Re: English as a creole.

On Jul 28, 6:28 am, Trond Engen <trond...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

<si-> "(prefix meaning) always, everywhere" (< Gmc. */sin-/ < PIE
*/sem-/). Actually, the second part of the word, <valr>, is listed by my
ON dictionary as an adjective meaning "round, cylindrical". At first
glance that suggested to me that <si-> is added to make the cylinder
into a sphere, but I think there is some reason to be cautious. The
dictionary gives no source for <valr> except for a reference to
<sivalr>. The noun <völr> m. "round staff" sited above is apparently the
same word as <valr>, although with the vowel altered according to the
umlauted accusative.

The adjective <valr> and thereby the noun <völr> must belong to the
nearly forgotten Norwegian verb 'vala' "roll", related to German 'Walz'
and e.g. Lat. <volvo>. There's also a No. verb 'vøla' "make, repair" and
a Sw. counterpart 'väla' "work slowly", possibly the origin of the word
<völundr> "master artisan" and the mythological name <Völundr>, but
these are more difficult.

So it still was a compound word in Germanic and later on, meaning "all-
rotating" or something similar. And it's finally fallen into disuse,
because "si-" has lost transparency.

The Etymologycal Dictionary of German attempts to explain "rund" as
having been borrowed from (or first found in) "runttavele" (=the
knights of the round table) in the 13th century, which seems a little
far-fetched, especially considering that this is an English legend.

Being the very essence of the much admired French culture, the tales of
noble knights and their ladies were translated into languages all over
Europe. Young men and women of the nobility competed in picking up the
customs, the words and the latest fashions from France. That the word is
attested in one of these translations is strengthening the case for
borrowing.

I'd suggest that the word "rund" is found in the late sources only
(since the 13th century in German) just because it rarely occurs in
the religious and historical contexts which are typical for the early
texts.

I don't believe what Phogland says (that runnaDur is "clearly" a
Dannish borrowing) because it's pretty clear that if someone says
"clearly" he's not sure himself. Unfortunately, my knowledge of
Icelandic is not sufficient to make my own judgement.

He also wrote why. But you don't need Icelandic. If you make the case
for an origin within Germanic, the absence of the word from Icelandic --
or even ON -- should be easy to get around.

The idea of "knights of the si(n)valur table" is not particularly
appealing, because "si(n)valur" (or whatever the word was in OE) still
could have a connotation of "all-rotating", "rotated all over" or
"spherical". There must have been a simpler, different word.

Besides, there are too many problems with the mechanism. It's all too
far-fetched, not simple or direct. First, I don't think that 13th's
Germans understood French translations better than Old English
originals. To borrow a simple word from French that nobody spoke and
spread it all over northern Europe, that's really something.
Especially considering that OE borrowed a word from a book which was a
translation from their own language. That's like the US English
borrowing back a common lexics word from a translation of a Hollywood
movie into Spanish in Mexico.

Besides, even if, by any chance, a borrowing of this type could occur,
it's more reasonable to suppose that "rund" would be first introduced
as a _slang word_ or _formal word_ Cf dinero (Sp > Eng), wampum
(Amerind. > Eng), lavE (Gypsi ? > Russ, same meaning) or formal
speech. There's hardly any way of borrowing into basic lexics rather
than via slang, formal speech or massive bilingualism. The slang word
could have gradually displaced the original a few centuries later, but
not immediately. And because this process would be occuring at
different rates in different languages, we'd probably have different
stylistic and semantic connotations of the rund-to-"sivalur" usage in
modern languages. The older word would have survived in some languages
and would be partially or entirely forgotten in others.

Just imagine suddenly borrowing the Russian word "krugly" into
Norwegian. Why should Norwegians do that? What mechanism could
possibly account for that?. . .

.

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