LL-L "Etymology" 2003.03.01 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject:  LL-L "Etymology" 2003.03.01 (03) [E]

Gary wrote:
"The word 'down' is of course also used in the North
and South Downs in the South of England - where it has
the soul meaning of 'hill'."

Indeed! I realised this almost as soon as I had hit the lethal 'send'
button.

I wouldn't put it past the Old English to nab a Celtic word here and there
when it suited them, nevertheless it's quite a semantic shift from
'hillfort' to 'undulating hilly countryside' although having already
mentioned the problems the Celtic word _ros_ presents (where it varies
between 'wood', 'headland' and 'land sloping to a water source' depending on
the context and language) it's not beyond the realms of possibility. Perhaps
_dún_ or _dinas_ was borrowed into Old English as a kind of military slang
for the kind of environment in which the invaders kept finding (and so
expected to find) Celtic hillforts. But...

...I'm still unconvinced by the idea that a toponym could have formed the
verb _down_. You mention German _herunter_ and Scandinavian cognates for
_beneath_ aren't these better candidates for an English cognate for _down_
than a toponym borrowed from Celtic?

We even have the contrast _up and under_ to suggest that _under_ was, at
some point, exactly equivalent to _down_ the way we use it now. In fact,
_down_ seems more receptive than most verbs to reduplication - cf: _down
under_ and _down below_.

Go raibh maith agat

Criostoir [I left the diacritics out just this once]

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject:  LL-L "Etymology" 2003.03.01 (05) [E]

Henno Wrote:
"My Dutch Etymological Dict says _down_ derives from Old English _ofdune_,
_adune_
meaning downhill. It says it has nothing to do with Irish dûn (fortress),
this is related (not borrowed either way) with Dutch _tuin_ (garden),
English _town_ (meaning "walled area"). English also has the word _down_ as
a noun meaning _dune_, as a relic.
The germanic origin is sought with the *dhû-no from a verbal stem *dhû-
which means
shake/stir, so hill = shaken earth (Greek: chutè gaia = grave hill) or with
a meaning
_opgestoven aarde_ (earth brought by wind), which would be related to _dier_
and Latin fumus. But an old and not a borrowed word (but in a "typical"
meaning)."

That explains it, then.

(By the way, I wasn't suggesting that Eng. _down_ derived from Ir. _dún_ -
that would be impossible - but rather using the Irish word to illustrate a
Brythonic cognate - presumably something like W. _dyn_ or Corn. _dinas_
which Old English speakers would have come into contact with.)

Go raibh maith agat

Criostóir.

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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject:  LL-L "Etymology" 2003.03.01 (05) [E]

> From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
> Subject:  LL-L "Etymology" 2003.02.28 (10) [D/E]
> ... My Dutch Etymological Dict says _down_ derives from Old English
_ofdune_, _adune_ meaning downhill.

I don't know if this contributes to the discussion, but in my
West-Limburgisch (Vliermaal) we use "del".

Some samples:

Lek dat éns del!
Put that down!

Zèt oech! Zèt oech del! (when stressing)
Sit down! Please sit down!

Similarey:
Lek oech del!
Lay down!

I have no intuitive "feeling" "del" is semantically associated with the
Dutch "dal", but I may be wrong etymologically. If it is, it would rather be
a plural (with Umlaut)

Regards,
Roger

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject:  LL-L "Etymology" 2003.03.01 (03) [E]

Gary Taylor wrote:

> I've never been happy with
> the Hochdeutsch 'hin- or herunter' - it doesn't seem
> as compact to me as 'down'.

That's what we have "hoch" and "nieder" for, or "auf" and "ab" (as in: "ich
setzte den Koffer ab" - "I put down the suitcase"). "Ab" is a two-letter
word - they don't come any shorter in German. It is also used in many
composite nouns and verbs. The slighty longer form "hinab", meaning
"downwards", exists as well. There also used to be another word for "up"
which is now rather archaic but was much employed in writing a hundred years
ago: "empor". I've always wondered about the etymology of that one.

