LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 04.JAN.2001 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Edwin Michael Alexander [edsells at idirect.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 04.JAN.2001 (01) [E]

At 07:59 AM 01/04/01 -0800, Ron wrote:
>  The question I need to add to John's is this: Why then did early speakers of
>Old English consider themselves ethnically Anglian and Saxon (and establish
>Anglian and Saxon kingdoms in Britain) when their language was supposedly so
>different (i.e., belonged to another sub-branch) from Anglian and Old Saxon?
>What could account for this relatively sudden language switch of people who or
>whose recent ancestors had immigrated to the British Isles from an area
>situated in today's Southern Denmark and Northern Germany?
>
>Of course, there is this theory floating around (I think mentioned by Robinson
>as well) that Anglian and Saxon migrants had mixed with Frisians on their way
>to the British Isles, probably after staying in Frisia for a while.  In other
>words, this would mean that Frisians participated in the Germanic colonization
>of the British Isle but that they have not received sufficient credit, perhaps
>because they were mixed in with Anglians and Saxons and did not claim their
>own Frisian-dominated territories in Britain.
>
>I do not know how "wild" this theory is still considered at this time.
>However, it does not seem implausible to me, especially if we imagine that the
>migrating Anglians and Saxons were predominantly male and married Frisian
>women who first taught their children Frisian, which would have helped to
>speed up the development of an Anglo-Saxo-Frisian creole.  If so, we would not
>have an Anglo-Frisian sub-branch but simply a Frisian one.
>
>Is anyone seriously investigating these alternative possibilities, or are we
>forever married to the "Anglo-Frisian" theory because it predominates in the
>literature and is standard in high school and university courses?

This has always puzzled me, too.  And why are the Franks never brought into
the mix?  There is good evidence for Frankish settlement in Kent, Sussex,
and Hampshire in the 6th and 7th centuries as there is evidence that
Frankish kings claimed Kent as their dominion during this period.  The
Venerable Bede himself notes that Ethelbert of Kent married Bertha 'of the
royal stock of the Franks'.  Would this not be a possible explanation for
the harder 'r's' of the southwestern counties of England which continue to
this day (there and, for example, in General American)?

I think there is another questionable assumption here that these various
groups of Frisians, Saxons, etc. really considered themselves so
separate.  Was this the case?  For example, here in Canada one might
identify oneself as a Canadian, a North American, an European (or whatever)
descendant, a white person (or whatever), a Torontonian, etc etc depending
upon the context.  We know that people today who speak Frisian and Low
Saxon can read (with some difficulty albeit) Old English (certainly a lot
more easily than speakers of Modern English!).  If there is this affinity
even 1500 years later, no doubt the differences between them linguistically
probably weren't any greater than between, say, General American and
Jamaican, if that.  When Canadians travel to Britain, they are usually
identified by their speech as "Americans", which they are always very eager
to correct.  Over here, we speak of the "British" accent as if there were
really only one.  Did the average Frisian consider him or herself a Frisian
like it was some sort of nationality or in any sort of modern way?  Or was
it more like the way people in Manhattan consider themselves somewhat
different from those living in Brooklyn, but all agree they are New Yorkers.

It is all very convenient to lay our modern boundaries on these people, but
the world was quite different back then and we end up with perhaps more
questions than answers by this approach.

My own theory is that while I cannot explain why the terms Anglo and Saxon
survive as names of the people while Frisian and Frank (and Jute) do not as
names of the invaders, it was not long before they started calling their
language "English" which would indicate to me that the creolization process
amalgamating the dialects of the various contributors into a mutually
comprehensible speech and vocabulary began early and was recognized as
"different" from the language of the continent.

Ed Alexander
JAG REALTY INC.
80 Jones Street Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8R 1Y1
Pager: 905-312-5204  Fax: 905-525-6671 Email: edsells at idirect.com
Jag Realty Inc.: http://www.deerhurst.com/jag/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Language varieties

Thanks, Ed.

