From: stlatos
Message: 67974
Date: 2011-08-07
>If you mean "before" I'm not saying OE heorl is older than OE eorl , but that in PGmc h\x\G\0 variation existed from PIE x()- . The Latin ev. is one part, but an important one due to age.
> W dniu 2011-08-07 19:27, stlatos pisze:
>
> > OE heorl \ eorl corr. to L Heruli , so that is one with ev., and ev.
> > that the version w/out h- became much more common. The giants Ymir ,
> > Hymir , and Gymir show the variation.
>
> Much more common indeed. <heorl> is a late 10th-century hapax, while
> <eorl> occurs hundreds of times in Anglo-Saxon texts of all ages, so
> obviously their status is very unequal and nothing justifies placing
> <heorl> berore <eorl>, as you do above.
> Cockney-style h-dropping was already beginning to spread in England,That doesn't have anything to do with whether they'd record h- in a new word for no reason, especially when some of the languages they'd encounter would have many h- and 0- in opposition.
> especially in Mercia, and we have examples of both <h>-omission and
> unhistorical <h>-insertion. All that has precious little to do with the
> interpretation of Germanic names recorded hundreds of years earlier.
> Incidentally, the "Heruli" were first mentioned in th 3rd century, when
> even upper-class Romans surely dropped their aitches all the time.
>That's why I clearly wrote "giants" not "giant". Why do you keep making arguments against things I never said? Anyway, the existence of Ymir , Hymir , and Gymir , from 3 dif. words is almost impossible, and they share enough characteristics besides being giants to make a common origin likely.
> Ymir anf Gymir were nor even the same fellow.