LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 04.JAN.2001 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 04.JAN.2001 (04) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: "Language varieties"

John Feather asked:

> Why were Frisian and Middle English similar? Was there
> parallel evolution  from Old English and contemporary Old
Frisian or was (written)
> Frisian influenced by written English?

Frisian and Middle English were similar for the same reason that
Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are, or Italian, Spanish or
Portuguese–  one language splits into several, which gradually
diverge.  Old Saxon/Platt diverged more due to much greater
contact with High German–  Frisia paid tribute to outsiders, but
was not occupied, colonized, nor otherwise disrupted (other than
by viking raids); Charlemagne did occupy the Saxons, and to
subdue them executed their leaders by the thousands, and
uprooted great numbers of Saxons to break their ability to
organize resistence.  After this upheaval came increasing
integration into the rest of the Carolingian and Holy Roman
empires.

Ed Alexander raises the excellent question:

> I think there is another questionable assumption here that
> these various groups of Frisians, Saxons, etc. really
considered themselves
> so separate.  Was this the case?

We don't have definite evidence, but it strikes me as unlikely
that the North Sea tribes of 400-600 AD would have seen
themselves as separate peoples, but merely as separate tribes.
The Scandinavians identified themselves as belonging to tribes,
but considered all the tribes to be one people, the Norse, down
into the 1100's, and to a lesser extent much longer than that.
Likewise  Roman provincials didn't think of themselves as
Spanish vs. Portuguese, even if they had a local identity as
well as the imperial one.
People tended to stay with the tribe they were born into, but
not necessarily: they are ample accounts of individuals and
groups leaving one tribe and joining another: being Frisian,
Angle, Saxon, etc. was basically a political matter; only
gradually did the language diverge over the centuries.

Ron wrote:
> The question I need to add to John's is this: Why then did
early speakers of
> Old English consider themselves ethnically Anglian and Saxon
(and establish
> Anglian and Saxon kingdoms in Britain) when their language was
> supposedly so different (i.e., belonged to another sub-branch)
from Anglian
> and Old Saxon?
> What could account for this relatively sudden language switch
of people who or
> whose recent ancestors had immigrated to the British Isles
> from an area situated in today's Southern Denmark and Northern
Germany?

and Ed further wrote:
> This has always puzzled me, too.  And why are the Franks never
> brought into the mix?  There is good evidence for Frankish
settlement in
> Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire in the 6th and 7th centuries as
there is
> evidence that Frankish kings claimed Kent as their dominion
during this
> period.

There are indication of various tribes in England: Franks,
Frisians, Swabes in Swafham (modern Swabia is only part of the
older Swabe lands; they had earlier been on the middle Elbe)
but–  the Angles and Saxons probably contributed the dominant
group.  The Frisians had adequate land, the Franks and Swabes
had already overrun good land, and so only smaller numbers of
them would have had the incentive to cross the sea to fight for
Celtic land.  The Jutland peninsula, on the other hand, appears
to have been poor farmland: full of forest (“Holstein” meant
“forest-settlers”, Holt-saten) and post-glacial bogs.  The bulk
of the Jutland population appears to have emigrated; the
peninsula is described as depopulated and empty circa 600.  When
I say Jutland, I'm excluding Holstein, which alone in the
peninsula kept its pre-migration population.
Danes trickled in to Jutland, and over the following 1200 years
and more, the forest was cleared, the marshes drained and the
heath rehabilitated.  My own grandmother's grandfather's father
was locally known for reclaiming large tracts of waste for
agriculture near Bov/Flensburg.  In this way, Jutland north of
Holstein became specifically Scandinavian.
When the North Sea Germanic tribes left Jutland, they removed
the transition dialects between West and North Germanic, so that
when the Danes and continental Saxons met, there was a
linguistic gap that now demarcated the two varieties.

The Angles and Saxons needn't even have been the final majority
of settlers: the U.S. is thought of as an English-based country,
but German-Americans are the largest group, followed by
Irish-Americans, followed by English-Americans, with Hispanics
catching up.  As the various Germanic settlers (and assimilated
Celts, I presume) intermixed and built up new tribal identities,
the southern regions settled on the Saxon name (Wessex, Essex,
Sussex), while those to the north settled on Anglia, and its
deriviatives, englisc and Engle land, gradually caught on
generally.  This is the mixing that Ed suggested.
Whatever Angles might have stayed on in Jutish Anglia would have
been Danicized; while the continental Saxons were called alde
seaxan, “the Old Saxons”.

In short: the inhabitants of inhospitable early Jutland probably
formed the bulk of settlers, because other tribes sent much of
their surplus population to the other good lands available, and
the names Saxon and Angle were generalized to the entire
conglomerate people.

Stefan Israel
stefansfeder at yahoo.com

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