Early Proto-Germanic - a reconstruction
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- Опубліковано 30 кві 2024
- The usual form of reconstructed Proto-Germanic if fairly close to attested Proto-Norse and relies strongly on Gothic for its forms, reflecting a language stage spoken around 0 ad.
However, the time depth between this language and its split from PIE is vast and many changes happened during these two millennia. There are many examples that show that an earlier stage of the language was markedly different, and that many of these traits might have persisted longer than one might think.
just discovered this channel and have been on a bit of a binge through your other videos, fascinating and wonderful stuff, keep it up! respect from england!
This is really well done! Hope to see some longer content soon too… look forward to more videos! Thanks!!
The apparent conservatism of Germanic has made me think for a while now. For example the question of how large the Proto-Germanic continuum was. Bordering in the south to Celtic and in the North to Saami and Finnish, the range of Proto-Germanic would have been quite a lot. In the same area nowadays there are more divergent tongues, Low German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and so on, so it just seems weird to imagine the same area to have been uniform over the same large area. What happened or how could this continuum persist.
Another interesting thing is the possible Germanic inscription on the Negau helmets, which seems to show already a loss of final -z though and would indicate West Germanicism? Though it is reckless to base it on one name alone.
A concept I have encountered recently is called dialect levelling, which might be a part in all of this. This process has been theorised to have taken place in Berber and in some Indonesian languages. Berber has the same "problem" as Germanic, the family is not that divergent to be 5000 years old. Rather it seems like most Berber languages only diverged around 200 AD, at the same time the split from Semitic and Egyptian must have happened during the early Bronze Age already, given that Egyptian and Akkadian are already quite distinct when they first appear 2800 BC. The idea of dialect levelling is like a Koiné replacing a previously existing diversity with a new trade Koine, in this case fascilitated by Roman trade in the Sahara. Basically leading to divergent languages to converge again for a time.
Might this have happened with Germanic as well? Then again it would mean that one of the most conservative varieties just won out, which is also weird. The alternative might be that the conservatism is a sort of compromise between varieties.
Germanic was a continuous dialect continuum until the migration of the goths and the later on emigration of the Anglo-saxons to Britain and slavic settlement in the east. During this up to around 500 ad northwest Germanic was still one language with increasing dialectal diversity, and innovations like umlaut spread freely.
I think maybe Baltic is an interesting comparison, being a highly conservative branch spoken around the same area, but that did not get as influenced by the upheaval around the fall of Rome that led to the massive migration of Germanic and slavic that in turn split into different languages over a large area. Some have suggested that Slavic was like a kind divergent Baltic dialect that went its own way, maybe Germanic was like a kind of Centum Baltic originally that likewise got "caught up" in all the turmoil of late antiquity.
@@tidsdjupet-mr5ud Baltic is also interesting for its conservatism. Though I have seen people proposing that Baltic is conservative because it migrated into an area, where Indo-European was already established instead of interacting with a lot of substrate influence like Celtic, Italic or Hellenic did.
The same has been said about Finnic, migrating into an area, where Saami had already spread before. Given that Finnic as well is pretty conservative among the Uralic langs.
As for "Centum Baltic", what is interesting to note is that Balto-Slavic is not really a satem lang like Indo-Aryan is, but just satemised. Baltic in particular has doublettes of centum and satem forms like Lithuanian akmuo - ašmuo "stone". Loanwords and common innovations like the strong/weak distinction of adjectives suggests Baltic-Germanic contact also.
@@Flozone1 Germanic and Baltic also share the short a/o merger.
_"so it just seems weird to imagine the same area to have been uniform over the same large area"_
Look at how similar the East Slavic languages are today despite being spread over a vast area. That's really just a sign that the expansion happened recently.
0 AD is not a thing btw. It goes from 1 BC to 1 AD. There is no year 0
How does it got from 1 bc to 1 ad if there’s no 1 ad
@@rahjah6958Are you implying there’s no “after death” bc there was no “death” to come after? If so, that was clever and wicked funny lol well played my friend.
