Talk:West Germanic languages

message: I was just passing through an noticed that the family tree seems to give the impression that Northern Middle English descends from Middle English and was contemporanious with Early Modern English. Is this the case? 81.79.229.119 21:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The family tree 

message: Although there is an entry in the German Wikipedia, Mecklenburgisch-Pommersch doesn't exist actually. This is a mixture of two different dialects: Mecklenburgisch-Vorpommersch and Pommersch. I know Vorpommersch and Pommersch sound similar but in fact they have only few things in common. Today only the first dialect is spoken in Germany, the second has somewhat died out due to World War II. --89.53.45.236 20:55, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mecklenburgisch-Pommersch 

message: I realize that both terms can be considered correct, but seeing as Low Saxon - though a disambiguation page - directs to Low German (where the two are equated), shouldn't we be using Low German in this article? Aryaman (☼) 20:39, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, we should. "Low Saxon" is ambiguous, as it is often used only for the dialects of Low German spoken in the Netherlands and Lower Saxony. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 22:07, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Low German vs. Low Saxon 

message: The map is not correct. The region of South Tyrol is not included in its entirety nor is the region of Swiss Graubuenden which is mainly German speaking. Walsar german speakers are also found in Italy. Therefore, the area of German speaking Switz. is wrong. Furthermore the border of Liechtenstein is nothing like it really looks on the map. This map is really unprofessional and not completely accurate. It needs to be updated! I don't think the portrayal of Luxembourg is right either.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.81.131.243 (talk) 14:49, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a wiki, so feel free to make corrections. If you go to Wikimedia Commons, register a user name, and wait four days, you'll be able to upload a corrected version of the map, either under a new name, or as a new version of the image with this name by going to commons:File:Europe germanic languages.PNG and clicking "Upload a new version of this file". +Angr 19:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The map

message: "The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family of languages  and include languages such as English, Dutch and Afrikaans, German, the Frisian languages, and Yiddish" (from article). Additionally, "Low Franconian, or Low Frankish, is a group of several West Germanic languages  spoken in the Netherlands, northern Belgium (Flanders), in the northern department of France, in western Germany (Lower Rhine), as well as in Suriname, South Africa and Namibia that originally descended from Old Frankish" (Low Franconian languages). The conflict occurs with the listed four (4) subdivisions in the ISO 639-5 on the top right portion of the page; "Anglo-Frisian, Low Franconian languages, Low German, High German" when one compares it to the West Germanic Family tree listed near the end of the article;
* Anglo-Frisian
          o English
          o Scots
          o Yola (now extinct)
          o Frisian languages
* Low German
          o Low Saxon
          o Low Franconian
                + Dutch
                + Afrikaans (in South Africa and Namibia)
* High German
          o Alemannic German
          o Austro-Bavarian German
          o German
          o Luxembourgish
          o Yiddish
          o Vilamovian
The article seems declarative in there being four subcategories, but ends stating (in part), "Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form dialect continua, with adjacent dialects  being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not" and then removes one of the categories, making the languages listed under "Low Franconian" only dialects, and the branch itself a language.
Also note how the Indo-European language tree, and the West Germanic language tree are congruent.
VMK 13:11, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Dutch is not Low German, do not readd it as being so. Thank you. HP1740-B (talk) 00:13, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Dutch is traditionally classified as or with Low German, though I've noticed Wikipedia meticulously avoids calling it such (presumably for nationalist reasons).Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 00:57, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Traditionally Frisian was also classified as Low German, but more recently classified as Anglo-Frisian as its closely related to English. Dutch is related to Low German, and a Low German Dutch dialect spoken in the east is classified as Low German. The whole thing with west-germanic languages is that they can be divided between those that did and those that didnt undergo the High German consonant shift. In that sense you can call all west-germanic languages Low German, except for High German. That would include English. Yes I can even find a minority amount of traditional sources that classify english as Low German. Contemporary classifications are different. All traditional sources that previously describe dutch as low german also included frisian as such. And that doesn't make sense. Why Would Dutch and Frisian be considered Low German and not English? No, contemporary sources mostly speak of Dutch as Low Franconion, English and Frisian as Anglo-Frisian and Low German as the dialects spoken in Northern Germany and Eastern Netherlands. All of course closely related, as Low German originates from Old Saxon. Grey Fox (talk) 20:55, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  As far as I know the division is made in terms of which specific features they have or lack. High German has the consonant shift. Low German and Anglo-Frisian together are defined as having a single verb form in the plural. I don't know how to divide those two, but at least the specific characteristics of Low German are clearly defined. So that leaves Dutch/Low Franconian, which has neither of these features. Though you have to take into account that the original 2nd person plural in Dutch is now the 2nd person singular, its ending is still -t as the German 2nd person plural -t, while the other two plural endings have -en as in German. CodeCat (talk) 23:59, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Family tree versus Subdivision conflict 

