LL-L: "Shared features" LOWLANDS-L, 01.JUN.2001 (01) [D/E]

[Lowlands-L]

======================================================================
 L O W L A N D S - L * 01.JUN.2001 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
 Web Site: <http://www.geocities.com/sassisch/rhahn/lowlands/>
 Rules: <http://www.geocities.com/sassisch/rhahn/lowlands/rules.html>
 Posting Address: <lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>
 Server Manual: <http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html>
 Archive: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html>
=======================================================================
 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: Mike Oettle <oettlepe at iafrica.com>
Subject: LL-L: "Shared features" LOWLANDS-L, 31.MAY.2001 (04) [E]

Dear Ron -
    the long discussion of Germanic/Slavic dialects in eastern
Germany/Poland was most interesting, not least because of the mention of
Scottish immigration at some point.
    But what caught my eye was the paragraph mentioning Pietsch/Peitsche,
which has an equivalent in Afrikaans. One doesn't think of Afrikaans as
having Slavic loanwords, but the entry for the word in "Afrikaanse
Etimologieë" is probably worth quoting:

_piets:_ afransel, slaan; Ndl. _pietsen/pitsen_, "slaan" (veral in dial.),
verb. m. Ndl _pietsen/pitsen_, "kyp" (ook veral in dial.) word betwyfel; kan
dit misk. verb. hou m. Ndl./Afr. _peits_ (q.v.) en m. Hd. _peitsche_ (vgl.
OFri _pïtsken_, "peitschen, schlagen" by tDK 722)?

    (The first mention of the word is in bold type, as is the word peits in
[Ndl./Afr. peits (q.v.)]; the other words between _ markings are in
italics.)

    "Afrikaanse Etimologieë" is by S P E Boshoff and G S Nienaber, and was
published in 1967 by the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (no
placename is given, but I presume it to be Pretoria).

    The mention of Scottish immigration also calls to mind mention of a
situation outlined in a book (which I am currently unable to trace) on the
subject of Britain in the time of Arthur.
    It stated that Germani from various parts of what is now northern
Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium would cross the North Sea and assist
the English in settling land taken from Brythonic-speaking inhabitants. This
was a process that began with the first Germanic settlements in Britain and
continued throughout the Dark Ages, but was reversed during the 40-year
peace that followed Arthur's routing of the English at the Battle of Badon
Hill.
    During those years, the author noted, Englishmen crossed the North Sea
to assist in Germanic settlement on the Continent, especially in Flanders
where land was being taken from Romance-speakers.
    I mentioned this book in a recent message on the subject of the Scots
language, and was queried on it. It was in the stock of the main Port
Elizabeth city library, but is not currently there. But I will check again,
as it has some pertinent points about events in the Dark Ages.
    Regards,
    Mike
----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Shared features

Dear Mike, Lowlanders,

We discussed the matter of _piets_ in Afrikaans a long time ago.  Also a long
time ago there was some discussion about the apparently never confirmed
assumption that Afrikaans has had some Low Saxon (Low German) influence.  This
does not seem all that absurd if you consider that many "Dutch" people are
actually native speakers of Low Saxon (from the eastern provinces of the
Netherlands) and that there have pretty much always been people from Germany
among the European settlers, many from the north (especially in the earliest
days), and most eventually having been absorbed by Afrikaans-speaking
communities.

If _piets_ came from Low Saxon _Pietsch_ and _pietschen_ -- which is what I
assume -- than it must have come from speakers from Northern Germany, because
I understand that the use of _Pietsch_ does not reach as far as the
Netherlands or even as far as the border region on the German side.  I
understand that in these areas the older, native word _sweep_ and variants of
it are still used.  Apparently, some dialects farther east have both _Pietsch_
[p`i:tS] and _Sweep_ [svEIp] ~ [sve:p], others only _Pietsch_.  Many have
_Klabatsch_ [kla'batS] for 'whip' and _klabatschen_ [kla'batS=n] 'to whip' as
well, probably onomatopoetic in origin.  The way I use these is this:
_Pietsch_ is a whip used on animals or on play tops (for those of us who are
old enough to remember), while the kind you use (or hopefully *used to* use)
on humans is a _Klabatsch_.  (By the way, all of them have feminine gender,
thus take the pronoun _se_ [zE.I].)

In short, I believe that Afrikaans _piets_ is an indirect Slavic loan, namely
one borrowed via Low Saxon, neither the borrowers nor the lenders being aware
that the origin is Slavic.

I think it would be very interesting to search for other possible Low Saxon
loans in Afrikaans, namely words that do not and have never been used in Dutch
and Zeelandic but are used in Low Saxon.

