Re: [norse_course] Re: Lag, lög and Gesetz, gesetnys

Hello Xigung,

Hochdeutsch isn’t really home in South Germany either. Or at least
those I have met from the Southern areas insist on their own local
dialect, even lawyers or other highly trained people. I have read a
short article some days ago about the language use of the German at
workplaces. The study draws a few important consequences and on of
these is that the about 70% of Bavarians speaks dialect at workplace,
too, meanwhile in other areas not at such a high percentages. I have
also observed that TV presenter of Bavarian and Austrian TV channels
use their own accent as standard language, while other regional
channels are not likely to do so. Beside Bavaria, the other large
southern province of Baden-Württemberg is promoting a sympathy
campaign with the “heimtückisch” motto: “Wir können alles. Ausser
Hochdeutsch.”

I speak with High German pronunciation usually, and some Southern-
like accent in colloquial speech. May be for this reasons the
Hochdeutsch and Southern dialects are “the German” to me. But you
are definitely right about that we should not ignore
Niedersächsich/Plattdeutsch.

As to Grimm and Jütland (Jylland): may be the cause the tried to prove
the German-being of Jütland are merely political: Germany (or German
Bund until 1871) and Denmark both proclaimed some areas of
Schleswig and Holstein to be their own, but in 1864 German and
Austrian troops invaded Schleswig and Holstein, and finally it was
connected to the German Empire North Schleswig was returned to
Denmark after WW I.

Imre

PS. one of my favourite tongue twisters is the
word “südschleswigsches”.

-------

xigung <xigung@...>

>
>
> Hi Imre,
> Well, I think you also ought to consider "Low German"
> (Niederdeutsch), because Hochdeutsch really is the language
> of Southern Germany, which differs in many respects from the
> Anglo-Saxon that you are interested in.
>
> Low German, Frisian and Dutch are really much closer
> to Old English.
>
>
> About the language of the oldest runic inscriptions, the
> experts differ. People from the West Germanic regions
> seem to wish to equate Scandinavian with Anglo-Saxon
> at around the year zero. I do not know what reasons
> they have for this, but I suspect it is motivated in a
> kind of cultural imperialism, just like Grimm by linguistic
> means tried to "prove" that Jutland really belonged to
> Germany, which was used to motivate several campaigns of
> suppression.
>
> Remember that the earliest runes (ca. 200 AD or somewhat
> earlier) are very few, and that there are not many other
> records of the Scandinavian tongue as early as that.
>
> What I should like to look into, are the vocabularies of
> Old Norse, as compared with Old English. Are the words
> basically all adaptions of the same roots, or do the Scandinavian
> languages contain many roots (what percentage?) that are not
> found in Old English?
>
>
> Vale,
> Xigung.
>
>
>
>
> --- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Imre <hobbi-

germanista@...> wrote:

> >
> >
> > Dear Haukur, Diego, Xigung and Llama nom,
> >
> > thanks for the contributions from all of you, indeed. Meanwhile I

have

> > realized that my question was somewhat improper, as it is very
> difficult
> > to say if two similar tongues can be considered dialects of the very
> > same languages or two separate languages. Separate statehood

of

> > the speakers might contribute to considering them separate
> > languages, just as in case of the split of the former Yugoslavia, the
> > once "indivisible" Serbo-Croat today is considered to be 3 separate
> > languages, such as Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, though

difference

> > may be less significant between Bosnian and Serbian than Swiss
> > German and Hochdeutsch (the latter two are thought to be the

same

> > language).
> >
> > It could have been similar in the age of shifting from common-

Germanic

> > to Western-Germanic languages and Old Norse. Since this was
> > continuous we could only set a symbolic date or estimate a longer
> > period during which it could have happened. But of course mutual
> > intelligibility does not end at the time when the dialects split >into
>
> > separate languages, e.g. written Dutch is more or less intelligible

to

> > German-speakers, or Estonian is also understandable to Finns in

some

> > extent. But because of the mutual intelligibility no one would say

that

> > these are dialects of the very same language, any longer.
> >
> > The reason for my question was that I wanted to when the Old

Norse

> > word `lög' acquired the meaning `law'. According to

my "presumption #

> > 1", this must have happened after that Old Norse and West

Germanic

> > languages split form each other, because the English cognate `lay'

and

> > German cognate `Lage' do not have the same meaning as `lög'.
> >
> > But again ("presumption #2") – since dialects can be well different
> > before formally splitting into different languages – it could have
> > happened that in the Northern dialects of the common-Germanic

the

> > proto-Germanic *'lag' (or whatever the correct form may have

been)

> > already had the meaning "law" (or some kind of commonly

accepted

> > social custom etc.), but not in the West or East dialects.
> >
> > This latter argument could be supported by the fact that German

and

> > OE both use words ("Gesetz" and "gesetnys") with the similar

original

> > meaning: "setzen" and "to set" also have the same primary

meaning

> > as Swedish "lägga" (`to lay') and ON "leggja", both having the

primary

> > meaning `to lay, to put, to set etc.'. I presume that the Northern
> > dialects and Western dialects meant the same thing, but one of the
> > dialects shifted to an other word, though a secondary meaning
> > (i.e. `law') of "*lag" could have been intelligible to the Western
> dialects
> > or a secondary meaning of the word "*set" or "*geset" (or

whatever

> > the correct proto-Germanic may have been) could have been
> > understandable to the speakers of the Northern dialects, e.g.

Swedish

> > still has the verb "sätte" with a similar meaning as

German "setzen"

> > and English "to set".
> >
> > Greetings,
> >
> > Imre
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
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