Fwd: Re: [gothic-l] Re: To Dirk and Tore and keth

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Cory,
I think I made a terrible mistake !
I think it may have resulted from a paradigma somewhat like this:
"Snow is dry and rain is wet. Snow is colder than rain, hence dry things
 are colder than wet things."  (couldn't find any better paradigma in a hurry)
It deals with two things that are being compared, somehow being switched
around, such as to produce exactly the opposite of what was intended.
But how do I straighten out the mistake? Maybe pointwise:
:)
1. I speak German reasonably well, I also understand spoken German
  (radio movies people classes etc)

2. I know people from Tirol. Sometimes a bit hard. But once I
   got used to it, I understood what they were saying (usually) 

3. When I visited Bayern, I found it somewhat similar to Tirol
   dialect. And that what I had learned in Tirol was useful
   for understanding Bairisch.

4. In a book I have, there was a bairish text example, and 
   I thought I did understand it. That is, thought I could
   translate to normal German.

5. I believe Dirk took part in the discussion we had about
   Birisch/Jiddisch a while ago, and that he said [I think]
   that he fas familiar with Bairish.

6. Then, in trying to explain the difference between Old Icelandic
   and Old Gutnish to Dirk, searching for a good analogy, I compared
   the relationship between Old Icelandic (O.I.) and Old Gutnish (O.G.)
   to the relationship between modern Hochdeutsch (H.G.) and modern
   Bairisch (B.). I did this because in comparing O.I. - O.G. to
   H.G. - X , I felt I had to choose a language that Dirk knew for X.
   And since we had been discussing Bairish a while before, and Dirk had
   said he spoke it [I think], I thought I would choose X = B.

So that was the background.
Then to practical matters:
Let us say you provide me with a sample text in Bairisch, say of
approximately 100 words. Then I should, perhaps with some help
for a word or two, the text not being extreme in any sense, be
able to translate it to Hochdeutsch in a literal word-by-word fashion.
(gulp - I *think*)                                         (A)

Next you give me an Old Gutnish text, again not too difficult, of say
a 100 words, then presumably I should be able to translate it to
Old Icelandic (with some help from Grammar book + Dictionary,
becaue I am better at writing H.D. than at O.N.)           (B)

So we have two experiments then: (A) and (B).
Let us say I manage to perform resonably well on both tasks.
The question then is: in which case did I have to make more
changes? There are two types of changes: a) in words, or in
stems of words, and b) in morphological details. (prefixes and
(postfixes to the stem)

The question then is where it was necessary to make more
changes (of both types a + b) ? In experiment (A) or in experiment (B) ?

Counting the number of changes made in, say, a sample text of 100
words, would then give a measure of how close the two languages are.
If there are fewer changes in experiment (A) than in experiment (B),
it would mean that, according to this way of measuring the difference
between two languages,  Bairisch is closer to Hochdeutsch than Old
Gutnish is to Old Icelandic.

Example 1:

"Vandaag heb ik de gehele dag getypt; toch ben ik niet vermoeid omdat
 ik ook een wandeling gedaan heb."  (Dutch sample text of 18 words)

"Heute habe ich den ganzen Tag getippt; doch bin ich nicht müde weil
 ich auch eine Wanderung getan habe." (Hochdeutsche Übersetzung)

 Analysis:  The word stems that were different are Heute, ganzen, weil.
            That is 3 word in 18 = 1:6.
            Prefixes and postfixes thet were different were "ver-",
            which had to be removed from "vermoeid".
            I have not taken into account differences in spelling
            which may only reflect differences in convention.
            Differences in sound are also difficult to analyze
            if we do not write with phonetic alphabet.
            Systematic differences of sound quality such as dag/tag,
            toch/doch, ben/bin, oei/ü, ik/ich, ook/auch, doen/tun,
            heb/habe, are also difficult to make up ones mind about.
            Should they be counted as differences or not? And how
            much weigt should they be given. Any way, I think the
            ratio 1:6 gives a rough measure, but the sample size
            ought to have been increased in order to obtain a better
            ratio that is closer to the expectation value.

