LL-L "Etymology" 2008.10.26 (01) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 26 October 2008 - Volume 01
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From: Wolfram Antepohl <wolfram at antepohl.se>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2008.10.23 (01) [E]

"Förtvina" is still quite alive i Swedish (i.e. not "förtvinat" so far). The
meaning is slightly different from "försvinna". "Förtvina" means "to
disappear slowly", "whither", "fade away", while the act of disappearing in
"försvinna" is rather sudden. My Swedish ethymology relates it to Old Norse
"thvina" and probably a Pangermanic root, possibly "dweinan" as Diederik
stated earlier.



Wolfram



From: Diederik Masure <didimasure at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2008.10.20 (06) [E/LS]

RE: Lucas

I saw a lot has been answered on this already so I hope I'm not repeating
anyone.

I repeated your searches on fortvinne and fordvinne, since I've never heard
these words in Norwegian either. Strange that they have so few hits, the
only fortvinne one:
"Fristilt er nok å ta litt i, de førstnevnte er degreadert til andrelaget,
men det er et tydelig tegn på at de kan fortvinne billig ja."
From the site or RBK - the Trondheim football team. Here the meaning could
be something similar to 'forsvinne', but the fact that all the rest is
written in Bokmàl is a bit strange, that this would be the only dialect word
- especially if it's such a rare dial. word that it's the only occurrence of
this on the whole net! In written languages dialect words/constructions can
of course slip through, but usually that happens with very frequent words
because then the writer might not know it's actually not standard language.
Maybe a miswriting for something else?
"fordviner" with one n (as we would expect from Dutch 'verdwijnen') gives
only one hit either - strange. There's another hit, which is Danish.
"Leddsmertene kan plutselig *fordvinne* fra den ene dagen til den andre" -
the only hit on fordvinne, but again clearly standard language and the
meaning clearly corresponds. More hits with -r though.

I suspect it to be a loan from Low German/Dutch through the Danish written
language - that's why it probably is a bit old fashioned nowadays, so only
used humourously or with a formal connotation. Danish "fordvinde" gave 3
hits. (Danish changes most written -nn- into -nd-), fordvinder 8 hits. So
the one 'fortvinne' hit was probably a miswriting of 'fordvinne'.

Strange enough not even my Rigsmàlsordbogen (old fashioned Bokmàl) gives
fordvinne. But I found an Old Norse word "dvína" attested.
I'll ask my Norwegian gf (from Bergen) if she's ever heard of any of these
words, though

One last thing you should know tho, the roots of (for)svinne and (for)dvinne
are not at all related, it is not a case of High German shift vs. unshifted.
DWINA is, according to the Dutch etym. dictionary, remotely related to
"dead" (so must be a root "DW" giving dw-ein-anan and dow-d-os with
ablaut).
(ver)zwinden, which also exists in Dutch, has to do with zwaaien, zweep,
zwieren etc, none of which are a loan from German

Diederik

From: LUCAS ANNEAR <annear at wisc.edu>
Subject: Etymology

Lowlanders,

Today in Norwegian lecture we were discussing some new vocabulary, and
amongst them was "forsvinne", 'to disappear'.  I asked my professor if she
knew of any any (dialectal) variations of the word that used 'fordvinne' or
maybe even 'fortvinne' (to find out if any coronal stop was to be found
instead of 'svinne').  She wasn't aware of any, but knowing Du. 'verdwijnen'
and Fris. 'ferdwine', I thought there must be some variation.  And of
course, a quick Google search for "fordvinne" and "fordvinner" (inflected)
gave me some results (as did a search for 'fortvinne' but I wasn't able to
decide if it was the same; nothing came up for 'fortvinner').

Would anybody be able to enlighten me as to why we find 'forsvinne' in the
dictionaries but not 'fordvinne'?  The Norwegian "Lexin" had nothing for
"fordvinne", and neither did Haugen's Norwegian - English dictionary.  Is it
just the case that the High German form is used more?  Is 'fordvinne' used
mainly in the west (Bergen and other Hansa cities)?  Thanks a lot.

Regards,
-Luke Annear
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