Geordie "gan" - English "go"

[benadam]

The dialect of the north-east of England, known as the Geordie dialect, probably has as its most famous feature the word 'gan' for 'go'. As in, "Gannin alang the Scotswood Road" (going along the Scotswood Road), "I telt him where to gan" (I told him where to go).

I've been told that this, along with other features of the dialect, is a more conserved form of Anglo-Saxon. It seems to be true that "gan" was Anglo-Saxon for "go", at least according to this scanned online A-S dictionary ('gan' is at the bottom-right of this page).

My question is though, how is it that it changed into 'go' across the whole of the rest of England, and was only retained in one small region? 'Gan' /gæn/ to 'go' /gəʊ, gɔː/ doesn't seem like a very natural change to me. At least, if English was my conlang, I'd never have thought of "'gan' -> 'go' everywhere except one small area of the country", cos I'd think it was silly.

[Astraios]

The Anglo-Saxon was gān, i.e. an /ɑ:/.

[finlay]

There's also "gang" as in German gegangen, Scots and some older fixed phrases like gangway or gangplank. It'll be related to that, surely?

[Soap]

Isnt the -n part of the infinitive? Retention of that would be highly unusual, deletion would be normal. The ā > ō shift is normal as well.

[Yng]

Yeah, ā > ō is regular and expected and the weird thing here is not that -n disappeared in 'go' but that it was mysteriously retained in 'gan' and reinterpreted as part of the stem rather than an infinitive marker.

[spats]

Yeah, ā > ō is regular and expected and the weird thing here is not that -n disappeared in 'go' but that it was mysteriously retained in 'gan' and reinterpreted as part of the stem rather than an infinitive marker.

Could have been back-formation from the OE/ME participle (ge)gangen(de). "To go" is not used in the simple present very often, and the simple past had already been suppleted by wend in ME. The remaining forms could therefore be "regularized" to a normal strong verb by changing the present tense root to "gang". The subsequent ŋ > n is an easy change.

[Yng]

Incidentally, it's not just a Geordie thing; it's present in Scots and also (although it may be dead there by now) in dialects across Yorkshire and Lancashire as 'gang'.

[Shrdlu]

I really don't know, but to me it looks the same as the American habit of turning -ing to in'.

[Miekko]

I really don't know, but to me it looks the same as the American habit of turning -ing to in'.

Which is not just an American habit, and maintains a distinction present in older varieties of English - in fact, dialects that use -ing for the participle are innovative, dialects that don't are conservative.

See, e.g. Wikipedia's article on participles:
In Old English, weak present participles ended in -ende or -iende depending on verb class. In Middle English, various forms were used in different regions: -ende (SW, SE, Midlands), -inde (SW, SE), -and (N), -inge (SE). This latter form eventually fell together with the suffix -ing, used to form verbal nouns.

-ende > -in is more natural than -ende > -ing

[finlay]

I really don't know, but to me it looks the same as the American habit of turning -ing to in'.

Every dialect of English does this to some degree, asshole. It's just that it varies by location how stigmatised it is and what social class is more likely to do it – and there are still some dialects (although this time AFAIK they are mostly in America) which maintain a distinction between gerund/derivative noun [ɪŋ] and participle [ɪn]. So for them they would always say that they're "build[ɪn] a build[ɪŋ]".

And yeah, distinction carried over or not carried over from OE rather than a sound change of [ɪŋ]→[ɪn] or vice-versa.

[Carlos]

In my dialect (Western American English), both are pronounced as [in].

[benadam]

Isnt the -n part of the infinitive? Retention of that would be highly unusual, deletion would be normal.

the weird thing here is not that -n disappeared in 'go' but that it was mysteriously retained in 'gan' and reinterpreted as part of the stem rather than an infinitive marker.

So, do you mean that 'to go' was 'gān' or 'gāng', while simply 'go' (I dunno what the proper linguistic word is) was... 'gā', or something? And then certain dialects lost the -n or -ng, while others retained it, and lost the distinction, using 'gān' where it had been 'gā'? Or am I just barking up the wrong tree? Yeah, language change is not my forte...