Yes, I find it quite conceivable that early Germanic settlers/invaders in
Britain first considered themselves Saxons, Angels and Jutes (and probably
Frisians) and then gradually began to consider themselves Saxon, Anglian and
Jutish (and probably Frisian) Englishmen and -women, before dropping the
ethnic prefixes.

I assume that, for a while, people still hung on to a sense of their
respective continental ethno-geographic origins, or at least to those of their
respective rulers.  Also, English missionaries seemed to have returned to the
land of their ancestors to Christianize people there, and they appear to have
had relatively easy access to the Old Saxon used there (since Early Old
English and Old Saxon seemed to have been mutually intelligible to a fairly
high degree), though they may have have used Old Saxon with Old English
interference.  The question is if they really had a sense of this being their
ancestral land like, say, a Dutch-Canadian sees the Netherlands nowadays.

In 1998 we discussed the famous (?) supposedly Old Saxon baptismal
(Christianization) oath from what is now Northern Germany.  This is what I
said then [LOWLANDS-L * 17.JUL.1998 (03)]:

==BEGIN QUOTE==

The famous Saxon baptismal oath of the turn of the 8th to the 9th century
tends to be mentioned as one of the earliest extant Old Saxon texts.  In
this ritualized dialog between a Christian priest and a person to become
baptized, the original belief system of the Saxons (and other Germanic
peoples) is referred to as "diabolic."

It has been stated by Agathe Lasch that the text is not purely Old Saxon
but a mixture of Old Saxon and Old English, two languages that are very
closely related and at the time were pretty much mutually intelligible.
Apparently, there were frequent contacts between speakers of the two
languages.  Lasch (1935, "Das altsaechsische Taufgeloebnis," p. 133) says
that the baptismal oath was composed for Saxons by a missionary (assumedly
from England) with Old English interference.

Is any of you able (and game) to pinpoint what exactly is English in this
text?  You will find the text and my translation below.

Note the inconsistency between _ende_, _end_ and _and_ 'and'.

By the way, also note the use of the noun _unhold_ we recently mentioned
within another context.

Thanks, and regards,

Reinhard/Ron

==

Original:

Forsaichistu diobolae?
-- ec forsacho diobolae
end allum diobolgelde?
-- end ec forsacho allum diobolgeldae.
end allum dioboles uuercum?
-- end ec forsacho allum dioboles uuercum
   and uuordum, Thunaer ende Uuoden ende
   Saxnote ende allvm them unholdum the hira
   genotas sint.
gelobeistu in got alamehtigan fadaer?
-- ec gelobo in got alamehtigan fadaer.
gelobeistu in Crist gotes suno?
-- ec gelobo in Crist gotes suno.
gelobeistu in halogan gast?
-- ec gelobo in halogan gast

Translation:

Do you forsake the devil?
-- I (do) forsake the devil.
And all devil worship?
-- I (do) forsake all devil worship.
And all devil work?
-- I (do) forsake all devil work
   and words, Donar and Wotan and
   Saxnot and all those demons that are
   their companions.
Do you believe in God, the Almighty Father?
-- I (do) believe in God, the Almighty Father.
Do you believe in Christ, the Son of God?
-- I (do) believe in Christ, the Son of God.
Do you believe in the Holy Ghost?
-- I (do) believe in the Holy Ghost.

==END QUOTE==

Ed Sproston replied [LOWLANDS-L * 17.JUL.1998 (07)]:

