Talk:Germanic languages/Archive 1

message: 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.
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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?
::No, scholars don't. Langobardic was a west-germanic language of high-german stock.
Asdfgl 23:12, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Location

message: The page includes this quote:
:3. The presence of two distinct types of verb conjugation: weak (regular) and strong (irregular). English has 161 strong verbs; all are of native English origin.
If I should be nitpicky, at least "take" is a strong verb with a non-native english origin, instead being a scandinavian/old norse borrowing. 
The scandinavian languages are also germanic, though, so maybe it's unnecessary to edit this.
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I thought that the verb "catch - caught" had a Romance origin (capere) MaartenVidal 22:45, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Linguistic Markers

message: 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)
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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)
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I deleted "Burgundian", as it was an old French dialect. --zeno 00:44 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)
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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.
:Swedish has cognates "orka"(vb. cope,manage,handle etc.) and "yrka"(vb. demand). It also has the word "Verk", although technically, it is a low german borrowing, and not a cognate. It is a more exact translation, though.
::I might have been wrong. It seems like it is a true cognate... 
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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)
thread_title: Low German

message: :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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title: Yiddish

message: ----
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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title: More on Non-IE Roots

message: :Tok Pisin is not a pidgin any more, just like Afrikaans isn't any more.  Morwen 21:58, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)
:: It is generally agreed that Afrikaans is not a creole language and did not begin as a pidgin. Booshank 20:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Tok Pisin

message: How does one revert a page? The last edit has made a hash out of the table. Cheers Io 14:37, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I found out in the meantime. Now reverted to last good version. Io 14:44, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Reversion

message: Some notes on the comparison of terms table:
For English "Home":
- I believe the dutch "Thuis" is short for "te huis", i.e. "at house", and is not the same word linguistically as "Home".
This is correct.  Just like 'thans' comes from 'van te hand = bij de hand' so does 'thuis' originate from 'te huis'.  See for example Max Havelaar where 'te huis' is still used. --asmodai 15:43, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparability of Terms 

message: I think the tree got a bit large and unwieldy. Maybe the English dialects should be moved to a page of their own, as was done with the German dialects. By the way, is there really a linguistic difference between "Commonwealth dialects" and "American dialects"? I am not aware of any.
I guess this shows the limitations of the tree notation. A tree works well for languages - they are not mutually intellegible, and so they evolve more or less in a tree-like shape. But a tree does not work so well for dialects which are mutually intellegible -- dialects are related to each other in a network, they mix with their neighbors all the time. Of course it's hard to draw the line between language and dialect, but maybe it would be a good idea to limit the tree on this page to the higher levels, where a tree notation actually makes sense. --Chl 16:06, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, there are differences between some Commonwealth and some American dialects (f'risntance, in Australia, the diphthong represented orthographically as AI is pronounced [æi], not [ei], and many Rs are silent, whereas most are pronounced in most American dialects, though this generalisation is inaccurate because it's based on politics, not pronunciation). However, any grouping of Englishes by 'Commonwealth' vs 'British' vs 'American' is pure nonsense, based on politics and not pronunciations (because they alliterate, y'see). Canadian English generally shares a lot more with American English than it does with Australian English. --Kesuari 06:18, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tree 

message: moved to Germanic languages for consistency with other language family articles (Italic languages, Anatolian languages etc.) dab 10:53, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: page move

message: I'm sorry, this is about "Germanic languages". English is one of them. Fine, why not list British English vs. American English. But the listing of every English-like lingo in America is bloating the tree. People can click on American English for higher resolution, after all. Otherwise, we'll end up with an entry for each and every American, British, German, Scandinavian, Swiss, Dutch, etc., town and district. That's clearly not what we want here. dab (ᛏ) 20:53, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: the tree

message: 2. The use of a dental suffix (/d/ or /t/) instead of vowel alternation (ablaut) to indicate past tense.
That's not unique at all. There are strong and weak verbs in nearly every Indo-European language, of which the strong verbs use ablaut-systems and the weak verbs don't, although the dental suffix in the past tense is not usual.
I only wrote it here, because someone with more knowledge than me should correct it, if I'm wrong, but I'm quite sure, that I'm right.
:Not really.  The Germanic weak verbs were a unique development in Germanic.  The strong verbs are not: they derive directly from PIE ablaut-based verbs, and are found in other IE languages including Latin and Greek, though they are not called "strong" there - simply because conventions of description are different.  The Germanic lanugages are not the only group to have formed a "simpler" alternative ablaut-free verb paradigm, but those are separate developments which should not be thrown together.  At any rate, the text as it stands is correct.  --Doric Loon 10:21, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Strong/Weak verbs

