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

I'd like to know more about this. Estimates seem to range from
around the beginng of the Christian Era (predating the earliest
runes, but maybe not by much), to as late as the 5th century AD!
Here for example is an interpretion which characterises the language
of the earliest runic inscriptions as North-West Germanic; see the
section on Runes:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/eieol/norol-TC-X.html

But others use a terminology in which the language of these earliest
Scandinavian inscriptions is called Proto Norse, or Primitive Norse
(Danish 'urnordisk'; thought to be already distinct from West
Germanic on certain points), becoming Transitional Norse
(Danish 'senurnordisk' "Late Proto Norse") at around the time Slocum
& Krause say North and West Germanic diverged. But how much this is
a just difference in terminology, or a difference in opinion about
the timing of specific sound changes, I'm not sure.

> > 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".

That's Gothic lagjan, with one 'g'!

ON English German Gothic

liggja lie liegen ligan
leggja lay legen lagjan

The first is a strong verb, originally intransitive "be lying", the
second transitive "place an object somewhere, cause it to lie
there". But modern English has somewhat confused this distinction.

Llama Nom