>LG steit, geit is what I heard. More likely seems to me an
>origin in 'long-vowel verbs', from a kind of impersonal '4sg'
>in -i alone, cf Greek 3sg pherei, cf Dutch draai-, gooi-, Grm
>dreh-, NW dial gouw- "turn", "throw", later 'normalized' with
>a 3sg -t suffix: draait, gooit. I'd venture the same origin
>for Eng. stay.
Unfortunately, in most such comparisons, only standard
High German words are taken into consideration, and
the dialectal variants (German dialects being the *real
German language*, whereas the standart High German is
an "artificial" one) are virtually unknown.
E.g. instead of dreh-, many German-speakers, for example
southerners, have drah- [dra:] ("Dreh dich um" v. "drah di um";
"umdrehen" v. "umdrahn".)
Or geh- (gehen): gehe, gehst, geht, gehen, geht, gehen. In
various dialects there is a go- in use (e.g. "du gohscht";
unfortunately I'm not in command of any of the relevant
dialects where gohst, goht are typical).
Even the past tense and perfect morphems -gang- has
a different pronunciation in some dialects, even tending
to sound -gong-. (So, again [go] instead of [ge:]. And
this is today's, everyday's German, in vast areas of the
contemporary spoken German).
As for stehen: in Bav. there's a slight transformation
by adding -ng- > stengen, pronounced [Stenga] or [Steng&].
Example:
"Do gibts vui, de mehra dean und des aa no bessa, ohne
dass si vorn hi stoin! I moan, dass oa, de vorn dro stenga
und koa Kritik vatrogn, weg ghearn!"
"Translation": "Da gibt's viel (viele), die mehr tun und
das (= dieses) auch noch besser, ohne dass sie vorn
hinstellen! Ich meine, dass auch die, die vorn dran stehen
und keine Kritik vertragen, weg gehören!"
BTW, how often is there a mentioning of "dean/tean" in
comparisons? AFAIK, only the general and High German "tun"
is mentioned, but "dean/tean" is the "tun" uttered by at
least 20 million German-speaking people, Munich and Vienna
included! The same applies to "zum Doa" = "zu tun" ("to do").
So "tun" has two "siblings": "tean" and "doa" [in both
a diphtong: [ea] and [oa], the latter having a dominant
[o], and the secondary <a> is tiny and often rather a
Schwa [&]].
George