[gothic-l] Re: Old Gutnish

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi Keth,

--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
> ...
> No, you are of course right, that one then too easily thinks about
> a English having descended from Old Norse or vice versa, which is
> of course false. But I think the Vikings were probably aware of
> such "rules of correspondence" and immediately understood that when
> someone in England was called "Adelstan" then in Old Norse that 
would
> be "Adelstein". And when they referred to Adelstan among themselves
> they always said "Adelstein". A modern example of the same is that
> in Norway we say "iskrem" for "ice-cream" which was an American
> invention. But today I think the tendency has changed and that
> young people prefer to adopt foreign words unchanged. Thus they
> say "skeit-bård", "le-vais" and "naik", but write "skateboard" ,
> "levis" and "nike".
> So I meant "becoming" not in a historic sense, but as describing
> what a word "becomes" when certain rules of transcription are 
applied to it.
> So it is a function really, or a "mapping". The vowel system of one
> language can sometimes be "mapped" onto the vowel sytem of another
> language. But this only happens when the languages have a close
> relationship and descend from a common root. I therefore felt that 
such
> sytematic features should not be counted as real differences when
> comparing two languages for the purpose of seeing that they are in
> agreement as a result of both having developed from a common 
predecessor.
> For example within Norway we have many regional languages. One
> of the main differences is often that certain vowels are pronounced
> slightly differently in different regions. This does not mean they
> are "different" languages. You see something of the same when you
> compare Austrian German with German German, where the Austrian
> says "mein Gott", but the German says "main Gott" (in speech)
> which is also one of the examples you mentioned.
> ...

Now I understand what you meant. I have also noticed that Adelstan was 
called in Old Norse "Adelstein", thus being aware that OE stán = ON 
stein, thus that OE "á" = ON "ei". Indeed, such things can happen 
between closely related languages, and I have noticed this also in 
other languages (I can not remember examples now).

Francisc 



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