Incidentally, it's not just a Geordie thing; it's present in Scots and also (although it may be dead there by now) in dialects across Yorkshire and Lancashire as 'gang'.

Yeah, I have heard 'gang' in Scottish folk songs, but I've never actually heard a Scottish person use it. I assumed it was archaic. I never knew it was used in Yorkshire or Lancashire at all!

[Salmoneus]

It's also, unsurprisingly, found in Cumbria. My father still uses 'gannen' instead of 'going'. [It might be 'gangen' - this thread has me confused enough I can't trust my own recollections. But I think it's gannen].

[Soap]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gong_farmer#References says gang/gong was a euphemism for shit even in 1200 AD, so the change must have happened very early. Perhaps it was helped by the unusual shape of the word, where the last vowel of the verb and the vowel of the infinitive were both /a/. That probably cant have happened very often. Reminds me of the Dutch teen meaning "toe", which is /te:n/ rather than /teən/.

However, that wouldnt explain those other words such as 'gegangen' in German, where there is little chance of the infinitive ending blending with the stem and the nchanging to /ng/. Perhaps there is a distinct word 'gang' that got somehow overlaid with 'go'. The PIE nasal infix /n/ plus reduplication could possibly be the cause.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix: ... g%C4%81nan

[finlay]

Yeah, I have heard 'gang' in Scottish folk songs, but I've never actually heard a Scottish person use it. I assumed it was archaic. I never knew it was used in Yorkshire or Lancashire at all!

Neither have I, but Scotland's a reasonably large area...

[merijn]

A few remarks from a native speaker of Dutch:
1) In Dutch the plural and the infinitive of the verb end in -en, which is pronounced by most speakers as @, though people from the east sometimes have a syllabic n. However, there are a few verbs whose stem end in a vowel that have -n and where the schwa is lost instead of the n; they are staa-n "stand", doe-n "do", zie-n, "see", slaa-n "beat" and the verb at issue here gaa-n "go". So perhaps something similar happened in those English dialects that have "gan". It is perhaps noteworthy that in Afrikaans the infinitive/plural form of these verbs has survived instead of the stem.
2. In Dutch (and in German) the cognate with "stand" staa-n ends in a vowel and not in -nd. The past tense does have the -nd: sg stond pl stonden. The word stand is the verbal noun of staan, and gang is the verbal noun of gaan.

[Nortaneous]

I really don't know, but to me it looks the same as the American habit of turning -ing to in'.

Every dialect of English does this to some degree, asshole. It's just that it varies by location how stigmatised it is and what social class is more likely to do it – and there are still some dialects (although this time AFAIK they are mostly in America) which maintain a distinction between gerund/derivative noun [ɪŋ] and participle [ɪn]. So for them they would always say that they're "build[ɪn] a build[ɪŋ]".

And yeah, distinction carried over or not carried over from OE rather than a sound change of [ɪŋ]→[ɪn] or vice-versa.

I'm not sure whether or not I have this, but I know I'd always have "build[ɪn] a build[ɪŋ]", except in more formal speech, where they'd both be [ɪŋ].

[Yng]

So, do you mean that 'to go' was 'gān' or 'gāng', while simply 'go' (I dunno what the proper linguistic word is) was... 'gā', or something? And then certain dialects lost the -n or -ng, while others retained it, and lost the distinction, using 'gān' where it had been 'gā'? Or am I just barking up the wrong tree? Yeah, language change is not my forte...

Sort-of. The Old English (and early Middle English) verbal paradigm was far more morphologically rich than what we have now; gān was the infinitive and gā was the 1sg (in OE there were vowel changes in the 2sg and 3sg as well which disappeared either by analogy or sound change).

Incidentally, it's not just a Geordie thing; it's present in Scots and also (although it may be dead there by now) in dialects across Yorkshire and Lancashire as 'gang'.

