LL-L "History" 2005.10.08 (04) [E]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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   L O W L A N D S - L * 08 October 2005 * Volume 04
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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2005.10.08 (02) [E]

Then the Wursten county should be considered as a part of East Frisia
rather than North Frisia, or even seperately? The first mentioning of
Frisians in the Land of Wursten is 1071 by Von Lehe, I read in the link
Reinhard sent two days ago about the history of the Germanic people(s) in
Northern Germany. The first mentioning of Frisians in East Frisia was not
so much earlier.

jonny meibohm schreev:

>Hi, Ingmar,
>
>It's not North Frisia I'm writing about. I just mentioned it in this
>context, but it may have run differently there.
>My home region is the marshland at the estuary of the Elbe- and the
>Weser-river, and the inhabitants (dominatingly Saxons) had left their
early
>settlings at ca. A.D. 500 - maybe some 50 or more years before or
>thereafter.
>The Frisians came at ca. A.D. 700; that is a proved fact for the area of
>'Land Wursten' on the eastern side of the Weser-river.

Yes, maybe it is better to say that Old Saxon isn't the direct ancestor
of Modern Low Saxon LINGUISTICALLY then, in the sense that many modern LS
characteristics were not directly derived from their Old Saxon equivalents.

Compare Modern Dutch, which doesn't have "Old Dutch" as its direct ancestor
but a mixture of Old (West) Low Franconian, Old (West) Frisian, Old North
Sea Western Germanic varieties spoken in Flanders and Holland, and Old
Saxon as well! But Modern Dutch is a standard language, unlike modern Low
Saxon.

So then, Old Franconian and Old Saxon are the ancestors of Modern Low
Saxon? And in some areas Old Frisian as well?

Ingmar

R. F. Hahn wrote:
>That sounds like an overstatement to me.  What would the ancestor be then?
>Are you then, for the sake of consistency, saying that Old English is not
>the direct ancestor of Modern English and Scots because of strong
>Scandinavian and even stronger and transforming French influences?  Is
>Vulgar Latin not the ancestor of French because of Celtic substrates and
>influences, and not of Romanian either because of strong Slavonic,
Hungarian
>and Greek influences, and Old Turkic is not the ancestor of the Turkic
>languages because of strong Iranian and other types of substrates and
>influences?
>
>You need to keep influences within the development of a language apart
from
>the ancestry issue.  Loss of a certain number of Inveonisms (many of which
>survive in competition, e.g., _us_ ~ _uns_) should not be taken as an
>indicator of wholesale transformation -- and even if it were, it still
would
>not change the ancestry.
>
>Yes, Frankish overlordship did take its toll on the development of Saxon,
as
>did Germanization and Neerlandization in the more recent past.  But as far
>as I am concerned, Old Saxon is still the ancestor.

----------

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

Hi again, Ingmar!

I think there is a terminological or semantic difference here.  It appears 
that there is a difference between human ancestry and linguistic ancestry. 
As far as I know, linguistic influence or admixtures are not considered 
ancestry.

Again, have you ever heard anyone say that Norman French is an ancestor of 
English, "LINGUISTICALLY"?  Have you ever heard anyone suggest that Middle 
Saxon is an ancestor of the Scandinavian languages and Estonian (a finnic 
language) because of the enormous influences it had on these languages, 
especially lexical influences?

*All* languages are mixtures to varying degrees, but all of them are 
considered derived from a basic ancestor each, and they undergo various 
non-native conditioning and influencing in the course of their lives, 
retain, however, their ancestry within their core.  There may be a few 
exceptions, perhaps because of our ignorance.  English is one of those 
cases, where (closely related) varieties of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and 
Frisians seem to have gotten mixed very early on.  Why "ignorance"?  Well, 
obviously we don't even know half of what really occurred at the time, and 
looking at (scarcely represented) written varieties (assumedly those used by 
the elite) doesn't tell us much about the real linguistic diversity then. 
It is only when English and Saxon began to be written on a regular basis and 
in various places that we can gather some information about dialects

True.  Modern Dutch (including Standard Dutch) has been influenced by 
numerous language varieties, but its origin and core are still Hollandic. 
The fact that there appears to be no evidence of Old Dutch (Hollandic) 
language in extant written sources should not be taken as meaning that there 
was none.  It may never have made it to the written stage before the 
speakers adopted a different variety as their "high" language.  Modern 
Standard German, too, intended to be a national language in an originally 
and basically at least bilingual state conglomerate has been strongly 
influenced by Low Saxon (mostly by way of Missingsch varieties).  But its 
actual ancestor is still Old ("High") German.

We assume, reasonably I believe, that there were, for instance, Old Bantu, 
Old Polynesian and Old Athabascan, even though there are no written records 
of them.  I feel that Europeans tend to be too much hung up on written 
language and lose sight of the fact that the majority of past language 
varieties were never written.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron 

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