LL-L "Etymology" 2003.10.13 (09) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

======================================================================
L O W L A N D S - L * 13.October.2003 (09) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
http://www.lowlands-l.net * sassisch at yahoo.com
Rules & Guidelines: http://www.lowlands-l.net/rules.htm
Posting Address: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org
Server Manual: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html
Archives: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
=======================================================================
You have received this because you have been subscribed upon request.
To unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l" as message
text from the same account to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or
sign off at http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================
A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
=======================================================================

>Hai everyone
>Ron replied to Antero: Secondly, the _hana > kana_ transformation might
>be due to the Russian influence,
>
>But, if I remember correctly from a book I read as a child, wasn't
>Karelie/Finland
>at one time under Russian rule?  Could that have been sufficient to
>influence some words and alter their pronunciation?
>
>Groeten ,
>Jannie Lawn-Zijlstra

Hello Jannie et al.

The current area of Finland has been a battleground between the kingdom
of Sweden and Russian forces from the Middle Ages until 1809 when
Finland was annexed by the Russian Empire as a Grand Duchy with her own
legistlation and eventually own currency, the Finnish Mark. Up to that
moment the frontier changed many times while the population on both
sides of the border remained Finnish both ethnically and linguistically.
The Russian influence in the Finnish (or Carelian) language naturally
gets more marked the more Eastward you go. Correspondingly the Swedish
influence is grater in the Western parts of Finland. Due to the
fundamental differences between the Finno-Ugric Finnish and the
Indo-European Swedish and Russian those influences always remained
rather superficial being mostly loan words. Another important source of
loan words was the Low Saxon spoken by the rulers of the Baltic
countries and the Hansaetc League. The Finnish town of Wyborg (Viipuri)
(lost in the WW2 to the Soviet Union 1945) used to be a lively
commercial centre where in the Middle ages the bourgeois class was
mainly Low Saxon speaking Germans trading with Nowgorod and Reval
(Tallin) a long time before the establishing of St Petersburg and even
after that. While the common people mostly spoke Finnish, also Russian,
Swedish and even French could be heard in that little cosmopolitan
centre. I don't know when the poultry was introduced to Finland, in any
case it was a rare phenomenon till the end of the 16. century. The name
"kana" obviously is of Germanic origin: Swedish "höna" and as Ron
pointed out the Low Saxon "hana". As for my speculation that the
transformation from h to k might be due to Russian influence, well Ron
said: "Russian would have had to borrow the word first (> *_ган(а)_
[*gan(a)]) and then pass it on to Finnish (> _kana_)", which is very
good argument. However all kinds of changes can take place in
circumstances where many languages meet, so purely speculatively I think
a place like Wyborg could have been a breeding ground for
transformations like hana>kana and
hansa>kansa. It's also only a short while ago when the colloquial
Finnish was strongly divided in dialects actively used by the "common
people" Those dialects have phonems, often antiquated ones, the
relatively young standard literary language does not know.

--
Antero Helasvuo
Luutnantinpolku 9 C 20
00410 HELSINKI
FINLAND

TEL (fax on demand) +358 9 5872345
antero.helasvuo at welho.com

================================END===================================
* Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
* Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
* Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
* Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l") are
  to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at
  http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
======================================================================