MEDOS, *midus? + neologisms (was 'strava')

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>
> Yes, this owes itself to Icelandic and maybe a bit to the German 
> Verdeutschung "Selbstlaut". I was in doubt if "uocalis" was already 
> used in the classic grammar terminology and could therefore be a 
> loan in Gothic (*wokaleis M. -ja?). And what was the Greek term I 
> wonder? How you feel about aitwmulaugia and swllabe(i)? Could a 
> secondary accent make it *aitwmulOgia (like MakidOnja, you 
> remember)? *-logja?


Seems reasonable.  Makidonja could be a naturalised loan; it's easy to
imagine that the name was familiar to the Goths before the bible
translation.  I think that was Braune's suggestion.  But in Richard
d'Alquen's theory it could have been naturalised before or after the
bible translation, but kept its native form when the spelling of the
other names was revised, as d'Alquen supposed, in Ostrogothic Italy,
after /o/ and /u/ (and /e/ and /i/) had become phonemically distict,
to bring it into line with Greek and Latin texts.  Alternatively for
"etymology" how about *waurde urrunseis, fi.pl., *waurdis urruns,
fi.sg.?  Or as a compound: waurda-urruns.  I think a more literal
calque on Greek might be something like *sunja-waurdei, but then the
meaning isn't so tranparent and it perhaps carries the baggage of
outmoded ideas about etymology demonstrating the 'true' meaning.  For
syllable, we could calque Icelandic 'samstafa' as Go. *sama-stabo,
feminine on-stem.  The Icelandic term is used in the 12th c. First
Grammatical treatise, which might be a good place to raid for ideas:

raddarstafr "vowel"
hljóðstafr "vowel"
samhljóðandi "consonant"
samhljóð "consonant"

These would give Go. neologisms: *razdos stafs, mi; *hliuda-stafs,
mi.; *sama-hliudands, mc.; *sama-hliuþ, na.  And they have the added
advantage that if we forget what they mean we can always look them up
in an Old Norse dictionary!



> Absolute you mean smth like ith ... ussokjandans or [at] uns ... 
> ussokjandam?

Yeah, that's what I meant, although I guess you might want to avoid
too many of them close together just for sylistic reasons.



> Thanks again for your mark. But warning, you've encouraged me to 
> proceed with such a practice, so you'll have to share the 
> responsibility -:) (remember the LoTR "Two Towers" movie "- Don't 
> talk to it, Merry! Don't encourage it!")


Hoooom ;)


> Anthar waurd bi thatei bokarjos mith sis misso ni mins 
> thrasabalthaba haifstjand, hvatharaizos Hunithiudo aigin wesi, ist 
> MEDOS in Priskaus Istaurjai (Fr. 8, II) – bistugqun bi soknai 
> galeikai, andizuh gutiskamma (*midus) aiththau winithiskamma (*medu) 
> gamotidedeina. Aina gaskaidein habam af *strawai ei *midus jah in 
> razdom Gutane gakunjaim bigitada, tharei samaleiko dragk 
> wodawagjando ustaikneith. Hva ahjaith bi tho sakjon, Gamathljans 
> swerans? Jabai gutisk ist, in hvis ni swe *MIDOS gamelith warth?
> 
> Another word that provoked a no less hot discussion among 
> specialists, to whether language – Gothic or Slavic – it could be 
> attributed, is hO MEDOS in Priscus' Historia (loc. cit.). The only 
> difference from *strava question is that we have this word for an 
> alcoholic beverage attested if not in Gothic then in other Germanic 
> languages (ON mjoedhr, OE meodu etc). Slavic has *medu (reduced -u). 
> The phonetic difficulty here (where can we get through without such 
> difficulties?) is that, if being Gothic, it should have been most 
> probably written down as *MIDOS (< Go. *midus). What do you think?


Fairweit haba hausjan hva þai in unsis slabiskans razdafrastjos bi
þata qiþaina, iþ ni man þata unmahteig wisan, þatei in sumaize gutane
razdom /i/ jah /e/ missaleikai gawesun (jah samaleiko /u/ jah /o/),
jah afar þatei in anþaraim samaþ gadrusun.  Bair samana Gu. hilms,
FKSlab. SlemU--jabai þata leihvawaurd us austragairmaniskon bi sunjai
ist--jah managa waurda kreimagutiska: sevene, schester, regnen; goltz,
boga, *schnos (schuos).

I'm be curious to hear what the Slavicists among us will have to say
on this matter, but I don't think it's impossible that /i/ and /e/
(and likewise /u/ and /o/) remained distinct in some 'Gothic' dialects
after they had fallen together in others.  Compare Go. hilms, OCSl.
SlemU "helmet"--if that is in fact a loanword from East Germanic--also
many words from Crimean Gothic: sevene, schester, regnen; goltz, boga,
*schnos (schuos).


> 
> P.S. How you like `dragk wodawagjando' for "alcoholic beverage" 
> (Skalda-MJOEDHR, ODH-rerir). If it is too strong an expression, 
> could it be simply `dragk inwagjando (ahman)'?
> With `gamathljans' I mean "participants of the same `mathl' (forum)".
> 
> Walhahrabns gamelida
>


Good suggestions, or how about *ana-dragk, na., from the verb
'ana-drigkan' "get drunk".  Or maybe: dragk *ana-fahjata, cf. ON
áfengr "intoxicating", a Gothic ja-stem adjective perhaps?  Another
possibility *waiga, cognate with ON veig, arguably recorded in runes
on the Körlin bracteate as an alternative to the usual runic 'alu'. 
If 'in-ahei' is "sobriety, presence of mind", I guess the opposite
could be *us-ahei.  To emphasise some more specific psychoactive
quality, we could maybe use the suffix -izl, neuter a-stem, by analogy
with 'swartizl' "ink", indicating a substance that turns what it
touches black (or just a substance that is black?).  Possibly varying
the suffix according to whether the previous consonant was voiced, so
for example: *gailisl', *hlasizl "euphoriant"; *wakrisl "stimulant"
(uswaknando *lubi, wakrjando *lubi); *linþizl, *slepizl, *swibnisl
(*swifnisl?) "narcotic"; *rimisizl 'tranquilizer'; *sibjisl, *feinisl
"empathogen".  And thinking of more mundane things: *skaunisl "purgative"?

Llama Nom





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