melken, Milch, Molke [Re: Of cows and living]

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, st-george@... wrote:

>
> >Oops.
> >
> >Why -ch in Milch and -k in melken and Molke?
>
> I wish I knew myself. Perhaps because of the
> general older (Middle and South) German habit
> [k] > [x]. Tirolians and Swiss go even further:
> words such as Kind, Kaese are actually pro-
> nounced with sorts of [x]-like sounds instead
> of [k] (velar-uvular "behauchtes k", more or
> less similar to what one hears in
> Neerlandsch :)).
>
> Whereas the nextdoorneighbors, speakers of
> Bavarian & Suebian, never have such [x]
> rendering of the [k] in the same situations.
>
> BTW, in Southern German, there is a dialectal
> tendency to...
>
> Mili ['mi-li] (which can also sound
> rather like ['mi-le]),
> Müli ['mü-li] (in East Austria)
> and
> Mui(ch) [muj(x)].

As if from *mulg^- ?

>
> In Middle German, also
>
> Millisch ['miliS]
>
> (since there [x] > [S]).
>
> >Torsten
>
> George

But unless there is a secret dairy component in the production of
Weisswurst, I can't see how the -ch/-k variants could be explained
with reference to Low vs. High German, which would be the standard
explanation of that variation elsewhere. So we'll have to accept the
presence of either both *melg^/*melgh^ in Proto-Germanic or appeal
to some sort of loan transmission of both.

BTW Dutch melk /mel&k/ with epenthetic vowel.


Torsten