LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 06.JAN.2001 (02) [D/E]
Lowlands-L
sassisch at yahoo.com
Sat Jan 6 22:21:05 UTC 2001
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L O W L A N D S - L * 06.JAN.2001 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans, Ap=Appalachean, D=Dutch, E=English, F=Frisian, L=Limburgish
LS=Low Saxon (Low German), S=Scots, Sh=Shetlandic, Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
=======================================================================
From: mathieu van woerkom [mathieuvanwoerkom at hotmail.com]
Subject: language evolution
3 januari schreef Catherine Buma:
>I have been researching Frisian history for the past six months,
particularly the 7th and 8th centuries, and >have found several references
to the fact that the Frisian language became distinguishable from other
>languages in the 8th century. (By Frisian language I am referring to the
modern day province of Fryslan).
>If this is true, why? Did it have something to do with the geography of
Fryslan during this time or >particular events such as incorporation into
the Carolingian empire or such? I can't seem to find a terrible >lot of
English language material on Frisian history or language so I hope that
someone here can help me.
I once read an article about Frisian history in a newspaper, because new
archaeological discoveries were made. It is mostly about the history before
the 8th century. I translated a part of the article (originally Dutch),
maybe you’ll find it interesting.
Mathieu van Woerkom
mathieuvanwoerkom at hotmail.com
quote (NRC Handelsblad):
"Surprisingly the terps (artificial ‘hills’ people built to live on,
because of the water) are disappearing in Friesland, at the exact moment
that excavations in those terps caused shocking discoveries. After
excavations in recent years, especially in the area around the village
Wijnaldum, it appears that Frisians are not Frisians at all. A lot of
Frisians today like to think that they, Frisians, descend from Frisians
that built terps at the North See coast 2.500 years ago. No matter the
foreign domination, attacks from the outside and migration of the nations
in the last couple of thousand years: The Frisians stayed in their terps,
from prehistory until now, en fought for their freedom. No sea or foreign
rule could beat them. The title of the Frisian Archaeological Newspaper
therefor is The Free Frisian’.
This romantic idea has been called ‘the dogma of the unspoilt existence of
the Frisian tribe’. It is formed the last couple of centuries on foundation
of archaeological discoveries in terps and about Frisians being mentioned
in historical reports, for example by the roman Tacitus.
But almost a century ago people started to spoil this idea. The Frisian
archaeologist and jurist Pieter Boeles claimed that there has been an
invasion in Friesland by Anglo-Saxons after the Roman Age.
He received heavy criticism. Even when he changed his opinion a bit and
claimed that the Anglo-Saxon rulers mingled with the (few) remaining
Frisians and started calling themselves Frisian. Since then, a lot of
Frisian researchers have tried to show that Boeles’ opinion was wrong, says
Jos Bazelmans in an article about this problem in Jaarverslagen van de
terpenvereniging. (Annual reports of the terps association)
Today Frisians still cherish the idea that Frisians have lived on the terps
since prehistoric times. Bazelmans as well as colleague archaeologists make
short work of that idea. The Frisian tribes didn’t even survive a
‘homeopathic dilution’ (as was proposed in a thesis in 1996), at least not
in Friesland. On the foundation of recent research archaeologists now think
that everyone left the terp area in the time of the migration of nations
(in the 4th en 5th century AD). After more than 100 years new people came
to live in Friesland, and this Medieval Frisians were Anglos and
Jutlanders. Bazelmans thinks that since the seventh century (after a period
of 3 centuries without anything being written about them) they were called
Frisians because the Franks, who knew classics, called the area Frisia,
after ancient examples. The medley of tribes living there thus became
Frisian.
Did the Frisians really have kings, like romantic Frisians hope, who ruled
from North-Holland to the German river Weser? The terps should tell.
Bazelmans en Heidinga are (based on recent archaeological discoveries in
the terps) far less romantic than today’s Frisians. The medieval Frisians
certainly had connections with fellow tribes and dynasties at the coast of
the North Sea in England and Denmark – that is why they’re also mentioned
in the heroic poem Beowulf."
end quote.
