LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 26.JUL.2000 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: "Language varieties"

John Feather wrote

[Stefan Israel wrote:]
>> As late as the 500's AD, runic inscriptions were
>> still being written in a
>> single Northwest Germanic language<
>
> Is this in fact correct? The earliest runic
> inscriptions, from 300 CE,  seem
> to be in proto-Norse. Gothic, recorded from 350 CE,
> is said to have Nordic
> features, which seems to imply that Nordic had
> Nordic features when the
> Goths left the Baltic area.

For a nice overview of the early runic inscriptions,
see if you can track down Elmer Antonsen, particularly
his Concise Grammar of Runic (I believe that's the
exact title, but it's been some years since I last
read it).  The earliest preserved inscriptions are
thought to date to about 200 AD, but they don't show
regionalisms.  Runes must be older, because the first
preserved inscriptions are on rock in the north,
whereas runes are specifically designed for carving
into wood, and derive from the alphabet being used in
northern Italy before Latin took over.

The lack of regionalisms is surprising, because, as
you point out, the dialects were clearly diverging by
this time.  Gothic/East Germanic and Norse/North
Germanic share some traits that West Germanic doesn't
have(some traits are innovations, others are
coincidental conservatisms).  Gothic was already
distinct by 350 AD, and the North Sea Germanic
dialects (ancestral to the lowland languages) must
have been distinct by the 400's, if not earlier.

What seems to have happened is that the written
language remained conservative into the 500's across
Germania: the original fairly undifferentiated
language led to a conservative writing tradition; that
tradition broke down after several centuries.
Many people take this to mean that only a smallish
circle of trained rune-masters were literate.  This
strikes me as likely but unproven.

Interesting addendum: the Proto-Germanic verb
_writan_, "to carve", gives us German _ritzen_ "to
carve" (and _reizen_ "annoy; stimulate"), and English
_write_).

> I said before that I found it difficult to get a
> clear picture of these
> issues from the literature. I have noticed that some
> authors at the popular
> end of the scale go straight from Protogermanic to
> Old English (say) with no
> reference to a Common Northwest Germanic period.

Some parts of these developments from the pre-literate
period are still murky, so no one has a clear picture
on those topics.
As far as writers jumping from Proto-Germanic (circa 0
AD) to Old English (recorded starting c. 700 AD), it's
an easy shortcut, but sloppy.
One reason for the omission is that recognition of a
distinct Northwest Germanic period didn't arise till
latish (late-ish?), so any work based on early
scholarship may miss that period.  And the following
West Germanic branch probably never existed as a
unitary language: by the time North and West Germanic
had clearly separated, West Germanic was already
differentiating into North Sea Germanic/Ingveonic,
Istveonic (Old Dutch/Lower Rhine), and the High German
dialects.  In that way, West Germanic is more an areal
description of related dialects than a single
ancestral language.

Stefan Israel
stefansfeder at yahoo.com

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