Re: [tied] Re: Torun´

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 4:34 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Torun´

> What puzzled me was that the German knights (not the Hansa) would use Low German. As you know, all of German Prussia showed only High German.

 

That's a much later affair, which started after the decline of the Hansa and the spread of literary High German alongside Protestantism. The knights of the Order were recruited from far and wide and certainly spoke different varieties of German, but the real speech of the town was Low German. That was the dominant variety of German throughout the Hanseatic League in the Middle Ages. The Knights' official communication was conducted mostly in Latin, but I suppose they used Low German in everyday communication, just like everyone round them, at least in addition to whatever happened to be a given knight's native dialect.

> Beginning of the common era? That leaves room exactly between 50BCE and 0. Interesting. Do you have evidence of Grimm operating before 0?

Grimm's Law, Verner's Law and the loss of non-initial accent (in this order) are common Germanic, so you have to allow sufficient time between GL and the dispersal of the Germani. There are a fair number of GL-affected names attested BC, e.g. the Cherusci or the Marcomanni (marko: < *marga: 'frontier').

> You're right, of course. Still, what is the etymology of <tungri>, if
it has nothing to do with <þuringi>?

 

If they were really Germanic (rather than Celtic-speaking), perhaps a derivative of *tung(w)- (< *dng^Huh2-) 'tongue, speech'? We can only guess.

 

> BTW, do you have the reference for that/those posting(s) (there are a lot of hits on Verner)?

Don't remember exactly when it was, but perhaps the fact that Miguel Carrasquer Vidal was one of the main discussants on that occasion might help.

 

Piotr