Re: Substrate in Scandinavia

> > > pratt- "trick" sticks out as interesting; I'm thinking
> > > it has more to do with "clever", i.e. English pretty
> > > originally meant something like "clever, charming, etc."
> > > Then there's Dutch pratt "to speak" and English
> > > prattle "babble" --are these somehow related?
> >
> > DEO
> > "prate (old, dial.) "talk, converse"; MDa, Nw. id. Sw. prata; loan
> > from MLG praten, corr. Dutch, MEngl. praten. Most likely
> > onomatopoieic, cf. MHG braten "converse"."
> >
> > Gmc p-, side form b-; typical of Kuhn's NWBlock words.
> > Cf Engl. blather, Da. pladder "twaddle".

> > Torsten
> >
> Do you think they're related with /r/ <=> /l/ or are both just
> expressive words?
>

Hadn't even thought of that. I haven't noticed any l <-> r interchange
in Kuhn's NWBlock words; I saw Arnaud postulated it for some of his
'Celtic' correspondences. DEO has Lat blatera:ra, blati:re "chat(ter)"
as belonging to a 'similar root' as the last one. Da. has also
'pludder' in the same sense.


Torsten