From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 13686
Date: 2002-05-10
----- Original Message -----From: tgpedersenSent: Friday, May 10, 2002 12:35 PMSubject: [tied] Re: IRMIN
[Torsten:] Artificially Latinized from what? What were they trying to derive it from? As I see it the <þu:r> reference became taboo (cf. the respective pronunciations of Sáddam vs Saddám in news during the Gulf war), just as in High German the day of Woden became mid-week instead. Missionaries and clergy would have pronounced <þu:r> as if it were a suffix, hence <-Dur>.Artificially Latinised from the traditional Latin spelling <Thuringia>, kept alive by the literary tradition, going back to the time when the name had initial <þ->. A voiced sound "as if in a suffix" would have been devoiced into German /t/, as in <tür> < *duriz in a word-initial position.Piotr