Yeah, I have heard 'gang' in Scottish folk songs, but I've never actually heard a Scottish person use it. I assumed it was archaic. I never knew it was used in Yorkshire or Lancashire at all![/quote]

Yeah, but there are a number of reasons that could be. Firstly, if you're not actually Scottish then chances are you won't hear thick Scots spoken unless you happen to overhear two people speaking it on a train. Secondly, urban Scots and probably rural Scots as well have undergone major convergence with Scottish English in the past few decades. Thirdly, there are dialectal differences to take into account.

[Salmoneus]

Of course, there's always the other explanation for weirdnesses Oop North: 1500 years of close contact with scandinavia. Can anybody comment on how scandinavia treats the verb in question?

[communistplot]

I really don't know, but to me it looks the same as the American habit of turning -ing to in'.

Every dialect of English does this to some degree, asshole. It's just that it varies by location how stigmatised it is and what social class is more likely to do it – and there are still some dialects (although this time AFAIK they are mostly in America) which maintain a distinction between gerund/derivative noun [ɪŋ] and participle [ɪn]. So for them they would always say that they're "build[ɪn] a build[ɪŋ]".

And yeah, distinction carried over or not carried over from OE rather than a sound change of [ɪŋ]→[ɪn] or vice-versa.

I'm not sure whether or not I have this, but I know I'd always have "build[ɪn] a build[ɪŋ]", except in more formal speech, where they'd both be [ɪŋ].

For me I'd say something like: [ãːm bɪɫ.ɾɛ̃n a bɪɫ.ɾɛ̃n] or the alveolars would merge like they do in Winter. But yeah, it seems like just an archaism that was retained with (-n) being analyzed as part of the stem rather than a marker as it was. I mean, English sound change laws, nay sound change laws in general aren't absolute, so unless this is irregular we could just have a case where certain changes failed to take hold in Geordie.

[Yng]

Of course, there's always the other explanation for weirdnesses Oop North: 1500 years of close contact with scandinavia. Can anybody comment on how scandinavia treats the verb in question?

ON apparently had ganga, with gang- as part of the stem all the way through the present tense. I did wonder if it was this but a source I saw earlier claimed that it was ga in Old Norse already.

[Carlos]

I'm not sure whether or not I have this, but I know I'd always have "build[ɪn] a build[ɪŋ]", except in more formal speech, where they'd both be [ɪŋ].

Interesting. I always have [aɪm bɪɫ.din a bɪɫ.ɾin]. Not even in formal speech do I use [ɪŋ] (besides in king, sing, etc.)

[Magb]

Of course, there's always the other explanation for weirdnesses Oop North: 1500 years of close contact with scandinavia. Can anybody comment on how scandinavia treats the verb in question?

ON apparently had ganga, with gang- as part of the stem all the way through the present tense. I did wonder if it was this but a source I saw earlier claimed that it was ga in Old Norse already.

Ganga won out in West Norse and gá in East Norse, AFAIK.

[Skomakar'n]

There's also "gang" as in German gegangen, Scots and some older fixed phrases like gangway or gangplank. It'll be related to that, surely?

That was what I immediately thought when I read the first post of this thread. Proto-Germanic had *gangą and *gāną alongside each other, with the same past tense. Some varieties kept one, and some the other.

Of course, there's always the other explanation for weirdnesses Oop North: 1500 years of close contact with scandinavia. Can anybody comment on how scandinavia treats the verb in question?

Generally, Scandinavia uses 'gå' (from *gāną) and Insular (Icelandic and Faroese) use 'ganga' (from *gānganą), but I'm fairly sure there are Swedish and Norwegian dialects/rural varieties that use 'gånga'/'ganga'/'gange', which does appear in some old, Swedish texts and compounds, as far as I've seen. So, yeah; generally it's a split-up between the Northern Germanic varieties; 'gå' and 'ganga'.

[Drydic]

I really don't know, but to me it looks the same as the American habit of turning -ing to in'.

I really don't know, but to me it looks the same as the American

I really don't know, but to me

I really don't know,

I really don't know