Social institutions and government: airut
'messenger', hallita 'to govern', laina 'loan', toumita 'to judge', kartano
'estate, manor'.
Tools and technical terms: saha 'saw',
lukko 'lock', kaira 'auger', ansas 'beam', terwa 'tar', mitta
'measure'.
Housekeeping and husbandry: leipä
'bread', saippua 'soap', tupa 'living room', lattia 'floor', pelto 'field',
kana 'hen'.
Miscellaneous: tauti 'sickness', parta
'beard', kulta 'gold', perjantai 'Friday', ruoste 'rust', rauma
'straits'.
Archaic Germanic loans in Saami also exist
(e.g. awjo 'island'), but are definitely fewer than those in
Finnish.
The Baltic Finnic languages (including
Finnish) also absorbed numerous early borrowings from Baltic (e.g. Finn. paimen
'shepherd' < PBalt. *paimen-, silta 'bridge' < *ti:lta-). There are even
more ancient loans that found their way from old Iranian languages into
Proto-Finno-Ugric, to be inherited also by Finnish (Finn. sata 'hundred'
< Iranian *satam, vasara 'hammer < *vazra-), as well as words that may be
Proto-Indo-Iranian (taivas 'sky' < *daiwas [if not Baltic]) or come from
hard-to-identify but apparently "satem" Indo-European languages (Finn. porsas
'pig' < *pork^os, *teksa 'ten' < *dek^m in kahdeksan 'eight' and yhdeksän
'nine'). Some old loans are difficult to date but their phonological
structure suggests a non-Germanic, non-Baltic and non-Iranian but
nevertheless IE source (Finn. orpo 'orphan', oja/ojas 'plough tongue', olut
'beer'). Finally, there is a residue of common Uralic words with IE counterparts
(e.g. Finn. mete 'mead', vete 'water', nime 'name') that testify either to
extremely ancient contacts between the two families or to a distant genetic
relationship. But here I'm getting too far away from
Scandinavia.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 1:36 PM
Subject: re: Finnish loans [norse_course]
Piotr and Pavel wrote:
>There are scores of old Germanic loans in
Finnish, many of them
>beautifully archaic and evidently dating back to a
chronological layer
>identifiable as Proto-Germanic, e.g. kuningas <
*kuningaz 'prince', rengas
>< *xrengaz 'ring', laiva < *flauja-
'ship', etc. Finnish is rather
>conservative in terms of phonological
development, so those loans are
>conserved like flies in amber, and their
Finnish form is sometimes more
>archaic than what you can find in any
historically documented
Germanic
>language.
>
>Piotr
Nice Baltic image: "flies
in amber" !
Do you know how many words we are talking about ? (order of
magnitude)
If you were to make up a list, would it be exhausted in a single
mail ?
Personally I have never looked too deeply into this question of
Finnish,
because the Finnish language is soo different from the other
European
languages, and is supposed to be soo difficult to learn, that very
few
people make the effort. Far more people have actually tried to
learn
languages like Russian, and I suppose those who got a chance to
live
there are also more or less fluent. But Finnish is, I think,
even
more difficult than Russian !
Of course, there is the same
phenomenon with respect to the Saamic
language(s): e.g.. the Saamic god
"Horgallis" is supposed to derived
from ON "Torekall".
Come to think
of it: I may be able to answer my own question.
In fact, I now recall that
the Brill dictionaries publish
lists of such borrowings to and from the
various neighboring
languages. (but I had temporarily forgotten about
this,
since I have until now classified Finnish as "too difficult
to deal
with")
Looking it up, I find, then, 426 (for hundred and twenty
six)
borrowings from North Germanic into Finnish. The list
includes such well
known words as:
(extract from
list)
arðr
austr
bátr
barn
blót
bukkr
dreki
dróttinn
dvergr
embætti
flugdréki
frjádagr
hjálmr
hraunn
hvalr
jól
kaup
kefli
kellari
ketill
kjalki
Laufey
laugardagr
laukr
leikr
(1)
markaðr
merr
nafarr
nagli
nál
(1)
naut
ríkr
rugr
ryðja
sápa
sárr
saumr
saxar
segl
serkr
(1)
signa
síld
silki
snoeri
sokkr
stofa
stokkr
stríð
stro,nd
stýri
sveinn
svinnr
tak
teikn
teinn
tjald
torf
torg
troll
trumba
tún
Týr
týsdagr
þollr
Þórr
þorskr
vaðr
vín
vindr
vo,ttr
o,ndurr
So
what this list suggests is: social institutions (marked),
weekdays, gods,
supernatural beings, instruments, things
to do with fishing and sailing; also
the plow, as well as
things that have to do with the building of
houses.
What surprises me is the word "vo,ttr" -- because the other
words
suggest the Finns came from the East, and met with
the North Germanic people
when they came to the ocean
(the Baltic ocean). But if they lived inland, it
would have
been cold there, and they would have needed something
to keep
their hands warm. But this can also be explained
if we assume the vo,ttr was
made of wool (or down) while
the Finns may have used something made of
fur.
The thing with the weekdays incidentally also give a
good
indication about the time period in which the loans
occurred. That is
because we can be 99 % sure that
the Germanic peoples got their weekday names
from the Romans.
Because it reflects the well known
"interpretatio
Germanica" of the Roman pantheon.
But we also know that the
Roman calendar originally did
not have the week. It only had "kalendae",
"ides" and
"nonae". The Romans must have adopted the 7-day week
relatively
late, some time after their politics had
gotten them involved in the Middle
East. And from that time
on the introduction of the same 7-day week by the
Germans
cannot have been immediate. After that it must have
taken some
time before the 7-day week arrived in Finland.
I am not going to attempt to
estimate what century we
then arrive in. But it is clear that we are talking
about
several centuries. (A.D.)
> Does someone know more
Finnish loanwords?
> I know _jukko_ "yoke", but certainly I don't
know the Norse word (since
> Old Norse dictionaries are hardly
available here in Russia).
I have "eykt" (f.).
But this word was not part
of the list from which the
above excerpts were taken. Maybe it means that
this
particular word arrived earlier than the others (?)
(maybe directly
from "urgermansich" ?)
> I might also have a go and tyr to
say that _Joulupukki_ (the Finnish
> Santa Claus) is also two
loans:
> _Joulu_ looks like jól (o with an accent mark, just in
case)
"jól" (=yule) was indeed part of the list I quoted.
Also note
that words like geohol, gehhol, geol, geola
are documented in Anglo-Saxon.
Also in the Gotic language
there is "fruma-jiuleis" = the month of
November.
All this shows that the word "jól" is an old one.
But when the
Icelandic Annals say that this name
was introduced in honour of Julius
Caesar, how seriously
are we to take this? It is of course relevant to
consider
that it was Julius Caesar who *was* responsible for an
important
calendar reform. But the question is whether
the Icelandic annalists are
merely speculating, or -
what would be more interesting - are passing on a
genuine
tradition.
> _pukki_ standalone means "goat" -
certainly the cognate of the English
> "buck".
> Any
ideas?
> Cut it if it's offtopic ;-)
I find it an interesting
topic. Am not sure if it is
off-topic for the list. This is typically
material that you'd
find in ON textbooks, as general background
material.
Keth