This is kind of “out there”, but in
The History of English Podcast
The Spoken History of a Global Language
by Kevin Stroud
Episode 35: English Sounds and Roman Letters
If you want to listen to it go to 38:00 to 39:55
transcript
Some scholars think that there is a link between the Jutes and a Scandinavian tribe called the “Geats”. This is when that link comes in. It has to do with the sound changes that took place in Latin and English which I have been discussing. One of the major sources of our knowledge about the Geats was the epic poem Beowulf, which is composed in Old English at a later date. Beowulf himself was a Geat who later became king of the Geats. The name of the Geats is spelled G E A T S in modern translations of the manuscript and so, many later generations of modern English speakers have tended to pronounce the name “Geats”. But, remember G E A R was pronounced “Year”, the original version of our word “year”. So, that initial “G”, probably had a “Y” sound in Old English. In the original text the name was spelled G E A T A S, so the pronunciation was probably “Geatas”. Meanwhile, the name “Jutes” reflects a later pronunciation change. Remember “Iupiter” became “Yupiter”, then became “Jupiter”. Well, the same thing happened with the name of the Jutes. During the time of Bede, Latin was still in the middle of that sound change and it was using the “Y” sound pronunciation of Yupiter. So for the same reason “Jutes” weren’t the Jutes yet. They were more like the “UTES”
listen at 38:00
Go Jutes…I mean UTES!
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