Actually, nobody ever say "herunter" or "hinunter" in spoken High German.
It's always "rauf" and "runter" (which one can "legally" spell without an
apostrophe these days, although the Duden still marks them as inferior), or
one of the forms mentioned above. And then, of course, there's Lower Saxon
"dahl".

What I really miss in German, though, are all those terms for wearing your
shirt the wrong way, namely "upside down", "inside out" or "back to front",
or, even better in Dutch: "ondersteboven", "binnenstebuiten", and
"achterstevoren" (I love those!).

Gabriele Kahn

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject:   LL-L "Help Needed - Not"

Hi all,

there's a word I absolutely cannot find for the translation I am stuck with
over the weekend.

The English word is "carrack" (and the French name  and it describes a type
of 15th/16th century merchant ship which could also be used for fighting
(the one in my text has a mangonel mounted on it). For all I could find out,
it seems to be similar to a caravel; one source even claims that the famous
Santa Maria was actually a carrack.

So far, so good. But what is a carrack in German?? None of my dictionaries
or Internet resources could help me with that one. So - if any of you could
provide me with further information, I'd be extremely grateful. Dutch or
Lower Saxon names would be appreciated as well.

Having written the above, I decided to give it ONE more try before I came
running for help. I thought some more about the words "carrack" and
"carraque" and then decided that, according to everything I have ever known,
or rather "sensed" (I'm no linguist, really), about words shifting from one
language to another, I might want to try the made-up word "Karacke". So I
typed that into my Google engine - and got 120 hits!!

I think that's pretty funny. I'll never need a dictionary again...

Gabriele Barge (no, wait, it's still "Kahn").

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject:  Etymology

Roger (above) about Limburgish _del_:

> Some samples:
Below North Saxon dialect (of Lowlands Saxon/Low german) equivalents:

> Lek dat éns del!
> Put that down!
Legg dat maal daal!

> Zèt oech! Zèt oech del! (when stressing)
> Sit down! Please sit down!
Sett di! (pl. Sett ju!, pol. Sett Se sik! ~ Sett Se jüm!)
Sett di daal! (pl. Sett ju daal!, pol. Sett Se sik daal! ~ Sett Se jüm
daal!)
Althernative:
Gah sitten! (pol. Gaht (Se) sitten!)
("Go to sit!")

> Similarey:
> Lek oech del!
> Lay down!
Legg di daal! (pl. Leggt ju daal!)

> I have no intuitive "feeling" "del" is semantically associated with the
> Dutch "dal", but I may be wrong etymologically. If it is, it would rather
be
> a plural (with Umlaut)

I have a "feeling" it *is* related, that _del_ comes from
adverbial/directional *_dal(l)e_ > * _däl(l)e_ > *_däl_ = _del_.

Above, Gabriele "Barge" shared her personal triumph in locating a German
gloss without a dictionary.

Congratulations, Gabriele!  However, ... darn!  Another one discovered the
"trick"!  This is how I find many a word that is not listed in any
accessible dictionary, not only in German.  With the Web having grown to an
enormous size, this is getting really easy.  It also helps that some search
engines allow you to specify and limit the language choice.  So, in this
case, if you had no guess, you could have specified German only and
input the English or French word (the latter being _caraque_, by the way,
from Spanish _carraca_, from Arabic ﺔﻗﺍﺮﻗ _qarâqa_) in the hope that a
German
site lists those names as well (such as in a bibliography).

I didn't know the German word either, and I too guessed _Karacke_ or
_Karracke_ when I started reading your post.

You lucked out, because you had a good guess.  Well, Gabriele, does this
mean that years "listening" to etymological reasoning on Lowlands-L are
paying off, or are you unwilling to share the glory?

Cheers!
Reinhard/Ron

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