As for Scottisch emigration to Prussia, note the name of a town in the
Gdansk/Danzig region: Polish _Nowe Szkoty_, German/Low Saxon _Neu Schottland_.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Stefan Israel <stefansfeder at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L: "Shared features"

Marco Evenhuis writes:

> I wonder what Stefan means with Old Dutch in this context,
> since most coastal dialects in the Netherlands in those days
> were clearly part of the 'North Sea Germanic' group

I didn't clarify that, that's true- when linguists refer to Old
Dutch, they are referring to the inland dialects, as opposed to
the Ingveonic coastal dialects.  Old Dutch is also called Old
Low Franconian.  It's ancestral to Limburgish; unfortunately
most of the neighboring dialects weren't set to writing till
later.  Old Dutch in this sense is an ancestor but not the
ancestor of modern standard Dutch, and not ancestral at all to
most Dutch dialects.

Like Ingveonic varieties, it kept ptk, and spirant _g_ (still
pronounced that way in Flemish).
Unlike Ingveonic, it still had three separate personal endings
for verbs (thus _werthun_wirthit_werthunt_ "we/you/they become"
vs. Old Saxon _werthad_werthad_werthad_); it didn't palatalize
/k/, /g/ (cf. Old Dutch _kint_ vs. English _child_).  Old Dutch
also diphthongized long _e_ and _o_ to _ie_ and _uo_, which was
adopted by High German dialects.
It also didn't have Nasalschwund, thus Dutch _mond_ vs. English
_mouth_; you find vestiges of coastal Ingveonic dialects in
place names in -muiden ('rivermouth').

Modern Dutch is an amalgam of these inland dialects and the
coastal ones, which accounts for why Dutch shares many features
with Ingveonic but not others.

>(Flemish -not to be divided in
> western and eastern Flemish before the 1400s

Not completely true- we have exactly one sentence of
recognizable Old West Flemish from the 1100's: some monk jotted
down this sentence in the margin of a Latin text he was writing:

 hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hi[c] enda thu w[at]
[u]nbidan [w]e nu

"all the birds have begun nests except you and I- what are we
waiting for?"

The rounding of _all_ to _oll_ and the loss of [h], shown by the
scribe not knowing if _ik_ had an <h> or not point to West
Flemish, though I will grant you, just because their were
already discernible differences between east and west Flemish
doesn't mean that the differences were necessarily great.

> All of which can hardly be considered 'Old Dutch'...

The term is unfortunate, since the language in question was only
one part of what is now the Netherlands, but the term is still
used as a matter of tradition.  In any event, that is the Old
Dutch I was referring to.

----------

From: frank verhoft <frank_verhoft at yahoo.com>
Subject: shared features

Beste Laaglanders

Criostoir:
"I think it might be useful to divide our study and
search into two distinct areas: ancient and modern."

After reading and re-reading the mails about this
topic, I still find myself a bit confused, and - to
paraphrase a Dutch proverb - I hope that all the wise
men are willing to answer and or comment on the
remarks and question by this, erm, less wise man.
However, and hence the quote from Criostoir, my
questions are limited to the ancient area.

I wrote (unaware of the modern area):
"but the "link" or similarities or shared features
between English, Frisian, Zeeuws, (Old) Saxon (and
even Old Norse) have been thoroughly described and
discussed, and is part of *any* academic
publication/book on (historical) comparative
linguistics of the Germanic languages. It's referred
to as "Ingvaeonic" (Dutch "Ingweoons") features."

To which Stefan Israel replied:
"Cristoir is looking beyond inherited Ingveonic/North
Sea Germanic elements, elements going back to the
400's or earlier."

And much much later. At least until the 11-12th
century, Zeeuws, West Flemish, Fries and English
shared the same (type of) sound changes  (e.g. the
already mentioned unrounding), which, if i may believe
Van Bree's "Historische taalkunde", can happen when a
substratum is at play, (as Criostoir has indicated
too).

Stefan Israel:
"He's looking for subsequent interaction between these
languages as well. The development of the "self" word
as _selm_, _sem_ etc. is an example of possible
interaction coming long after the Ingveonic languages
diverged."

A possible interaction or a parallel development due
to a substratum, or both?

Stefan:
"Proto-Low Saxon and proto-Anglo-Frisian would pretty
much have been one and the same:  Old English and Old
Saxon were still very similar past 800 AD; the
differences circa 500 AD would have been less, and
probably minor before, say, 300 AD--  I'm basing that
on reconstruction; we don't have direct evidence
going back that far. Old Dutch was quite similar to
those languages, though distinct enough to be
classified separately from the Ingveonic/North Sea
Germanic/Anglo-Frisian-Low Saxon group.  Orrin
Robinson's Old
English and its Closest Relatives gives a very handy
intro to the topic."