message: No, not all of them. Strive-strove-striven was borrowed from French, and became strong thru analogy with thrive, drive, and so on. Bryan 82.44.212.6 22:57, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And Take-took-taken is borrowed from Old Norse, (I think Strive is from Frankish, though, so it's probably true that all English strong verbs are germanic in origin, at least...) 惑乱 分からん 11:36, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: All 161 English strong Verbs Are Homeborn

message: What is the source for using the term South Germanic to cover EGmc+WGmc? --Pfold 17:44, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe East Germanic should be moved right, next to Gutnish. (Well, that is where they (Goths) claimed they came from.) -- Petri Krohn 23:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: South Germanic

message: I wonder whether the Low Franconian and Low German column maybe should be swapped, since I believe that Low Franconian actually is slightly closer to Anglo-Frisian. 惑乱 分からん 11:43, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Diachronic box

message: The English "give" is given to mean "geven" in Dutch, which to my opinion is wrong. It should be "geef". And it looks to me as if the translations in the other languages are translating it the same way. "give" should be changed to "to give", so at least the translation makes sense by looking at it from a theoretical viewpoint. Which on the other hand isn't the purpose of the table, but at least then it would be correct in some way. Comments would be appreciated(83.118.38.37 15:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You mean English give could only be construed as an imperative, and if the infinitive was intended it would need to be to give? No, I'm afraid I don't agree there. The English bare form can be used perfectly well as an infinitive on its own, and it is used as such as the citation form of the verb in most modern grammatical literature. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:54, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The German translation of "dead" is "tot", not "tod". "Tod" is a noun, meaning "death", not "dead". Mbruno 02:03, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vocabulary comparison

message: I have changed the somewhat old notations East Scandinavian and West Scandinavian into the more modern Mainland Norse and Insular Norse. The former classification is valid only for the period 700AD-1500AD (using the timeline in the article). Post 1500AD, it's clear that such a classification is rather pointless and theoretical. The modern view is mentioned in the article about Swedish ( http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svenska ):
:"Svenska är ett indoeuropeiskt språk som tillhör den nordgermanska grenen av de germanska språken. Tillsammans med danskan tillhör det den östskandinaviska undergruppen, som skiljer dessa från de västskandinaviska språken norska, färöiska och isländska. En modernare uppdelning av språken baserar sig på ömsesidig begriplighet och delar upp de nordiska språken i en fastlandsskandinavisk grupp som inkluderar danska, norska och svenska och en öskandinavisk grupp som inkluderar färöiska och isländska. Detta på grund av att norskan blivit kraftigt påverkad av i synnerhet danska under det senaste årtusendet och fjärmat sig från de övriga västskandinaviska språken."
What the article says is basically that since the originally West Norse language Norwegian has close-to converged with the East Norse language Danish, the old classification for the modern languages doesn't make any sense any more. Due to the demand for consistency, someone needs to write a proper article on Wikipedia about Mainland Norse and Insular Norse, though. ( Hunef 18:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now solved the problem in a more elegant manner by avoiding the notions of Mainland Norse, Insular Norse, East Norse and West Norse completely. I focus on particular languages instead. ( Hunef 21:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Mainland Norse and Insular Norse

message: I believe the western half of the Republic of South Africa should be colored  "solid red" rather than the "stripped red". I say so because 55 % of the population of the Western Cape and 67 % of the population of the Northern Cape speak Afrikaans (a Germanic language) as first language. On top of that, another 20 % of the population of the Western Cape are native speakers of English. Mbruno 02:10, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: Let me say it with Marlene Dietrich:
Where are all the Franconians gone?
I remember that there are not only Low Franconian dialects (related to Dutch), but Rhine Franconian dialects spoken in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Luxembourg e. g. and Main Franconian dialects spoken in northern Bavaria. Because it is not true, Bavarian Dialects are spoken in the Nuremberg area!--Pelagus 20:14, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: the difference is that Low Franconian is considered "not German", while the other Franconian varieties are considered "German". The definition of "German" is by political and social consensus, not by linguistic criteria; the difference is essentially that there are newspapers printed in Low Franconian, but not in Main Franconian. dab (ᛏ) 13:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Franconians 

