Re: R: Re: English oddities

>From: Mangiat <mangiat@...>
>Subject: R:      Re: English oddities
>Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 13:43:25 +0200
>Well, I'm happy, because I like it! That 'yule' has a very Scandinavian
>sound (wasn't the Danish word for Xmas 'jul'?).
Yes. From Old Norse "jo'l" (same in Icelandic), which in fact referred to a
pagan festival. That festival was AFAIK to celebrate winter solstice.
Christ's supposed birthday conveniently comes up at approximately the same
time, so the Christianized Scandinavians just used the old word for the new
festival (which is rather typical for how they adopted the new custom).
"Christmas" would, in Icelandic, be expressed as "Kristsmessa", or in
Danish, "Krists messe" (don't remember if the 'messe' word is actually used
in Danish though).

>SOME OTHER QUESTIONS
>
>English has 'it', German 'es', Swedish 'ett', Latin 'id'. Where's Dutch
>'het' from? Perhaps analogy with 'hij' (male)?
Apart from Swedish 'ett', I could be told they're all of the same root.
Wasn't it that in High German, final affricates simplified, so that the
German -s can be accounted for as "-t > -ts > -s"? Old Norse has the cognate
"hit". But anyway, I'm not the first on this list to answer that Dutch 'het'
is a cognate to English 'it'.

Oskar
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