Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/tigulǭ

Did the German word Tiegel also come from this? 174.124.126.25 06:48, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

It's uncertain. The word originally meant "clay pot/earthen vessel", and it has a cognate in Middle Low German degel (> Old Norse digull); Middle Dutch degel. Attempts to link it to Latin tegula, which has a similar basic meaning, have been proposed but the Gmc urform, *digulaz, is too different imo. In spite of that, Dutch has 2 words: degel₁ which means "plate, slab" that does come from tegula, and another older word degel₂ related to the above which means "pot, kettle, urn", which shows that the Latin word could take this form, so it is possible. Leasnam (talk) 13:31, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

@Leasnam, Victar: The above distinction is artificial. The Latin tēgula has become very widespread, and you cannot separate meanings of a frying pan or saucepan from that of a rooftile. German Kachel, from a vulgar form of cācabus, also has all these meanings. The vowel quality varies from everything from a to i and u in the descendants, as also in Ancient Greek τάγηνον (tágēnon). We need a move to Proto-West-Germanic and a merge with that *digulaz, if that all is Proto-West-Germanic at all, rather in the descendant section of tēgula. For the latter word see also Pfeifer, it is attested late and is probably a borrowing after the High German vowel shift; whereas the Northern d vowel may be from the awareness of speakers of isoglosses, mimicking inherited words; or it is just like the popular t → d change in Anatolian Turkish, and Greek too has such variation as in τάπης (tápēs) with its alternative forms. One just needs to get over the mental hurdle that rooftiles and frying-pans are distinguished, which they weren’t under historical conditions, and have explanations for the small onset difference: native explanations are much less likely thus than a borrowing of the same word as found everywhere up to Turkey and Morocco. Fay Freak (talk) 16:26, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

@Fay Freak, Leasnam, Victar: There's clearly something off here. OHG ziagala and Old Saxon tēgala or tiegla cannot go back to PWG *tigulā, only to PWG *tēg(a)lā. According to Pfeifer, OHG zigel, OE tigel(e) and others go back to a short-vocalic Vulgar Latin variant *tegula or *tegella (both of which also yielded various Romance forms), and ON tigl is borrowed from OE, Swedish tegel and Danish tegl probably from MLG. A Proto-Germanic reconstruction never made sense here, anyway.

As for Tiegel, Pfeifer derives this etymon from a Late Latin lexeme tēgula 'frying-pan', also with a short-vocalic Vulgar Latin variant tegula, a loanword from Ancient Greek tḗganon. This is a late word found only in High German, not attested before about 1000 in Late OHG, in Notker, and putatively (but plausibly) from Early Old Italian. Formally, Late OHG tegel, tigel 'earthen pot' (which would presuppose a PWG **degl or **digl m., with a short stem vowel) is also starkly different from OHG ziagala, ziegala (from PWG *tēgalā f.), ziagal, ziegal (from PWG *tēgl m.) 'tile'. (Pfeifer suggests alternative explanations for the words in d-, as well. He also mentions the possibility that a PWG *digl < PG *dig(u)laz 'earthen pot' could have existed. Maybe a Late OHG reflex of the Germanic lexeme, tigel, accidentally not attested in Classical OHG because it is an everyday word relatively irrelevant to early medieval Christian literature, was conflated with a Romance loanword tegel, and its meaning shifted from 'frying-pan' to 'earthen pot' after the native lexeme.) This account seems credible. The language of De re coquinaria is patently late (at least in parts) and vulgar, basically "Low Latin", and apparently the sense 'frying-pan' is not found earlier than that, especially not in the pre-Christian era, and in fact even seems unique to De re coquinaria in antiquity. So it is not at all certain that this is not a separate etymon. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:45, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

You may be right about the Germanic forms and borrowing dates; very much untenable even on first glance that it was a borrowing into Proto-Germanic instead of Proto-West Germanic, whose descendants may have been supplanted in individual West-Germanic languages, hence the discrepancy. I have not taken a stance on them. But as for the Latin etymology, one should stop falsifying the meanings. There is no evidence either that it meant, for Apicius, “frying-pan”, like you know, or even a cooking-pot (Pfanne in the Swiss sense, though as you discern on Spanish tarro meanings became as wild as that later), so one reads too much into the Apicius occurrence based on posterior, unrelated synonymy. As the references contradict each other, there is surely much wrong in them that had to be and has to be corrected, as you have seen. Fay Freak (talk) 21:30, 26 September 2021 (UTC)