L. M. Corinth writes:

Eight classes have effectively stifled my natural brilliance, so all I have to offer is a poem which I wrote during math class, and a translation of part of the Aeneid that I particularly liked.

Somnus*

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Gabriel Bertilson writes,

This is the first post of two explaining the principal parts of a Greek verb. This is a fairly Latin and Greek insider topic, but hopefully it’ll prove interesting nonetheless. This was one of the several topics I might have written on in my much-overdue post, and it might show my oddity that I picked it over the others.

The principal parts of the verb are ?????, ????????, ??????, ???????, —, — (páskh?, peísomai, épathon, pépontha, —, —). The meaning is have something happen to one (either good or bad); (in a bad sense) suffer; so the principal parts are, translated, I suffer, I will suffer, I suffered, I have suffered.

The point of the principal parts (for those of you who aren’t familiar with Latin or Greek) is to give all the stems the verb will use in its various tenses. So, removing the -? from the first principal part gives the stem for the present and imperfect forms (????-?, ????-???, ????-??, páskh-?, páskh-eis, páskh-ei, I suffer, you suffer, he suffers. . .), removing the -???? from the second principal part gives the stem for the future middle forms (????-????, ????-?, ????-????, peís-omai, peís-?i, peís-etai, I will suffer, you will suffer, he will suffer. . .), and so on.

As in this verb, one or more of the principal part slots may be empty because the forms that would be there don’t exist.

In Greek and Latin, the various tense stems are formed from a basic root in various ways: by ablaut, the addition of a suffix, a nasal infix, or reduplication (and often by two or more of those means). In some verbs some of the tenses are supplied by one verb, others by another (compare English I go, I went or French aller, tu vas, tu iras).

In this verb the aorist (??????) uses the simple root with no suffix: ???- (path-). This is the zero-grade form of the root.

Zero-grade is a term referring to Proto-Indo-European ablaut. Ablaut is the system of vowel gradation in the ancestor-language of most of the modern European languages by which the vowel of a syllable alternates between long ?, short e, long ?, short o, and no vowel, depending on what sort of a word the root is used in. Here’s an example root:

long ?: ????? (pat?r) a father, subject	long ?: ??????? (eupát?r) one noble-born, subject
short e: ?????? (patéra) a father, object	long o: ????????? (eupátoros) of one noble-born
ø (no vowel, zero-grade): ?????? (patrós) of a father

This explains one part of the formation of ?????, since there are various grades of the root represented in the principal parts of the verb: the e-grade in ???????? (peísomai) and the o-grade in ??????? (pépontha), in addition to the zero-grade in ????? (páskh?) and ?????? (épathon).

But, as you can see, there’s a bit more involved. It’s not quite clear that these forms differ in only one vowel; indeed, it appears possible that each is from an entirely separate verb. Clearly more than merely ablaut is involved. And so in my next post I’ll give you the rest of the story.

EDIT: Soundfiles added for some of the words. I decided they weren’t done well enough and was going to remove them, but John convinced me that I might as well just keep them up. So here they are. They’re meant to be an approximation of the ancient pronunciation of Greek, before the changes that gave rise to Modern Greek pronunciation, and so they’ll sound pretty different from the pronunciations given in courses on Greek.

Gabriel Bertilson writes,

Gothic is the Germanic language spoken by the ancient Goths, one of the invaders of the Roman Empire in the 3rd to 5th centuries AD. It is classified as East Germanic (the only language of that class that we know much about), as contrasted with West Germanic, the main members of which are English, Frisian, Dutch, and all the varieties of German, and North Germanic, which contains all the Scandinavian languages except for Finnish.

So why is it classified as a different language group from the other Germanic languages? Here I’ll explain two of the main differences that distinguish the sound system of Gothic from that of other Germanic languages.

The first is the absence of i-mutation in Gothic. In all other Germanic languages a vowel that in Proto-Germanic was followed by an i or j in the next syllable would change by i-mutation. In Gothic, however, this would not occur. So, for example, we have Gothic f?tjus vs. Old English fét, feet, and Gothic nazjan vs. Old English nerien, to save.