@@rahjah6958 there is a 1 AD, the original comment said that. There is however no 0 AD.
Think about it. If you have a point and everything before it is measured in years before and everything after in years after
then you have one year before it, then point 0, then one year after
ergo 1 BC and then 1 AD
No 0 AD
Have there been any studies on whether there's any connection between the pace of a tribe's migration and how rapidly languages diverge?
Not that I know, but most of the divergence of Germanic happened around the migration period ca 400 ad.
Actually I once heard that it was found that languages tend to be more conservative when travelling, kinda like how Icelandic is the closest Norse language to Old Norse, despite being spoken in an island far away from the Old Norse homeland
@@rommelrivera6131I think that's more due to isolation and limited influence from neighbouring languages than from travelling. Other languages like Turkish or Thai which moved far from their homelands adopted many loanwords and even grammatical features.
Great video! Thank you!
Good content. Keep going!
Some claim that the Germanic languages have vocabulary (And maybe other traits?) from some non-Indo-European language. Would that "mixture" with another language be as resent as those Germanic sound laws? Did the Norse mix with some pre-Indo-European populations as late as 500 BC? Or is the non-Indo-European aspects older than the sound shifts? So that the language before 500 BC was more typical Indo-European, but still with some odd vocabulary?
The sound shifts in Germanic are not that special and similar changes have happened in other branches. Also, genetically and material-culture wise at least Scandinavia seems to have been settled by Indo-European speakers fairly early, with most of the earlier cultures such as pitted ware being assimilated around 2000 bc.
AFAIK the Germanic substrate theory is not as influential anymore and Germanic does not seem to be that strongly affected by a substrate, like for example Greek that has a very apparent non-IE component in both lexicon and mythology.
There is no genetic evidence for any admixture event in 500BC. Nor is early Germanic less Indo-European than any other contemporary branches. Modern Germanic languages are less like PIE than Sanskrit or Homeric Greek, but that's surely to be expected.
Hugtakande to! Meir av dette 👏👏
Good video. Keep it up man, there are many people (atleast within this given niche) who are interested in these things.
Mycket intressant!
7:00 You're speaking "English", you can say "Tiw" as well as bending over for the Scandys and just loosely waving at the rest of us. "Tyr" is like the most distant word from these proto-Germanic roots. We know "Tiw" was in English, and our reconstructions of it's forbearer in proto-Germanic is "Tiwaz". That's interesting in this context.
I mentioned (west) norse Týr since it is the most familiar form. In fact, the Swedish/Danish form of the name wasn't Týr either but Tir as in Swedish tisdag. There are many features of old Norwegian/Icelandic that did not apply to other Scandinavian dialects.
I agree with using English forms in English, but Old Norse Týr is not as distant as you think, because you are confusing spelling and pronunciation. In the 800s ON Týr, better spelled Tiwʀ, was pronounced /tiwɹ̝/. Proto-Germanic tīwaz was pronounced /ˈtiː.wɑz/. On the other hand English Tew-if we use the pronunciation in Tuesday, and it rhymes with "new", which seems most reasonable-is pronounced /tjuː/.
Old Swedish Iohan or short form of Johannes (“John”). First recorded in Sweden in runes in the 11th century.
is not enough, we need...
saint Ермола́й (Jermoláj)
#Jorma hoiti näitä toimiaan niinkuin taisi, mutta kun hän oli enemmän soittaja ja laulaja kuin tietäjä, joutui Panulan tietäjän vanha maine yhä heikompaan huutoon sitä mukaa kuin Reidan maine kasvoi.
Jorma did has errands as he knew how to, but as he was more of a musician and a singer than a wise man, Panula's wise man's old reputation got weaker and weaker as Reita's improved.
