| View previous topic :: View next topic |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Nick wrote: | | Gu- isn't always pronounced /gw/ in Spanish. Just think of guepardo (= cheetah) or indeed our friend guerra. Before -i- or -e- gu- needs a dierisis (= gü-) to be pronounced /gw/ (e.g. ambigüedad). |
1. It's the same in French. Guerre, guepe, Guillaume are not pronounced /gw/, but /gh/. And also many words starting by ga- are pronounced wa- in English (but, seemingly, there's no French word beginning by go- becoming wo- in English):
Garde/warden, gages/wages, garantie/warranty, pays de Galles/Wales and so on: the link to establish is not between GU- and W-, but between guttural G- and W-.
2. According to the French dictionaries, a great number of French words beginning by the letter G are Frankish of origin (beginning by W at the time), though the French words having a Frankish origin are not many. If I am not mistaken, Frankish (among other origins) is ancient Dutch. And English has certainly much in common with Dutch (the industrious Northern Sea).
3. Necessarily, the pronounciations of the two letters G and W (as initial letters and before E, I or A) were very similar. We can imagine them either weak (near to W) or hard (near to the guttural G).
4. Interestingly, the name of Gomel, the town in Belarus, is now preferably written as Homiel. But I have read that, in the past, as the aspirated H didn't exist as a Cyrillic character, this gap had been filled by the letter G. It means that the aspirated H was a genuine consonant, a sound letter (it is not really the case in French). It makes me think of the way you, English people, pronounce the word 'human". At my French ears, it sounds as "kewman", or, why not, "guman", a remembrance of the Gotic guma.
5. What do you think of this? http://www.loecsen.com/travel/discover.php?lang=fr&prd_id=33&from_lang=3&to_lang=25
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| DPCrisp wrote: | | But that would take us back to the warrantee/guarantee, ward/guard, garden/yard Norman thing, and we don't want to go back there, do we? |
Some of us are very familiar with the GU = W rule that means garderobe can be pronounced "wardrobe" and guerrilla almost exactly "warrior". {Technically, we can't tell whether ward was pronounced "guard" and warrior "guarrior", but I find the other way around more satisfying/convincing.} Not familiar with what orthodoxy has to say about it, though. What do you know of it, Nick? What's to be avoided? |
I apologise for this belated interference. Especially as you are much more enlightened on this subject than me. But it seems that French and English orthodoxies are not on the same wavelength. The English think that "warrantee", "ward" and so on were Norman words (pronounced /gwa/). But French dictionaries link these words to (a potential) Frankish.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| Interestingly, the name of Gomel, the town in Belarus, is now preferably written as Homiel. But I have read that, in the past, as the aspirated H didn't exist as a Cyrillic character, this gap had been filled by the letter G. |
Or the letter K. I kept wondering where this place called Harkov (Third Battle of, 1943) was when I realised they meant Kharkov. {But is White Russian different from Great Russian?]
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
According to the conventional wisdom the fact that the English dictionaries see "ward" and "gaol" as from Anglo-Norman and the French etymological dictionaries see them as from Frankish is not a problem as the sequence could be Frankish to Francien to Norman French to "Middle" English. Most etymological dictionaries just give the previous step and hope that the reader is simply ignorant of the languages mentioned and so s/he will take the "explanation" at face value.
However, I think there's great potential to be garnered from teasing out the inconsistencies between etymological dictionaries for different languages. How much is actually known about Frankish or is it simply the slop-bucket for everything that cannot be explained otherwise? Was it ever written down beyond a few names? (I'm probably on the wrong forum for those last two questions but I'm too lazy to open a new thread).
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Got another one for anyone collecting:
Gymru and Cymru in Welsh.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
As far as I know, Frankish was never written down so no-one's any the wiser. Of course nobody ever wonders why Frankish was never written down. They had...what?....five hundred years in power but apparently decided that they could leave real power (ie the bureacracy) in the hands of...um...well, there's another point...who exactly?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Nick wrote: | | According to the conventional wisdom the fact that the English dictionaries see "ward" and "gaol" as from Anglo-Norman and the French etymological dictionaries see them as from Frankish is not a problem as the sequence could be Frankish to Francien to Norman French to "Middle" English. |
It is true, but perhaps too conventional. For instance, the French guerre is linked by the French dictionaries to the German werra, to the Dutch werre and to the Anglo-Norman werre. But Anglo-Norman is English, not French.
