# Scandinavian: hå-/hög/høy



## Gavril

NorwegianNYC said:


> 3) In this particular instance Hellquist is mistaken. See this: http://www.nob-ordbok.uio.no/perl/ordbok.cgi?OPP=høy&bokmaal=+&ordbok=bokmaal As for that matter, Old Norse _hauh_ is a form of _hár_. There is no contradiction here!



The entry you linked to says 



> høy a1; el høg a1; el II høy a1 (mno _høg_, påvirkning fra østnordisk, jamfør norr _hár_)



Isn't this more or less the same thing that Hellquist says? He writes, "no[rsk] _høg (_genom inflytande från sv.)", although perhaps "sv." was not the specific East Norse dialect that influenced this word.


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## NorwegianNYC

My point is that _hár_ (technically _há-_) was the Norse base term for all the other [norr hár]. Here _hauh_ is actually a derived form. It does not change the fact that the Håvard has retained a Norse form, whereas modern-day Norwegian, Swedish and Danish has høy/høg - hög - høi respectively.


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## Gavril

NorwegianNYC said:


> My point is that _hár_ (technically _há-_) was the Norse base term for all the other [norr hár]. Here _hauh_ is actually a derived form. It does not change the fact that the Håvard has retained a Norse form, whereas modern-day Norwegian, Swedish and Danish has høy/høg - hög - høi respectively.



Right, but just because Håvard retains an otherwise-rare form (or otherwise-vanished form) doesn't mean that it is an exception to any sound change. The _hå_- in this word (just like Norse/Icelandic _hár_) is not the direct predecessor of Scandinavian _hög_/_høy_/etc., but a different accentual form of the same stem.


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## NorwegianNYC

No - _há_ *is* the predecessor of _høy_ (from Proto-Germanic *haukhaz (cognates: Old Saxon _hoh_, Old Norse _hár;_ Danish _høi, _Swedish _hög_; Old Frisian _hach_, Dutch _hoog_, Old High German _hoh_, German _hoch_, Gothic _hauhs_ "high;")


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## Gavril

NorwegianNYC said:


> No - _há_ *is* the predecessor of _høy_ (from Proto-Germanic *haukhaz (cognates: Old Saxon _hoh_, Old Norse _hár;_ Danish _høi, _Swedish _hög_; Old Frisian _hach_, Dutch _hoog_, Old High German _hoh_, German _hoch_, Gothic _hauhs_ "high;")



_hár/hå _are from the root-accented form of this stem _(*hauh-), _whereas_ høy/hög _are from the suffix-accented form (*_hauG_-, via Verner's Law). Neither form is descended from the other, and as far as I can tell, nothing in the dictionary entry you linked to claims otherwise.


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## NorwegianNYC

No. This is simply not the case. The Norse form _há_ was influenced by East Scandinavian _høg_ (perhaps rather Low German), but at a much later stage (not until Middle Norwegian). This has got nothing to do with Verner's law. In Norse, _há_ was the form derived from P-G *haukhaz. The name Håvard has retained the Norse form _há_ despite the form _há_ was later influenced by _hög_, and became _høy_. And therein lies the point. If Håvard has preserved the now obsolete form _há_, which later became _høy_, why cannot Anslo have preserved ans- by the simple fact it was preserved as a name. There are other names preserving now obsolete elements, such as Olav and Geir.


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## Gavril

NorwegianNYC said:


> No. This is simply not the case. The Norse form _há_ was influenced by East Scandinavian _høg_, but at a much later stage (not until Middle Norwegian). This has got nothing to do with Verner's law.



Verner's Law is how East Scandinavian _høg _came to be. Icelandic _haugur_ "heap" is a more exact cognate of this word (phonetically speaking) than _hár_ "high".



> In Norse, _há_ was the form derived from P-G *haukhaz. The name Håvard has retained the Norse form _há_ despite the form _há_ was later influenced by _hög_, and became _høy_. And therein lies the point. If Håvard has preserved the now obsolete form _há_, which later became _høy_, why cannot Anslo have preserved ans- by the simple fact it was preserved as a name.



Because the loss of the nasal in _Anslo_ > _Oslo_ is due to a *sound change* affecting all instances of -ns-, whereas the introduction of East Scandinavian _høg_ into Norwegian is a case of lexical replacement. 

In the latter case, proper nouns can indeed preserve forms that would otherwise be lost, because lexical replacement depends on the sound-to-meaning connection within a lexeme, and this connection is often weakened or lost in proper nouns.


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## NorwegianNYC

Gavril said:


> Verner's Law is how East Scandinavian _høg _came to be.


 Yes, but the Norse was _há(r)_, and _høg_ was a later influence from East Scandinavian, or more likely, Low German.


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## NorwegianNYC

Did this all of a sudden become a separate thread??!!??


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