The Life of St. Adalbert was indeed written down in 999 or slightly later, =
but refers to the events of 997. The final yer is consistently ignored by al=
l early writers who transcribed Polish names and personal names into Latin, =
but internal years are sporadically recorded as orthographic vowels, perhaps=
as epenthetic cluster-busters rather than etymological segments. The first =
documents in which a large number of Polish words can be found come from the=
12th c., and by then all weak yers had definitely been lost. The spelling o=
f the earliest sporadic attempts to record Polish is so messy, and the examp=
les are so few that it's difficult to make any sensible generalisations (but=
double consonants are not uncommon. "Gyddanyzc" looks quite successful to m=
e, as compared to some other early versions of Polish toponyms.
Progressive voicing ssimilation like *gd- < *g(U)t- is unlikely in Polish, =
where regressive assimilation of obstruents is the norm. We would expect *g(=
U)t- to yield *kt-. Besides, in out earlier debates Sergei provided some ver=
y nice Lithuanian counterparts of *gUda:n-.
Piotr
--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Feb 2001 21:12:42 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
> <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> >Danzig is a German adaptation of Slavic *gUdan-Isk- (Polish Gdan'sk, fir=
st mentioned in AD 997 as "urb[s] Gyddanyzc"). ...
>
> What else do we know about this "urb[s] Gyddanyzc" (Bräuer,
> Einführung, I 113, mentions it as: "Gelegentlich lassen sich
> reduzierte Vokale noch in slav. Glossen in nichtslav. Texten belegen,
> so in der Vita S. Adalberti (nach 999): <Gyddanysc>"). The final -U
> is not rendered, but was it lost in (West-)Slavic already? Did the
> author understand or speak any Slavic at all? What was his native
> language and orthography (e.g. why the spelling <dd>)? Could it be
> that *gUta- was assimilated to gda- even at a stage where the <yer>'s
> had not quite vanished completely but led a shadowy existence
> comparable to the French e-muet?