Here, this term is directly linked to the invasion of England by William of Normandy and his French allies i.e. the aristocracy of Northern France. According to Andrew Bridgeford (1066 : The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry), for instance, Eustace of Boulogne, Edward the Confessor's brother-in-law, and his soldiers have been very active in the battle of Hastings (he is at the tenth rank among the landowners in the Domesday Book). During the conquest, in his army, there were many Flemish soldiers, who settled in England afterwards. Moreover, in the area of Boulogne, at this time, people would speak Flemish (Dutch), and not French, the linguists say. Boulogne is 30 kilometers far from England. So saying that werre/guerre has been imported in England by the Normans is very hypothetical.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I must admit that to say that Anglo-Norman is "English, not French" is at best a rash short cut, at the worst completely false (you know that better than me).
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I only meant that Anglo-Norman was a link in the "English" string of proposed etymologies. Of course, it was Norman French as spoken in England by people who spent their lives popping to and fro accord La Manche and a far few dying in shipwrecks in the process.
By the way, don't forget the Bretons; they were hugely important in conserving Cornish (a very similar language) in England under the Normans. They were also meant to be a significant conduit for the Arthurian Legends to get to Provence and the trouvadours.
By the other way, did you see that William the Bastard's (subsequently "the Conqueror") mate Alan the Red was named the richest "Briton" ever? Have you read about the theory that the Alans were in fact a contingent in William's army and used their hallmark feigned retreat to get the English to break their shield wall? It's supposedly what won the battle at Battle. Anyway, as with Strongbow's invasion of Ireland, how much can we say about the real composition of the invading army when the only people who "counted" are the leaders?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In discussing this we have to remember that /k/ and /g/ are simply the voiceless and voiced versions of the same letter so it's not surprising that there are paired cognates with them in. After all, half of us pronounce "acknowledge" as "a[u]g[/u]nolidge".
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
| Of course nobody ever wonders why Frankish was never written down. They had...what?....five hundred years in power but apparently decided that they could leave real power (ie the bureacracy) in the hands of...um...well, there's another point...who exactly? |
The Franks, especially Charlemagne, were spectacularly successful, in all but name they founded the Holy Roman Empire, the natural successor to Rome, yet by the end of the first millenium the monarchy wasn't in control and various dukedoms rose to power... tempting to see the inability to maintain control as linked to Frankish illiteracy.
So this points to the Church as being the real power structure, mediating between rulers; the Serments de Strasbourg which Gilles dug out positively reek of ecclesiastical jargon and pseudo-legal terminology, no-one apart from the clergy would have been able to lay out such a document. No treaty would have been effective without the Pope's sanction.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
| In discussing this we have to remember that /k/ and /g/ are simply the voiceless and voiced versions of the same letter so it's not surprising that there are paired cognates with them in |
Does this mean that 'kn' was 'gn'?
And another thought occurs, Alcuin (who? quien?) of York, Charlemagne's advisor, might have been 'someone' as in alguien or algun (alguno) in Spanish...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Pulp History
In: Wales
|
|
|
|
Cymri / Gymri is a mutation in Welsh and is used depending on the context - another is Nghymri...... also used is B/F (as in fach / bach 'small') and M/F (mawr / fawr 'big'). English is thankfully free of mutations, unless you count Anne Widdecombe.
_________________
Question everything!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Oh, Hatty, you've offended me! My college at York University was called Alcuin and we've always seen him as a walkin', talkin' Yorkshireman - he invented lowercase letters, damn it! Don't take that away from us!
No but seriously, Alcuin was a corruption of Ealhwine - Latinized as Albinus. We know he was master at the York cloister school in 778 and that he toddled off to Aachen in 781. We have over 200 letters written by him. He weren't just anyone! However, yes it does seem that algun-algun@-alguien is related to Latin "alquis".
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By the way, I was thinking this afternoon. Isn't the disappearance of any vestige of Norse in Normandy in just over two generations almost as unbelievable as the supposed transformation of Anglo-Saxon in "Middle English"? I mean, as I understand it, there is not one word of Norse in Norman French / Anglo-Norman. I can't imagine a whole ruling class giving up every single word their grandparents used. Sure it would have been convenient to adopt the language of the majority that they were governing but there should have been some words for concepts that couldn't be expressed well locally. Maybe it is just another example of how the written record diverges from what was actually being spoken. Does anyone know a good book on/dictionary of Anglo-Norman?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
