LL-L "Etymology" 2008.08.12 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 12 August 2008 - Volume 02
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From: Diederik Masure <didimasure at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2008.08.12 (01) [D/E]

>>>But what about this vexing *ja(h)*?
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>
>>>Reinhard/Ron

ah, in all the excitement about Scandinavian og/och I overlooked this
question.

In Dutch, the only reflex I know is 'ja', meaning yes. It can also be
doubled, jaja, which can mean something like "yes yes, (I don't believe
you)." then is understood an underlying "jaja, dat zal wel", I guess.

Archaic dialects still inflect this word with personal pronouns, how exactly
this happens I can't tell because in Antwerp and the rest of the
province there is only one remnant of this, the 3rd person singular, jaat
(joat, jot). Jaa-'t = Ja dat is waar. It's hard to define when you use ja,
when jaat - they might be generally interchangable(?)
Examples from the world wide web from Brabantish people of
apparently different backgrounds:
*Jaat* juist geraden, wat hebben ze gewonnen pierre, niet bij ons dus. (Yup,
you guessed right, etc.)
*jaat*! very nice! yes! very nice!

*Jot jot*, vanalles veranderd. Yep, a lot has changed.
*jot jot*, das woar joeng. Yup, that's right dude!
I would most easily translate this "jaat" to English as "yep" or "yup"?

Dialects in West Flanders also have eg. ja'k (1st person), and other forms
for other persons, I am sure our Roland can tell more about this. A random
example from the net:
"Cisca, wilde goa met mi trouwen" Ciska haar antwoord: "*jok*"
Ciska, do you want to marry me? Ciska's reply: yes-I! (yes I do)

***

Although we're mainly Lowlands, also Scandinavian has some interesting
reflexes, apart from 'ja' ('já' in Icelandic/Faeroese)
Norwegian dialects and the Nynorsk written language have 'jau', which in
Danish/Bokmâl has become 'jo', to answer a negative question:
Eg har ikkje gjort det! Jau, det har du! (I didn't do this! Yes you did),
like Dutch jawel and German Jawohl.
From Old Norse jaur.

In Icelandic we also find játa, Old Norse ját(t)a, "to say yes", "to admit".
But I can't completely place it, as
http://www.koeblergerhard.de/germanistischewoerterbuecher/altnordischeswoerterbuch/an-J.pdf
says it comes from Gmc. jehtôn-, and I don't know if we logically can
connect the stem jeht- or maybe jeh- to our jah (can it be ablaut?)

Besides játta ON also has the weak verb já from *jehan, both of which mister
Koebler says come from Indo-European jek-, a root meaning "to say/speak".

Normally, the nordic languages lose initial j-, cfr. ár, year. From *jehan
and *jehtôn we can regularly get Proto Nordic *ehan, ehtan and then with
breaking and shifting of stress in diphthongs eahan > jahan > já (loss of
-h- and of final -n); ehtan > eahtan > jahtan > játta.
But in the short word jah we can't explain the initial j-. It should
regularly have given já, maybe because of its special status as a
word/interjection it preserved its j-? Because the long á should have given
modern Norw/Dan/Swed 'jå', whereas all 3 have 'ja'. So it seems to be more
conservative and not following the general sound laws...

Diederik
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