Can you please write English?
I know the French have no respect for the rule of law and for other people's languages, but just do it.
I know the French have no respect for the rule of law and for other people's languages, but just do it.
Late Old English and Early Middle English
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Sander, the main thing is that Old English is far more transparent if one knows at least a bit of German; at that point, it basically looks like German with more inflection and a rather weird orthography.
>>Sander, the main thing is that Old English is far more transparent if one knows at least a bit of German; at that point, it basically looks like German with more inflection and a rather weird orthography.<<
I don't think knowing German helps that much. They are too dissimilar, and with the sound shift and all... I think knowing Old Norse would help a bit more.
I don't think knowing German helps that much. They are too dissimilar, and with the sound shift and all... I think knowing Old Norse would help a bit more.
Guest, even still, Old English is much more transparent to a Modern English-speaker if they also know German than if they know just Modern English alone. As for your comments about Old Norse, yes, Old English would be even more understandable were one to know that, but one must still remember that much of that is just due to later loans into Old English from Old Norse, and Old English is still fundamentally West Germanic, specifically Anglo-Frisian West Germanic, all things considered.
=> I don't think knowing German helps that much. They are too dissimilar, and with the sound shift and all... I think knowing Old Norse would help a bit more. <=
Oh I know it does, you would be amazed how similar English and German are.
Oh I know it does, you would be amazed how similar English and German are.
I would say that both views are right: we used to study some Old English/Early Middle English texts at university, and while it was most similar to other West Germanic dialects, it also had some phonetic developments typical to Scandinavian languages (e.g. the palatalisation of the perfective prefix "ge-" into /ye/, which in Middle English changed to "y-", as in "y-ronne" from the prologue of the Canterbury Tales). This can be due to the fact that the Anglo-Saxons came from the border area between the West Germanic and the Scandinavian dialects (the southern part of the Yutland peninsula).
Well, Easterner, many or the North Germanic languages have had the palatalization of Old Norse /g/ into /j/ in many places, especially word-finally, which English and the Frisian languages, and to a lesser extent Low Saxon and Dutch have also had, *but* the North Germanic languages have never had the past participle prefix "ge"- (or derived prefixes such as Middle English "y"- and Southern Low Saxon "e"- or "y"-), which is a feature limited to the West Germanic and East Germanic languages.
I agree, Sander -- Old English might as well be Martian, for me. The only reason I recognized "ic" asr "I", was because I've been hanging around you and your Dutch "ik" too long....
In all that text, all I could pick out on sight were the following:
Beowulf is min nama = Beowulf is mine [my] name
gif he us = give he us [he gives us]
andswarode = answered (only because of the weird "sw" in both words)
min ærende = mine [my] errand
word æfter spræc = word after sprach (mix of English and German, only vaguely intelligible as to meaning)
Hi, Candy: nice to see you again!
In all that text, all I could pick out on sight were the following:
Beowulf is min nama = Beowulf is mine [my] name
gif he us = give he us [he gives us]
andswarode = answered (only because of the weird "sw" in both words)
min ærende = mine [my] errand
word æfter spræc = word after sprach (mix of English and German, only vaguely intelligible as to meaning)
Hi, Candy: nice to see you again!
Travis,
Thanks for the correction. I actually remember having read Plattdeutsch texts on the Net which had the same palatalised prefix. This dialect bears some resemblance to Standard German, Dutch and Danish alike, being something of a link between the three, in much the same way as Occitan is a link between Standard French, Italian and Catalan.
Speaking of Low Saxon, I have wanted to ask: what is called Plattdeutsch in German is a variant of Low Saxon, or are they two different Germanic dialects? Also, are there any figures as to how many people are actually native speakers of Low Saxon nowadays? (I read somewhere that they may amount to several thousand only, although there are much more people who can actually understand and speak Low Saxon/Niedersächsisch.)
Thanks for the correction. I actually remember having read Plattdeutsch texts on the Net which had the same palatalised prefix. This dialect bears some resemblance to Standard German, Dutch and Danish alike, being something of a link between the three, in much the same way as Occitan is a link between Standard French, Italian and Catalan.
Speaking of Low Saxon, I have wanted to ask: what is called Plattdeutsch in German is a variant of Low Saxon, or are they two different Germanic dialects? Also, are there any figures as to how many people are actually native speakers of Low Saxon nowadays? (I read somewhere that they may amount to several thousand only, although there are much more people who can actually understand and speak Low Saxon/Niedersächsisch.)
