The German Question, Part Five

Updated slightly 7/1/2015, then updated again (the Word History) on 6/9/22

Remember, it is believed by many historians (and seemingly supported by archaeology) that Germanic peoples spread into other parts of Europe, including eastern and central Europe, from the northern areas of Europe. Beginning in the 500s A.D., Slavic tribes* spread into areas often vacated by Germanic tribes in the eastern parts of Europe. It is believed that the primary reason that these Germanic peoples left the area was that they fled invaders from central Asia, especially the Huns.** In modern geographic terminology, the areas involved were Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, part of Belarus, and part of Ukraine (and undoubtedly a part of Lithuania***). Also included were parts of modern Germany, up to the area of the Elbe River. (A Word History is below the notes)

*Many linguists seem to agree that the various Slavic elements didn’t show great diversification in dialects for quite some time, making communication between these tribes relatively easy. Slavic is an Indo European language and is therefore related to English, but further down the family tree.

** The Huns were a nomadic group of people, long thought to be from Asia. They were excellent horsemen and fierce warriors, but their origins are murky. They appear in distant southeastern Europe in the vicinity of the Black Sea in the mid 300s A.D. Historians have generally believed them to be from central Asia and related to the Turks, but even the answer as to why they might have moved westward into Europe has never been clearly established. "Typically" the various tribes moved to find better sources of food, or because they lost their homeland to invaders. The Huns are, of course, best known for one of their leaders, Attila. The Huns took over large parts of Europe for a time, but eventually a coalition, largely of Germanic tribes in eastern Europe, defeated them in the mid 400s. The center of their empire became Pannonia, now basically modern Hungary.      

*** All of these modern countries still speak Slavic languages, with the exception of Lithuania. Many linguists feel there was a period of overlap between the Slavic languages and the Baltic languages, which includes Lithuanian, but that the two diverged from one another. On the other hand, some linguists still use “Balto-Slavic” as the term for these languages, as they feel the two are too closely related to be grouped separately. Lithuanian is thought by some (many?) linguists to be the least altered, and thus the closest, living language to the original Indo European, but this is a subject in its own right, and is thus beyond the scope of this article.

WORD HISTORY:
Toy-While this is a fairly common word in English, its origins are uncertain. In writing, as "toye," it came to be used in the 1300s with the meaning "amorous dalliance;" that is, "casual sexual affair." This later (in the 1500s) brought about the more expanded meaning of anything done for "fun, entertainment, or amusement," including "funny remarks," and by the late 1500s, "object for a child's entertainment" developed. Where did English get it? Did English already have a spoken form of the word in English dialect that was simply not used by the literate element of English society? Did an Old English form die out, ^ only to be resurrected by borrowing the word? The English traded goods heavily with the areas of the North Sea coast, which included the close relatives of English: Dutch, Frisian, and German (both Low German and High German). Low German has "tüg," and standard German has "Zeug" (the "eu" is pronounced as English "oy," and the "Z" is pronounced "ts"), with the generalized meaning "tool/implement (usually as the compound "Werkzeug;" literally, "work implement"), implement, stuff," and standard German has "Spielzeug," meaning "toy." Dutch has "tuig," also generally meaning "tool," and "speeltuig" meaning "toy." Danish and Swedish, also Germanic languages, have "toi/toj," and "tyg," respectively, with the meaning "stuff, gear." The verb "toyed" was derived from the noun during the 1500s. Some linguists have speculated (with good reason) that "toy" could be related to "tug" and "tow." English "tug" and "tow" are part of a "family of Germanic words" related through forms in Old Germanic. One of the other members of this family is German "ziehen" ("ziohan" in Old High German), which means "to pull, to drag, to draw." The Old English form of this word was "teon" (infinitive form, same basic meanings as the German word), and it's important to remember that German "z" is pronounced "ts." In this same family are the nouns, English "tug," and German "Zug," with the English word noun being the word for "a small boat that pulls a larger ship," and the German noun meaning, "a train (an engine that pulls a number of railway cars"). It most certainly seems that "toy" is a member of this overall family of words and it may well trace back to a form in Old English (see note below).

^ English once had "suhlgeteog," which meant "plowing tool/implement." A number of English words lost the ending "g" sound over time, as for instance, "day" and "may" (the verb form) both had an ending "g" at one time ("dæg" and "mæg"), as their German cousins still do: "Tag" and "mag/mög," the second form being the root for the infinitive and for the subjunctive.