Crimean Gothic

Hi. What was the reasoning for reverting my edit of schwalth? Why would the etymology be incorrect? I guess the reverting of malthata could be due to differing opinions on whether the ending is a verbal form or accustaive pronoun, although I'd have liked a short explanation in the edit summary. Also, when we're already discussing, what about the connection between mycha and Gothic mekeis? Wakuran (talk) 01:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I removed it because technically it isn't even an etymology. It only said "cf" (whatever that means) and some words in other languages, but that doesn't actually tell me anything about the origin of the word that "Unknown" didn't. Is the implication that they are cognates? If so, why not just say so? And why not actually list the ancestor *swaltaz, and the related verb *sweltanan that the other two are descended from to make the relationship more clear?

As for mycha, I don't know if it is related. It's possible. It's hard to determine any relationship when there is so little that is known about the language and the spelling is inconsistent.

Yes, the format was bad, agreed. But I felt the reversal implied that the word lacked cognates and proposed relationships in other languages, which doesn't seem to be the case. I felt that there were stronger criteria required than for other Germanic languages. Wakuran (talk) 08:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Are we still agreed that this words needs some cognates listed? I think so, at least. It seems to be definitely related to *sweltanan.

• swaltaz seems like the most likely origin, because it fits with how verbal nouns of strong verbs were usually formed in Proto-Germanic. Can you find any other descendants of it?

There is Old Norse sultr, Icelandic sultur (“starvation”) and Old English swylt (“death”); both seem to be zero-grade. Do we know enough about Crimean Gothic phonology to tell whether schwalth is o-grade (< *swaltaz) or whether -wa < *-u-? If the latter, it could be the same as the Old Norse word.

I think sult is the West Norse form, Modern Swedish has svält. It's also possible that it's not a direct descendant of the original nominal form, but and independent creation from the verb, I guess. Thank you for your reply, anyway.

Wow, so Swedish svält (“starvation”) <> English svelt (“skinny”)? The svelt entry is missing an etym...

@Eiríkr: I would assume English svelt is just another spelling of svelte, which seems to have a different origin.

@Wakuran: Modern Swedish does have svält (Old Swedish svælter), which is indeed probably influenced by the verb form svälta (Old Swedish svælta); but older Swedish also has sylt (Old Swedish sulter, sylt and sylter) and Danish has sult. I have now discovered, however, that Swedish also has an obsolete svalt (Old Swedish svalter), which does seem to be < *swaltaz.