"Plattdeutsch" ("Plattdüütsch" in Low Saxon) is just another name for Low Saxon, which is probably more commonly used in German and Low Saxon than it is in English; "Low Saxon" literally translates into German as "Niedersächsisch", into itself as "Neddersassisch", and into Dutch as "Nedersaksisch". Today, though, the term "Low Saxon" generally seems to be the preferred usage in English when referring to such, and it lacks the connotations of "Plattdeutsch"/"Plattdüütsch". Furthermore, the term "Low Saxon" is useful politically because it does not conceptually subordinate it to German, but rather places it on the same level with German and Dutch, and is useful linguistically because it in reality exists in a triangular relationship with German and Dutch rather than being any closer to German than it is to Dutch.
As for Low Saxon being sort of analogous to Occitan, I myself would agree. In many ways it is similar to both German and Dutch, in some ways it is similar to German and not to Dutch, in some ways it is similar to Dutch and not to German, in some ways it differs from both German and Dutch, and in some ways it actually shows similarity to the North Germanic languages and the Anglo-Frisian languages than to the other non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic languages. Overall, if one had to choose a single "average" modern Germanic language, in my opinion at least it would probably be Low Saxon, as it has similarities to practically all the other modern Germanic languages in one way or another. If one looks at it one way, it is similar to German, in other ways, it is similar to Dutch, in other ways, it is similar to English and the Frisian languages, and in other ways to the continental North Germanic languages.
As for the amount of speakers of Low Saxon, from what I have gathered, it is actually quite large *but* this is complicated because many individuals' competence in it is only limited, due to the influence of both German and Dutch. In particular, one often gets things like a combination of Low Saxon grammar and practically German vocabulary, which is referred to as "Missingsch", and also people accidentally replacing Low Saxon grammatical rules with those of German, for example, in the context of how to use the imperative mood, which differs between German and Low Saxon. Hence, one does have a significant body of people who speak it, but a very large portion of it are not really fluent in a "pure" form of it, without being significantly influenced by German and or Dutch both vocabulary-wise and grammatically.
As for Low Saxon being sort of analogous to Occitan, I myself would agree. In many ways it is similar to both German and Dutch, in some ways it is similar to German and not to Dutch, in some ways it is similar to Dutch and not to German, in some ways it differs from both German and Dutch, and in some ways it actually shows similarity to the North Germanic languages and the Anglo-Frisian languages than to the other non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic languages. Overall, if one had to choose a single "average" modern Germanic language, in my opinion at least it would probably be Low Saxon, as it has similarities to practically all the other modern Germanic languages in one way or another. If one looks at it one way, it is similar to German, in other ways, it is similar to Dutch, in other ways, it is similar to English and the Frisian languages, and in other ways to the continental North Germanic languages.
As for the amount of speakers of Low Saxon, from what I have gathered, it is actually quite large *but* this is complicated because many individuals' competence in it is only limited, due to the influence of both German and Dutch. In particular, one often gets things like a combination of Low Saxon grammar and practically German vocabulary, which is referred to as "Missingsch", and also people accidentally replacing Low Saxon grammatical rules with those of German, for example, in the context of how to use the imperative mood, which differs between German and Low Saxon. Hence, one does have a significant body of people who speak it, but a very large portion of it are not really fluent in a "pure" form of it, without being significantly influenced by German and or Dutch both vocabulary-wise and grammatically.
Hi Uriel! :-)
I have very little time to post at the moment - but will try to get over to langcafe at some point. (lot of trolls around antimoon at the moment, eh?)
What I find very weird about Old English is the word order. For example, the A-S Chronicle (translated into Modern English because I can't remember the original): 'they said openly that Christ slept and his saints', not 'Christ and his saints'. (The word for 'saints' was 'halechen' as far as I remember.)
I have very little time to post at the moment - but will try to get over to langcafe at some point. (lot of trolls around antimoon at the moment, eh?)
What I find very weird about Old English is the word order. For example, the A-S Chronicle (translated into Modern English because I can't remember the original): 'they said openly that Christ slept and his saints', not 'Christ and his saints'. (The word for 'saints' was 'halechen' as far as I remember.)
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