----------
From: Criostoir O Ciardha [paada_please at yahoo.co.uk]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 05.JAN.2001 (01) [E]
A chairde,
Thanks for the reply, Ron and Stefan. Much
appreciated.
I feel you raise a number of interesting points in
general in what you say, particularly concerning the
strand of semantics regarding the blurred line within
"ethnic" (again for want of a better word - perhaps
this is a fault of the English language that other
Lowland languages don't have? *laughs*) terminology
and our policies toward its theory.
> Here in the United States there seems to be a
> euphemism-inspired shift in which many people mean
> "racial" when they say "ethnic" and mean "ethnic"
> when they say "cultural." I also agree that there
> tends to be a blurry line between "ethnos" and
> "nationhood" in European minds, with the old "one
> nation - one ethnicity - one language" ideal still
> being basic in many mindsets, which is still
> reflected in the language policies or at least in
> their realization (or lack thereof) in most European
> countries - more in some than in others, as you well
> know.
I think the whole elasticity and mire when encounters
when discussing the uncertainty and the hesitancy of
bandying various terms around is that on the whole
most people seem content - at least in my opinion - to
not really care about what term they use so long as it
conveys a sufficient sense of the subject group being
"alien". To use the term "race" when one is describing
an ethnic group is clearly intended to over-emphasise
the group differences and, in many cases, to demean
them. Precisely because notions of "ethnicity" are
fairly malleable, particularly over time or through
the looking-glass of political bias (of which I am as
guilty as anyone), it can become very difficult to
discuss around this subject without inadvertantly
making an assertion through terminology used. (I'm
reminded of the way the British Government made great
use of the term "English race" to describe the whole
of the United Kingdom and Ireland regardless of
ethnicity throughout the late 19th Century and early
this century, particularly during the colonial
scramble for Africa.) Consequently we should perhaps
give serious thought to clarifying a set of terms that
we all agree upon so that we do not fall prey to that
dread killer of discussion, semantics. What do the
other members feel?
> I agree with you and Stefan in that we cannot be
sure > what sort of ethnic awareness the early
> Germanic-speaking settlers/invaders of Britain had.
> I still contend, though, that there must have been
> *some* sort of sense of ethno-tribal allegiance, for
> otherwise the designations "Saxon" and "Anglian"
> would not have been continued in the "new" land.
What would you describe as "ethno-tribal allegiance"?
I don't wish to be polemic or pedantic but I feel that
local patriotism as I have said is adequate so far as
I see it to describe what feelings of allegiance the
proto-English may have had. To me "ethnicity" implies
a dissociative, macrocosmic upswell of solidarity that
I consider largely irrelevant in the context of
agricultural communities in lowland England and
Scotland. (This is part of my reason for seeking
certain guidelines over appropriate terminology.) We
have to factor in the type of lifestyles the new
arrivals would be leading. If they were leading
largely quasi-tenant/pre-feudal farming lifestyles the
primary allegiance the settler would have held would
have been to his immediate family and his neighbours.
Consequently there may not have been any "group
identity" at all, if one takes the possibility to the
extreme. In that case notions of "Saxonism" or
"Anglianism" could have been outside appellations that
the people then came to accept as they were solely
welded (forcibly or voluntarily) into feudal society:
if we look at "Welsh", "Walloon", "Vlakh" and so forth
we can see that "foreigners" can take their
designation by neighbouring groups as their ethnonym.
There has even been a suggestion that the Irish term
"Gaeil" ("Gaelic speaker") which is used concurrently
with "Éireannach" ("of Ireland") is of Welsh (or at
least Brythonic) origin: e.g., Welsh "Gwyddel", Breton
"Gouzel", possible Cornish "Gwithiel" (cf:
Lostwithiel) - "Irishman, Gael".
