[gothic-l] Ic. "Bill" & Relevance

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

>>Perhaps someone could reconstruct a Proto-North-Germanic form for this word,
>>and then from there we could reconstruct the Gothic ;)
>
>   Well, if the Romans had cars, and called them "automobiles", (which they
>certainly would not) then the Goths might have calqued an awkward form like
>*silbagaggands; or they could have borrowed the word, doubtless as
>*awtaumobilus, pl. *awtaumobileis, and then could have clipped it to
>*bilus, pl. *bileis.
>        "bíll" on the other hand, if an original Icelandic form, would
>perhaps reflect *bîlaz or *bîliz = Go. *beils.
>        I'd prefer *karrus to both. :)

Well, it is kind of nice to have a totally new word for a new invention.
"Bil" is used in all Scandinavian countries. In Holland and Germany
they chose the first part of "automobile", probably taking after the French.
Note that "auto" < Greek and "mobilus" < Latin.

To most Scandinavians "bil" probably appears as a word with only
one meaning (as car), but there are some older meanings attached
to the word. These older meanings may however be differentiated
from the new meaning (car) by using variant spellings. Thus in
New Norse we have bild/bil = iron used to let blood; sword (archaic);
penis. And bel/bil = a small space or a piece of something or a
short span of time.

We also have the word "kjerre" (= a car), but this now only
has the meaning of a vehicle that is either handdrawn or
by an animal. Thus there is no confusion between the new
self-powered vehicle and the older vehicles that do not
move by themselves. It is nice when language manages to
introduce differentiations of that kind, because then the
older words can retain their old meanings and avoid being
"swamped" by all kinds of new developments. It is also
nice when new ubiquitous objects can have short names that
do not have other meanings that they can be confused with.

The word "bil" as short for automobile was introduced by
a suggestion published in the Danish newspaper "Politiken"
on the 14th of March, 1902.

Keth



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Old school buds here:
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