Talk:Germanic languages

To Rmhermen on Burgundian see Burgundians for people. The language is very difficult, but a website from ch/Switzerland gives info in German. 'Lex Burgundionum" = Burgunderrecht= Laws of the Burgundians - one of the oldest Germanic law records, by Gundobad + 516 , Laws written down are based on tribal Germanic custums. and by king Sigismund + 523/4 "Prima Constitutio". Burgundian soldiers , originally from Baltic Sea, Vistula to Rheinland , Worms area had soldiers as "hospites" in Roman service. Then came to (later)Burgundy, Swabia (Schwaben), Switzerland, Savoyen. , settled in 443 :"Sapaudia". and 457 in province Lugdunensis. Language remnants are very sparse, a Burgunder king daughter married Theoderic the Great. Some history in "Niebelungen Lied" and in later Switzerland in: "Burgundische Eidgenossenschaft" see external Swiss link in Germanhttp://www.Snl.ch/dhs/externe/project/textes/D8028.html user:H.J.

Me again (boring day at work) -- the lex Burgundiorum (Burgundiarum?) is written in Latin, as are the other extant law codes

Location

All the West-Germanic languages seem to be located East of the East-Germanic languages. --AxelBoldt

All the East-Germanic languages do not exist any more.

Gothic is the known East-Germanic language. From the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD, they did live to the east of most other Germanic speakers, in what is now Poland, Ukraine, the Balkans and thereabouts. Later, some of them settled in Spain and Italy. (And legend has it that they may have lived in Sweden at an earlier date.)

The other possible East-Germanics are guessed from a few tiny fragments and proper names, and the fact that those tribes at one stage lived close to the Goths (in what is now Poland). Except maybe the Lombards. I don't know much about them except they later lived in northern Italy. Do scholars really think they spoke East-Germanic?

Non-Indoeuropean Roots

Is the quote of up to 80% non-indoeuropean roots correct? I have seen quotes of ca 30% elsewhere. And who were the Battle Axe people??

I could not find any sources to prove 80% and Battle Axe people, so I would propose to delete this item 6 at all. -- Vassili Nikolaev

What about removing the information about German dialects? They are also in the article High German. And it does not make sense to see them in such an overview (imho) --zeno 08:50 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

I agree; this page is too detailed with Low German, High German, and North Germanic holding the information. I'll shorten it, tell me if it's good now. -- Toby 01:17 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

Low German

Regarding "Low German": On Low German, it's explained how the term is used in at least 3 senses. The table now reflects the sense adopted by Wikipedia for that article -- which I adopted (and has spread to other language wikis) on the grounds that it was a real linguistic category but had no other name. (I would move discussion there, if any.) -- Toby 01:35 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

Toby asks: How about "traditionally" for Yiddish/Hebrew? Sounds good! Sebastian 09:40 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Great! I'm glad that that works out. -- Toby 02:09 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)

I deleted "Burgundian", as it was an old French dialect. --zeno 00:44 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Comparison of Selected Terms

Action is a bad example, as it is derived from Latin. Work (Latin: opus, Afrikaans, Dutch & German: werk) is a better word, but I don't know any other equivalents.

I moved "Lombardic" to the upper german branch, since it definitely underwent the second germanic vowelshift according to runic inscriptions. The wrong classification as an east germanic language seems to be copy&paste error, that meanwhile has spread throughout international wikipedia version. --Zinnmann 13:20, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yiddish

I am fairly sure that Yiddish does belong; to call it a "pidgin" implies that during the development of Yiddish, it was a contact language that involved Hebrew speakers meeting German speakers. Hebrew was long dead as a spoken language well before the Diaspora. Yiddish is in fact just a relatively ordinary dialect of German that developed in isolation from other German speakers, and developed a distinctive vocabulary to reflect the culture of the people who used it. Yiddish is largely intelligible to other speakers of colloquial German.

Yiddish does belong. Its grammar and basic vocabulary are typically German; it has a regular sound rule in which German "au" corresponds to Yiddish "oy" (which would be written äu in German), e.g. heraus:aroys. The fact that it has borrowed lots of words from Hebrew, Slavic, and other languages doesn't make it less Germanic. -phma 18:30, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Not sure about Angloromany, which strikes me more as a jargon, a secret Romany-derived vocabulary attached to an English base, rather than a pidgin. Smerdis of Tlön 17:01, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

While some might rightly question whether it counts as a separate language, "Ebonics" is definitely a variety of English, and therefore counts as a Germanic language, at least if English itself qualifies. For if admixture of alien vocabulary means that a language ceases to be Germanic, English also should be dropped from the list; it has far more Romance and Latin words than Yiddish has Hebrew or Slavic words. Smerdis of Tlön 20:34, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

My friends from Berlin say that they can understand spoken Yiddish well enough to get the general idea of what's being said (if not every single word.) It ought to stay. Kwertii 23:11, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

More on Non-IE Roots

Quoting from the page: "The abundance of non-IE roots. There are many Germanic roots that are not found in other IE tongues. These include words for universal actions such as "bite" and "chew" and all words about ships and the sea, except "boat". These roots may have been borrowed from the so-called Battle-axe people, of which the Norse, Angles, Frisians, and Franks had been a part when they were living on the Vänern Sea. The Aesir would later come from Jutland before landing in Sweden and supplanting the language with Indo-European words."

