The Neolithic Hypothesis

[Eduard Selleslagh]

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Date: woensdag 31 maart 1999 7:54

[ moderator snip ]

> I've read in some places that the languages formerly spoken in
>present Jutland, Schleswig & Holstein were "in between" North Germanic &
>West Germanic and that when the Angles migrated to England, that a gradual
>linguistic frontier was replaced by a barrier of non-mutually
>comprehensible languages.
> On one level this has a certain logic but on the other hand,
>English & Frisian do seem much closer to Low German. I can appreciate that
>Frisian may have been affected by Low German and Dutch but English wasn't.
> Another contradiction that I've seen are charts that list East
>Germanic with North Germanic.
> Why all the confusion? Has all of this been straightened out?

[Ed Selleslagh]

Some comments:

Around here (Flanders) it is - more or less - generally believed that the
Frisian people and the closely related West-Flemings (not just
linguistically) are descendants of probably southern Danish or other more or
less Scandinavian tribes that migrated south over the coastal sand
bars/islands, the last remains of which are the Dutch and German
'Waddeneilanden' and part of Sylt.  Don't forget that even as late as in J.
Caesar's time the geography of the coastline of the Low Countries was very
different: it consisted of 'lido's' separated from the mainland by shallow
sea/lagoon/marshland, similar to the lagoon of Venice. This lagoon and its
marshes stretched from the hills of Picardy to the IJsselmeer and the
Waddenzee and part of inland Friesland. It seems almost obvious that modern
Frisian has a Scandinavian sounding base, but was profoundly influenced by
Dutch/Low German. West-Flemish dialect is by far the most archaic Dutch
dialect.

The early inhabitants of these coastal islands and peninsulae were pretty
separated from those of the mainland (first the Brythonic Belgae, then the
Gallo-Romans, and finally the Salic Franks).  Tacitus called the Germanic
people of the coastal areas Ingaevones, who lived 'proximi Oceano'.

I am not sure at all that you can say English wasn't influenced by Dutch/Low
German, albeit in a somewhat convoluted way: Saxon itself is - or was - a
(collection of) Dutch/Low German dialect(s), while Anglian may be considered
to have been something in between Danish and Low German. Anyway, Old English
(pre-1066) and Old Dutch (which lacks almost entirely equally old texts, say
pre-1100) are remarkably close. In Eastern Holland, there are still Saxon
dialects. Finally, there are only a few tens of nautical miles between
English and Dutch, and both have a long seagoing tradition (Don't forget
that the earliest cultural center of Dutch was in the southernmost part of
the domain, in mainland West-Flanders).

As to 'northwestern Germanic', I am very, very skeptical about that idea.
The least you can say, is that it is not a necessary hypothesis.
Postulating mutual (or one-way west > east?) influence between east- and
west Germanic seems sufficient to explain the observed phenomena.  There was
ample opportunity for it to occur after the split of northeast into north
and east Germanic

Ed.