Re: [tied] Swedish Phonetics

From: Mark Odegard
Message: 5896
Date: 2001-02-02

>From: "petegray" "snob"
>
>Walter Skeat (old, but still sometimes right) offers:
>
>snob : a vulgar person, also a journeyman shoemaker, snap a lad,
>servant, usulaly in a ludicrous sense; Lowland Scots snab, a cobbler's
>boy - Danish dialect snopp, snupp, bashful, silly; Icelandic snapr a dolt,
>Swedish dialect sno:pp a boy, anything stumpy, cf Swed dialect sno:ppa, to
>cut off, make stumpy. See SNUB, and cf Swedish snopen, ashamed.
>
>Any takers?
>
>Peter


Well. I remember a lecture way back when, in my freshman year of college. A
comment about the Faulkner? characters surnamed 'Snopes'.

The comment was that the word-initial combination of 'sn' in English is
highly derogatory. Snake, sneer, snot, snooty, snob, snarl, sneak, etc.
About the only possibly nice one is 'snow', and even this one has negative
connotations. Snorkel is neutral, but, really, is a kind of word for 'nose'.
The words all involve an uplifting motion that makes the nose move, as with
a sneer. We might be onto the proto-World, or at least, Nostratic words for
'deprecate', 'nose', 'snort'.

Here, phonology and facial gesture merge into one. This seems to be a
Germanic commonplace. Is it true with other language groups as well?


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