Re: About the word "spinster"

Brian M. Scott wrote:

<http://www.indo-european.nl/cgi-bin/startq.cgi?flags=endnnnl&root=leiden&basename=%5Cdata%5Cie%5Cceltic>.

Ranko Matasovic', 'An etymological lexicon of Proto-Celtic
(in progress)'.

When feeding it with OI <glen> I get this:

I've cleaned up both of them:

Proto-Celtic: *glendos 'valley, shore' [Noun]
Old Irish: glend [s n]
Middle Welsh: glynn [m] 'glen, valley'
Middle Breton: glann 'shore'
Proto-Indo-European: *glend- 'shore' (?)
IE cognates: MLG klint, 'shore' ON klettr 'rock'
References: Pedersen I: 38

Deshayes (Dic. etym. du Breton) has two roots here:

Glann 'rive': c. glan, w. glan, pc. *glanno-
1499 _glann_

Glenn 'terre, pays, contree': w. glyn, g. gleann, pc *glend-
16th cent _glenn_

As for 'glean' I don't know if this is of any relevance but there is a second match for OI <glen>:

Proto-Celtic: *gli-na- 'glue' [Verb]
Old Irish: glenaid, -glen; glieid, -glia [Subj.]; gíulaid, -gíulai [Fut.]; gíuil [Pret.]
Middle Welsh: glynu
Middle Breton: englenaff < *en-gli-na- 'stick'
Cornish: glena
Proto-Indo-European: *gleyH-
Page in Pokorny: 362
IE cognates: OHG klenan 'smear', Lith. dial. glejù 'smear'
References: KPV 337ff., LIV 190, LP 369, LEIA D-148

And one here:

Englenañ 'encoller': c. glena, w. glynu, oi. glenaid, pc. *glina-
1499 _englenaff_

Modern breton uses n-tilde to indicate the nasalisation of the preceding vowel. That nasalisation has 2 very different origins:

A - The result of /n/ before some consonants (s, S, Z...). Not the same in all dialects which means that each dialect may write n-tilde in different places.

B - One of the results of the /M/, some kind of fricative m. It evolved into [w], [v], nasal plus [v] or [w] and the latter occasionally into simple nasal. Which furthermore may simply disappear. All of this according to word and dialect. A well known case is the infinitive marker that we find here.

(A) was historically written just <n>, and (B) was many things, one of which was <-w-> and <-ff>. Currently, nasality is always written n-tilde, which is very unfortunate since it represents neither etymolgy, nor morphology, nor dialect, nor phonemes actually (breton has a number of neutralisations and sandhi that are simply butchered by the current system, devised as it was by individuals that wished to reform and 'modernise' the traditional system but didn't always know what they were doing).

In my upcoming orthographic reform proposal, n-tilde is done away with:

- (A) will be written <n> (and let each dialect realise it as [n] or nasality);

- (B) when it stands for nasality or nothing according to dialect will be written:

- finally <-m> ('true' final /m/ is to be double <mm> anyway,
since it always follows a short vowel; words like em are
really e'm, so they can either be exceptions or written
'correctly';

- medially <-nh-> (very rare, mostly derivations of the former
or interjections);

- (B) when it stands for a wide array of possibilities will be <nv> ('true' [nv] doesn't occur);

- (B) in other cases has merged with /w/, so it'll be written accordingly.
--
am

laurus : rhodophyta : brethoneg : smalltalk : stargate

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