LL-L "Etymology" 2008.04.13 (04) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 12 April 2008 - Volume 04
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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology"

Beste Jorge,

You wrote:

  I do indeed have my dictionaries all around me, tried to scan out the
entry in the American Heritage Dictionary for "bhel-1)  and failed totally
in editing the thing, the lines hopelessly overlapping. Then I started  to
copy it out straight out for 2/3 of an 8-pt. column—just too much work! You
are absolutely right about "bald", first item in the article.

You could save yourself some work, copying it from the  bhel-1 entry on

http://www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html

If you want to make sure the mailserver doesn't choke on the fancy layout,
you would then better paste it in a plain text-document though, before
finally inserting it in a message. Anyway, thanks for the follow-up.

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2008.04.12 (04) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Etymology
>
> Of course, guys, now we've got to be careful because we are starting
> to assume metatheses: *b-l- > *l-b- > *-lb. While this is by no means
> impossible, we'd have to come up with a good set of proof.
>
> Yes, Latin for white in alb- (as in albino), which would be at the
> other extreme we're talking about.
>
> Did the Romans mean "the white (land)" when the called Northern
> Britain Alba (perhaps terra alba originally), later meaning 'Scotland"
> specifically?
>
> Many people do indeed believe that the name of the Alps refers to
> "white." Others believe it came from a Celtic language spoken there
> long before the arrival of the Romans.

And blah blah blah blah blah etymology is not my subject  :)

It's not that I don't understand the processes, I mean I can do the
basics, like tracing "father" and "pater" from  acommon ancestral root,
but it seems to me that you have to know really a lot of languages,
including their historical forms to follow this sort of argument, and I
don't!

Are there any works a person can study to learn the basics of this sort
of thing properly? Or is learning dead languages the way to go?

Something I often wonder about when I see etymologies traced through
large tracts of human history is, how would this work for some of the
modern vagarities of London speech such as rhyming slang and truncated
idiom?

For example, as we've discussed before, in Cockney rhyming slang there
are widespread vocabulary changes such as "titfer" for "hat" and
"kettle" for "watch", the origins of which can be quickly lost.

Similarly such truncated phrases as "I just thought of it on the
spur" (meaning "spur of the moment") which perhaps could give future
linguists the wrong impression about the derivation of the phrase.

Do etymological studies actually turn up any "fracture lines" in older
etymologies which could possibly have been caused by the widespread
adoption of a mode of speech based on wordplay or a criminal or secret
organisation code?

One example would be words in modern romance languages where eg "cheval"
doesn't trace back to "equus" because we're dealing with Latin slang
terms. Did the Hanse have their own particular trade language which has
influence the development of Low Saxon and other lowlands languages, and
is the fault line apparent in lost or nonsensical etymologies? Did the
Vikings?

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/
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