Questions tagged [germanic-languages]
Branch of the Indo-European languages from Northern Europe, including English, German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages
28
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2answers
8k views
Why is “ß” not used in Swiss German?
What are some of the historical reasons why the orthographic symbol ß is not used in Swiss Standard German and “ss” is used instead?
2
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1answer
80 views
Why “were” for subjunctive?
Is the subjunctive (what I learned in school as "Konjunktiv 2") Ger. "wäre" ("Ich wäre gern ..." - I'd like to be ...) cognate to "were" even for singular person ("*als ob ich sicher wäre " - as if I ...
3
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1answer
89 views
Homophones in Proto-Germanic
Does anyone know reconstructed homophones in Proto-Germanic or where I could look them up? I am interested in clear homophones, not polysemes.
0
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1answer
121 views
Stark differences in French and German
Both the German and French languages, along with English, evolved from the same roots. This is reflected in some of their words and grammatical structures. So then why are the pronunciations of both ...
2
votes
1answer
54 views
What's the difference between V2 word order and OVS word order?
Is there any difference between the two? They seem the same to me, c.f.:
Fußball spielten die Kinder vor der Schule im Park.
Football played the kids before school in the park.
(...
2
votes
1answer
70 views
What is this “Freeze” language?
I remember having a side discussion with a professor in college and he told be about a nearly extinct language; the closest thing I can remember to its name is "Freeze". Apparently its spoken on some ...
4
votes
3answers
190 views
Have linguistics found any evidence that Semitic languages influenced Germanic languages or vice versa (in ancient times)?
Have linguistics found any evidence that Semitic languages influenced Germanic languages or vice versa (in ancient times)?
BACKGROUND: I suggested to a forum of linguists that a certain Semitic word (...
2
votes
2answers
142 views
Germanic Philology: “translate” a word from indoeuropean language to the germanic language
I'm having a philology test next week. One of the questions will be to "translate" an indoeuropean word into a germanic word, like: i.e. Agros -> germanic Akraz (i.e. "g" --> germ. "k" for Grimm's Law,...
2
votes
1answer
238 views
How intelligible are German and Dutch to each other?
I'm asking this because I stumbled upon what I believe is a Dutch copy of The Brothers Grimm at a used book store. I initially thought it was archaic German and looked over it to see if I could make ...
7
votes
3answers
330 views
Does the English “Garden” come from the French “Jardin” or the German “Garten”?
I always assumed that the English word "Garden" was similar to the German "Garten" due to the Germanic roots of English.
But according to Wikipedia, "Garden" in English is related to the French "...
1
vote
0answers
41 views
dictionary middle norwegian
I try to help somebody with research on the influence of Middle Low German on Middle Norwegian.
For that purpose, a number of documents from the Norwegian Corpus ([Diplomatarium Norvegicum]) are ...
2
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0answers
99 views
Is there any epenthesis in German by which “eins” sounds like “eints” and how frequent is the phenomenon?
The phenomenon works also on the cluster ls and thus it becomes [lts]. Both examples are alveolar sounds.
The epenthesis does not occur universally, but often works on "eins" anyway.
This does not ...
4
votes
1answer
111 views
Possible extrapolation of old German word “hansa” to protogermanic and possibly common root with Sanskrit “sangha”
I came across a discussion about if "Lufthansa" means air-Swan, inspired by the sanskrit word hansa swan. Which is of course wrong as it has its origins in the old german word hansa for group or ...
3
votes
2answers
118 views
Etymology of the words ''Wave''
Do the words Wave(English) Welle(German) Vague(French) have the same Etymology as Val(Serbo-Croatian,Slovenian),Vlna(Czech,Slovakian),BолнаVolna.
All these words mean the same thing-Wave. but I ...
9
votes
3answers
219 views
Where did the use of the two auxiliaries in the Romance languages come from?
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French all have a (compound) perfect tense, which I find curious, given that Latin did not. (You can alternatively perhaps say that it is either united with the ...
0
votes
2answers
172 views
Common gender in Swedish and gender equality
I study Swedish and I have a question. I know ancient grammatical masculine and femenine gender fused into one ("common gender") at some point in time, but I was wondering...
They say that the ...
11
votes
2answers
479 views
When and where did the guttural 'r' originate?
I have often wondered why French is (almost) unique in the Romance languages in using the guttural 'r' – in particular, the uvular fricative. Apart from Piedmontese / Piedmontese Italian (and even ...
