Talk:kitling

Etymology

To me, this seems more like a raising of the vowel of cat, when the ending -ling was added, such as cat > kitten, with the k being retained only in kitten to ensure a hard pronunciation. 75.121.178.153 08:01, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

The raised vowel of Old Norse ketlingr is the umlaut of a to e before a vowel i in the following syllable (cf. Proto-Germanic nom. sg. *mannz, nom. pl. *manniz > English man, pl. men), so this corresponds to a (virtual) Proto-Germanic form *kattilingaz (masculine), and kitten corresponds to *kattīną (neuter), although it's not completely clear where the i instead of the expected e comes from (the vowel change in Old French chito(u)n besides chaton is itself obscure, as is the change in Low German Kitten). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:32, 20 May 2017 (UTC)