[gothic-l] Re: Proto Germanic Vowels

[Anthony Appleyard]

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: David Salo <dsalo at softhome.net> wrote:-
>    It's interesting to note that, because of continuing assimilations and
> dissimilations related to the initial w-, the word for "wolf" in this
> history of English has changed from [wolf] to [wulf] and back multiple
> times since Pre-Germanic: PGmc *wulfa- > CGmc *wolfa- > OE wulf > ME
> wolf(e) > ModE [wulf] (still spelled "wolf"!); but German retains Wolf <
> CGmc *wolfa unchanged.

  I thought that:-
  - Common Gmc had no short {o} or long (a), because PIE short {o} and long
{a} became short (a) and long (o).
  - The PIE for "wolf" was {wlqwos}, and the L was a vowel.
  - English {wulf} has stayed unchanged right through. The English frequent
habit of spelling short {u} as if it was long (o) is not due to pronunciation
but was to resolve reading ambiguities caused by the deficiencies of mediaavel
styles of handwriting whereby some lowercase letters (i u/v w n m) if not
written very carefully tend to look on the page like a long undifferentiated
sequence of dot-less i's. Likewise e.g. "honey" for **"hunny".

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