The second is that Gothic retains the original Proto-Germanic z between vowels, but in other Germanic languages this z changes to r. (This process is known as rhotacism, a change to a rho- or r-sound; a word also used for a peculiar pronunciation or excessive use of r.) So we have Gothic dius, diuzis vs. Old English deor (from which we get Modern English deer), German tier, and Icelandic dýr, animal, and Gothic huzda vs. Modern English hoard.

This change is similar to the change of intervocalic s to r that occurred in Latin honos/honor, hon?ris, honor, distinction and arbor/arb?s, arboris, tree. The genitive form originally ended in -osis, but the intervocalic s changed to r (in this and all forms besides the nominative singular). Then the nominative form changed to -or from -os to become more like the rest of the forms of the word.

Other examples of Latin rhotacism are tempus, temporis, time, and (what I just read about with astonishment) eras, you were vs. es, you are. The stem for all the forms of sum, Latin to be (except for the ones beginning with s- and f-) is es-; but the s changes to r when it happens to be between vowels. So this explains the occurrence of er- in the imperfect and future of sum, what I would have wondered about had I thought about it a bit.

And so endeth my post. A good day to you all.

Gabriel Bertilson pictures,

And goes on to write,

By request of John, today I give you the etymology of worship (perhaps a bit later than when I had it ready).

Worship comes from Old English weorþscipe (with the variant forms wurþ-, wyrþ-), from weorþ, worth and -scipe, -ship, in a condition/state of; so if the word had come down to us regularly, we would have modern English worthship.

The loss of the th (Old English þ/ð) was probably due simply to the fact that it’s easier to say sh than thsh. From the quotes given in the Oxford English Dictionary (perhaps not an exhaustive record of all spellings throughout the history of the English language, but the closest I can get), the first time the th was omitted was in 1154 (wurscipe), and the last time it occurred was in 1340 (worþssipes).

It was originally used to refer to “the condition of being worthy, honor, renown”, which makes most sense from its constituent parts. And then, related to that, it described what a person of “worthship” deserves or is entitled to: respect, honor.

And so from the last meaning we get the usual modern meaning of worship: in worship we’re seeking to give honor to God.

I was thinking about this all: if worship is merely the giving of honor to someone deserving it, can we really say that one should only worship God, since there are other people who have done good things? I suppose the answer is that the worship of God is more than merely the giving of honor to Him.

But as I have nothing more helpful to say on that, a good day (or night) to you all.

A note on the picture: The flower is foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia); the fern is Lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina); and the roundish divided leaves in the background are (I think) wild geranium (Geranium maculatum).

Gabriel Bertilson pictures,

Early meadow-rue

And goes on to write,

John said something about my writing a post on liturgy, so here’s something like that. (He also talked about my doing worship, but that’ll be my next post.)

Liturgy comes first from the Greek ?????????? (leitourgí?), public service, service of the gods, public worship. This in turn is from ?????????? (leitourgós), public servant, minister. This is from *?????? (leîtos), public, a variant of *?????? (l?itos), and -????? (-ergos), that works.

?????? comes from ????/???? (l?ós/le?s), a variant of ???? (l?ós), people. In Attic Greek (the dialect spoken in Athens; the most prestigious one) an original ? (?) turned to ? (?) in most places (except after ?, ?, and ?); in Ionic, however, it turned to ? everywhere. An example given in Wikipedia is Attic ??????? (ne?ní?s) vs. Ionic ??????? (ne?ní?s), young man.

The alternative form of the variant form, ???? (le?s), probably comes from the length of the vowels being exchanged by quantitative metathesis.

?????? is only recorded in the substantive uses (that is, uses in the function of a noun) ?????? (l?iton), public hall (in the neuter) and ?????/???? (l?it?/l?t?), priestess (in the feminine).

-????? (-ergos) comes from Greek ????? (érgon), work, deed. Interestingly enough, this is in fact the cognate of our English word work. The ? (g) corresponds to English k, and the English w corresponds to the obsolete Greek letter ? (w) called digamma that was originally in the word (??????, wérgon). This letter is named from the fact that it was made from two capital gammas (?) put together. (It’s where our letter F comes from.)