message: From where is the information that Germanic speakers other than English and German are about 50 million? I think there'll be more than that, but that depends (mainly) on the definition of what constitutes German, if the dialects in Germany are considered as German dialects or separate languages, also there are many people that speak several different Germanic languages and dialects, so speakers often overlap. Anyway, here's info from Wikipedia's language pages:
# English 1st 380 mil, 2nd 150 mil - 1 bil (Depending on definition of fluency, I guess)
# German 1st 110 mil, 2nd 120 mil
# Alemannic German 10 mil
# Austro-Bavaraian German 12 mil
# Limburgish 1.6 mil
# Dutch 22 mil
# Afrikaans 1st 6 mil, 2nd 10 mil
# Yiddish 3 mil
# Low German 1st 3 mil, 2nd 10 mil
# West Frisian 300-700.000
# Scots 1.5 mil
# Swedish 9.3 mil
# Danish 5.5 mil
# Norwegian 4.6 mil
# Icelandic 300.000
# Faroese 60-80.000
A rough count gets around 80 mil, only including Low German gets 46, so, the number would depend on if you'd consider all High Germanic dialects as German, or not. 惑乱 分からん 17:01, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But in that case, is there any reason to add the 50 mil number, anyway? (Also, I think the wording sounds awkward.) Anyhow, that was my reasoning. 惑乱 分からん 17:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, this page doesn't mention anything about the continuum, but alright, then, I understand the reasoning. 惑乱 分からん 20:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other Germanic languages 

message: The North Germanic part of the table now shows disproportionate detail; the variety of North Germanic is rather less than the variety of German, and it is indefensible to show things like Gutnish or Norn, but not Austro-Bavarian / Alemannic / Saxon. I suggest we revert the table back to lower detail, there is only so much detail you can present at a glance before the 'overview' purpose is defeated. dab (ᛏ) 13:56, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: diachronic table

message: I tend to go with Ulritz in this edit dispute. Since the article is named "Low Germanic languages", it makes sense to have a direct link, instead of a redirect. 惑乱 分からん 13:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Low Saxon - Low Franconian vs Low Germanic 

message: I'm afraid I fail to see Futures points. Would you care to eleborate so we can solve this matter quickly?
Rex 14:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the diachronic table is basically a classificatory tree diagram, a "stammbaum" (with a bit of extra fancy formatting). Such diagrams are used by linguists to represent just this: linguistic relationships within language families. Every linguist will be aware that there are some incertainties and limitations of this way of representing relationships, but still, that's what they are used for. This one for instance represents the claim that Norwegian and Faroese are related to each other more closely than either is to Icelandic; that the three of them are related to each other more closely than to Swedish and Danish, and so on. Whether those claims are right or wrong in detail is not the issue. If this diagram is not about "representing their relation to each other linguistically", then what the hell is it doing here? Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, Lombardic has its own extra disclaimer underneath anyway. And the four parallel branches under "South Germanic": by way of convention, if you have a more-than-binary branching under a single node in a classification tree, the linear order of the nodes is insignificant. This simply means that the exact relation between these four branches is undefined. Which is just as well. In sum, all I can see is that this tree has been very very carefully grafted in such as way as to represent something, and so as to represent it as accurately as humanly possible under the given circumstances. Now, you still haven't answered me this: If this something isn't linguistic relationships, then what is it? Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Re-read my last. "Suggesting closest relation" is simply a misreading of how a tree diagram works. The positioning of Dutch vis-a-vis the neighbouring nodes is suggesting no such thing. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Given the nature of how tree diagrams work, this is simply the best we can do. Of course you are free to move the Dutch branch to the right of the Saxon branch, if you prefer that. It makes no difference, but maybe the "perception" changes? Anyway, it's a very, very minor issue, and doesn't warrant such a wholesale disclaimer as the one you put up. Otherwise, you'd still have to explain: if "representing linguistic relationships" isn't what the table does, then what does it do? Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not removing anything anywhere. It's a hierarchical tree, left-right adjacency as such has absolutely no meaning within it. If some readers should be unable to understand that, that's too bad for them, but there's really nothing we can do about it. Let's face it, there simply is no possible way on earth we could present family relationships in a one-dimensional space and represent every single link between them. The table as it is is as good as any, and it does exactly what such tables are supposed to do: represent linguistic relationships, as exactly as possible in such a format. It's really no different from any other language tree contained anywhere else on Wikipedia or in the linguistic literature; hence, no need for special disclaimers. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks Fran. The table shows the succession of the significant historical stages of each language (vertically), and their approximate groupings in subfamilies (horizontally). Horizontal sequence within each group does not imply a measure of greater or lesser similarity.? Sounds still trivial to me, but if folks insist... Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's great, I'll make the change. We should aim for maximum clarity ;) - FrancisTyers · 18:04, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diachronic troubles 

message: Sorry to diverge from discussion of the article itself, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me where I could find a comparative vocabularies table, similar to the one in the article, that features primarily "Old" languages;- Old English, Old High German, Old Norse and the like? Knyght27 12:10, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, perhaps you could pose the question at Proto-Germanic language. For a start, here's some dictionaries looking useful you could look through yourself, a lot of the text included is in German, though: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/aa_texts.html http://homepage.uibk.ac.at/~c30310/publikat.html 惑乱 分からん 17:11, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparative vocabularies