Re: Uralic Loanwords in Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 4:48:26 PM on Thursday, February 4, 2010, stlatos wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> Next time you respond to a year-old message, at least have
> >> the courtesy to give a link;
>
> > The previous messsages in the thread can be seen on the
> > website; look at the links below the message.
>
> I don't normally read Cybalist via the web site. I dislike
> web interfaces.

I also replied to the very words you apparently were looking for in an e-mail immediately before my reply to you, so even if you just read your e-mail all you needed to see should have been there (in the span of minutes, not a year).

>
> >> Yes, it was an obvious joke, for reasons that have
> >> nothing at all to do with the word itself; apparently
> >> you're as inattentive as Arnaud was. Look at the
> >> original post, which you will find at
> >> <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62491>;
> >> in particular, note the last line before the signature.
>
> > I know it was meant as a joke; [...]
>
> Then why did you ask whether I considered it an obvious
> joke? It should have been perfectly obvious that I did.
> (Don't bother to answer; I frankly don't care.)

I knew it was meant as a joke since I read the entire thread and he later directly said it was a joke, and why. I didn't fully understand the intended meaning of first message when I had read only it, in the same way that Arnaud didn't at the time. For example, if the exchange had gone like this:


A.
Why did OE fæder become E father?


B.
Obviously, because d > D.

:)


A.
But OE > E doesn't usually change d > D; why did it happen here? Because of the r?


C.
LOL! Eye fail!


B.
I meant it as an obvious joke, but looking at Joe Schmo's dissertation on the subject, I see that OE fæder actually is the source of E father.


Do you see now how I knew it was meant as a joke after reading whole thing in the archives a year later, but how Arnaud didn't know it was meant as a joke, or what the supposed joke was, after just reading the first message?

>
> > Arnaud merely wanted an explanation of the -e-e instead of
> > -(a)-a [...]
>
> Which was silly of him, since the explanation is obvious.
> (So far as I can recall, not even he thought that Finnish
> was IE.)

What is the obvious explanation (according to you)?

Arnaud wanted to know why kantele ended in -e instead of -o (or -a with Baltic o>a) if < * kantlom. Apparently he understood that the -e- was inserted to break up a non-Finnish cluster by something like V1C1C2V2 > V1C1V2C2V2 .

> >> You have no idea what I believe about them:
>
> > Yes, hence my question.
>
> You didn't ask a question. You wrote:
>
> Did you also consider the first reply an obvious joke,
> since you don't believe they're related by borrowing?
>
> That contains an assertion that I don't believe that they're
> related by borrowing. If you think otherwise, your grasp of
> English syntax is defective.

You are wrong. I did ask a question, the above was a question, it questioned two things, and it was ambiguous (as many sentences in English are), whether spoken or written (for example, "Will you ever stop beating your wife?" is ambiguous and could be interpreted as containing an assertion (and almost always does when the speakers are using the rules of conversational implicature); "Will you ever return from the Moon?", in normal conversation, might be answered by "I'm not on the Moon; are you crazy?", but, if meant as "Will you ever go to the Moon and will you ever return from the Moon once you are there?" might be answered differently if asked of an astronaut).

I wrote it that way since the original message in the thread was written 1. as an obvious joke (obvious to the joker), and 2. because he believed the words were not related by borrowing. I thought they were foolish beliefs, and wanted to know if you believed them (or one of them) also, because of what I thought (and think) was your foolish response to the exchange. Your response was also ambiguous (no shame in that), and I wanted to understand it. That is, I wanted to know if you responded as you did because you thought Arnaud should never have believed a borrowing from Baltic to Finnish possible, or that he responded seriously to the part of the message you took as a joke (and, I suppose, which part did you consider the joke (since the joke could have been that he meant it was really borrowed from Baltic *kantle: or Lith kankle:s, not from as far back as PIE, because that would be silly for some reason implied by " :) " ?)?