Re: [tied] Transhumance [Re: etyma for Crãciun]

At 10:16:40 AM on Friday, January 2, 2004, tgpedersen wrote:

[...]

> In other words, in the Germanic dialects in the old
> Nordwestblock space, we would expect some people to speak
> proper Germanic, cases and all, but the remainder to speak
> a horrible creole, simplified with respect to case, number
> and person. But, aha, this is just what is the case in the
> Low German plus Dutch area (and Jutland).

Except that Middle Dutch still had a fair number of case
distinctions, as may be seen from the paradigm for <die
dach> 'the day', which closely parallels that of NHG:

Sing. Pl.
----- ---
N die dach die daghe
G des daghes der daghe
D dien daghe dien daghen
A dien dach die daghe

[...]

> Of the people that according to Bede colonised England,
> the Saxons were a "reconstitued" Nordwestblock people.
> Jutes, if my interpretation is correct, was a collective
> designation for Nordwestblock/Jutland people, which leaves
> the Angli, which were also well out of the way of the
> Thuringians to begin with. In other words, a good part of
> those people that occupied England probably didn't speak a
> proper Germanic, but a creole version.

Except that OE has a pretty extensive declensional system,
of which a good deal is still found in Southern ME into the
13th century (and in Kentish even later).

Brian