Haukur,

Thanks for your remarks. I wanted to know if the word stems have
something common in their origin, it’s not so important, I was watching
a French film yesterday and I became aware of the word “loi”, I have
a “bad” habit, that I translate what I hear on TV to different languages
I know, or at least try to imagine how a certain sentence would sound
in an another language. The word “loi” reminded me on “lex”, “lag”
and “lög” and also “law”.

As to the German, I think it does not have a direct cognate to “lag”
or “lög” with the meaning “law” , though it has the word “legen” (to
lay, place, put etc.) which is the cognate of ON “leggja” and
Swedish “lägga”, the word that you have mentioned. If we make a
noun from the verb “legen” we get “Lage”, which corresponds exactly
to “lag” or “lög” but has a different meaning: “situation, position,
location etc.”

It is also strange that the English has the word “lay” (the cognate
to “lag” and “lög”) but it has no law related meaning, instead it has
taken the cognate word from ON. Just as “Lage” in German doesn’t
have one either. So it seems that “lag-” and “lög-“ word-stem acquired
a law related meaning after the West Germanic and Nordic languages
got away from each other.

To see if that is also true for the East Germanic branch, I have also
checked a Gothic dictionary for a cognate word, and I have
found “laggjan” corresponding to NHG “legen”, NSW “lägga” and
ON “leggja” and English “lay”, and has the meaning “to lay, lay down,
set, place”, but not “law”.


Imre

PS. A question to everyone: To what date or century are the West
Germanic languages estimated to have split form Old Norse?

PSS. Rightly, Haukur has mentioned that German “Gesetz” also derives
from a word meaning “lay”, i.e. the German “setzen”.

PSSS. The Finnish has the word “laki” meaning “law” which is a loan-
word from ON-Old Swedish. This comparison also shows that the
Finnish makes loan-words unvoiced, just as “native” Finnish words are
also unvoiced (with the exception of “d” and “v”). Banana
sounds “panaani”, to give a funny example;-)





Haukur Ţorgeirsson <haukurth@...>

>
> > Could someone tell me if the Latin ’lex’ was a cognate of the
> > words 'lag, law, lög' etc. in the Germanic languages? Or is it a loan-
> > word?
>
> I think the English 'law' is a loan-word from Old Norse.
> The Latin 'lex' is supposed to be related to 'legere',
> "to pick up".
>
>
> > I know that the English ‘law’ is a loan-word from the Old Norse. I

was

> > trying to figure out what could be the German cognate of this word,

but

> > it seems to me there isn’t such a one. Law is either ‘Recht’ or

‘Gesetz’

> > in German (the latter has the Old English cognate ‘gesetnys’).
>
> I think 'lög' is related to 'leggja' and ultimately
> means something like "that which is laid down". That's
> something close to the meaning of 'Gesetz' isn't it?
>
> Apparently there's an Old Saxon word 'gilagu' meaning
> "decisions, fate". Compare with Old Norse 'řrlög'.
>
> Kveđja,
> Haukur
>
>
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