message: I've created a table of characteristics that appear in West Germanic but not in all languages. I think it would be useful to show the internal division of the languages, the continuum between them, and also their relationship. This is also important in light of the fact that West Germanic has been notoriously difficult to see as a 'tree'. Unfortunately I don't know how to find sources for this, so for now I'm just showing it here. I'm sure there are quite a few though, as the West Germanic dialect continuum has been studied extensively.
                                          	Old English	Old Frisian	Old Saxon	Old Low Franconian	Old Central German	Old Upper German
Palatalisation of velars                  	Yes        	Yes        	No       	No                	No                	No
Unrounding of front rounded vowels        	Yes        	Yes        	No       	No                	No                	No
Loss of intervocalic *-h-                 	Yes        	Yes        	No       	Yes               	No                	No
Class II weak verb ending *-(ō)ja-        	Yes        	Yes        	Partial  	No                	No                	No
Merging of plural forms of verbs          	Yes        	Yes        	Yes      	No                	No                	No
Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law              	Yes        	Yes        	Yes      	Partial           	No                	No
Loss of the reflexive pronoun             	Yes        	Yes        	Yes      	Yes               	No                	No
Reduction of weak class III to four relics	Yes        	Yes        	Yes      	Yes               	No                	No
Monophthongization of *ai, *au            	Yes        	Yes        	Yes      	Partial           	No                	No
Final-obstruent devoicing                 	No         	No         	No       	Yes               	No                	No
Dipthongization of *ē, *ō                 	No         	No         	Partial  	Yes               	Yes               	Yes
High German consonant shift               	No         	No         	No       	No                	Partial           	Yes
CodeCat (talk) 19:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table of dialectal characteristics 

message: Dear CodeCat, I really appreciate your contributions concerning Proto-Germanic, but today you were wrong. You reverted my contribution:
* Proto-Germanic *e becomes *i before syllabels with i or j (cf. OHG. and Old Saxon. biris, Anglo-Saxon birest „you bear" vs. Old Norse berr and Gothic baíris)
Saying: i-mutation of e is a Proto-Germanic change, not West Germanic. - Here you mixed something up. I think you had in mind the following change from Indo-European to Proto-Germanic:  
/e/ > /i/ when followed by a syllable-final nasal — *en "in" > *in; *séngʷʰeti "(s)he chants" > *sengʷidi > *singwidi "(s)he sings" 
This is accurate, but it simply refers to a different case. My contribution was accurate and I will restore it. Best regards to the Netherlands--DownUnder36 (talk) 23:05, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I had in mind the change of e to i when i or j follows. That is a common Proto-Germanic change and there are sources for that as well. The Proto-Germanic form was *biridi. CodeCat (talk) 01:05, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Can you tell a source for this? As to my knowledge the second person present tense of this verb was Proto-Germanic *berezi (not *birizi) from Pre-Proto-Germanic *bʱéresi. The "e" in the first syllable in Proto-Germanic is to be recontructed from the converging evidence of Gothic and Old Norse (see article); the form *biridi refers to the 3rd person anyway. Bammesberger (1986) reconstructs this form as *ƀeređi, also with /e/ in the first syllable. Best regards--DownUnder36 (talk) 08:48, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Gothic evidence isn't any good in this case because e and i merged in Gothic, becoming i normally and ai before h and r. As for Old Norse, it's very likely that the alternation between e and i was levelled out by analogy. But the i-mutation is still visible in other words where there was no such analogy, such as *giftiz < *gebaną "to give" or *midjaz < PIE *medhyos. Old Norse also has -i- in those words. -e- did not alternate with -i- via PIE ablaut, so i-mutation is the only other explanation. As for a source, D. Ringe's 2006 book "From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic". CodeCat (talk) 11:20, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Still not convinced. Proto-Germanic /e/ didn't give Got. /i/ in any position but as you say has been preserved as "aí" (probably pronounced /ɛ/) before h and r (and also before hʷ). So if Western Germanic languages shift Prg. /e/ to /i/ in one of the environments where Gothic didn't (or just modified /e/ to /ɛ/ and if they do so also in contrast in Old Norse, than this change is specific for these langauges and presumably a later change than similar /e/ > /i/ shifts between PIE and Prg. Or what should be inaccurate with the example given in the article? - I know the famous book of Ringe 2006, who acually focuses on the changes between PIE and Proto-Germanic. I just searched for arguments in our debate but didn't find one (which page?). - And YES my first posting of last night wasn't as friendly as it could have been.--DownUnder36 (talk) 20:15, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