Of course to accept the ethnonym of a neighbouring
group speaking a different language is much rarer, but
that does not necessarily preclude that it has
happened; I vaguely recall reading once that "Sorbian"
(Sorbian, "Serbscina") derives from the "Serboi" of
Ptolemy's era who were settled in the region of
central Poland, and who also gave our modern day
Serbs. I'm not entirely certain of this; does anyone
have any clearer information? Similarly, the Slavs of
Kiyyiv took the term "Russian" (Russian "Rus'") from
the Vikings, whence it proliferated into Belarus' and
"Little Russia" (Ukraine). Again this is conjecture,
and I would seek clarification.
> However, as Stefan seems to imply, this may have
been > a case of leadership-dictated group allegiance
that
> does not necessarily reflect the actual ethnicity of
> all its members, which may very well have been
mixed.
> I suppose this is what might be termed
> "ethno-political allegiance."
An excellent assertion. Further, would it not be
better to see the whole notion of
Frisian/proto-English/Saxon mix and development
therefore as "ethno-political compromise" rather than
"ethno-political allegiance"...? There is much
evidence to support Stefan's implication of
leadership-dictated "ethnicity" - it is well known
that both the Serbs and the Croats moved in tandem
from Poland to the area of the former Yugoslavia with
either an Iranian ruling class or an Iranian element,
as their ethnonyms are Iranian. Similarly the Bulgars
of course absorbed their Turkic superstrate into an
existing Slavic population and the Viking Kievan Rus'
were soon Slavicised to Russians. But the question
remains: how can such "compromises" be effected in
practice? It is very much one thing to propose notions
of absorption of a ruling class into into the class
they have been oppressing but quite another to explain
who it was achieved. Can anyone provide any answers?
> Interestingly, Sater Frisians, speaking the last >
remnant of East Frisian and doing so outside Eastern >
Friesland, traditionally do not see themselves and >
their language as Frisian but as specifically >
"Saterlandisch" (_Seeltersk_). However, lately Sater
> Frisians have been participating in inter-Frisian >
activities, especially with Westerlauwer ("West") >
Frisians (of the Netherlands), and this may >
eventually result in renewed ethnically Frisian >
awareness among that population at large.
This is fascinating. Is there a history of
inter-Frisian involvement or is this "pan-Frisianism"
a product of recent nationalisms? Of course without
meaning to disrespect west and east Frisians it could
be that before other groups broke their territorial
continuity there was a well-developed sense of
"Frisianism" that was submerged.
If I may be forgiven for political polemicism, could
we be seeing the beginnings of a drive for Frisian
political, social and state-territorial
[re]unification? Could there ever be a single Frisian
state encompassing all Frisian-speaking groups? If so
the development seems to me to be unique; never before
has a single undoubted nation had so many languages.
Scotland has three from two separate language groups
(Scots, Shetlandic and Gaelic, from Germanic and
Celtic respectively, and Shelta too). (Here I am of
course ignoring languages that are spoken in the
territory as the result of linguistic extirpation,
such as English in Scotland or Dutch in Fryslan.) And
do non-west Frisians look toward the [province of]
Fryslan as their state-territorial patron with regards
culture, sociology and political leadership? I would
be very interested to hear what other subscribers have
to say about a unified Frisian state.
Once again, thank you very much for a lively debate.
Go raibh míle maith agaibhse.
Críostóir.
-----------
From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: "Language varieties"
Ron asks:
> Let me ask this again. How can you be so sure [that English
and Frisian descended from a common ancestral language] , given
the scarcity or absence
> of information about the early language varieties? Is there
any actual proof
> of this, or is this a perpetuated hypothesis? What proof is
there to show
> that Frisian and English descended from a supposed common
"Anglo-Frisian"
> ancestor and that Old English is not a Friso-Anglo-Saxon
creole? Of course,
> *all* of the languages we discuss here ultimately have a
common ancestor.
> What I am keen on finding out is how much validity there
really is to assuming
> an Anglo-Frisian subbranch.