==BEGIN QUOTE==

This looks purely Old Saxon, as far as I can tell. I cannot see any evidence
at any rate of classical West Saxon. However as we are dealing with the
missionary period i.e. pre-early-West-Saxon it could well be that the
Anglo-Saxon who did the work was a Northumbrian or else an Anglian of
another ilk. You would have to ask an expert on Anglo-Saxon dialects to spot
any concordances. But I can tell you the following: the nominal ending -o is
not West-Saxon, nor is the verb inflexion in -o. "Ec" is not a West-Saxon
form and I cannot remember seeing it in the dialects either ("ek" is known
in Old Norse just out of interest, before it softened to "eg"). Neither do
we see the classic West-Saxon dipthongs in ea- (as we might expect to see in
allum > eallum). In AS the devil is "deofol" and the b in the above text is
certainly an Old Saxon form. Compare English "knave" and German "Knabe" - it
is the same process at work. Having said that "i" for West-Saxon "eo" does
occur in some dialects  and late West-Saxon has "io" in its stead. But I
believe that was the standard dipthong in OS anyway.
The doubled consonant uu- does resemble Mercian and Northhumbrian forms but
is no certain evidence of influence. "Gotes" for God's would be "godes" in
OE - this is a clear distinction. The Old Saxon also has "o" in several
places where Old English would have "i(e)". And OS has "b" where AS would
have "f" (or "v") as mentioned before. Finally OS fadaer and alamehtigan
would be "faeder" and "aelmeahtigan" in WS OE.  The alternation of "end "
and "and" may be one clue to AS influence, but is by no means certain.
Anglo-Saxon texts often alternate between "and" and "ond". There are some
more points, but these are the main ones.
If this is via the Anglo-Saxon, it is, as far as I can tell, in spirit and
message only. It certainly has the classic style and feel of a piece of
Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical literature, but that isn't neccessarily saying
too much. Don't forget that the Old Saxon scribe would have done his utmost
to convert both the language and style (if the latter was necessary) to his
native Old Saxon idiom. That Anglo-Saxon missionaries could be understood by
Saxons there is no doubt, but the lines of comprehension would not have been
flawless. We can see something of a similar situation in the Old English
rendering of Ottar's account of his northern travels to King Aelfred. The
scribe understood Ottar in the main, and the text set down in West-Saxon.
But we occasionally see break-downs of communication between Norseman and
Englishman and the AS scribe having to form new OE words for this purpose
alone, based on ON originals. OS and OE were much closer and it wouldn't
have been too difficult for a scribe to disguise an Anglo-Saxon source,
especially if it were as early as the eighth century and an Anglian dialect.
However I leave the question of a dialect source to an expert and cannot
rule this out.
If the scribe himself were an Anglo-Saxon, it appears he has done a fine job
converting his native tongue to a foreign language and idiom. However I
believe the scribe to be a Saxon: Anglian poets trying to write a West-Saxon
language still occasionally betrayed their linguistic provenance and the
differences between Anglian and West-Saxon are no doubt smaller than those
between AS and OS.
All in all, the text appears to be wholly OS in form, although it could
certainly be a re-working of on OE original. We have an example of this kind
of translation in the biblical Genesis, 25 lines or so of which exist in
both OS and AS (the one translated from the other - I can't remember which
way round). The text doesn't look directly AS but I cannot rule out dialect
issues. Consult an expert!

==END QUOTE==

K. D. Hucke said [LOWLANDS-L * 19.JUL.1998 (02)]:

==BEGIN QUOTE==

in my opinion the languages "Old Saxon" or "Old English" are linguisic
invention of our time, not languages that were actually spoken. Of course
identifying ancient literary fragments with different languages is
important, but one must not forget that they rather represent different
orthographic styles or tradition than actual different languages. The
written sources, that we have to deal with are only the tiniest part of
languages. The spoken languages remain somewhat of "dark continent" for
us.  So I believe the "Saxonicae" is probably an artificial language that
was cultivated in court or scholarly circles to have a good chance to be
comprehended by a wider than regional audience.  As the spoken languages
is concerned, what means do we have to reconstruct them?  Or if we had
testimonies of them, would we not find out that they would stubornly
resist our efforts of language definitions. We have to be aware of this
dark side of languages that could appear as alien to us as customs or
mentalties of these times. When we think of linguistics, we are in an
(mostly) orderly universe of logic, vocabulary and grammar among other
things. But human understanding seems to work despite a lack of order or
logic.

==END QUOTE==

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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