Re: Schöffe I

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "t0lgsoo1" <guestuser.0x9357@...> wrote:

>
> >Yes it is. And connected to jurisdiction, and to leading flocks.
>
> Of course to leading "flocks": without a "flock," no chief is a
> chief any longer! :)

True that.

> BTW på. What are its exact meanings? As op in low German or
> (a)uf in "Bastarnian"?

Historically it's been explained as 'op å' -> oppå -> på
(cf. English 'up on' -> upon -> 'pon, as in 'pon my word!).
As a preposition and preverb 'Ã¥' (<- PGmc. *an) survives in Swedish (but obsolescent) and in Jysk; in Danish only in 'Ã¥syn' "countenance" and 'Ã¥sted' "scene of the crime". Semantically it's English 'on', German 'auf', Dutch 'op'.

> (It strangely looks like the Romanian pe (regionally and
> colloquially also pă [p&]); seemingly, at least in some situations
> på means the same thing as pe.)

Also Russian po-russki, Danish 'på russisk'.
You never know. What's the origin of Romanian 'pe'?

> Is a rådgiver a... Ratgeber? ("advice giver").

Yes. There are many German and Low German calques in the Scandinavian laguages. Most of the German 18th cent. purisms were loan-translated into Danish and Swedish.

> (Were Danks a bit more... "bastarnisch", I could
> understand more out of a text på dansk/pă daneză. :))
>

It's also a difference in mentality, or was. To Germans, the ideal was a layered society, where people know their place. To Danes, the ideal is a flat society where no one has a pre-assigned authority.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Schleswig_War#Constitutional_crisis
That's also why the so-called ethnically Danish party in Southern Schleswig is also ideologically different from the (previously) authoritarian German state; ethnically German parents too send their children to Danish schools for that reason. Also from that comes the Danish definition of Danishness: intent, not roots; you're Danish if you want to be, otherwise you're not. Of course, after '45 the political divide has narrowed.


Torsten