Heruls :[gothic-l]: Etymology

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Lada,

You wrote:

>I hope I'm not starting to sound like a nagger, but /h/ cannot
>be voiced, if voiced it would be written otherwise, phonetics mostly use
>Greek gamma or yogh (3). Pronounced versus unpronounced ( or better
>graphical ?) is a much better way of classifying.
>                                      Spiranticaly
>                                                          Il Akkad

No, I guess you are right. By "voiced" I assume you
mean that the vocal chords are used. What I had
in mind was also a sound that comes from somewhere
at the back of the throat, but which doesn't use the vocal
chords.


I have a book on German phonetics. Maybe I can find something
there: 

Yes, here I think I found something:

[x] = stimmloser, gespannter, frikativer, velarer Spirant.

Well, I am not sure it is *exactly* the same, but this
description surely approximates what I had in mind when
I tried to describe how a Russian, who has just learned
Norwegian says, e.g.:

"Har du det travelt?"  (are you busy)
"Har du en saks?"      (do you have a pair of scissors)
"Han hadde en Honda."  (he had a Honda)

then he will pronounce the words har, hadde, han, honda etc..
with an initial H that I would describe as "rough" [x].


Maybe it can be described  a little bit as if you
had something in your throat, maybe a cold or something
like that; and then you wanted to clear your throat,
as if by a slight "cough".... Something like that.

BTW: when a German says "Ach ja!", then the ch of "Ach"
is quite similar to what I'd call the "rough h".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Any way, my theory is - I think I also read it somewhere -
that the ancient Germans pronounced words that we write
as  <H + vowel + other sounds>, with phonetic [x] and not
with [h].


Or to be more precise: Those words that we have today
that begin with H, and that can be shown to have continuously
developed from Old Germanic words that the written records
show were written also with an initial H, may have been
pronounced, in some of the Germanic dialects, with a "rough" H,
instead of our "straight outbreathing sound" that we today
indicate by H.

So although the symbol is the same, the sound that it
indicates has changed (from "rough" to "smooth").

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Perhaps we can find some examples in the Gothic language:
Braune says that Gothic h derives from Indo-European k,
and that it began as a voiceles spirant, but that it is
difficult to know exactly how it was pronounced due to
poor transcriptive material. However, one generally
assumes that it was a "Hauchlaut" (breathing sound, I
believe this is the [h]) at the beginning of a word
before a vowel, but in other cases it was more like
a "Spirant" (this would correspond to the [x] if I have
understood it correctly).

He also says that the Latins render Gothic h by means of
their own h, and gives Hildibald and Hildericus as examples.
But he also points out that the h is sometimes dropped,
as in Ariamirus.

He also gives examples of how Gothic took Hebrew names
in their Greek version, such as 'ebraios (=Hebrew), 'eródes
(=Herod) and writes them in Gothic as Haibraius and
Herodes. However, since the Greeks in the time of 
Wulfila no longer pronounced the "Spiritus asper'
(I assume he means [h] by this expression, that is the
little raised comma), he says that the Goths were probably
only following school tradition as well as the tradition
of the ancient Latin Bible.


Braune also gives examples of Gotic words on h:
*haurn      horn
hana        cock
hairto      heart
hails       hail
hunda       hundred
hafjan      to have

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Any way, the example I had in mind was Hilperic versus
Chilperic. Since both these forms are found in Mss. 
deriving from Jordanes' 

If we go to writings that stem from a later date, where
I have looked at Notker in the 9th century, then we'll
find that he writes:
Hartmutus
Hildericus
Hildegardia
Himiltrud
Hludowicus
Hugo
Hunfried

But nowhere does he use the Ch- variant.
The reason may have been that Notker was himself
a native speaker of German, and was therefore able
to reduce an earlier non-uniform practice to a
common denominator, because of his insight into
Germanic pronounciation.


Best regards
Keth









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