At 5:55:21 PM on Sunday, October 19, 2008, Rick McCallister
wrote:
[...]
> Doesn't the presence of Icelandic offer a away around your
> MO. If a word is in Icelandic, unless it's a recent
> loanword, wouldn't it have to come from Old Norse?
Depends on what you mean by 'recent': despite the purist
purging of the last century or so, there are still some MLG
borrowings (e.g., <hertogi> 'duke', <smakka> 'to taste',
<spegill> 'mirror', <orsök> 'cause, reason', the last two
possibly via Danish). There used to be a lot more, and
there are still more in speech than in writing.
Brian