3
votes
1answer
163 views
possible etymologies and cognates for Dutch 'mooi'?
The Dutch word 'mooi' (beautiful) doesn't seem to have a clear etymology nor any cognates. Does anyone have theories or ideas for possible origins or cognates?
It seems to have caused Dutch 'schoon' ...
4
votes
0answers
59 views
Is there a measure for grammatical similarity?
Something I see from time to time is the proportion of words from various sources, e.g. English has about 29% French, 29% Latin, 26% Germanic and 6% Greek words. I've never seen anything similar with ...
9
votes
2answers
172 views
Why do phonemes such as /r/ and /ɾ/ evolve into uvular sounds like /ʀ/?
Forgive me if this seems vague, but this is mainly looking at the Germanic languages. Proto-Germanic probably used an alveolar of some sort, most likely a trill.
In terms of Modern Germanic ...
6
votes
2answers
175 views
Does the Dutch sentence “Waarschijnlijk deze zomer ga ik naar Spanje” follow the V2 structure?
This question would be better on Dutch Languages SE, but that site is still in Area 51.
I was discussing Dutch grammar with a Dutch native and how I'd just learnt that Dutch is a V2 language (as are ...
0
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0answers
87 views
Why is it believed the West Germanic /i/ became /aɪ/ in some cases?
I am no study of linguistics, it is an hobby, so certainly nothing I know about in depth, but this one I do find puzzling. I understand that sometimes sounds change, this happens in English today due ...
3
votes
2answers
126 views
Aorist Present--what does this mean? I thought aorist was primarily reserved for past action
As if aorist isn't confusing and ambiguous enough, what could Prokosh mean in A Comparative Germanic Grammar when referring to "aorist presents"? If anyone has the book, it's on page 66. Here are a ...
4
votes
1answer
175 views
Is /ɡ/ Germanic and /dʒ/ French in English ge-/gi- words?
I've recently noticed that in English words starting with "ge-" or "gi-", when the "g" is pronounced /ɡ/, they tend to be etymologically Germanic, while the words where the "g" is pronounced /dʒ/ tend ...
8
votes
2answers
329 views
Why does “begin” have /g/ instead of /j/ if it's from PG *ginnan?
My understanding is that the reflexes of Proto-Germanic velar consonants before front vowels were usually palatal consonants in Old English, which in turn generally yield palatal or palato-alveolar ...
3
votes
1answer
106 views
What is the influence of Germanic languages on Esperanto grammar?
I am making a presentation in my class about the influence of Germanic languages on the Esperanto grammar. I was wondering if you could help me further.
I already said that Esperanto was a non pro-...
2
votes
3answers
264 views
What's up with the letter W?
English is an interesting and incestuous mangling of stuff. I sometimes think about W and it is a pretty interesting letter with much mystery and intrigue.
In French, oui begins with a W sound, yet ...
5
votes
2answers
112 views
How is the the adjective in a definite noun phrase different from a nondefinite one in Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages?
In the wikipedia article about definiteness I came upon this:
In the Germanic languages and Balto-Slavic languages, for example (as still in modern German and Lithuanian), there are two paradigms ...
5
votes
2answers
372 views
Did the Dutch “zee” (sea) and “meer” (lake) diverge or did the German “das Meer” (sea) and “der See” (lake) diverge from a shared linguistic heritage?
The words for:
sea; and
lake respectively,
in Dutch, are:
zee; and
meer,
whereas the German translation of the same is:
das Meer; and
der See1.
This striking, almost completely opposing, ...
2
votes
0answers
52 views
Resources to learn just grammar
I'm interested in learning about the grammar of other languages (notably German, Russian, and Arabic), but I don't really want to learn to speak them. Only their grammar, syntax, morphology, etc., to ...
1
vote
2answers
60 views
Meaning of word/title “Doodenbeer” [closed]
The Fritz Mackensen painting titled Doodenbeer painted around 1900 has this unusual title. What does the title mean? I hear it might mean death beer, but this painting is about a funeral scenario and ...
2
votes
1answer
122 views
Is there a name for self-reference in verbs?
In German and Swedish we have typically the ending ...sig (själv) or ...sich (selbst) (in German) when doing something with yourself, for yourself or oneself.
Example
Ändra sig (="change yourself/...
0
votes
1answer
173 views
When did Icelandic stop being mutuality intelligible with Continental north Germanic languages?
