melken, Milch, Molke [Re: Of cows and living]

From: st-george@...
Message: 43506
Date: 2006-02-21

>Oops.
>
>Why -ch in Milch and -k in melken and Molke?

I wish I knew myself. Perhaps because of the
general older (Middle and South) German habit
[k] > [x]. Tirolians and Swiss go even further:
words such as Kind, Kaese are actually pro-
nounced with sorts of [x]-like sounds instead
of [k] (velar-uvular "behauchtes k", more or
less similar to what one hears in
Neerlandsch :)).

Whereas the nextdoorneighbors, speakers of
Bavarian & Suebian, never have such [x]
rendering of the [k] in the same situations.

BTW, in Southern German, there is a dialectal
tendency to...

Mili ['mi-li] (which can also sound
rather like ['mi-le]),
Müli ['mü-li] (in East Austria)
and
Mui(ch) [muj(x)].

In Middle German, also

Millisch ['miliS]

(since there [x] > [S]).

>Torsten

George

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