LL-L "Etymology" 2009.04.30 (01) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 30 April 2009 - Volume 01
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From: Diederik Masure <didimasure at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.04.29 (04) [E/LS/German]

Heather: but 'weinen' (to cry) is also derrived from "weh" so ultimately
weinig < weh still comes down to 'weh'

Diederik

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

Vowel-wise this works, as I described before:



This jives phonologically. Old English long "a" (á > Modern English [ou])

very often corresponds to Old Saxon long "e" (> Low Saxon [ei] ~ [ai]) and

also to Scots long "e" ([e:]); e.g.



OE  =  ModE  =  Sc  =  OS  =  LS

stán = stone = stane = stên = steyn (Steen ~ Stein)

bán = bone = bane = bên = beyn (Been ~ Bein)

án = one = ane =  ên = eyn (een ~ ein)


to weep:
Old English: wánian
Old Saxon: wênion (> weynen)

Theoretically then, Modern English ought to have *"to wone" and Scots ought
to have **tae wane*.

"Little" or "few" ought to be *"wony" and **wanie* [we:ni] respectively if
the same morphological extension had been applied. The "weenie" theory thus
doesn't seem to pan out unless it is a calque from Middle Dutch or Middle
Saxon.

By the way, I suspect that Old English *á* was pronounced like Modern Low
German long "a": [É‘] or rounded [É’]. This would make it easier to explain
its development to Modern English [ou]. What I suspect also is that the
rounded version predominated in the south, thus developing to /oo/ ([ou])
while the non-rounded version predominated in the north, thus developing to
/aa/ and eventually to [e:] in the Northumbrian branch, thus in today's
Northumbrian and Scots varieties.

Cheers!
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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