Re: Scandinavia and the Germanic tribes such as Goths, Vandals, Angl

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@> wrote:
> >
> > On 2008-11-02 20:34, tgpedersen wrote:
> >
> > > English does that for yester-day vs. Germ. gestern, yield vs. geld,
> > > but is this regular, or limited to a few words?
> >
> > Regular, as explained by Brian, but -- more importantly -- there's no
> > initial glide in the Old English words for "Jute" and "Jutish". They
> > began with the diphthong e:o- ~ i:o- ~ i:u- < *eu-.
> >
> > Piotr
> >
>
> I think one has to be careful about the Old English forms in this
> case. Spellings with <iu-> can sometimes stand for /ju:-/, as in
> <Iu:de:as> "the Jews", and in <iuc>, <iung>, <iu:>, alternative
> spellings for <geoc> "yoke", <geong> "young", <geo:> "formerly"; one
> also finds <ioc>, <iong>, and <io> for these same words, all with Gmc
> *j-; also the word <ge:oc> "help, support, rescue; safety;
> consolation" is sometimes spelt <e:oc>, and the word <i:esend>
> "viscera" is also spelt <ge:sen>; one may conclude from these
> variations that it is at least possible, if not plausible, that these
> OE spellings of the tribal name "Jutes" represent a word that had *j-
> in Germanic (and which might have been imperfectly transmitted to the
> non-Jutish Angles and Saxons, who might have spelt it also imperfectly
> according to their conventions).
>
> Andrew
>

Not to mention also <ge:stende> for <y:stende> (in Bosworth-Toller;
meaning not given), <iesca> for <geocsa> "hiccup", to illustrate the
variation between perception as vowels/diphthongs and as consonant
plus vowel, which could have occurred with the OE name for "Jutes",
although to my knowledge no forms with <g-> are recorded. Could it
not also be possible that an initial *jeut- might have merged the *j-
with the first element of the following diphthong, through such forms
as *jiut-, *jiot-, where it would be easy for the /j/ to be dropped?

Andrew