Finnish olut looks far too archaic (final
-t!) to have been borrowed after the operation of the North Germanic back umlaut
(cf. Old Norse öl). Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian and Old Prussian) and Slavic
preserve independent reflexes of *alu- (a plain u-stem, with the final *t
absent) rather than loans from Germanic. The most archaic form here is Old
Prussian alu, retaining its original neuter gender. I'd reconstruct (northern)
PIE *olu-(t) (as in Mann 1987; laryngeal purists may add an initial *h1 if
they like) with regularly unrounded *o > *a in Germanic, Baltic and
Slavic, rather than Pokorny's *alu- (*/h2elu-/ in laryngeal terms). The
hard-to-believe connection with 'alum' is less attractive than one with
*el-/*ol- 'move, rise' (also of liquids 'run, overflow', cf. Peter Kitson
"British and European river-names", Transactions of the Philological Society
94:2 [1996]). The root is well represented in "Old European" hydronymy: Aluta (=
Olt), tributary of the Danube in Romania), Ol/awa in SW
Poland, etc. If so, we face the possibility that the Baltic Finnic
word was borrowed as far back as the first contacts of northern IEs with
Proto-BF speakers in the East Baltic area.
Older and more recent borrowings from
Germanic into Finnish form easily distinguishable layers, especially if borrowed
more than once -- a typical case is Proto-Germanic *badja- (Finnish patja
'mattress') > post-umlaut North Germanic bed- (Finnish peti
'bed').
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 1:42 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Digest Number 334
Interesting. That means Finnish has the North Germanic
u-umlaut
olut
and Latvian doesn't.
Torsten