LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.20 (02) [D/E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 20 March 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology"

Diederik and Elsie,



Diederik wrote:



*braai are indeed calves tho, not the same as knieholte?*



I only mentioned the word "braai" because Afrikaans "waai" (~ Wade)
apparently means "knieholte" and not "kuit" like "Wade" and "braai" do. In
the Afrikaans case, meaning shifted.



*uëgnisse (groin) is called, with an old Antwerpian word, iëkenisse.
probably the same word altho I cant place the sound correspondences here.*



The words for groin: eekenisse, iëkenisse, uëknisse, uëgnisse(n) all derive
from Latin "inguen", but the loan must be pretty old. Reinterpretation has
taken place because the Latin word undboutedly felt strange in people's
mouths. Maybe even interference with a yet older word, ending in -nis? Given
the shape of "inguen" (fold, alcove, niche, like a "nis"), it wouldn't
surprise me.

Nor is the shift i > u astonishing. Here in Southern Brabant, the reaction
to unrounding, which geographically surrounds Brussels, is one of
hypercorrection. Seems as if we've heard an u > i change way too often, and
therefore, regularly, when "i" was perceived, people (wrongly) assumed it
was false and actually was a corrupt "u". Examples: slim  > slum, wit > wut,
Filip > Luppen, Grimbergen > Grumberregen, schimmel > schummel and so forth.
Excessive rounding is popular here, in any position and of all vowels and
diphtongs.



*In antwerp one sits on their "(h)ukkes", plural. Why wouldnt it be related
to dutch hurk(en)? r's dont normally drop in that positions, true, but the
resemblance and as far as i know identical use seems too coincidental... *



Resemblance can be very misleading. Mutual (recent) influence during the
formation of both words is always possible of course, but that doesn't mean
both words have the same roots.

Usually I can "feel" if words are etymologically related or not, especially
if they are typically Hollandish ones. The phonetic relationships between
Hollandish and Brabantish are strict enough to rule out certain
possibilities. Just to make sure if my assumption was true, I looked it up
in Jan De Vries' dictionary:



*Hurken**: ww., sedert Kiliaen: hurcken, horcken (Holl.), vgl. mnd. hurken.
Dit is een k-afl. van een ouder mnl. mnd. huren, mhd. huren, (verouderd nhd.
hauern). Het woord is op een beperkt gebied overgeleverd. Daar naast huren
ook hukken staat, kan men hurken als een contaminatie opvatten.*

*Verband met de idg. wt. *keu 'buigen', bukken (waarvoor zie: hok 2) is
mogelijk, al geeft IEW 588 vlgg. geen enkel voorbeeld van een idg.
afl. ***keur of
*keus.*



Contamination often occurs at the fringes of two dialect regions, so "huren"
+ "hukken" > "hurken". German "hauern" can be found in Grimm's Wörterbuch.
He calls it Alemannic, Bavarian and South Franconian.



Kind greetings,



Luc Hellinckx

•

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