[40] I know perfectly well that in these and in other similar words there were reasons for the original word disappearing as unfit (shortness, possibility of mistakes through similarity with other words, etc.). What interests me here is the fact that the substitute is a word of the nursery.
[41] “Einige namentlich in der ältern litteratur vorkommende angaben über kinder, die sich zusammen aufwachsend eine eigene sprache gebildet haben sollen, sind wohl ein für allemal in das gebiet der fabel zu verweisen” (S 1. 286).
[42] Cf. against the assumption of Keltic influence in this instance Meyer-Lübke, Die Romanischen Sprachen, Kultur der Gegenwart, p. 457, and Ettmayer in Streitberg’s Gesch. 2. 265. H. Mutschmann, Phonology of the North-Eastern Scotch Dialect, 1909, p. 53, thinks that the fronting of u in Scotch is similar to that of Latin ū on Gallic territory, and like it is ascribable to the Keltic inhabitants: he forgets, however, that the corresponding fronting is not found in the Keltic spoken in Scotland. Moreover, the complicated Scotch phenomena cannot be compared with the French transition, for the sound of remains in many cases, and generally corresponds to earlier [o], whatever the explanation may be.
[43] Curiously enough, Feist uses this argument himself against Hirt in his earlier paper, PBB 37. 121.
[44] Feist, on the other hand (PBB 36. 329), makes the Kelts responsible for the shift from p to f, because initial p disappears in Keltic: but disappearance is not the same thing as being changed into a spirant, and there is no necessity for assuming that the sound before disappearing had been changed into f. Besides, it is characteristic of the Gothonic shift that it affects all stops equally, without regard to the place of articulation, while the Keltic change affects only the one sound p.
[45] ME. knowleche, stonës [stɔ·nes], off, with [wiþ] become MnE. knowledge, stones [stounz], of [ɔv, əv], with [wið], etc.; cf. also possess, discern with [z], exert with [gz], but exercise with [ks]. See my Studier over eng. kasus, 1891, 178 ff., now MEG i. 6. 5 ff., and (for the phonetic explanation) LPh p. 121.
[46] Sharp tenues and aspirated tenues may alternate even in the life of one individual, as I have observed in the case of my own son, who at the age of 1.9 used the sharp French sounds, but five months later substituted strongly aspirated p, t, k, with even stronger aspiration than the usual Danish sounds, which it took him ten or eleven months to learn with perfect certainty.
[47] I use the terms loan-words and borrowed words because they are convenient and firmly established, not because they are exact. There are two essential respects in which linguistic borrowing differs from the borrowing of, say, a knife or money: the lender does not deprive himself of the use of the word any more than if it had not been borrowed by the other party, and the borrower is under no obligation to return the word at any future time. Linguistic ‘borrowing’ is really nothing but imitation, and the only way in which it differs from a child’s imitation of its parents’ speech is that here something is imitated which forms a part of a speech that is not imitated as a whole.
[48] The etymology of this name is rather curious: Portuguese bicho de mar, from bicho ‘worm,’ the name of the sea slug or trepang, which is eaten as a luxury by the Chinese, was in French modified into bêche de mer, ‘sea-spade’; this by a second popular etymology was made into English beach-la-mar as if a compound of beach.
My sources are H. Schuchardt, KS v. (Wiener Academie, 1883); id. in ESt xiii. 158 ff., 1889; W. Churchill, Beach-la-Mar, the Jargon or Trade Speech of the Western Pacific (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1911); Jack London, The Cruise of the Snark (Mills & Boon, London, 1911?), G. Landtman in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen (Helsingfors, 1918, p. 62 ff. Landtman calls it “the Pidgin-English of British New Guinea,” where he learnt it, though it really differs from Pidgin-English proper; see below); “The Jargon English of Torres Straits” in Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. iii. p. 251 ff., Cambridge, 1907.