LL-L "What does it mean?" 2008.06.08 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 08 June 2008 - Volume 02
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From: Soenke Dibbern <s_dibbern at web.de>
Subject: LL-L "What does it mean?" 2008.06.07 (03) [E]

Op'n Sa., den 07. Jun.'08, hett R. F. Hahn dit Klock 20.11 schreven:

Hi Ron, Jonny and all,

even though the puzzle seems to be solved by Arthur Jones' remarks, I have a
few thoughts left on it.

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: What does it mean?

 Hi, Luc, and thanks for the response about this boddeme thing.
>
> I get your point, and you and whoever advanced the ship theory may well be
> correct.
>
> Here is what swayed me (and I'm still not totally married to it):
> As Jonny mentioned, boddem also denotes shallow coastal waters. Even in
> German the loanword Boddom is still used to refer to certain stretches of
> shallow water along the Baltic Sea coast.
>
Do you refer to "Bodden" here, as in "Greifswalder Bodden"?

 So, I simply meant coastal waters, in this case those then regarded as
> being part of Danish territory. Yes, Boddem still means 'bottom' in Modern
> Low Saxon, but I don't think the German idea of Boden comes into it (leave
> alone Blut und Boden).
>
Is "Bodde*m*" above a typo, or a LS word I don't know? To my knowledge there
are two words in LS that I suppose to be cognates of E "bottom" (ground;
also: buttocks), D "bodem" (ground; also: ship), Swedish "botten" (ground).
These are
1. Böyn (~Böön, Böhn) - attic, ceiling, cf. G (Dach-)Boden
2. Bodden (~Borden, Borrn) - ground, area (of land), soil

While at least in modern Low Saxon certainly the word "Grund" would be used
to evoke the associations linked to "Boden" in German (as in G "Auf meinem
Boden ...", LS "Op mien Grund ...", "On my [premises/property/estates](?)..."),
I don't know whether this was the case during the middle-ages as well...

 This volume contains hundreds of Hanseatic documents, mostly
> correspondence, of a four-year period in the 15th century. Yet this short
> letter is the only one mentioning boddem(e). If it means 'ship' and 'ships',
> why are ship and schepe mentioned everywhere else rather than boddeme?
>

Besides Arthur Jones' explanation, which I find more convincing, the reason
could be that Jonny's sentence was a proverb/idiom/rule of thumb, already
old at that time. Everybody would have known its meaning, but it would
rarely have been written down in formal letters to and from the "honourable
gentlemen" of the hansa league. Similarly, "First come, first serve" is a
widely used legal principle, but I assume you won't find it very often in
legal writs.

Have a nice day!
Sönke

---------

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

Thanks, Sönke, for those excellent points!

Yes, *Boddem* ~ *Bodden* was an error on my part.

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron
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