text:  PS: I want to tell further sources on this as soon as I can.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by DownUnder36 (talk • contribs) 20:17, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  If e didn't become i anywhere in Gothic, then what about all the instances where it did become i? See for yourself; i and ai are in complimentary distribution in native Germanic words. I don't think this article should give WP:UNDUE weight to a minority position, the majority agrees that i-mutation did occur in Proto-Germanic or at least demonstrably in Proto-Northwest-Germanic (because the merging levelled out the effects in Gothic). CodeCat (talk) 22:27, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  As to me, all arguments have been exchanged now. I am curious about more views on this question and will look for further references myself.--DownUnder36 (talk) 10:13, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Change from *e > *i 

message: Article reads:
:The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family...
What is meant by "traditional" here? Is there a "modern" classification which is different? Is there a question as to the validity of the three branches? As far as I know, no. So the word "traditional" is unnecessary here.
Map caption reads:
:The traditional distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe...
I have no idea what "traditional" is supposed to mean here. The map clearly shows German ending at the Oder-Neisse line. This is a post-1945 phenomenon -- before then, there were millions of German-speakers in modern Poland, Kaliningrad (Russia), and the Czech republic. I will improve the caption. --Macrakis (talk) 20:30, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I see what was intended by the "traditional branches", but the wording isn't good. I think West Germanic is still accepted as a grouping, even if Proto-West-Germanic is questioned. --Macrakis (talk) 21:17, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The "traditional" view has been that Proto-Germanic split up in West Germanic, East Germanic and North Germanic. It's in many ways a workable structure, but according to "modern" linguists historically it is doubtful that a Proto-Westgermanic language ever existed. They think that after East Germanic broke off, the remaining Northwest Germanic language broke into North Germanic, North Sea Germanic (Ingvaeonic), Weser-Rhine Germanic (Istvaeonic) and Elbe Germanic (Irminonic). The latter three constitute the West Germanic languages. Frisian and English  are Ingvaeonic, Dutch is Istvaeonic with some Ingvaeonic influences, and German is a mix of Irminonic and Istvaeonic.--Watisfictie (talk) 13:15, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Traditional

message: The family tree is deeply unsatisfactory. For a start, it is ensourced. But more to the point it is, to be blunt, ludicrous: the Rhine-Weser group apparently consists only of Dutch and no Central German dialects, and all the German dialects are grouped as Elbe Germanic. --Pfold (talk) 13:28, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankish_language#/media/File:Altfr%C3%A4nkische_Sprache_600-700.png is a map sourcedly showing most of the area appearing as Central Franconian in other maps was part of Old Frankish and the one of Rhine Franconian as Elbe Germanic. Sarcelles (talk) 06:02, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think we should rely on an "own work" map on WP based on books solely devoted to Dutch (and therefore not about High German), I suggest looking at Chris Wells's German a Linguistic History. Fig. 3 on p. 39 has *all* Central German dialects derived from Weser-Rhine Gmc, and only Alemannic & Bavarian coming from Elbe Gmc. This is the standard view stated in a standard work, not something I would regard as idiosyncratic, and certainly you would need *much* better sourcing if you want to diagree with it. --Pfold (talk) 07:44, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

text: Another source - the diagram from Maurer's seminal work: Elbgermanisch", "Weser-Rhein-Germanisch" und die Grundlagen des Althochdeutschen  --Pfold (talk) 08:33, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Family Tree 

message: Where does Old Frankish fit in the article? I'm surprised that Langobardisch/Lombardisch are here, but the similarly extinct West Germanic tongue is not. That's kind of funny, because I think most people have the idea of Langobards/Lombards as an East Germanic tribe like the Burgundians, or at least might wonder why Burgundians are East, with the others West and perhaps not vice versa, or not the same between them either way, because those two seemed to have been related, judging by a common history after the Völkerwanderung, whereas Goths and Vandals rather disappeared. I don't think anyone confuses the category Goths and Vandals belong to and at least the former have their own version of the Bible to judge. One wonders how the Vandals and Alans conducted government in the dual kingdom at Carthage, with one Germanic and the other Iranian.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.234.42 (talk) 00:23, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old Frankish and Langobardisch/Lombardisch 

