>Almost every germanic lang has the *bleiv- root: German 'bleiben', Dutch
>'blijven', Swedish 'bleva'(?). English has the Romance 'remain' and his own
>'abide' (OE a^bi^dan). What's more, I've tried to find cognates of 'bleiv-'
>in Gothic and OHG. None. What's your opinion?
We're not just any Germanic language. We have a Germanic language
that has borrowed extensively from Romance (and Latin and Greek)
and extremely readily borrows from other languages. It's borrowed
to such an extent that many people believe that English _is_ a
Romance language; or (perhaps stranger still) a sort of "part-
time" Romance language.
>
>German has 'schön', Dutch 'schoon' (?). Where's the English cognate?
I think it's related to shine - no dictionary to hand, alas!
>Shouldn't it be 'shoon' (beautiful is from French)?
Nah. We wears em on our feet!
Padraic.
>Luca