Two points:
1) I believe the evidence indicates that an Anglo-Frisian group
versus an Old Saxon one arose -after- Charlemagne, and that
scholars were mistaken to posit it anachronistically before
then.
2) the term creole does not apply here.
Let me use the linguistic definition of the word creole: the
resulting language when a pidgin becomes a population's native
language, such as Gullah. A creole only arises from a pidgin,
and pidgins only arise where languages are not mutually
intelligible, forcing speaekers to focus on basic vocabulary.
Pidgins radically strip grammar to utter basics- all the old
Germanic languages show the rich, inherited grammatic
complexity, and show no trace of creolization.
You object to an Anglo-Frisian subbranch: that really should be
an Anglo-Frisian-Saxon branch: almost all the features of
Anglo-Frisian show up in Old Saxon; they were often obscured by
scribal tradition, and then slowly given up under High German
influence, but the same features or relicts of them show up in
all three languages. The older notion of Anglo-Frisian versus
Old Saxon confused Old Saxon's superficial appearance with a
putative inherent lack of North Sea Germanic (NSGmc) features.
Less-well-known manuscripts of the Heliand poem and various
minor documents in Old Saxon clearly show “Anglo-Frisian”
brightening, palatalization etc. The three languages were still
very similar hundreds of years after the migration to Britain.
Runic inscriptions starting circa 200 AD show no substantial
differences in Germanic language/s.
Even in the 1200's, Wessex English and Frisian were still very
similar, and I hardly need mention the semi-intelligibility that
has remained into modern times. There can be no question that
they were mutually intelligible 700 years earlier. There
simply was not time for the Angles, Saxons and Frisians to
develop highly differentiated languages by 400 AD. To create a
creole you need a pidgin, which requires mutually unintelligible
languages.
Mingling Angles, Saxons and Frisians would have found the same
basic language: you would hardly talk about a Platt-Platt
creole if Platt from Rendsburg and Aurich intermixed. Yes, the
regionalisms might mix to form a new variety, but it would still
clearly be a variety of Platt. And Platt has had far more than
a millenium to differentiate; North Sea Germanic had only a few
centuries from Runic, which initially showed no regionalisms.
> Should Old English turn out to be a Frisian-based creole with
Saxon, Anglian
> and Jutish elements (much like Afrikaans starting out as a
Dutch-based creole
> with English, Malay, Khoi-San and Bantu elements, or Yiddish
started out as a
> German-based creole with Semitic and Slavic elements)
Yiddish is not a creole at all; it shows none of the radical
simplification of a creole; it unambiguously continues its
inherited German grammar; Semitic and Slavic loan words, though
numerous, did not erase Yiddish's inherited structure.
Afrikaans comes close to being a full-fledged creole, due to
prolonged contact with Khoi-San and Bantu languages. But the
contrast between even the most dissimilar Germanic varieties of
the 400's AD, say Gothic versus Runic, do not even remotely come
close to the contrast of unrelated languages that lie behind an
actual creole.
We could add Old and Middle English of the Danelaw as a
semi-creolized language; it falls short of a creole, but like
Afrikaans, there was extensive but not complete simplification.
When you compare Old Norse and Old English of the 900's, the
differences are much greater than between Middle English and Old
Frisian of the 1200's. The difference between Angles, Saxons
and Frisians 800 years earlier could not have been much.
Neither the English nor the Frisians ever occupied the other;
the similarities must be primarily inherited, not subsequently
acquired by massive contact.
>would it then not be more accurate to say that there is no
Anglo-Frisian subbranch
> but simply a Frisian subbranch from which not only the various
Frisian
> varieties descended but secondarily also the various English
and Scots varieties?
> In that case, it would be a question of terminological
accuracy.
I think the name Frisian is confusing the issue: Frisian is a
sibling to English and Platt, not an ancestor: it makes no sense
and only misleads to name an ancestral variety after one of its
offspring, and after the one least involved (Jutland gave up its
population to Britain; Frisia did not empty out).
