Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands (EWN). Vol. 1: A-E by Marlies Philippa, Frans Debrabandere, Arend Quak

Abstract

MLR, IOI.3,2006 91I Abhandlungen, Auszfige und vermischte Nachrichten von schwdbischen Sachen; Zum Dienst und Vergniigen hoher und nidriger, gelehrt- und ungelehrter Personen' (p. 63)?Why two lines ofWilhelm Muller inGerman with translation (p. [93]), but ahighly allusive key phrase from Robert Spaemann, 'die (natuirliche) Befreiung von der Natur zu der Natur' (p. 96), in German only? The many quotations inManuela Achilles' paper in English translation only are particularly annoying. Should 'A.E.G.' be introduced as 'German General Electric' (p. 307), as if it were linked with the British or the American G.E.? The volume iswell presented and almost free of technical faults, save for occasional occurrences of that indication of imperfect word-processing, the intrusive hyphen (p. 289: 'human-ist', 'denun-ciation'). Treatment of footnotes and bibliographies is sensible and uniform; unusually for such a volume, indexes are provided (albeit not free of error). CARDIFF UNIVERSITY ALFRED D. WHITE Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands (EWN). Ed. by MARLIES PHILIPPA, FRANSDEBRABANDERE,and AREND QUAK. Vol. i:A-E. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 2003. 728 pp. E5I.89. ISBN 90-5356-653-8. Etymological dictionaries of the Dutch language have been available for almost a century, but the most prestigious, Fanck-Van Wijk (I9I2-36), is now antiquated, even De Vries (I97I) is out of date, and the ubiquitous Van Dale is too superficial for serious study. The luxurious new four-volume work by Marlies Philippa and her associates is therefore very welcome indeed. This first volume bodes well for the pro ject. Although not quite the entire Dutch lexicon is covered-bellen 'to telephone' is strangely absent and obviously compounds are omitted unless the semantic develop ment is interesting-the range of lemmata is full and importantly includes such items as deemster 'dark', which today ismostly restricted to the Belgian form of the lan guage; Indonesian, South African, and Surinamese variants are noted, as are Frisian. In all, some Is,ooo lemmata are planned. The introduction gives a careful explanation of the aims of comparative linguistics, the history of etymological research, the concepts with which the reader will be confronted, and the Indo-European language family as an object of study. A glossary explains technical terms. All this is kept admirably clear and simple, with many lively examples apparently aimed at encouraging the beginner to discover that etymology is fun. Oddly, the introduction does not give a systematic account of the regular sound-shifts which have given Dutch lexis its distinctive shape. When, for example, the article on dan 'then' tells us that this word comes from Germanic fia-, going back to a PIE root to-, the reader is left to guess how t became first k and then d. Some phonological developments are discussed under important lemmata, e.g. the characteristic Dutch shift ft > cht under achter 'after', while others are characterized in the glossary, such as the Germanic spirant law under the heading Primdrberuihrung (p. 39), but it is not easy to find these, and others again, such as Grimm's Law, are not explained at all. This seems incongruous when the work is otherwise obviously catering for laypeople. On the other hand, the table of periodization (when did Old Saxon become Middle Low German?) on page 3 I is very convenient. One interesting though controversial feature of this dictionary is its championing of the European substrate theory, which contends that lexical units found only in Germanic are likely to be loanwords from the language of the pre-Indo-European in habitants of Europe. The editors claim in the preface that this is the first etymological dictionary to take account of the substrate, not only in Dutch but in any Western 9I2 Reviews European language, and indeed a good many entries make reference to it. Various explanations are offered for the lemma aal 'eel', for example, but each has some draw back, and the entry concludes that since archaeological evidence shows that eels were eaten in northern Europe in theMesolithic Period, the word will probably be from the substrate. As many as 15 per cent of native Dutch words are substrate words, if this volume is to be believed. Obviously, the editors are heavily influenced...