"I'm learning things I didn't want to know"

[leukocyten]

"The Deal (No Deal)" from the musical "Chess"
A translation into English under the cut. It would have made the entry too messy if I had done it the usual way.Seuraavasta tekstistä oli tulla kommentti erään ystäväni tekstiin. Lopulta päätin, että on ehkä parempi siirtää se tänne ihan omaksi merkinnäkseen. :D

Comments

Bairn-child

[anonymous]

You wrote a really interesting piece so I decided to do some very basic research on the etymology of the words and here's what I found for bairn:
1. -noun Scot. and North England. I believe this geographical fact is important because this word would not be widely used in the south of England where I am at the moment. I am not saying that it was never in use here, just perhaps not during the last 1000 years. Also, and this is an even bigger assumption than the year, we could amuse ourselves with the theory that whoever brought the word into England, settled in Northern England or Scotland which have kept the word in their vocabulary. Scottish comes to my mind as well if I just think about where I could have heard the word and it no doubt, just like you said, has crept into early modern English literature.

2. Origin:
before. 900; Middle English BERN, BARN, Old English BEARN; c. Gothic, Old Norse, Old High German, Old Saxon, BARN, Old Frisian BERN, Middle Dutch BAREN, Albanian ME BARRE pregnant; akin to Lith BERNAS boy, fellow, bear.

The geographical origin is more difficult to establish of course but just for the sake of argument, let's say that it was the Old Norse speaking Scandinavians who brought it here.

Now then, you asked how the British got the word 'child' into their language:

1. Origin:
before: 950; Middle English; Old English CILD ; akin to Gothic KILTHAI womb

but
2. Old English CILD "child," from Proto Germanic *KILTHAM(source of Gothic kilþei "womb"), unrelated to other languages. Also in O.E. meaning "a youth of gentle birth" (archaic, usually written childe). In 16c., especially "girl child." The difficulty with the plural began in O.E., where the nom. pl. was at first cild, identical with the sing., then c.975 pl. form cildru (gen. cildra) arose, only to be re-pluraled c.1175 as children, which is thus a double plural. M.E. plural cildre survives in Lancashire dialect childer and in Childermas (c.1000) "festival of the Holy Innocents" (Dec. 28). Childhood is O.E. cildhad; childish is O.E. cildisc; childlike (a good-sense variant) is first attested 1586.

I was going to suggest that as bairn is said to have come to English before 900 and Child before 950 it would be reasonable acceptable to infer that bairn came first. Having looked at the subsequent history of the word child, I'm not so sure anymore. If CILD had indeed developed a special plural by 975 can it be reasonable to assume that it did it in just 25 years? Of course I'd have to remember that they mention the year 950 only because that must have been the year of the first written occurence of the word but still. Also, saying that it came from Proto Germanic doesn't really help. I mean yes, it probably came from the Anglo-Saxons or Scandinavians on the continent but where exactly on the continent? How intriguing.

I am very sorry for not being able to resolve the issue, just wanted to contribute the discovery I made whilst doing the (re)search.

Also, interestingly enough, I'm not writing in Finnish because I'm at uni and I don't have the special characters on the keyboard nor did I want to start changing the settings to turn this into a Finnish keyboard.

Just one final word about Barn turning into Kind in Germanic. I'm not a Germanist but just by applying the general proceses of what happened to Old English words when the Normans came, I'd say that it was Barn used by some (I shall call them Anglo-Saxons for I do not know of a better term for the Old German speaking people on the continent) Anglo-Saxons, perhaps in the north was simply replaced by Kind which could have been used by some Anglo-Saxons in the south and for some reason Kind took presidence. This is a very simplistic theory, no doubt entirely wrong and I expect to be corrected by some Germanist. Still, I just thought I'd play with the idea as you have so expertly done in your previous blog entries.

-Maarit

Re: Bairn-child

[leukocyten]

Wow! :D I bow to knowledge far greater than my own. (Fine, a pile of dictionaries far greater than my own. But still.) I remember having read that the German word 'das Kind' has to do with womb and giving birth, too, so... Yeah, I should have seen that coming. Luckily, I am not really that interested in the history of English: Swedish beats it hands down. (Although, after this, I just might have to take the course in the history of English, too. And the course in Latin, too.)

Anyway, thank you so much for your extremely intriguing comment, as well as saving me the half an hour or so which I would have spent at the library tomorrow! :)