Example 2:
Well, here I wanted to find a sentence of Althochdeutsch and translate
to Neuhochdeutsch. But the examples I found were too difficult, and mixed
with too much Latin words. So I can't do it. I also looked at a sample 
of platt deutsch, but there were a bit too many particles for my taste,
and it is a language I've never really read much in. So I think I'll
drop it. Bairisch is actually better, because when I read it, I can 
"hear" what it sounds like, and that helps. But we already had an example
of Bairisch some months ago, and I think by the above method you'd
get a ratio of almost zero. But it could be tried and I think the result
would be that Bairisch is almost the same as Hochdeutsch according to
this rough method. So then we'd have to look at differences in sound
and different particle use and things like that. The experiment O.G.-O.I.
we already have (se below). It is just a matter of counting. But before
I go into that, I'd like some responses to this. Because if there are
no responses, then I see no point. Professor Torp's example is already
in the archive, and anybody can see that O.G. isn't very different
from O.I. At least if you have some training in reading O.I. sagas
and things like that, it is obvious that they are very very close.
Much much closer than Nederlands & Neuhochdeutsch! (because a 1:6
ratio is not a very small difference. It means that a learning
period is necessary before users of the two languages can communicate)
I could also take example Norwegian - Swedish, but the examples are of
course better suited if they deal with languages that the readers
already know, or at least where they know one of the languages.

Any way, in the sample below O.I.-O.G. there are 21 words.
There is however no need to replace "hitti" by "fann" (=found)
since both are allowed in Icelandic. The only differences
are 1) elvist (no such word in ON) and 2) þann/sá.
And so we get a "closeness ratio" of 2:21, for this particular
short sample. But as I said, the samples ought to be longer.
(in a statistical model one might find out things about
fluctations by assuming a Poisson distribution for large samples)
The difference þann/sá is actually interesting to compare
with Gothic. (see the demonstrative pronoun in Gothic)

With best regards
Keth




>Hi Keth,
>        I found your comments on this one intriguing, but probably just as
>puzzling as Dirk did.  While Old Gutnish and Gothic are clearly related
>as Germanic tongues, they do not seem to me to be as close as Bavarian is
>to German and Gothic.  (In fact, if you subtract out some later
>borrowings and the effects of the Second German Sound Shift from
>Bavarian, you will find that Bavarian is very close indeed to Gothic
>(especially in pronouns which are rarely borrowed, and in a number of
>other common words.)
>        Perhaps the problem here is a lack of familiarity with Icelandic and Old
>Gutnish.  (I can find my way through the Gothic texts, but I have a hard
>time with the Icelandic and Old Gutnish, even when I have both right in
>front of me, and I carefully compare them.)  You may need to explain more
>fully the connections here, if you wish those of us who are less familiar
>with Icelandic and Old Gutnish to be able to follow you.
>        I think that the possible connection between Old Gutnish and Gothic is a
>fascinating subject, and I agree that it merits further investigation
>(but I would add that Bavarian also shares connections with Gothic, and
>these connections merit further investigation too).
>Cory
>
>On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 19:31:56 -0000 cstrohmier at yahoo.com writes:
>> --- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
>> Hi Dirk,
>> You were just to compare the two texts below,
>> that is all.
>> 
>> >> I saw this by Keth: 
>> 
>> >> GOTLAND text:
>> >> Gutland hitti fyrsti maðr þann sum þjelvar hit. Þá var
>> >> Gutland sá elvist at þet dagum sank ok nátum var uppi.
>> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> >> ICELAND text:
>> >> Gotland hitti [=fann] fyrstr maðr sá sem þjalfarr hét. Þá var 
>> >> Gotland só ?elvist at þat dOgum sOkk ok nóttum var uppi.
>> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> >> (the first text is Gutlandish from 1350, the second is the same
>> >> text translated to Icelandic)
>> 
>> 
>> >
>> >I am confused now. Yesterday Keth wrote that I should take the time 
>> 
>> to 
>> >investigate some text exerpts that he had posted earlier, saying 
>> that 
>> >they would prove that Gutnish is even closer to Gothic than German 
>> is 
>> >to Bavarian?????? Keth, can you clarify this please?
>> >
>> 
>> You are hard to figure out, Why don't you just look at the texts?
>> I wrote at length about it, and this is only the first sentence
>> that Professor Arne Torp has translated to Icelandic.
>> So the first text is Old Gunish and the second is the same Old 
>> Gutnish
>> text translated to Icelandic. What's the problem?
>> 
>> Cheers
>> Keth
>> --- End forwarded message ---
>> 
>> 
>
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