Irene
Excellent presentation by prof. Catrin Norrby tonight about her previous project on conversational interactions in Sweden and Swedish-speaking Finland. Had not realised that "hi"/"hello" in Finnish is borrowed from Low German (moi/n)! Cf also letzeburgish "mojen".
@linguistics
#sociolinguistics
May 24, 2023 at 4:44pmWeb
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJun 19, 2023

@elmerot @linguistics That is definitely a possibility, but not a certain fact. That etymology would result in two different explanations for #FennoSwedish “mojn” and “morjens” respectively.

The Finnish greeting is discussed in Mikko #Bentlins doctoral thesis on Middle #LowGerman loanwords in #Finnish.

Equally intriguing, but not discussed anywhere, is the origin of Baltic #Finnic “hei”.