Re: Why no umlaut?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <miguelc@...>
wrote:

>
> On Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:40:20 -0000, "tgpedersen"
> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >However, the roots in Dutch haring "herring" and paling "eel" don't
> >exist in Dutch. How come they have no umlaut then? Analogy?
>
> Haring is from P(W)Gmc. *hæ:ringaz, and there is no Umlaut
> on long vowels in Dutch. The same might apply to "paling",
> but since the word is only Dutch, it's hard to tell what the
> /a:/ is derived from.
>

So ha:ring is de-umlauted P(W)Gmc? Why would anybody do that? Isn't it
easier to assume that ha:ring was a NWBlock substrate word which was
umlauted in those dialects of Germanic that felt umlaut was nice
(which doesn't include Dutch)?


Torsten