Whatever may have happened to "girl," the same flipping of letters
definitely happened with "bird," originally "brid."
The oldest known secular song in English is "Brid one Brere," i.e.
"Bird on Briar."
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
On Oct 19, 2006, at 2:42 PM, dhbailey wrote:
Ken Moore wrote:
dhbailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Well, historically
the word "girl" used to be "gril" in old-English, > but over years
usage changed to the easier to say modern order of the > letters.
Are you sure it was that way round? Neither Chambers nor the full
Oxford English Dictionary gave such a derivation, nor was it one of
about nine variant spellings in the Oxford.
Well that's what I recall my History of the English Language teacher
told us. Looking in the O.E.D. there is the potential origin in the
word gyril, so maybe that's what I'm recalling (through the dimness of
35 years), where there would have been two syllables, but being easier
to pronounce, things got changed around. In any event, it didn't
begin as a one syllable word that rolls off the tongue as it does now.
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