Umlaut in Crimean Gothic

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Gustafson" <stevegus at aye.net>
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2001 5:18 AM

[snip]

> As Ed Selleslagh and Oliver Neukum pointed out, the spellings that looked
> like they showed evidence of i-umlaut may have in fact been artifacts of a
> Dutch spelling system that adds an 'e' to indicate a long vowel, so that the
> 'oe' of Busbecq's writing may have in fact represented /o:/ rather than /0/
> or /oe/.

> Another of Busbecq's spellings that took me aback was "schuuester."  What
> would have been the value of 'sch' here?  Palatisation of the /s/ in
> 'swistar' to /sh/ seems unlikely in this environment, as does its conversion
> to /sk/.   Might this be a German contamination?

[Ed Selleslagh]

In Dutch, 'sch' normally stands for /sx/ (usually <sk, except when from Greek
sigma-chi); it is very common.

But in de Busbecq's 'schuuester' it is obviously not that, but rather the usual
(High)German value. As a matter of fact, 'uu' is a Latinist's representation of
'w' (double-u!!), so the word 'schuuester' is German 'schwester' (Dutch:
zuster, with u = u-umlaut)

Ed