Re: [tied] Language - Area - Routes

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 1:01 PM

Subject: [tied] Language - Area - Routes

>> One could easily compile a list of _hundreds_ of homonymic doublets (and many triplets as well) involving not loanwords (as Torsten would have it) but good Anglo-Saxon words that have became homophones because of perfectly regular mergers ...

> I don't recognize this as something I said. I did propose loanwords, but not as an explanation for homophones ...

 

But yes, you did, in your brief response to Miguel's comment about homophones in Bomhard's Nostratic reconstruction. I understand it was just a casual remark.

> This, I think, is the reason why Piotr assumes I mean Jutland, when I speak of Denmark (since it is contiguous with the continent, thus "accessible", not like the islands, where you would get wet feet, should you dare to try to travel to them, and why he calls
it "remote" (I won't get into Danish estimates of the remoteness of the river Tanew).

 

I didn't call it "faraway" -- as far as I recall, this was the word I used -- from a Polonocentric or a landlubber's perspective (for a Pole, Denmark lies just round the corner and is anything but exotic), but from the point of view of the Pontic Scytho-Sarmatians.

> Also, occasionally I see the Urheimat of Proto-Germanic described as "Denmark and Southern Scandinavia" (whereupon they proceed to concentrate on "Southern Scandinavia", ie. Swedish material). The now Swedish provinces of Skåne (Scania), Halland, and Blekinge
were Danish until 1658. They are the coasts of "Southern Scandinavia" (the interior, Småland, known from "The Immigrants" is not economically important until quite recently.
The provinces were part of Denmark exactly because it make good sense for a "sea people" to have them, as the Anatolian Western coast did for the Greeks.
 
I know something about the history and historical geography of Denmark ("continental" as well as "insular") and Scandinavia. The history of the Danes as a sea people is entangled with the early history of both England (I teach the history of English) and Poland (our countries' spheres of political interests overlapped in the SW Baltic area). Sweyn Forkbeard's wife and Canute the Great's mother, Sigrid (Sventoslava), was a Polish princess. If there are any differences of opinion between us, I don't think they have to do with my different perception of Denmark and its affairs :)

 

Piotr