Talk:panna

Dutch etymology

@Mnemosientje, Lambiam Panna is very frequently (almost anecdotically) said to derive from a Sranan Tongo word meaning "poortje" ("gate") in Dutch texts, but the Sranan Tongo word is never given. Do either of you happen to know it? Prisma's dictionary of Sranan Tongo only gives the football-related meaning, which might for all I know still be the source of the Dutch even if there isn't any meaning "gate". ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

The term is spelled pana in the recommended orthography. I believe it is used as a verb (A pana a bal go p’sa mindri fu en futu – He tunneled the ball right through his legs). There is a lack of online Sranan Tongo texts, so it will not be easy to find attestations. BTW, never rely on the ST Wikipedia as a source of info; it is like a bad joke.  --Lambiam 14:55, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

According to this site the etymon of pana is the verb panya – which has many meanings and is almost untranslatable; I don’t think it means “to destroy” though, but rather “to burst”.  --Lambiam 15:17, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

@Lambiam Sorry, I forgot about this. Prisma's dictionary gives meaninfs such as "to spread, to tell, to break apart, to explode". I reckon that some of these could be constructed as plausible etyma? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:21, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I guess it is possible, although not as plausible as one should like. Did the word make a round-trip ST panya > N panje > panna > pannaën > ST pana? The step panje > panna is the least obvious IMO. Surinamese Dutch has no problem with a word ending -je; cf. pantje from Sranan Tongo pangi (although n. not a diminutive) and buitje (mistress) and poentje (both diminutives only), where in all cases the final e is a schwa. So what process drove the alleged change from panje to panna?  --Lambiam 16:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

There is an article with the title “Panna” in NRC Handelsblad from 2007 that may be the oldest source to claim that panna is Surinamese for poortje. It is behind a paywall, but the link turns up in a Google search. This may be the earliest instance of the claim. Apparently the claim was repeated seven years later in the newspaper here. Can the term Surinaams be used in Dutch to refer to the Surinamese variant of Dutch? In that case the intention may have been simply to state that the street game called poortje by native Dutch youth is known as panna among the youth of Surinamese descent.  --Lambiam 08:48, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

@Lambiam A preview showed up for me: Een panna is een beweging waarbij een voetballer de bal tussen de benen van zijn tegenstander door schiet, in voetbaljargon kortweg 'poorten' genoemd. Alleen als de poortende speler de bal na zijn actie in bezit houdt, is de panna werkelijk geslaagd. Panna is het Surinaamse woord voor 'poortje'. It's not super clear what the last sentence means, but I think the intended statement is just that "panna" is used for the football move and not per se a claim that it means "gate". "Surinaams" in my experience typically refers to Sranan Tongo when the person in the street uses it for a language. As for the phonological change, is ɲ > n not an option? If the word was independently borrowed from Sranan into Netherlands Dutch it doesn't have to observe regularities in Surinamese Dutch. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:19, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

What we need here is [ɲj] > [n], which is a rather more dramatic change.  --Lambiam 11:43, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam I don't think [ɲj] and [ɲ] sound that different to the average Dutch and Belgian ears (so either shift is about equally problematic), but it's clear you're not strongly in favour of any one particular etymology. Do you have a preference regarding the etymology? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 14:42, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo I would have thought that Spanje and spanne sound rather different. In any case, I think the etymology is unknown.  --Lambiam 14:59, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam So you prefer {{unknown}} to {{bor|nl|srn|}}? (The comment about /nj/ and /n/ makes no sense.) ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:10, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo — Yes; I feel we should not state that the term was borrowed from ST if we have no plausible etymon. The only etymon that has been proposed is panya /paɲa/, which I think is not that close to /pana/, just like /spaɲə/ (see Dutch phonology) is clearly distinguishable from /spanə/. (The sense development is also not clear.)  --Lambiam 17:49, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam Well, that's a fair point, though it seems strongly associated with Surinamese Dutch youths, it can't really be established that it is from Sranan. I'll try to write up something.
I think that what you say about /nj/ and /n/ is true, but it is a restatement what was already known (/nj/ > /n/ is somewhat anomalous). What I meant to say is that speakers of European Dutch are likely to analyse [ɲj] and [ɲ] both as /nj/. /nj/ is a relatively marginal sequence in Dutch anyway, especially before vowels other than schwa, so anomalous deformations in borrowed terms would not be that perplexing. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 09:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)