Any references for the rather strong claim that the Norse, Angels, Frisians and Franks all were living by the Vänern lake in Sweden at some stage and can be positively identified as the battle-axe people? This may be one historical theory, but I think it can't be stated as a fact. It's notoriously difficult to connect spoken languages to pre-historical archeological findings. I propose this gets removed again. 82.73.105.231 01:27, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

While a speculative connection can be referenced in wikipedia, I don't think this belongs as this assertion on the Germanic languages page. I haven't seen this reference on other pages yet, so don't know how to evaluate those. Perhaps best would be to put a reference to any such pages from the location in this page. Anyway, I'll remove the section identifying these prehistorical people with particular language groupings. Martijn faassen 21:49, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've seen a lot of pages where you have contributed this particular theory. Could you cite references to consensus historical theory? I'll remove again until you do such. Martijn faassen 22:20, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This theory in my opinion should not be part of the page on Germanic languages. Reference such a theory (as theory) if you like, but don't keep putting it back as fact in the middle of this article. Martijn faassen 22:38, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin is not a pidgin any more, just like Afrikaans isn't any more. Morwen 21:58, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

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Theudish

Theudish language, as far as I know (and as Google shows) is not real; Google suggests that it is a micronation's conlang, so I have deleted its link from this page and edited its page. Anyone know more about this?

A puzzling paragraph

I can't make heads or tails of this paragraph, currently included in the article:

"Many of the present-day divisions between Germanic/Baltic and Celtic/Slav peoples are rooted in the imperial structure of the Roman Empire's division between West and East, as well as the subsequent division called the Great Schism, which had most Celts within the influence of Rome and Latin Catholic; while Slavs revolved around Byzantium and Greek Orthodox. In turn, the Germanic people were under influence by the Celts and the Balts were revolving around the Slavs, as Mediterranean culture spread northwards. This cultural osmosis and subsequent split is primarily responsible for the classification of these peoples and their languages as parallel, but otherwise, the differences aren't so great along the borders of their cultural spheres, at least.

Surely the Roman Empire and the East-West Schism have nothing to do with origin of a separate Germanic language family, because that origin came far earlier in history. Are these "divisions" supposed to be cultural as opposed to linguistic divisions? But if so, isn't this really part of European history rather than historical linguistics?

In the absence of some kind of clarification, would it perhaps be sensible to delete this paragraph? Opus33 00:05, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This has Kenneth Alan's work written all over it. My understanding is that he is no longer actively editing, having left when other users contested his murky but suspect notions about Germanic peoples, languages, gods, and mythologies. It can safely go. The difference between Germanic languages, Celtic languages, and Baltic languages are profound; and at any rate not all Germanic speakers ended up in the Western half, as the history of the Crimean Goths manifests. Smerdis of Tlön 00:28, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I've done the deed, hoping not to put anyone into a state of rage. Thanks for your advice, Smerdis. Opus33 00:35, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Kenneth Alan is at it still, though he's claiming he's not editing anymore.

I've seen him add this in a minor edit: These are chiefly found in Insular Germanic and Insular Nordic tongues, while the typically Indo-European roots are found chiefly in the Continental Germanic and Continental Nordic.

This seems to claim that non-IE words like 'bite' and 'chew' are not typically found in continental Germanic languages. If the examples are anything to go on, this is bogus, as words with the same roots exist in continental Dutch and German. I'll remove this. Martijn faassen 21:24, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing wrong with being a positive contributor. Why not stop being a negative detractor, Martijn Faassen?

I wrote what makes sense; those words would be BEST preserved in the maritime affected languages, rather than continental, because the metamorphosis of continental languages occurs in greater extent replacing what may appear native, NON IE ROOTS. In maritime communities, people more often attempt to preserve their unique heritage and do not take to kindly to conversion to continental ways. Case in point, the Norman Conquest brought a language to the British Isles that the people resented because not knowing it restricted the general populace's power in their own home. The Norse left Scandinavia for Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland etc. to escape encroaching Danish control in their daily lives, which meant a continental influence like language. Doing this would have the highest concentration of older terms, most of them maritime, in the isles and insular tongues. Anglo-Frisian speech would most likely have given the inspiration for much insular talk in the Low German tongues, obviously, for the degree of connection in location and time. The Hanseatic League would no doubt use many of these terms when doing business in their time, but the fact remains, the Low German background received most of it's maritime terms from the Anglo-Frisians, just as the Swedes, Goths and Danes learned theirs from the Norse. Of course there are always invented terms and slang, from any time period that has no roots, but for the most part, is what the article is referring to. No need to scream "bogus", when the facts of historical lexicography are blatantly clear. Lord Kenneð 07:12, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

You are deliberately leaving out the other part to my reference of Non IE Roots, the fact that most of these terms are about ships and the sea. It seems you wish to discredit me by distorting the facts of my behaviour. Lord Kenneð 07:16, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]