So, then, if ?????????? (leitourgós) comes from *?????- (leîto-) and -????? (-ergos), why isn’t it ?????????? (leitoergós), with the same vowels as those of the parts making it up? The reason is because of contraction. When an ? (e) and ? (o) come together, they change into the long vowel ?? (ou).

Then ?????????? (leitourgí?) came into Latin as l?t?rgia. Earlier in the history of Greek, the vowels ?? and ?? were pronounced like Latin ? and ?. Later they changed to ? and ?, and by the loss of length (which is present now in Modern Greek), they were pronounced in medieval times as i and u. So the reason for their transliteration into medieval Latin as ? and ? was probably either because of its scholarly pronunciation, or merely as a recognition of how it was pronounced formerly.

And then l?t?rgia came into English as liturgy. Generally Latin feminine nouns like l?t?rgia that end in -ia (not, however, -tia; that generally changes to -ce) change to -y in English, presumably from the Old French -ie.

So that’s about all I have to say on that.

And an announcement. The links to soundfiles in my previous posts have been modified so that when you click on them they’ll open up in a new window (or a new tab if you have my version of Firefox). Then if you click on a new one, it’ll go to the same window.

I learned how to do it from Marco Schuffelen’s webpage with soundfiles of Dutch words; he used it with some of his links. It’s quite an impressive site that he’s made. If you have any interest in learning how to pronounce Dutch, that would be a good place. (Of course, depending on what dialect you wanted…)

And I’ve put one of my pictures at the top of this post. It’s a picture taken at Nerstrand Woods State Park (I think) of an early meadow-rue. The early meadow-rue is a plant in the anemone family, though the only really obvious similarity it shares with anemones is the shape of its leaves.

So that’s all for today. I may get in some soundfiles later…

Edit: Added transliterations that pop up when you put your mouse over the Greek words, due to the fact that some of the characters that I used in my other transliterations aren’t in most fonts. A “/” put after a vowel indicates acute accent; a “^” indicates circumflex accent; a “:” indicates a long vowel.

Gabriel Bertilson writes,

In English most nouns form their plural with -s. Why, then, do we have man, feet, and mice rather than mans, foots, and mouses?

These nouns did in fact at one time form their plurals with a regular suffix. The Proto-Germanic word *fót, foot for example, had *fótiwiz as its plural. And the plural of Gothic fótus was fótjus.

So apparently there must have been some change that affected English at some time during its history that didn’t affect Gothic and Proto-Germanic. That’s indeed the case. This change is i-mutation or umlaut (not the Umlaut diacritic, though the diacritic is used in German writing to indicate it, but the phonological process).

I mentioned it in the last post, but here I’ll see if I can set it out more systematically.

First, i-mutation changes a vowel when there’s an i or j (a consonantal i) in the syllable after it. So *fótiz fits this description, and *manniz (Proto-Germanic men) and *músi (Proto-Germanic mice) as well.

Second, i-mutation changes the vowel by making it more like the sound i.

So front vowels – English bod and baud in some pronunciations of English (the one, for example, of most people in Minnesota), and bad, bed, bade, bid, and bead – were raised. That is, they changed to the sound “next in line” after it. In the list I gave, each sound would change to the one after it – bad to bed, bed to bade (or more precisely, a monophthongal version of it) or bead, etc.

A modern example of raising is a certain American pronunciation of -ing. (This is one aspect of what’s sometimes known as the California vowel shift – though it by no means occurs only in California.) Because of the ng sound (known in linguistics as a velar nasal), the i, which is pronounced in other varieties of English the same as the vowel in bid, is pronounced instead roughly as the vowel in bead. Sometimes the ng is somewhat palatalized (at least in the way I hear it) to something similar to the sound in RP new.

