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T
HE
E
ARLIEST
C
ONTACTS BETWEEN
S
CANDINAVIANS AND
S
OUTH
S
AAMI
167
Lehtiranta (1989: 30 f.) also presents a word found in Lagercrantz’ dic-
tionary (LW s.v.
hàppε
, here somewhat simplified transcription) which de-
notes another bone: SaaS.
haabbe
‘der obere Vorderbein im Vorderbein des
Rentieres’ / SaaN.
dab΄bâ
‘the marrow-bone above the
čib΄be
’. The Ume
Saami form is
hàbba
(Schlachter 1958 s.v.), whereas the languages further to
the north and east have forms with an initial occlusive. The word is formally
regular and the semantics is unproblematic. The forms can be derived from a
Proto-Saami *
θāmpə,
as Lehtiranta suggests.
Another word to be dealt with here was noted already by Qvigstad (1893:
140). It is the verb ‘to felt’ as in, e.g., SaaL.
tuohppit
‘verfilzen, walken’,
tuohpanit
‘sich verfilzen, gewalkt werden’ (HG s.v.), also in Lindahl –
Öhrling:
tuopet
‘valka kläde eller walmar’. Qvigstad (ibid.) connected it with
a word in Scandinavian languages, Sw.
tova
, No.
tov
etc.; in Icelandic it has
an initial fricative,
þœva
‘valka’ (cf. SAOB T2184 for more forms). The
initial
t-
in Lule Saami does not allow any conclusion as to the age of this
loanword, but the word is found also in four out of the five eastern varieties
of Ume Saami with forms like, e.g., Msk.
füεhpət
, Mlm.
füöhpət
‘to felt’
(Calleberg). This word is not found in Schlachter’s dictionary (1958), and
since that dictionary has been regarded as synonymous with the notion of
Ume Saami (Larsson 2012: 76), the Ume Saami forms have not been noted
in research. The correspondence SaaU.
fuo-
/ SaaL.
tuo-
makes it obvious
that this is an old loanword from a Scandinavian word with an initial *
θ
,
written
þ
and known as ”thorn” in Scandinavian studies. Lule Saami
tuohppit
could represent a Scandinavian
t-,
whereas Ume Saami
f-
can not.
There was a dental fricative in Proto-Scandinavian that remained in Old
Swedish and Old Norse and is still to be found in Modern Icelandic. It was a
phoneme separate from /t/ and reflects the same Proto-Germanic sound
(Widmark 2001: 78; e.g. Krahe 1966: 76, 91). So, in this respect the same
phonemes existed in Proto-Saami and in Proto-Scandinavian, and Scandinavian
loanwords in Saami can show the same development as inherited words, if
they are old enough.
The phonetic representation of this old dental fricative
þ
in loanwords al-
lows us to group loanwords into different historical strata. In the oldest ones
a continuative in South and/or Ume Saami reflects a Scandinavian
þ
(= PS
*
θ
). In the following stratum a Scandinavian occlusive is rendered as the
letter <d>, and in the youngest loanwords the letter <t> is used in South and
North Saami to show the postaspiration of the Scandinavian occlusive (Has-
selbrink 1944: 122, 77; Bergsland 1946: 23 f.), e.g.:
I:
SaaU. Msk.
füεhpət
/ SaaL.
tuohppit
‘to felt’, cf. OSw.
thova;