Re: PGmc question

--- On Mon, 3/30/09, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@...
> s.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> > On 2009-03-30 00:39, A. wrote:
>
> > > Thank you again for your response.
>
> > > And a big thanks to Brian, Andrew and Rick as
> well!
>
> > > I'd also like to ask just one last question,
> if I may...

> > > You (Piotr) stated there is now way e:ar and
> irmin can be related.
> > > Thus I'm assuming that despite the lack of a
> clear etymology for PGmc
> > > *ermana- , there is no way it can be
> linguistically related to *aura- .
> > > Is this because *aura- cannot develop into
> anything like OHG Ir-, OE
> > > Eor-, or ON Jor- ... is that correct?

> > Yes, I have little to add to what Andrew and Brian
> have already said,
> > except perhaps by clarifying the development of
> Germanic *e in *ermVna-.
> > Already in PGmc. an underlying */e/ was raised if the
> next syllable
> > contained *i or *j, so the variant *ermina- became
> *irmina- (hence OHG
> > irmin-). In Old English, *e was regularly
> diphthongised ("broken") to
> > _short_ /eo/ before a final or preconsonantal liquid,
> so *ermana- became
> > *ermen- > eormen-. Finally, the *e of Proto-Norse
> *ermuna- changed into
> > *iO > OIc. jö (also a regular process, conditioned
> by the presence of
> > /u/ in the next syllable.

> I actually would like to add that in OE, a form *Earmen
> (with *short* <ea>) would arise from PGmc *arman-, not
> from a PGmc *Aurman-. A form *E:armen, distinct from
> *Earmen, would be a compound of *Aura- plus another word,
> this one possibly in reduced form. And *Earmen would be
> clearly different from *Eormen in OE. Also needless to say
> *E:ormen would be a compound word as well, distinguished
> from *Eormen with short diphthong <eo>, and in
> virtually all varieties of OE, with a first element
> definitely not from *Aura- (with the lone exception of that
> isolated variety of Northumbrian that I mentioned).
> Andrew

I'm thinking about other common ea- words such as beard, dear, dearth, heart, hearth, etc. For English ear, we have German Öhr, Latin auriculus, right? But the others don't seem to fall in place. Is this due to the initial consonant or is -ea- just an ill-considered spelling convention here?