LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 04.JAN.2001 (05) [E]

Fri Jan 5 00:27:34 UTC 2001

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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: "Language varieties"

For those of you interested in trying to riddle out whether the
Old Saxon text Ron gave us was a direct translation from Old
English, read on.  I will warn you, the two languages were so
similar that I wasn't able to find much that was definite.  I
repeated the text at the end of this message.

Stefan Israel

>Ed Sproston replied [LOWLANDS-L * 17.JUL.1998 (07)]:
>
> ==BEGIN QUOTE==
>
> This looks purely Old Saxon, as far as I can tell. I cannot
see any evidence
> at any rate of classical West Saxon. However as we are dealing
with the
> missionary period i.e. pre-early-West-Saxon it could well be
that the
> Anglo-Saxon who did the work was a Northumbrian or else an
Anglian of
> another ilk.

I am drawing particularly on Campbell's Old English Grammar,
Siever's Abriss der altenglischen Grammatik, Marchand's Old
English dialect flowchart and Holthausen's altsächsisches
Elementarbuch.

> You would have to ask an expert on Anglo-Saxon dialects to
spot
> any concordances. But I can tell you the following: the
>nominal ending -o is not West-Saxon

It is however normal in the earliest Old English texts
(alongside expected -u)

The ending -ae (geldae) shows up in early OE and early OS and
thus is also ambiguous.

>"Ec" is not a West-Saxon
> form and I cannot remember seeing it in the dialects either

I don't find any indication of “ec” in any Old English dialect,
but I don't find it listed in Old Saxon: it wasn't the norm in
either language, although both ik and ek (the accented variant)
would have been present in the parent language.

> Neither do
> we see the classic West-Saxon dipthongs in ea- (as we might
expect to see in
> allum > eallum).

The majority of Angle-Saxons spoke Anglian dialects, which did
not diphthongize all to eall.

>In AS the devil is "deofol" and the b in the above text is
> certainly an Old Saxon form.

Actually, the older Old English did commonly write the [v] sound
with the letter <b> in the 700's, thus diobol does not
distinguish between the languages.

> The doubled consonant uu- does resemble Mercian and
Northhumbrian forms but
> is no certain evidence of influence.

<uu> was the common spelling on the continent as well as in
older Old English, thus it tells us nothing.  The Angle-Saxons
later used the rune wyn <P>, but that is probably too late to
play a role here.

>"Gotes" for God's would be "godes" in OE - this is a clear
distinction.

Actually, that's a problem-  neither OE nor Old Saxon would have
written God with a t.  That might be influence from High German
orthography.

>The Old Saxon also has "o" in several
> places where Old English would have "i(e)".

Such as <gelobeistu>:  that is Old Saxon (compare Platt glööben
vs. English believe)

>Finally OS fadaer and alamehtigan
> would be "faeder" and "aelmeahtigan" in WS OE.

I cant' find confirmation of whether OE [ae] was written <ae>
from the earliest times or not.  Kentish and Mercian OE
routinely wrote <e> (thus deg instead of daeg for “day”).  More
importantly: Old Saxon wrote a-umlaut before ht as <a>:  mahtig,
kraftig.  The form alamehtig looks like OE orthography (the
pronunciation may not have differed much or any).  To confuse
matters, tho, Old Saxon did occasionally write mehtig etc.:
thus, this word is ambiguous.

>The alternation of "end "
> and "and" may be one clue to AS influence, but is by no means
certain.

OS had both <and> and <endi>, OE favored just <and> (often
written <ond>.

The one really Anglo-Saxon element that stands out is <halogan
gast>:  Old Saxon wrote <helig> and <gest>.  This

> All in all, the text appears to be wholly OS in form, although
it could
> certainly be a re-working of on OE original.