1897, Juhani Aho, Panu
the earliest Germanic loans (Koivulehto 1981):
🇫🇮 paikka, joukko, katras, otsa, kansa, runko, rita (Proto-Finno-Permic)
place, group, flock, forehead, people, trunk, trap
*spaikǭ ? Gutnish spaik (“a mark carved in a tree”)
*jaukiją (“team of oxen”)
*gaduraz (whence Old English geador)
*oncca ? *anþiją (compare Old High German endi (“forehead”)),
in which case the borrowing would have to be very early (among the earliest Germanic loans)
*hansō (earlier *hansā)
Proto-Finnic *runka + -o, the root probably borrowed from Proto-Germanic *skrunkaz (compare Icelandic skrokkur).
Alternatively related to Erzya рунго (rungo, “torso, trunk”), in which case from Proto-Finno-Permic [Finno-Volgaic] *ruŋka.
Proto-Samic *rëtē ´animal trap´ *rita, possibly from Proto-Finno-Permic *rita.
*wrīþa- 'twist'. dialectal Reitel, Schupf-reitel
(Lith. riečiù, riẽsti ‘to twist, roll’ )
*wrīþan
to weave, twist
→ Italian: riddare `to go round in circles´
from Lombardic rīdan (“to wind, turn”).
Ritala, Ridanpää, Ritamäki, Ritanen, Ritari, ´a Finnish surname´
ritari ´knight´ Borrowed from Swedish riddare, from German Ritter.
? rita ? rëtē ? ríta (wraita)
Proto-Finnic *rata, borrowed from Proto-Germanic *tradō. Cognates include Estonian rada, Livonian radā, Karelian rata (“The Milky Way”).
Proto-Finnic *raita, borrowed from Proto-Germanic *raidō, originally referring to a trail or track left behind while riding.
🇫🇮 raide track, railroad track
Norwegian raide
Borrowed from Northern Sami ráidu, from Proto-Samic *rājδō, a borrow from Proto-Germanic *raidō, whence also the native doublet of rei.
→ Swedish: rajd ´a caravan of reindeer and sleighs´
riita ´quarrel, argument´
borrowed from Proto-Germanic *strīdaz, compare German Streit and Icelandic stríð. Related to Estonian riid, Livvi riidu, Ludian riid and Veps rida.
8:08 typo Proto-Finnic *sakna ´sauna´
Cognate with Proto-Samic *suovńē (“pit in the ground”); the original meaning may have been "pit", given that early saunas were dug pits into the ground and a pile of heated rocks (*kiukasa). Possibly a borrowing from early Proto-Germanic *stakna- (later *stakkaz, compare e.g. English stack). Lexikon der älteren germanischen Lehnwörter in den ostseefinnischen Sprachen however disputes this.
takka
A loan from dialectal Swedish stakka (“fireplace”), corresponding to English stack and standard Swedish stack. Doublet of taakka.
burden, pack (bundle to be carried)
Borrowed from Proto-Norse (*stakkaʀ) (compare Old Norse stakkr (“hay stack, heap”)). Doublet of takka.
excelllent, but why the ridicoulous pompous speachpattern in the example at the end
Your mom
That's what it sounded like. The penultimate stress on taisāam wirāam is not something we copied from Latin in order to sound pompous-it is based on Verner’s law voicing, and must have been there in those words at some time.
@@germanicgems i dont agree. It is not the pronounciation but the chanting tremolous patos im referring to. And you will also find that this speachpattern is not how linguists usually represent this as it is not reflective of normal speech
@@skog5351it's just because his vowel length is too long. if it was the correct length it would sound more natural. but otherwise, yes, that's how that specific context would've sounded
@@gavinrolls1054 I partly agree The vowel length is a major contributor too that, but its also the use of chest vs head voice - I think singing terminology is the best way to describe it. I also think its somehow robotic when it comes to sentence intonacion. Its fairly good as far as I can tell when it comes to the individual words but strung to gether it doesnt vary over the sentence like in natural speech. this is more like somebody chanting. But still important to emphasize Im not talking about the word pronounciation only the speachpattern and the use of voice. There is also a bit of exagerrated vibrato