--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
> *****GK: Actually I don't think they do. I'm not sure
> that "Chud'" becomes primarily associated with
> Estonians until much later, while continuing to retain
> its broader meaning. BTW What do you make of the
> "golthe" in "golthescytha"? Does that sound garbled to
> you? Would it have any meaning in Gothic? "cold"?
> or...? The Gothic on-line dictionary seems
> unavailable.*****
>
> >
The professor who taught us phonetics told us this true anecdote: Two
Danes were being used by a famous Australian professor of phonetics
at a lecture as pseudo-informants for him to show to his students how
to reconstruct the phoneme inventory of an unknown language (Danish).
The professor held up a leaf. "blad" [b.laD] said the Danes. "blal"
wrote the professor on the blackboard.
He held up two leaves. "blade" [b.lä:D&] said the Danes. "blalv&"
wrote the professor.
The Danish D (and G and B) are very lax, reminiscent of fast and
sloppy Spanish. It is a commonplace here that Germans mistake Danish
D's for l's. Even though the Australian had D in his own language,
the laxity fooled him. Perhaps Jordanes was fooled too?
Torsten