LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.01.22 (02) [E]
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L O W L A N D S - L * 22 January 2006 * Volume 02
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From: Rikus Kiers <kiersbv at tiscali.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.01.21 (05) [E]
Hi Gary and everyone,
Gary is talking about affrication and aspirated consonants.
I met the same words earlier. Can someone explain to me what that means?
greetings,
Rikus Kiers
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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.01.21 (02) [E]
From: Karl-Heinz Lorenz
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2006.01.09 (01) [E]
Hello Ron, you wrote:
"... perhaps more likely it's due to Celtic in the south
(whose substrate may have caused aspiration and affricatization in
German),
later to "invade" the north in the process of Germanization."
I always saw it that way. For me this is the only possible explanation of
the HG soundshift. But as we have no written resources of Celtic in the
Alps
then, it's obviously too daring for most linguists. I think therefore the
prevailing opinion is, that the soundshift can't be explained.
The Celts originally settled in the North of the Alps, they fled when
migration of Germanic and other tribes started. In the mountains they
could
hide, but in the course of time, there languages merged into ! German, but
they left their traces in it......
Greetings from Austria
Karl-Heinz
>From Paul Finlow-Bates
The difficulty I have with seeing High German sound shifts as being Celtic
influenced is that (as far as I can see) Standard HG has even less Celtic
words in it than English. If the Celtic speakers were going to
substantially influence the pronunciation, I would have expected a bigger
impact on the vocabulary. Do the various Alpine dialects have many Celtic
words?
Paul
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From: Karl-Heinz Lorenz <Karl-Heinz.Lorenz at gmx.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.01.21 (02) [E]
Hello again,
> Heile und dankschö, Karl-Hoanz! Wia heasch as? Bisch Wienächto wedr
> daham
> im Ländle gsi?
Yes, I was at home for Christmas. How did you manage to write this? It's
very good "getroffen", Alemmanic as it's spoken in my "Heimat" Vorarlberg
and in Liechtenstein too. It has this Alpine "Tonfall", so I think it's
sounds like Alemmanic with a Rhaetoroman accent. The Rhaetoroman Wren
version is pretty good. We don't have the shift from k to (k)ch, that's
mainly the difference to Swiss-Alemmanic and Tyrolean.
I avoid this "Heile" formula, especially here in Vienna, because perhaps
only in Vorarlberg it has no Nazi-connotation. We also say "Hoi", the
Liechtensteiner even a bit more. We are supposed to use "Gruezi", but we
don't. "Pfete" is authentic, but today we tend to use "Tschss". Karl-Hoanz
is not correct, maybe in Vienna it sounds like "Karl-Hnz.
> Talking about speculation, do you agree with the following? Saxon
> (Hanseatic) power in the north and Upper German powers in the Alemannic
> and
> Bayuvarian south (with their Celtic-influenced varieties) spread southward
> and northward respectively. (The southernmost Hanseatic trading posts
> where
> somewhere in the center of what is now Germany.) Their language feature
> presence got weaker the farther away from the respective heartlands they
> spread, and the band-shaped area in which they came to overlap coincides
> with today's "Middle German" or "Central German" varieties with their
> tight
> bundles of isoglosses.
>
> As our Críostóir said sometime ago, speculation can be fun.
Yes I agree with that, it's logic and if we repeat this kind of logic
speculation, we maybe come to results. Actually a lot of facts we are told
to be scientific are only speculation, oddr?
Pfete bis z'm n(ch)schta Mol (BTW Pfuete is said to be "Behte dich", with
Alemannic-Bavarian voiceless p, but I don't know for certain)
Karl-Heinz
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From: Karl-Heinz Lorenz <Karl-Heinz.Lorenz at gmx.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.01.21 (05) [E]
Gary Taylor wrote:
> I too am interested in the talk about Celtic substrate
> being the precursor to the High German sound shift.
> The thing that bothers me is that Celtic languages
> have (fairly heavy) aspiration. They would not
> therefore have had a problem with Germanic aspirated
> consonants, and would probably more likely have
> reinterpreted these as unaspirated if their own
> consonants were more heavily aspirated - which would
> not automatically have led to affricated consonants.
> > Please correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the old
> Celtic regions which became Germanic speaking first
> Romanised? A Romance base leading to affrication seems
> more plausible to me. Romance languages do not have
> aspirated consonants, so hearing one for them is more
> likely to sound like an affricate - i.e. consonant +
> fricative - than for Celtic speakers where they would
> just be copied with slightly heavier aspiration, but
> no affrication. A Romance speaker, however, hearing
> aspiration may adopt affrication to imitate this.
Very good argument, I didn't recognise that until now.
So the order is:
Celts romanised, romanised Celts germanised. A question for me now is: What
does aspirated Celtic to non-aspirated Romance language. I always thought
the Italian Affricate ds/ts to be from Celtic as the High German.
> There might even be the case of all three working
> together, so that Celtic speakers over-aspirate
> Germanic consonants, and Romance speakers interpreting
> this as affrication.
My speculative mind sees all these refugees from migration mingling their
languages in these secluded mountain valleys. Kauderwelsch, Walserisch etc.
as Ron wrote. The Romance people managed aspirated consonants to explode
into affricates.
> There's also the possibility that affrication of
> aspirated consonants is just a natural process and has
> nothing much to do with substrates...
And maybe the HG affricates are a little overrated in the linguistic
discours. Commonplace we are told that D is something between G and E.
For example: help - helpen - helfen.
But what is it if we spell it more phonetically:
D hel(u)p - E helph - G helf
E is in the middle now, it always is in context of HG sound shift:
appel - apHel - ApFel
tand - tHooth - tSahn - Bavarian: tSanTH
kan - cHan - kHann - Alemannic: (k)CHan
Aspiration also goes hand in hand with reduction of voiced consonants:
vis - fish - Fisch
vos - fox - Fuchs
zes - six - sechs
zingen - sing - singen
Vocalisation of L in D could also be seen in this context, but there is the
same phenomenon in Bavarian-Austrian.
And also the fricative pronounciation g in Dutch, in HG spelling:
D chaud - E gold - G Gold
I think for people who don't speak one of the three, HG and E and also LS
sound closer, as languages with more edge, whereas D is heard as a more
voiced, non-aspirated, fricative language. And the wrong conclusion of such
an unprejudiced listener would be: G and E are closer also in grammar,
etymology etc.
So the HG sound shift is a bit overrated and certainly an argument for
linguists against a concept of ingvaeonic languages.
And there is also the historic argument: The existence of Southern Germanic
as a own group (or sub-group) for me depends on the period. Before migration
these so called Elbgermanen sat in the North and probably spoke a language
without umlauting.
Some centuries later, in the Old-HG/Old-LS period I think Southern German
can be regarded as a group of its own, which began to spread towards the
North. (By the way, for mee it's a riddle, how these rural umlauted Southern
Germanic could have worked towards the North. Maybe it has to do with
traffic across the passages in the Alps where passengers from the North met,
when they went from Central Europe to Italy and vice versa.)
And at the moment Standard German developed out of East-Central German North
and South seem to me reconnected in a way.
Karl-Heinz
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