My reconstruction, compatible with the data and linguistic
principles:
There was a North Sea Germanic group that subsequently
differentiated into Frisian, Old Saxon and Old English; some but
not all of its features extended into Old Dutch and a few
extended into what became North Germanic (e.g. loss of n before
s: uns > oss). Some have called this variety Ingveonic;
linguists now prefer to say North Sea Germanic. I would NOT
call it Frisian, because Frisian was only one part of it: the
Saxons did not descend from the Frisians, their linguistic
siblings, and the Angle-Saxons may not have stayed in Frisia
long enough to affect their language, and there is little
evidence at all that a large percentage of Frisians emigrated to
Britain. If they had, the differences between the varieties
would hardly still have amounted to much by 400 AD; they were
still not that substantial centuries later.
Old Saxon came under High German influence: its NSGmc features
were partially obscured, then partially lost, leading to the
mistaken notion that Anglo-Frisian had differed from Old Saxon
previously: “Anglo-Frisian” didn't mutually develop separately
from Old Saxon: Old Saxon changed rapidly, while Old English and
Frisian changed independently but slowly.
Does that answer your concerns? We don't have much direct
evidence for NSGmc during the Great Migrations, but given the
limited time between Runic and the migration to Britain, and
given the continuing similarity long after the migration, we can
hardly posit that Frisian temporarily became unlike the rest of
NSGmc. Looking for substantial linguistic differences by 400
AD simply seems anachronistic.
Stefan Israel
----------
From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Language varieties
Thanks, Críostóir and Stefan!
Críostóir:
> What would you describe as "ethno-tribal allegiance"?
> I don't wish to be polemic or pedantic but I feel that
> local patriotism as I have said is adequate so far as
> I see it to describe what feelings of allegiance the
> proto-English may have had.
Fair enough.
Stefan:
> Yiddish is not a creole at all; it shows none of the radical
> simplification of a creole; it unambiguously continues its
> inherited German grammar; Semitic and Slavic loan words, though
> numerous, did not erase Yiddish's inherited structure.
Not quite. Though it may not meet the description of a creole, Yiddish has
syntactic constructions that are very much unlike those of any German
dialects (perhaps with the exception of German dialects on Slavic
substrates). Slavic-like syntactic structures are numerous, if not
predominant; cf. _zey hobn ale gemeynt az got vet dox tun a nes_ (cf.
German _Sie haben alle gemeint, dass Gott doch (noch) ein Wunder
herbeibringen werde_) 'They all expected that God would create a miracle
after all'. It even goes as far as using the interrrogative particle _tsu_
(cf. Polish _czy_), e.g., _tsu vet er forn keyn varshe?_ (cf. German _Wird
er nach Warschau fahren?_) 'Will he be going to Warsaw?'
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
----------
From: mathieu van woerkom [mathieuvanwoerkom at hotmail.com]
Subject: language varieties
Reinhard/Ron wrote:
>Should Old English turn out to be a Frisian-based creole with Saxon,
Anglian
>and Jutish elements (much like Afrikaans starting out as a Dutch-based
creole
>with English, Malay, Khoi-San and Bantu elements, or Yiddish started out
as a
>German-based creole with Semitic and Slavic elements), would it then not
be
>more accurate to say that there is no Anglo-Frisian subbranch but simply a
>Frisian subbranch from which not only the various Frisian varieties
descended
>but secondarily also the various English and Scots varieties? In that
case,
>it would be a question of terminological accuracy.
According to the article about recent archaeological discoveries in
Friesland I read a few days ago, it is just the other way around: Frisian
is an Anglo-Saxon (with Jutish elements) creole. Archaeologists now believe
that Anglo-Saxons and Jutlanders settled in Friesland (and took their
language with them)when the original Frisians weren't around anymore. This
would have been around the seventh century. Since then Frisian and English
grew apart, and nowadays Frisian has far more similarities with Low Saxon
and Dutch (especially the North-Holland dialects) nearby, than with
English. (This last phrase is just my opinion of course) Some
dialectologists even link up North-Holland and the dialects around the
former Zuiderzee (now IJsselmeer, with Flevoland -where I live- gained form
the sea) with Frisian.
