Your edit on [[Stoppel]]

I've sort of reverted your edit on "Stoppel", except that I put the Latin more towards the front as you had done.

Firstly, it was not correct to say "the High German form was Middle High German stupfel", because Central German is also High German, and it uses "Stoppel".

Secondly, in modern German -- which is not a standardized dialect, but an artificial amalgam of dialects -- we very often have the case that a word comes out with a certain consonantal "irregularity" in comparison to the Upper German-based MHG. But while this is so, it's still essentially the same word and thus a native one. Because the forms Stupfel, Stopfel, Stuppel, Stoppel were all around for some while, written, read, and reproduced, and eventually Stoppel happened to become standardized.

I've been working on these "irregular" consonantisms more or less systematically for some while, and thus far I have chosen to give the MHG-OHG lineage, and then explain the specific form according to its dialectal background (usually that is Central and/or Low German). This is also what the etymological dictionaries do in many or most cases. Thereby, I treat the word as being derived both from Middle High German and Middle Low German, not as a borrowing from the latter.

I only do this in cases where the identity of different dialectal forms was obvious to writers in the formative period of modern German, who were generally quite aware of the dialectal differences. I wouldn't do it if two stems happened to be cognates, but the identity wasn't obvious (because maybe the word had become archaic in Upper German, or the Low German form was just too different). All of this, of course, based on the standard literature.

You don't need to answer, unless you disagree with this practice.

Kolmiel (talk)17:05, 8 June 2015

What I don't agree with is saying that the word comes from MHG "stupfel". That's just clearly wrong.

CodeCat17:06, 8 June 2015

Sorry. This was ages ago, but I somehow hadn't seen your answer. I see your point. But I don't quite agree. Saying that modern "Stoppel" is from MHG "stupfel" doesn't mean that it directly developed out of this particular form. And this miscomprehension is ruled out by the following explanation, namely that the consonantism is northern.

What is meant is that "stupfel" was the MHG standard form -- MHG being very much a standardized language, by the scale of the time -- and that "Stoppel" is the continuation of this MHG word, even if its form has been influenced by northern dialects. Take Hafer. The word is a continuation of MHG haber even if its form has been influenced by Low German haver. A minor formal change in a word doesn't make it a completely different word that loses all connections with the MHG antecessor.

That's my point of view. But I think a compromise would be to say: from MHG stupfel, *stuppel, from OHG stuphila, *stuppila. So that's what I'll write.

Kolmiel (talk)14:07, 30 July 2015