Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/wela

Etymology

I'm not really sure about the derivation. I assumed it might have been *welō, an instrumental adverb... but it is also possible that it's a neuter accusative like *felu. Anglom (talk) 00:03, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

The difficulty is in the West Germanic ending -a, which apparently is missing from Old English and Old Frisian for some reason. -ō would not show such a pattern, it would appear as -u instead and OE would probably preserve it after a short syllable. An alternative is -ē, which would at least produce the right vowel, but that becomes -i in Old Norse and shouldn't be lost in Old English either. —CodeCat 00:14, 30 July 2015 (UTC)