Groeten,
Mathieu van Woerkom
----------
From: Candon McLean [candon3 at yahoo.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 05.JAN.2001 (03) [E]
R. Hahn Wrote:
> Let me ask this again. How can you be so sure,
> given the scarcity or absence
> of information about the early language varieties?
> Is there any actual proof
> of this, or is this a perpetuated hypothesis? What
> proof is there to show
> that Frisian and English descended from a supposed
> common "Anglo-Frisian"
> ancestor and that Old English is not a
> Friso-Anglo-Saxon creole? Of course,
> *all* of the languages we discuss here ultimately
> have a common ancestor.
> What I am keen on finding out is how much validity
> there really is to assuming
> an Anglo-Frisian subbranch.
The proof is the same that allows you to say "of
course *all* of the languages we discuss here
ultimately have a common ancestor."
Let me ask: What proof do you have for that statement?
Frisian and Anglo-saxon (old English) share certain
phonological features that set them apart as a group
from the rest of Western Germanic (and Germanic in
general), therefore it is reasonable to view them as a
subbranch.
Some of these features are:
1. PGrmc /a/ > [o]/ __N
2. Assibilation
3. Metathesis of /r/ (CrV > CVr
Orrin Robinson in his book _Old English and Its
Closest Relatives_ has a convient chart on pgg 150-151
which lists out the features of the various Germanic
languages. It's found, BTW, in his chapter on the
problems of grouping the Germanic languages. I found
it very thought provoking.
Cheers,
Candon
----------
From: Vermeulen [vermeulen.vastgoed at pandora.be]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 05.JAN.2001 (03) [E]
Beste Lowlanders,
De oeverloze discussie over het wel of niet korrekt zijn van begrippen en
stellingen in verband met volkeren en talen is, denk ik, ondergeschikt aan
de wetenschappelijke openheid van geest om alle stellingen aan bod te laten
komen die kunnen leiden tot meer klaarheid in de duistere middeleeuwen die
blijkbaar gekenmerkt zijn door legers van scribenten die de geschiedenis in
opdracht van hun heersers al dan niet hebben her- of verschreven. Men mag
doen wat men wil, maar de drang naar kennis van afkomst, ook gezamenlijke
afkomst (volk of taal), is nooit te stelpen. Toepasselijk op het Oud-Fries
en -Engels zou ik de lezing van het verguisde Oeralindabok voorstellen om
de
discussie wat pittiger te maken. Het losweken van interessante inzichten is
wellicht belangrijker dan de manier waarop je er toe komt.
m vr gr
Frans Vermeulen
> From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> Stefan,
>
>> English and Frisian descended from a common ancestral language,
>> and where thus originally one and the same.
>
> Let me ask this again. How can you be so sure, given the scarcity or
absence
> of information about the early language varieties? Is there any actual
proof
> of this, or is this a perpetuated hypothesis? What proof is there to
show
> that Frisian and English descended from a supposed common "Anglo-Frisian"
> ancestor and that Old English is not a Friso-Anglo-Saxon creole? Of
course,
> *all* of the languages we discuss here ultimately have a common ancestor.
> What I am keen on finding out is how much validity there really is to
assuming
> an Anglo-Frisian subbranch.
>
> Should Old English turn out to be a Frisian-based creole with Saxon,
Anglian
> and Jutish elements (much like Afrikaans starting out as a Dutch-based
creole
> with English, Malay, Khoi-San and Bantu elements, or Yiddish started out
as a
> German-based creole with Semitic and Slavic elements), would it then not
be
> more accurate to say that there is no Anglo-Frisian subbranch but simply
a
> Frisian subbranch from which not only the various Frisian varieties
descended
> but secondarily also the various English and Scots varieties? In that
case,
> it would be a question of terminological accuracy.
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron
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