Evertjan. wrote:
> Will Parsons wrote on 06 mei 2008 in alt.language.latin:
>
>> It may very well be that the change originated with the plebs, but
>> that is still a big change to accept without considerable evidence. C
>> is certainly translitterated quite regularly as kappa in Greek.
>
> And methinks not without phonetic reason.
> And not only into Greek also into Germanic.
>
> German Kaiser, Dutch Keizer, both meaning Emperor.
>
> also:
>
> OldEnglish: casere
> middleEnglish: kaiser, keiser [reentry from the German, it it said]
> OldNorwegian: keisari
> Swedish: kejsare
> Gothic [from the Greek] kaisar
Yes. I think the Dutch and Scandinavian forms, and perhaps even the Old
English forms derive from low German. I would guess that the Dutch form
is
a relatively recent adoption from German, otherwise I would expect the
diphthong to be monophthongized to [e:], yielding something like *Keezer,
rather than Keizer. In any case, the German form is evidence not only of
the old pronunciation of Caesar with hard C, but also the preservation of
AE pronounced as a diphthong, which is more remarkable, since AE appears
to
have transitioned to the same sound as E much earlier than the softening
of
C before E & I. (This can be seen clearly in the Spanish form "cielo"
from
"caelum", which has the same form as it would have if it had come from an
original *celum (with short E).
The Old English form "casere" is interesting. If the "a" is long, it
would
indicate that the word entered the language with a diphthong [ai], which
then became [a:], just like the inherited diphthong [ai] from
Proto-Germanic, as seen in Old English stán (modern "stone"), as compared
with German Stein.
The Gothic form gives no such evidence, since "ai" in Gothic, as in Greek,
could be pronounced as [e].
--
Will
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