H1 and t??

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:

>> Thanks, because there IS no connection between *tu: and *yus.

> That's what I believed until I succeeded in deriving them all from a
> completely regular original system where Eng. you IS the acc.pl.
> corresponding to nom.sg. thou. I had to invent some more sound laws, but
> that just cannot be helped if we are digging into a past from where there
> are no (or very few) other remains.

[Ed Selleslagh]

In the case of Eng. 'you', I think you're digging too deep, even though your
statement is correct.  But the 'y' is almost certainly derived from a 'g',
just like in Dutch: modern 'jij' (acc. 'jou') (j=y) for 2 p. sg. stems from
'gij', the old 2 p. pl., still in use in Flanders for both sg. and pl..
Another parallel Dutch - English: Middle Dutch 'g(h)eluw' > Du. 'geel', but
Eng. 'yellow'. The same applies to the 'y' of  'yard' (Du. 'boom-gaard' =
'orchard', i.e. 'tree-yard').

The transition g > y is quite common, including in some German dialects and
in Modern Greek (oikogeneia > ikoyenia, 'family'), where it is systematic
before i- and e-phonemes (i.e. oi, ei, eta, ypsilon or ai, epsilon...: the
conservative orthography of these phonemes is another, much more complicated
matter!).

I leave it to the specialists to elaborate along these lines or formulate it
more correctly..

E. Selleslagh