Lexember Day 31 - confront

This is an interesting example of a weird thing that happens to the Germanic geminate /rr/ cluster. You can see that it started out in Proto-Germanic as /rn/, which was then assimilated to /rr/ in Gothic. Now, if Griutungi had had ‑j‑ in the stem (**storrjan), it would have been degeminated to **storjan and nothing particularly interesting would have happened, so the addition of J must have happened after 700ᴀᴅ, when geminate intervocalic R was degeminated through metathesis, giving us *stroran, and before 800ᴀᴅ when said ‑j‑ would have caused I/J umlaut, giving us Old Valthungian *strørjan (which would likely have been spelt ⟨streorjan⟩). Later, a little before 1200ᴀᴅ, two instances of R within a single syllable of each other causes dissimilation. Usually the first R would change to L, but in cases where this is phonotactically impossible (/stl/ is not a valid sequence in this stage of the language), the second changes instead, giving us *strøljən and eventually Middle Valthungian strœljen.

It’s been a great Lexember this year, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing everyone’s lexica grow on Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, and various other corners of the internet. I’ve also enjoyed spending some mental time muddling over some conundra that have bothered me for a while, and while I still haven’t solved all of my “L-Problems,” I’ve solved many of them and I have a plan to knock out the rest in the new year. Happy New Year—I hope 2025 is less bad than I think it’s going to be!

Lexember Day 30 - crunchy

Something weird happened to a lot of Valthungian nouns and adjectives starting around 600ᴀᴅ. (Well, at this time they weren’t so much Valthungian as maybe late Griutungi or pre-Old Valthungian.) Nouns and adjectives ending in voiced stops (that is, B, D, and G) went through some linguistic gymnastics, beginning with a series of voicing changes. Final ‑b(s) and ‑d(s) became ‑b(z) and ‑d(z), and eventually devoiced again to ‑f(s) and ‑þ(s), respectively. (E.g. halbs ‘half’ → halbz → halfs → haufs; bards ‘beard’ → bardz → barþs → braþs.) Final ‑gs, however, voiced to ‑gz, but didn’t devoice to **‑hs. This resulted in an awkward voiced ending that would eventually become /ʥ/ (e.g. dags ‘day’ → dagz → dagž → daǧ). 

This unaesthetic combination caused an avoidance of that particular combination in many words, especially in adjectives ending with the Germanic *‑Vgaz ending (cognate to English ‑y, German ‑ig, and Latin ‑icus), and it became common to replace this ending with its Latin counterpart, ‑icus (→ ‑ikus, e.g. maht-īgs ‘powerful’ → meaht-ikus → mǣtikus), or to convert it to a “long j-stem,” resulting in ‑agis or ‑ugis (e.g. manags ‘many’ → managis ‘crowded’ or grēdags ‘hungry’ → grēðugis).

By the way, something similar may have happened around late Middle English in verbs ending in -ȝen, whereby a number of very cromulent Old English verbs (stīgan, migan, hnigan, sigan, wigan) vanished from the language, leaving only stray archaic fragments like stile and sie.

In any case, some nouns and adjectives did their own weird things, like borrowing Latin ‑alis (e.g. unags ‘fearless’ → unagalis) or, in the case of today’s word, Latin ‑ceus.

Lexember Day 29 - silver, money

From afar it appears that some of the diachronic map is out of sequence; in particular, the Old Valthungian spelling of sivbvr looks like it ought to be representative of the earlier form shown at 700ᴀᴅ, and the Middle Valthungian spelling of the same looks more like the version from 950ᴀᴅ. That’s just how spelling convention works, though. Old Valthungian still spelled /ju/ as ⟨iv⟩ held over from an earlier diphthong /iu/, and Middle Valthungian still retained the “Palatalizing J” after all of the palatal consonants.

Lexember Day 28 - anvil

I have a migraine, so I don’t have anything interesting to say today. Sorry.

Lexember Day 27 - peninsula

OK, so what’s that first G doing there? 

Isn’t ‘island’ auge and not gauge? 

Doesn’t gauge mean ‘region’ or ‘area’? 

Well, yes to the last two questions, and the two words are not related. 

The mysterious G in the compound is left over from a very early sound change of w → ɡ, which tells us that this was probably a calque from Latin into Griutungi or Late East Germanic, entering the language sometime prior to 900ᴀᴅ as *nēhwuwawi or something similar. Any later, and we would likely have gotten something like **nēfurauge or **nēfauge.

As for why reconstructed Gritungi *awi doesn’t match reconstructed Gothic *awja, that’s a little more speculative, but one of the few differences between Gothic and reconstructed Griutungi is that the latter had some different mechanisms for how glides (W and J) function in words – particularly when they’re part of the ending – and in this case, the later forms of the word auge require that the Griutungi form came from an earlier form of *awijō rather than *awjō. It’s harder to say what the Gothic might have been, because there are no reflexes of the ‑awjō stems in the language, but based on how other similar words have evolved, it likely would not have taken on this “long-form” ending.

