So, after that post I looked up the song on Youtube.

[conuly]

And along the way I was linked to another oh-so-old song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJr8uZPNm4Y

Now, this is much easier to read (and modernize singably), despite dating to about the same time:

Miri it is wile sumer y-last
And fugheles song;
Oc nu neheth windes blast
And weder strong.
Ei, ei! What this nicht is long,
And ic with wel miccel wrong,
Soregh and murne and fast.

Happily, there's a translation given below the video anyway. But still, the only really tricky word there is "fugheles", which apparently means "birds". I read that and immediately flashed back to several years ago, at the SICM, seeing a Jewish mother exhorting her toddler to look at the "faygeles". You don't have to speak any Yiddish to work out that when you're pointing at a birdcage while saying "Rifky! Faygeles! Faygeles, Rifka!" that one of those two words has to mean "birdies" while the other is a name. (That'd be the Rifka, a diminutive of Rebecca. I've always thought it sounds nicer than the only common English shortening of the name, Becky, but if you named your kid that and weren't Jewish you'd be dooming her to explain to people all the time how come she has that name.)

And after a little thought I remembered that in German bird is Vogel, so it all makes sense. Or it mostly does. It seems pretty obvious that the three words are related*, but where the heck did "bird" come from then?

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bird

Apparently, nobody is really quite sure. Well, that's annoying. "Fugol" is preserved more or less in the word "fowl", anyway.

* Don't get carried away with this. Chance resemblances between languages are more common than you probably think. We happen to already *know* Yiddish and German and English and Dutch (vogel) and likewise are related (you can see all the various "bird" words for Germanic languages on the list linked) so I didn't think I was going too far out on a limb here.

Comments

[pne]

And after a little thought I remembered that in German bird is Vogel, so it all makes sense.

The plural, Vögel, is even closer. Especially when you remember that Yiddish has no "ö" and they basically all turned to "e" (like in some eastern German dialects, too, for that matter).

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

That's a nice one, and another I know from the Medieval Baebes. The rendition you found is better, though.

On the "birds" thing, the Lakeland dialect for "bird" is "bogel" - I remember in particular that a curlew is "bogel wit lang neb" - bird with a long nose. That looks to me more like a variation on "vogel" with the first consonant mutated than a "b" from "bird", though.

[conuly]

Well, f/v to p/b isn't all that uncommon. Compare pisces to fish, pter to feather. Related words, but in one set of languages that sound became p, in another it became f. (One doesn't come from the other, of course, the separation happened first.)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Nobody is quite sure? I learned that bird basically is related to Brut (i.e., "brood", like, eggs and ickle birds that are still getting fed by their parents), and eventually metathesis happened, as it so often does, and the result (eventually) was bird. Which got extended to all sorts of birds (except possibly fowl) and replaced fugol.
Which always made sense to me. I'm devastated that the case is apparently less clear? (Couldn't check the Etymonline link because the site appears to be down.)

[conuly]

What they say is that this popular explanation doesn't hold up. It's working for me now, I'll quote it:

Look up bird at Dictionary.com
O.E. bird, rare collateral form of bridd, originally "young bird, nestling" (the usual O.E. for "bird" being fugol), of uncertain origin with no cognates in any other Germanic language. The suggestion that it is related by umlaut to brood and breed is rejected by OED as "quite inadmissible." Metathesis of -r- and -i- was complete 15c.

Edit: And this is what the OED says on the subject in full:

Etymology: Middle English byrd , bryd < Old English brid (masculine) (plural briddas ), in Northumbrian bird , birdas ‘offspring, young,’ but used only of the young of birds. There is no corresponding form in any other Germanic language, and the etymology is unknown. If native Germanic, it would represent an original *bridjo-z : this cannot be derived < brood n., breed n., and even the suggestion that it may be formed like these from the root *bru- (see brood n.) appears to be quite inadmissible.(Show Less)

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†a. orig. The general name for the young of the feathered tribes; a young bird; a chicken, eaglet, etc.; a nestling. The only sense in Old English; found in literature down to 1600; still retained in north. dial. as ‘a hen and her birds’.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I haven't put that much research into it, having been content with the popular explanation. So I guess I'll just have to believe the OED.
Still odd, though - Modern German "breed" is brüten, so that's got the umlaut right there. I wish the OED would link to the information they base their "appears to be quite inadmissible" judgement on, because now I'm curious!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

If you speak German, you can understand Yiddish pretty well. Back East in the early 70's, I heard the word 'faygele' used by the parents and older relatives of my friends, but they didn't mean 'bird'; they meant 'gay'. It never occurred to me that the word was related to 'vogel' rather than to 'fairy' or 'faggot'. Good to know; thanks!