Re: Odp: joatsimeo-Loan Words

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 603
Date: 1999-12-16

 
----- Original Message -----
From: JoatSimeon@...
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 1999 10:30 AM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Odp: joatsimeo-Loan Words

In a message dated 12/16/99 12:31:13 AM Mountain Standard Time, 
gpiotr@... writes:

<< but the _basic_ vocabulary, things like kinship terms, body parts, and 
common 
 objects, is almost all Germanic in origin... and, in fact, mostly PIE.
 
>SIGH. This is patently untrue. Sister is a loanword from Old Norse (or it 
would be *swester

-- my source lists Modern English 'sister' as derived from Old English 
'sweostor' not Norse 'systir'.

In any case, Old Norse and Old English were still mutually intelligible 
during the Viking-era settlements in England, no more different than some 
English dialects are from Standard English today, so it's more a case of 
intra-dialect influence.

>Aunt and uncle are French

-- but mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter, etc. are Germanic. 

Of the 1000 most commonly used words, a large majority -- not all, but a 
majority -- are Gemanic, while considerably less than half the total English 
vocabulary is.

Nobody could doubt, even with no knowledge of the historical circumstances, 
that English is a Germanic language.

Which was my point.
No, your point was that basic vocabulary was in principle never borrowed. On "sister" and the matter of regarding OE and Old Norse as "no more different than some English dialects are, etc." maybe you could consult some other sources as well. Your opinion on the 1000 most common words in English is utterly wrong. I'm sure you didn't bother to have a look at an actual word-frequency list. I did have a look at one this morning and was myself surprised to see how hyperbolic your statement turned out to be. If you'd said "fifty" or "one hundred" you would have been right, but mostly because the first 50 items are all function words like "of", "the" or "are".
 
You've got a lot of cheek for a fantasy writer (I presume), even one who evidently HAS done some reading on PIE to speak as if you were an eminent linguist in his ivory tower. What are your scholarly credentials, may I ask? Are you a professional historical linguist yourself? Do you publish on linguistics? If not, please leave the defence of the standard model to those who know it firsthand. Can't blame you for opening fire at Adrian (though forbearance is a great virtue), but your ad hominem attack on Brent was disgraceful and completely unprovoked.
 
Yours,
 
Piotr