Re: [tied] Swedish Phonetics

There were some expressive snubby-snobby words already in Middle English; in fact, there are so many possible sources for "snob" in early English, Scots and Norse that it's difficult to favour any single one of them. Sn- is one of the handbook examples of English and Germanic phonaesthesia. It doesn't work for all languager groups; I don't think sn- is used as an expressive combination in Slavic (we do have sl- for many slimy or sleezy things -- but "Slavic" is NOT one of them!).

Piotr

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

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, February 02, 2001 12:50 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Swedish Phonetics

>From: "petegray" "snob" > >Walter Skeat (old, but still sometimes right) offers: > >snob : a vulgar person, also a journeyman shoemaker, snap a lad, >servant, usulaly in a ludicrous sense; Lowland Scots snab, a cobbler's >boy - Danish dialect snopp, snupp, bashful, silly; Icelandic snapr a dolt, >Swedish dialect sno:pp a boy, anything stumpy, cf Swed dialect sno:ppa, to >cut off, make stumpy. See SNUB, and cf Swedish snopen, ashamed. > >Any takers? > >Peter Well. I remember a lecture way back when, in my freshman year of college. A comment about the Faulkner? characters surnamed 'Snopes'. The comment was that the word-initial combination of 'sn' in English is highly derogatory. Snake, sneer, snot, snooty, snob, snarl, sneak, etc. About the only possibly nice one is 'snow', and even this one has negative connotations. Snorkel is neutral, but, really, is a kind of word for 'nose'. The words all involve an uplifting motion that makes the nose move, as with a sneer. We might be onto the proto-World, or at least, Nostratic words for 'deprecate', 'nose', 'snort'. Here, phonology and facial gesture merge into one. This seems to be a Germanic commonplace. Is it true with other language groups as well? _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com