[gothic-l] Re: Old Gutnish

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi Keth,

--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
> ...
> Yes vowel systems are some of the things that can change quite fast.
> I think I discovered this morning another rule that makes it easy to 
translate
> back and forth between Old English and Old Norse. The rule is that 
ON "ei"
> becomes long "a" in English. Examples that I thought of are 
Hygelac/Hugleik,
> Wihstan/Vestein, but also gar/geir  ( a spear). Thus that 
particularly interesting
> sort of Danes mentioned in Beowulf, the Gardenas, would in Old Norse 
correspond
> to the "Geir-danir"  (=the Spear-Danes; who were they?).

It is not quite correct to say that "ON "ei" becomes long "a" in 
English".
In fact we have here two different evolutions of the same 
Proto-Germanic [ai]-diphthong, that became "á" (long a) in Old 
English, and "ei" in Old Norse. This correspondence can be found also 
in the most basic words inherited from Common Germanic, for instance:
Gmc. *aina-z > Goth. ains, ON einn, OE án (> Eng. one)
Gmc. *gaita-z > Goth. gaits, ON geitr, OE gát (Eng. goat)
Gmc. *xaima-z > Goth. haims. ON heimr, OE hám (Eng. home)
etc. etc. etc.

> ... 
> Another example is how the Old Dutch long "i" (written "ij") became 
the diphtong "ei".
> Thus when you see a Dutch word such as Rijn, mijn, fijn, zijn, you 
can be pretty sure 
> it used to be a long "i" some centuries ago, but today it is 
invariably pronounced as the
> diphtong. 

Inndeed, the Dutch "ij" (now pronounced something like [ei]) 
originates from the Common Germanic long [i]. A similar 
dipthongization occured also in Modern English (were the Gmc. long 
[i], still written "i", is pronounced [ai]) and High German (where 
Gmc. long i, written and pronounced "ei" in MHG, is written "ei" and 
pronounced [ai] in Modern German).

Francisc


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