Depends on how you define 'Ingvaeonic': In a very
strict sense - the way Stefan used it - "Ingvaeonic
languages" is almost synonymous for the Anglo-Frisian
group of the West Germanic branch. In a much broader
sense of the word - and that's why I used "Ingvaeonic
*features*" in my mail - it's a series of parallel
sound changes which are shared by English, coastal
Flemish, Zeeuws, Fries, Saxon, and even (Old) Norse
(though not all of those features by all the
languages), up to the 11-12th century and beyond.
Cf. Robinson, Old English and its closest relatives,
p.257, who tackles this problem of narrow and wide
sense.
Cf. Van Bree "Historische Taalkunde", Cf. Van Loon
"Historische fonologie van het Nederlands", and cf.
Marco Evenhuis mail of May 30, in which he calls this
"North Sea Germanic", which, btw, is considered to be
synonymous with Ingvaeonic in this respect.

A question: the features got shared despite the North
Sea (or rather, thanks to), but why should they have
been stopped at the non existant (geographical)
frontier between Zeeuws and the coastal Flemish?

Criostoir wrote
"I suggest - and it is tenuous and poorly conceived -
that proto-Zeeuws, proto-Low Saxon and
proto-Anglo-Frisian variants may share a number of
features inherent from before the departure of the
proto-Anglo-Saxons to what later became England
c.520AD. If that is so, then core vocabulary such as
personal pronouns (if indeed "senn" [self] counts as
such) may spring from a common source rather than be
innovations or in extremis survivals."

On of those common sources is West Germanic * _euw_,
which gave rise to Middle Dutch (Brabantian) _u_, and
"coastal" Dutch (Flemish, Hollands, Zeeuws) _ju_.
English has  _you_. I could only find references to
parallel developments in West Flemish/Hollands/Zeeuws
_and_ English, and not to loans.
(Later on, the Dutch dialectial variants replaced  and
diverged into the (Standard) formal/informal personal
pronoun 2S, but that's not important for this story).

Criostoir:
"What other vocabulary might Low Saxon, Zeeuws and
northern English/Scots variants share?"

Stefan:
"In their earliest recorded form, most of their
vocabulary, and gradually less as the languages keep
diverging- pick up the various dictionaries, or just
any text, and see how much you recognize right off the
bat."

When talking about core vocabulary wouldn't it be a
better question to ask what kind of *sound changes*
Low Saxon, Zeeuws, English/Scots share after the 5th
century (cf. Ron's and Marco's examples) and which
sound shifts affected those core words in a similar
way, since it's clear what *main the source* of the
core vocabulary is, viz. (Common or West) Germanic?

Stefan:
"Old Dutch was quite similar to those languages,
though distinct enough to be classified separately
from the Ingveonic/North Sea
Germanic/Anglo-Frisian-Low Saxon group."

The "first" Old Dutch phrase 'Hebban olla uogola
nestas hagunnan hinasse hic enda thu uuat undibat ghe
nu...' etc. is pretty Ingvaeonic, though. And if "Old
Dutch" (which of the many Old Dutch's?), or even
coastal Flemish can be considered distinct enough, how
can the "shared features", which are  present in West
Flemish, be explained?

I found a very misty explanation for the Ingvaeonic
features in Coastal Flemish, and I hope somebody can
add some comments:
"Omstreeks 600 vermelden de bronnen (which ones?) een
inval van Angelsaksen in het Vlaamse kustgebied, wat
mogelijk bevestigd wordt door het voorkomen van namen
op _-tu:n_ (Brighton, Bainctun, Waasten) en _-hi:de_
'haven' (Hythe, Koksijde) aan weerszijden van het
Kanaal. Sommige auteurs hebben zich op die gegevens
gebaseerd om de Ingweoonse kenmerken van het
Kustnederlands te verklaren."

Groetjes,

Frank Verhoft

==================================END===================================
 You have received this because your account has been subscribed upon
 request. To unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l"
 as message text from the same account to
 <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org> or sign off at
 <http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html>.
=======================================================================
 * Please submit contributions to <lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>.
 * Contributions will be displayed unedited in digest form.
 * Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
 * Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l") are
   to be sent to <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org> or at
   <http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html>.
 * Please use only Plain Text format, not Rich Text (HTML) or any other
   type of format, in your submissions
=======================================================================