Only the last item strongly indicates Old English influence;
many more items could just as easily be early non-West-Saxon Old
English as they could be Old Saxon-  the two were so similar, it
would be hard to tell.
There was another Old Saxon poem, a fragment from a Genesis
poem, that looked very much like a translation from OE, and the
OE original later turned up, but this piece is not as obviously
a translation.
My conclusion: circumstances suggest that it is a translation or
paraphrase, but the linguistic evidence in this text is mostly
ambiguous.  I think it's a translation or paraphrase, but I
can't prove it.

Stefan Israel

> In 1998 we discussed the famous (?) supposedly Old Saxon
> baptismal
> (Christianization) oath from what is now Northern Germany.
> This is what I
> said then [LOWLANDS-L * 17.JUL.1998 (03)]:
>
> ==BEGIN QUOTE==
>
> The famous Saxon baptismal oath of the turn of the 8th to the
> 9th century
> tends to be mentioned as one of the earliest extant Old Saxon
> texts.  In
> this ritualized dialog between a Christian priest and a person
> to become
> baptized, the original belief system of the Saxons (and other
> Germanic
> peoples) is referred to as "diabolic."
>
> It has been stated by Agathe Lasch that the text is not purely
> Old Saxon
> but a mixture of Old Saxon and Old English, two languages that
> are very
> closely related and at the time were pretty much mutually
> intelligible.
> Apparently, there were frequent contacts between speakers of
> the two
> languages.  Lasch (1935, "Das altsaechsische Taufgeloebnis,"
> p. 133) says
> that the baptismal oath was composed for Saxons by a
> missionary (assumedly
> from England) with Old English interference.
>
> Is any of you able (and game) to pinpoint what exactly is
> English in this
> text?  You will find the text and my translation below.
>
> Note the inconsistency between _ende_, _end_ and _and_ 'and'.
>
> By the way, also note the use of the noun _unhold_ we recently
> mentioned
> within another context.
>
> Thanks, and regards,
>
> Reinhard/Ron
>
> ==
>
> Original:
>
> Forsaichistu diobolae?
> -- ec forsacho diobolae
> end allum diobolgelde?
> -- end ec forsacho allum diobolgeldae.
> end allum dioboles uuercum?
> -- end ec forsacho allum dioboles uuercum
>    and uuordum, Thunaer ende Uuoden ende
>    Saxnote ende allvm them unholdum the hira
>    genotas sint.
> gelobeistu in got alamehtigan fadaer?
> -- ec gelobo in got alamehtigan fadaer.
> gelobeistu in Crist gotes suno?
> -- ec gelobo in Crist gotes suno.
> gelobeistu in halogan gast?
> -- ec gelobo in halogan gast
>
> Translation:
>
> Do you forsake the devil?
> -- I (do) forsake the devil.
> And all devil worship?
> -- I (do) forsake all devil worship.
> And all devil work?
> -- I (do) forsake all devil work
>    and words, Donar and Wotan and
>    Saxnot and all those demons that are
>    their companions.
> Do you believe in God, the Almighty Father?
> -- I (do) believe in God, the Almighty Father.
> Do you believe in Christ, the Son of God?
> -- I (do) believe in Christ, the Son of God.
> Do you believe in the Holy Ghost?
> -- I (do) believe in the Holy Ghost.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Language varieties

Dear Lowlanders,

What here is written as intervocalic "b" in Old Saxon tended to be written as
a barred "b" (i.e., a "b" with a bar through the overlength).  It seems to be
believed to have been a bilabial "b"/"v" (like Modern Greek _beta_ and Spanish
"b" or "v" as in _Habana_ and _nuevo_).  So we should perhaps not think of it
strictly as a "b".

In Modern Low Saxon (Low German, "Plat(t)"), this phoneme has developed either
into /v/ or into /b/.  (The latter seems to be in the minority but
predominates in the Low Elbe region, including Hamborg/Hamburg.)  For example
(and I use "B"), _diaBol-_ > _Düvel_ ~ _Daivel_ (_Deivel_) ~ _Dübel_ ~
_Daibel_ (_Deibel_) 'devil'; _geloBen_ > _glöven_ ~ _glöben_ ~ _gloiben_
(_gleuben_ ~ _gläuben_) 'to believe'.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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