Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> It is like this:
> Northern Germany was the Hanse, and the Hanse was Northern Germany.
> The Hanse(atic League) spoke platt (Low German) and Low German was the
> language of the Hanse. The Hanse Diets kept their minutes part in
> Latin, part in Low German; *never* in High German. If Columbus hadn't
> discovered America, moving Europe's center of gravity to the west and
> producing Holland's Golden Century, the Hanse would still be powerful
> and might have become a separate state, speaking another language than
> High German. And Middle Low German was the trade Lingua Franca of the
> North Sea and the Baltic, thus it became creolized; it played a
> similar role to the development of the grammar and vocabulary of
> Danish, Swedish and Norwegian as the one of Northern French to English.
>

Opinions may differ, but Europe's centre of gravity moved north in the
High and Late Middle Ages, contributing to the high urbanisation of
Flanders in particular, with the Hanse partly as the competition in
the North Sea, but not really in the Baltic trade (where Hanse
virtually had the monopoly). England's wool export policy, combined
with the Reformation and the outcome of war with Spain plunged
Flanders into stagnation, with trade moving from Antwerp to Amsterdam.
Imho the Provinces had no choice but to develop in the maritime
direction if they wanted to stay afloat. It would seem that the
gravity centre shrunk rather than shifted. The Provinces were a
relative latecomer in the Atlantic and the Pacific trade, though for a
while they did better than England - theoretically there was nothing
to stop the Hanse from expanding in that direction as well - though it
was a race.

Malgorzata