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

[Cory B Strohmier]

Hi Keth,
	Thank you for clearing that up.  I'm sure I'll ponder what you wrote for
some time to come.
Have a nice weekend,
Cory

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 01:59:02 +0200 keth at online.no writes:
> 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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