message: Rather, Yiddish is a sister language of the various High German dialects that formed the basis of Standard German, just as Moselle Franconian (Luxembourgish) is. I have rewritten the lede accordingly. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 19:17, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: For Yiddish not to be a daughter of German dialects, it would have to be a direct descendant of some branch of West Germanic - which it isn't -  and it would have to be able to trace its origin back to prehistoric Northern Europe - which it can't. --Pfold (talk) 22:32, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Just about nothing in what you said is even slightly correct or even relevant. Please go read about daughter languages, the Yiddish language, the Germanic languages, historical linguistics, a language is a dialect with an army and navy, among other things. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 23:14, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: For that matter you don't even seem to have replied to the original point which is that German, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish are sister languages descended from Old High German. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 23:18, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yiddish is no more of a "daughter language of German" than Luxembourgish is 

message: After browsing a while through the Proto-West Germanic (PWG) Wiktionary entries and this article i noticed that the noun inflection tables here and in wiktionary are not in agreement with eachother. For example: here short -a is retained (as in *dagă), as are nasal vowels (as in *dagą) reflecting the earlier PWG after loss of word final z. While wiktionary reflects the later stage of PWG where both -ă and -ą are lost leading to *dag.  Whouldn't it be better to have both be the same?
77.248.144.142 (talk) 18:44, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The coverage here is actually more accurate than Wiktionary's, assuming a Proto-West-Germanic stage. At the very least, those nasal ą's should not be dropped until the languages have already diverged. Old English infinitive form for most verbs is -an(from -aną), but the strong past participle is -en(from -anaz). Without the nasal vowel, there would be nothing to render these different results. Cynemund (talk) 10:48, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why don't we make the inflection tables consistent with those in Wiktionary? 

message: The sentence "The language family also includes Afrikaans, Yiddish, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Scots, which are closely related to Dutch, German and English respectively" is problematic: you can't have five things related "respectively" to three things.
I would guess it's supposed to say something like "The language family also includes Afrikaans (closely related to Dutch), Yiddish, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish (all three of which are closely related to German), and Scots (closely related to English)" --Crink (talk) 22:24, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed —Tamfang (talk) 05:10, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Except that Low Saxon is grouped historically with English as N.Sea Germanic. --Pfold (talk) 08:07, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: "Respectively"

message: I'm just writing to talk about perhaps expanding the vocabulary comparison tables on West Germanic languages since it doesn't really explore the breadth of West Germanic much. This comes after I made the addition of West Riding dialect, one of the many traditional Anglic Languages considered part of broad definitions of "English", which was quickly reverted. 
Looking beyond Anglic, there are no exemplars of the wider modern German dialect continuum beyond Standard German. Moreover, while Afrikaans is an officially recognised distinct language, it developed from the broader Hollandic dialect as Standard Dutch. As a result its inclusion here over exemplars of the seperate West Flemish dialect group for example, is slightly perplexing if the objective is to give an overview of West Germanic vocabulary/word forms as a whole. The spectrum of West Germanic isn't covered even in a loose sense and thus I believe this needs to be rectified with more inclusions. 
I would propose adding exemplars of Low and High German dialects, perhaps Wymysorys, as a start. Maybe removing Afrikaans since it essentially represents a second helping of the same narrow part of West Germanic as Standard Dutch insofar as its presence on the table is concerned. Additionally, we already have historical examples of Germanic in the form of the Proto-Germanic and Proto-West-Germanic on the tables, so is the addition of Old English and Old High German really necessary?
What do you think? Fendditokes (talk) 17:18, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expanding the comparison tables?  

message: The following was left by unknown editor in a "citation needed" template in the article:
Since 30 November 2017, as it is unsourced,
and contradicts:
* Friedrich Maurer (linguist)#Work & : Elbe Germans consist of Alemanni and Bavarians, Weser–Rhine Germans of Franks
** People are identified with their languages (Alemannic for Alemanni, Bavarian for the Bavarians etc.).
** High German consists of both Upper Germanic (Alemannic, Bavarian [etc.]) and Central German (Middle Franconian, Thuringian, Upper Saxon [etc.]).
** Franconian of the Franks developed into both Low Franconian (later Dutch) and Middle Franconian (part of High German).
* Hans Frede Nielsen, Nordic-West Germanic relations, in: The Nordic Languages: An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages, volume 1 (series: Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft or short HSK 22.1), 2002, p. 558ff., here p. 558f.: "Thus Maurer (1952) [..] replaced West Germanic with as many as three primary groups: North Sea Germanic (Ingveonic), the ancestor of Frisian, Saxon and English; Weser-Rhine Germanic (Istveonic), which developed into Franconian, etc.; and Elbe Germanic (Erminonic), which later became Upper German."
*: Franconian developed into both Low Franconian (later Dutch) and Middle Franconian (part of High German).
BTW: Was already discovered 2019...
– Primium (talk) 20:09, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources needed in Family tree