Branch of the Indo-European languages from Northern Europe, including English, German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages
5
votes
3answers
175 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
38 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
votes
0answers
72 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
101 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
105 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
195 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
157 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 ...
7
votes
0answers
189 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
126 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
47 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
133 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
135 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
votes
0answers
81 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
120 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
158 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 ...
7
votes
2answers
296 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
97 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
2answers
204 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
104 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 ...
4
votes
2answers
276 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
51 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
106 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
147 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
602 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
828 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
128 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
179 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
161 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
153 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
110 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 ...
7
votes
0answers
133 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
130 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
285 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
105 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
128 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 "...
1
vote
1answer
81 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
151 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
170 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?
-6
votes
1answer
329 views
Why Germanic languages are not generally as soft as other Indo-European languages? [closed]
Let me clarify what I mean by "harsh" and "soft" with an example: Suppose that you've just arrived in a strange planet and an alien is approaching you repeating just one vowel! Your feelings will ...
1
vote
1answer
342 views
Sound correspondences in Germanic languages
I've noticed that in particular germanic languages have similar base words to english of which many times the only difference is that of the vowels. This would make sense seing as to how they are ...
1
vote
0answers
41 views
Old Norse kné: a- stem or wa- stem?
The neuter noun kné follows a-stem declension.
But it comes from Proto-Germanic *knewą. This seems to be a wa-stem.
Then why does it follow a-stem declension? Did Scandinavians force it to, even ...
0
votes
0answers
82 views
Can someone explain this sentence from Dartmouth's German page?
Was perusing the page (you can find it here), I came across the paragraph "That said, word order is a complex aspect of language, never wholly mastered by non-native speakers.
What is the idea ...
5
votes
3answers
384 views
Verner's Law and 'ge-'
Verner's Law says that voiceless fricatives, when immediately following an unstressed syllable in the same word, underwent voicing.
The Germanic prefix 'ge-' as in German 'genug' or English 'enough' ...
6
votes
3answers
493 views
Feminization suffix “-in” in German: etymology and relatives
The suffix "-in" in German modifies an actor noun into a specifically feminine form:
Der Lehrer, die Lehrerin
Most of the original nouns have the suffix "-er", which is widely used in the Germanic ...
5
votes
3answers
2k views
Why do English, Italian, German, Spanish, French and Latin share a common alphabet and many words?
I wonder why English, Italian, German, Spanish, French and Latin share common alphabet and other words.
Also what is the relation among them.
0
votes
0answers
101 views
Why was 'thwart' assigned to PIE *terkw- “to twist”?
thwart (adv.) [...]
c. 1200, from a Scandinavian source, probably Old Norse þvert "across," originally neuter of thverr (adj.) "transverse, across,"
(cognate with Old English þweorh "...
1
vote
1answer
47 views
Why does väcka/wecken seem to be built as a causative although vakna/wachen is a weak verb?
The causative verbs in germanic languages are built upon the preterite of a strong verb. However there's one verb that seems to fall out of that scheme:
Swedish: vakna - väcka; German: (auf)wachen - (...