Lexember Day 26 - et cetera

I spent too much time playing with various graphics and font programs building that "&c" character that I don't have time to write anything interesting for the blog. Happy Boxing Day!

 

Lexember Day 25 - meow

Blīðna Žultin!

By the way, the noun and/or interjection form of meow is mjō, alternatively spelt miaw.

Lexember Day 24 - overthrow

Fun fact: If this were calqued directly into English, it would be “overcringe.”

So, I spent a little time re-thinking my verb template, and managed to make it way worse. Enjoy!

Lexember Day 23 - egg white, egg yolk

As promised in the slide, nothing interesting about this entry today. What might be a little interesting, though, to make it worth your time for clicking on my link and making it to the blog – thank you, by the way, for encouraging my nonsense! – is the development of the word ‘egg’ in the various Germanic languages. 

The Proto-Germanic word for egg was *aiją (depending on your preference of transcription), and the particular sequence of VijV (as well as VuwV) caused something called Verschärfung – also known as Holtzmann’s Law – to occur in North and East Germanic. In West Germanic, not much happened to it, and it eventually became Ei in German and Dutch, and, for a while, it was ey in English until it was eventually replaced in the 17th century by the Norse word which became our modern egg. There is a well-known Middle English text by William Caxton about the confusion of what eggs are called. “Sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for mete and specyally he axyd after eggys, and the goode wyf answerde that she could speke no Frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no Frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges; and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a-nother sayd that he wolde have eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she understod hym wel.”

Because of North Germanic Verschärfung, that intervocalic /jj/ became /ggj/, and was responsible for the Old Norse term egg, which was borrowed into northern English and gradually worked its way down. 

In East Germanic, meanwhile, Verschärfung instead caused intervocalic /jj/ to become /ddj/, and became Griutungi *addi. It was likely also *addi in Gothic, which eventually gave rise to Crimean Gothic ada.

Around the time of Old Valthungian, a geminate-deletion rule caused this sequence to break down to ahdi, and then in Middle Valthungian, the H was assimilated and the vowel lengthened giving rise to the modern form āde (ādi‑ in compounds). 

Lexember Day 22 - parking lot

Today’s word brought to you by a translation of a snowfall warning that popped up before yesterday’s storm. We got about 30cm of snow here in Halifax, which is a respectable amount for our first appreciable snowfall on the first day of winter. Today the sky is blue and the sun is shining! 

In case anybody’s curious, here’s the full translation (which is probably riddled with errors, because I haven’t bothered to proof-read it):

Snǣjudrusahwœuti

Skote Njuža
Fœri 51 stikim usgáliþ

Tœuža Garǣðiða

Garǣðiþ þo ferin at umbihreuvna wiðra bistœuðim wigalim mǣǧinþim.

Brutna: Umbigauge ǭk Mǣði Wiðragamǣnis Kanaðis

Bimēlins ǭk Unstadéginis

Garéþia Snǣjudrusis: 15 unþ 30 cm.

Gastáþs: Skote Njuža, Ogumaland

Tīðirynia: Af anþanǣča hisdágis unst·ēvunþa lǭgisdagis.

Inmēlinis: Snǣjus gengiþ vreðna īsastǣnulas ǣða rigna bróginis lǭgisdagis  in gœ̄žim ǭstram þis prǭginčis, hwa minžiþ garéþin snǣjudrusis.

Gustas droðarǭstaðra iži kwimnaþ miþ snǣjua mag tīmaro sǣjumāt minziþ tœuǧin in snǣjua fjuknaðatma.

Sčurins þlœ̄ro, swǣjo þrigatǣna, wigas, stǣgas, rǣðafuiðu, mag angunan nū snǣjuljuðis. 

Snǣjudrusahwœutins gitnaþ usgáliþ þeni sjǣjudrus inmēlivuiðra gitiþ usbíðna.

Lexember Day 21 - solstice

I didn’t even realize that this word wasn’t already in my lexicon – I had names for the winter and summer solstices, but not “solstice” itself. In the process, I also discovered the archaic English term sunstead. 

Anyway, Happy Solstice and Glad Yuletide to you all!

Lexember Day 20 - jugful

Ik bringa hǣma rœčifylin wīnis gā du žultina froðu þulan anmœuǧin þ·ufþlœusin. Þā genǧik wisna inča hēþia mīna.

‘I’ve brought a jugful of wine home for the winter holidays to endure encourage the good cheer. I’ll be in my room.’

Lexember Day 19 - double

Twīfauþs is the result of a rather unusual merger of two similar words with similar meanings. It’s almost not worth commenting on, except that the two words have completely different etymologies. In Early Modern Valthungian, these were two distinct words – twīfnas and twižafauþs. The twi has a semi-common source: twi- is a common Germanic prefix for ‘two’, while twī (with a long vowel) is part of a root form of the same word. The -f- of both words is completely coincidental, however... see below. (This adjective does not have a comparative or superlative form, but I didn’t feel like futzing around with the formatting to erase them.)