Back vowels, – English bod and baud in other dialects of English, and bud, bode, bood – on the other hand, were fronted. That is, they changed to the corresponding front vowel. Baud (this is the American non-rounded back-vowel pronunciation, not the English rounded back-vowel pronunciation) would change to bad, bud to bed, bode to bade (or a version of bode pronounced, like bode is, with rounded lips: Old Norse *beyd), bude to bead (or, again, a version of it pronounced with rounded lips: Old English/Old Norse *býd).

So… in Old English the front vowels were æ, e, and i/y/ie. Through i-mutation æ would change to e, e to i, but i, y, and ie couldn’t move up any further toward i, being right there.

The Old English back vowels were a, o, and u. I-mutation changed o to e, and a to æ in most cases, except with a nasal (m or n) following it, where it would change to e. (It would also in that case sometimes be written o, indicating that it was likely pronounced differently from the a in other places.) The vowel u changed to y.

Now we come back to our original words. Old English man(n)/mon(n), man changed to men(n) in the nominative plural with i-mutation.

Old English fót, foot changed to fét (and in some dialects , a rounded é sound) in the nominative plural, and sometimes had the same vowel in the dative and genitive singulars.

Old English mús (this Old English long u generally changed to Modern English ou), mouse changed to mýs in the plural. It’s interesting to note that the -e of the Modern English singular and -ce of the plural seem to have crept into our spelling without proper warrant. (Or else those bringing it in found “mous” and “mise” not very attractive… a sentiment I can somewhat understand.)

Now I’ve come to the end of my post… a rather long one. If you’ve read it this far, good job, and you’ll now be released from your misery. So I say, Wesaþ gé hále! and if the adjectival ending on that was wrong, Be ye whole!

Edit: Soundfiles, image of fœt with acute added.

Gabriel Bertilson writes,

Cognates have always fascinated me. They’re similar because they came from the same original word, yet different because they went through the sound changes of their own languages. In this post I’ll compare the word for cheese in English and German and explore how each came to be.

The English word is, of course, cheese, and the German word Käse. The word they both originate from is the Latin c?seus.

The first thing to note is the difference between the vowel in the English and German and the vowel in the Latin. Why don’t we have chase and Kase, with long a’s?

The answer lies in Germanic philology, in the process of i-mutation. I-mutation is the change of a vowel (back vowels fronted, front vowels raised) because of an i in the following syllable. In Old English (the English language before the Norman Conquest in 1066 and its influence by French), for example, a turned to æ; e turned to i; o turned to e; u turned to y, etc.

The word for cheese in Old English was originally *??si. This changed first to ?éasi through breaking (I don’t completely understand why it happened in this case), and then to ?íese/?ýse through i-mutation.

In Old High German the word was kâsi, kêsi. The same i-mutation that occurred in the Old English word occurred in this word, but is preserved in the orthography of modern German, with ä representing a with i-mutation or umlaut.

The second thing to note is the difference between the first consonant sound of the English word and the first of the German. The English has the ch sound; the German has the k.

The reason for this was a process in Old English called palatalization. By it, an original Proto-Germanic k sound would change to a ch sound. One of the places this happened was before the front vowels (æ, e, i, ea, eo, ie/y). Since the vowel in the Old English word for cheese was one of these, the c before it was palatalized. (In this post palatalized c is indicated by the c with a dot over it: ?. Hopefully it’ll show up properly in the font you’re using.)

A palatal consonant is one pronounced with the middle of the tongue against the hard palate. The only examples of this in American English are our consonantal y, the h in hue, and the lli in million. In English English (well, more specifically, Received Pronunciation), there are more: the t in tune, the d in duke, and the n in new.

The ch sound in English is not technically an example of that sound, but the process by which a sound changes to it is still called palatalization. This isn’t necessarily without reason, though, since the alternative would be postalveolarization. Yuck.

But there’s one question still to be asked: Why do we have Old English ?íese/?ýse and yet not have Modern English chise? The reason is that ?íese/?ýse is from the West Saxon dialect of Old English, but the Modern English word originates from the Anglian dialect’s version of the word, ?ése.

And so is my post brought to a close. Hope you enjoyed it, and, even better, learned something new from it. G’day.