According to wikipedia:
Between 1050 and 1350 Icelandic began to develop independently from other Scandinavian and Germanic languages;
When did it stop being mutuality intelligible with the ...
11
votes
2answers
637 views
Earliest recognition that Germanic and Romance languages are related
A recent question here, Earliest recognition that Romance languages are related asks for when in history it was first noted that individual Romance languages were recognized as ... similar/related/...
7
votes
2answers
862 views
West Germanic Th-Stopping
This is just one example: In the word "father", there is the interdental voiced fricative. However, in Old English, the word is fæder with a voiced alveolar stop; it is also fader in Middle English. ...
4
votes
1answer
139 views
Umlaut in Gothic
It's said that Gothic had no umlaut, but there would seem to be, although I'm sure it's not, signs of a-umlaut.
The digraph au in Gothic is thought to have represented three different sounds, one of ...
4
votes
3answers
222 views
Not affected by Grimm's Law?
I've read that path comes from Old English pæþ from Proto-Germanic paþaz.
The word is supposedly a cognate with Greek pátos as well as other Indo-European words beginning with the voiceless stop, and ...
4
votes
1answer
183 views
When did the /θ/ sound die out in the continental Germanic languages?
I am looking for dates when the /θ/ phoneme (which once written ð and þ in English, and now by the th grapheme) inherited from Proto-Germanic died out in continental Germanic languages.
In other ...
1
vote
1answer
165 views
How to convert masculine Old Norse dwarf names to feminine markers?
I'm wondering how to convert the Old Norse names from the "Catalog of Dwarfs" in the Völuspá into their feminine version? So that they look phonetically female.
For example:
Fíli > Fíla
Kíli > Kíla
...
1
vote
0answers
134 views
Lack of umlaut in Standard Dutch Plurals
I've never paid much attention to Dutch, but I've noticed in comparisons such as charts that Dutch does not have plurals formed with an umlaut.
Hence:
Feet—Füße—voeten
I thought it was odd, and when I ...
8
votes
0answers
148 views
L2 acquisition as a factor in loss of “complex” grammatical features
Recently I came across a short text on Language Log briefly discussing a phenomenon which seems to affect certain languages. The author noticed that loss or heavy weakening of inflection during ...
3
votes
1answer
138 views
What is the reason for some languages have non-linear word order for numbers?
Is there a scientific/historic explanation for the reversed word order for numbers in some languages?
For example, while we have for 32:
in English: thirty two (tens units), Hebrew: shloshim ...
-5
votes
3answers
445 views
Why does German require extra commas that may be considered useless by speakers of other languages?
Let us consider the following English sentence:
I set the table if you take out the trash.
One doesn't have to set a comma between "table" and "if" – in contrast to the German rules for comma ...
4
votes
1answer
113 views
Origin of the term “iminutive”
The word "iminutive" is used in Yiddish, and, apparently, Bavarian grammar to refer to the second diminutive (i.e., of nouns).
The etymology of "diminutive" is clear. As for the provenance of the ...
2
votes
0answers
78 views
“Two tier” theoretical epistemic modality
Quite recently I have noticed that most Bavarian verbs can become theoretical epistemic modal. What I mean by that is that you can take any verb, e.g. "[i] ko" - "[I] can", and turn it into it's ...
3
votes
1answer
132 views
Are “oivai ” and “always” related?
I know that the English "always" comes literally from "all ways". the Bavarian "oivai" sounds almost the same, means the same, but doesn't seem to be as straight forward. While "oi" means "all" and "...
2
votes
2answers
110 views
Do Scandinavian languages have liaisons?
According to Wikipedia,
Liaison (French pronunciation: [ljɛ.zɔ̃]) is the pronunciation of a latent word-final consonant immediately before a following vowel sound.
Scandinavian languages like ...
3
votes
0answers
172 views
How did West Germanic languages evolve?
I'm trying to make a comprehensive phylogenetic tree of Germanic languages, with dates of divergence, and I have been unable to find details on West Germanic languages and how they diverged. I have ...
13
votes
1answer
2k views
Do the words “angst” and “anxiety” share a common root?
The English word angst, taken from German Angst, seems to ultimately originate from Proto-Germanic *angustiz. This word has descendants in many Germanic languages, including, but not limited to, ...
3
votes
3answers
181 views
Do Germanic words have Romance qualities and vice-versa?
I know English was heavily influenced by French. But were there any other instances during which a Germanic language obtained Romance qualities or a Romance language with Germanic qualities?
