September wrote:I am curious as to whether the pronunciation of the Faroese dative case ending is related to the reason English-speakers often say "cardamon" instead of "cardamom". Example: "bussinum" is pronounced "bussinun" in Faroese.
Are these two examples of the same linguistic process, or is it just a coincidence?
There's more than one possible explanation for the pronunciation
cardomon.
Dissimilation and analogy (
-on is a common suffix on Greek-derived words in English) are both strong possibilities here.
As for the Faeroese dative, there's a parallel development in Continental West Germanic: already in Old High German, you find the dative plural ending being spelled (and presumably pronounced)
-on. The same is true of more generally in Old Dutch. Old English, by contrast, preserves
-um. However a subsequent shift to
-on or
-en can be observed in certain placenames, e.g.
Coton (OE
Cotum "[at the] cottages"),
Oaken (OE
Acum "[at the] oaks").
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons