WEST GERMANIC
Heodæg
Linguistics
| 22-11-2019
When learning a new word in a different language, I often look for something familiar in that word. Thus when I saw the Frisian word hjoed, which means today, I made the link with the Dutch word heden. Which also looks a lot like the German word heute. And of course the English word... er... today?
'Heden' and 'vandaag'
Hjoed is one of the first Frisian words I learned, because the news programme of Omrop Fryslân (the Frisian regional broadcasting corporation) was called Hjoed at the time. Nowadays it is more of a current affairs programme and has been given the name Fryslân Hjoed ('Friesland Today'). The link with heden seems obvious, but appearances sometimes deceive, so it's worth checking out. Moreover, heden is a bit of an outdated word in Dutch, or at least is no longer used very generally. Van Dale calls the word "formal". The common word in Dutch is vandaag, which is similar to English today, but has no equivalent in Frisian and German. That very well would have been possible, because fandeis or vontages wouldn't be strange words.
Heodæg
And yet, and yet, and yet... I can hardly imagine that English has not had a similar word. On etymonline.com it is mentioned under "today" that the German heute comes from *hiu tagu, but a possible Old English version is not mentioned there. (Striking: etymonline writes 'tagu', while the EWN talks about 'dagu'. The DWDS also chooses 'tagu', which is closer to Tag 'day' in terms of sound.) Because Scots is sometimes closer to for example Frisian than Modern English, I also searched there, but unfortunately found nothing. And then I suddenly see something in the Dutch Etymological Dictionary that I had previously overlooked. At the end of a list of old forms of "heden" in different languages it says "oe. heodæg.” That 'oe.' stands for 'Old English (before 1100)', and that means that once indeed an English relative of hjoed, heden and heute existed. Apparently in English happened much earlier what we see happening in Dutch today, namely that 'heden' is being replaced by 'vandaag', as was 'heodæg' by 'today'.
Dæg
After all the above, it will be clear that Old English heodæg is made up of 'heo' and 'dæg'. I particularly like the part 'dæg', because it clearly shows that English used to be closer to the other West Germanic languages than it is today. That 'dæg' is the direct ancestor of day. The amusing thing is, in my opinion, that 'dæg' in terms of spelling mainly resembles Dutch dag, while the pronunciation of day comes closest to Frisian dei. In both cases German comes less close with Tag and that makes sense, because that's of course also the case in distance. West Germanic appears to have arrived in England from Germany via the Netherlands and Friesland (as we now call those areas), and that seems to be true here. All those words for day can be traced to a word that probably meant "time the sun is hot".
Todæge
In the introduction I already observed that today doesn't resemble the three h-words, but that does not mean that that's it; it does resemble the Dutch word vandaag. Both to- and van- mean "on (this)", and in both cases the preposition is placed before the word 'day' or 'dag'. Only there is an extra 'a' in Dutch; it is vandaag and not vandag. Where does that 'a' come from? It has to do with the cases Dutch used to have and of which you can see traces here and there in contemporary Dutch. In Middle Dutch, the word was vandage, in which dage is the 3rd case of dag. Vandage still appears in Lower Saxon, as in that Skik song that irrevocably occurs to me when I read vandage: Wie döt mij wat, wie döt mij wat, wie döt mij wat vandage… (Something like 'Who can stand against me, who can stand against me today?', but a little lighter and more happy-go-lucky.)
'Heden' and 'vandaag'
Hjoed is one of the first Frisian words I learned, because the news programme of Omrop Fryslân (the Frisian regional broadcasting corporation) was called Hjoed at the time. Nowadays it is more of a current affairs programme and has been given the name Fryslân Hjoed ('Friesland Today'). The link with heden seems obvious, but appearances sometimes deceive, so it's worth checking out. Moreover, heden is a bit of an outdated word in Dutch, or at least is no longer used very generally. Van Dale calls the word "formal". The common word in Dutch is vandaag, which is similar to English today, but has no equivalent in Frisian and German. That very well would have been possible, because fandeis or vontages wouldn't be strange words.
Fryslân Hjoed, the current affairs programme on Omrop Fryslân
'Op deze huidige dag' Strange words or not, the reality wants us to have the triplets hjoed-heden-heute, and the question is: do those words have the same origin? The answer is simple: yes. All three of them go, via different variants, back to the Protogerman * hiu dagu, which meant "on this day". An older form of heden is huden, from which in Middle Dutch (1200-1500) hudig was derived: "op desen hudigen day” meant 'today'. That hudig changed sound and became huydig, or in today's spelling huidig. The Frisian word for huidig is not something like hjoedich, but hjoeddeisk, which resembles the Dutch hedendaags. Whereas in Dutch there is a subtle difference in meaning between hedendaags ('contemporary') and huidig ('current'), in Frisian the same word is used for both meanings. But the relationship between "heden" and "huidig" is best seen in German: heute is clearly the basic form of heutig. That last word is much older than the Dutch huidig, and it could be that huidig was formed by analogy with heutig. In addition to heutig, German also has heutzutage for "contemporary". As with today, English differs from the other three, with words such as (at) present, today and now(adays).Heodæg
And yet, and yet, and yet... I can hardly imagine that English has not had a similar word. On etymonline.com it is mentioned under "today" that the German heute comes from *hiu tagu, but a possible Old English version is not mentioned there. (Striking: etymonline writes 'tagu', while the EWN talks about 'dagu'. The DWDS also chooses 'tagu', which is closer to Tag 'day' in terms of sound.) Because Scots is sometimes closer to for example Frisian than Modern English, I also searched there, but unfortunately found nothing. And then I suddenly see something in the Dutch Etymological Dictionary that I had previously overlooked. At the end of a list of old forms of "heden" in different languages it says "oe. heodæg.” That 'oe.' stands for 'Old English (before 1100)', and that means that once indeed an English relative of hjoed, heden and heute existed. Apparently in English happened much earlier what we see happening in Dutch today, namely that 'heden' is being replaced by 'vandaag', as was 'heodæg' by 'today'.
Dæg
After all the above, it will be clear that Old English heodæg is made up of 'heo' and 'dæg'. I particularly like the part 'dæg', because it clearly shows that English used to be closer to the other West Germanic languages than it is today. That 'dæg' is the direct ancestor of day. The amusing thing is, in my opinion, that 'dæg' in terms of spelling mainly resembles Dutch dag, while the pronunciation of day comes closest to Frisian dei. In both cases German comes less close with Tag and that makes sense, because that's of course also the case in distance. West Germanic appears to have arrived in England from Germany via the Netherlands and Friesland (as we now call those areas), and that seems to be true here. All those words for day can be traced to a word that probably meant "time the sun is hot".
Todæge
In the introduction I already observed that today doesn't resemble the three h-words, but that does not mean that that's it; it does resemble the Dutch word vandaag. Both to- and van- mean "on (this)", and in both cases the preposition is placed before the word 'day' or 'dag'. Only there is an extra 'a' in Dutch; it is vandaag and not vandag. Where does that 'a' come from? It has to do with the cases Dutch used to have and of which you can see traces here and there in contemporary Dutch. In Middle Dutch, the word was vandage, in which dage is the 3rd case of dag. Vandage still appears in Lower Saxon, as in that Skik song that irrevocably occurs to me when I read vandage: Wie döt mij wat, wie döt mij wat, wie döt mij wat vandage… (Something like 'Who can stand against me, who can stand against me today?', but a little lighter and more happy-go-lucky.)
WEST GERMANIC
In the West Germanic section every other week I discuss a word that strikes me. I look at the meanings and forms of the word, and especially at where the word originates from. With that I compare the four West Germanic languages Dutch, English, Frisian and German, with the occasional inevitable trip across the fictional West Germanic border.
In the next episode: Crusade in Oldebroek...