Friday, February 14, 2014

MANN

Ever wondered why the German word MANN has double N? Especially given that it's claimed to originate from Middle High Deutsch 'man' and Old High Deutsch 'man':
http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mann

Look at the name of one of famous Germanic tribes MARCOMANNI (by the way, a part of a bigger tribe named - attention! - SUEBI). What do we see?

MARCOMAN-N-I

A perfectly Old Kartvelian plural form construction where N is an archaic plural form suffix (today replaced by -EB).

But when the Kartvelian days in Europe were over, and the Latin days came, what did people start to see in that name? Right, an Italian pseudo plural form (I-ending) of the singular form MARCOMANN. Hence the double N.

To sum up, with very high degree of probability the double N in MANN is a remnant of Kartvelian plural form.

No comments:

Post a Comment