Lingua Frankie

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Lingua Frankie

Postby TisILeclerc » 6:30 pm

You say Potato I say chips with everything and don't spare the salt and vinegar.

This is a bit post mega but I'm confused.

We are told that Kent was occupied by Jutes. We are told that the Jutes came from Jutland.

The dialect areas of England can be traced back quite clearly to the Germanic tribes which came and settled in Britain from the middle of the 5th century onwards. There were basically three tribal groups among the earlier settlers in England: the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. The Angles came from the area of Angeln (roughly the Schleswig-Holstein of today), the Saxons from the area of east and central Lower Saxony and the Jutes from the Jutland peninsula which forms west Denmark today. The correlation between original tribe and later English dialect is as follows:

Germanic tribes and regions in England where they mainly settled

Saxons — South of the Thames (West Saxon area)
Angles — Middle and Northern England (Mercia and Northumbria), including lowland Scotland
Jutes — South-East of England (Kent)


https://www.uni-due.de/SHE/HE_DialectsOldEnglish.htm

The coastal area of Saxony is quite near to the land of the Angles and Jutes. So I would assume they had very similar languages or dialects. Yet once in England they split off from each other.

For all purposes of intercommunication, these leading dialects were as powerful barriers as are separate and distinctive languages at the present day.


http://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Resea ... 006-07.pdf

We are further told that the Northumbrian language was influenced by Scandinavian. But surely they were all Scandinavian to some extent anyway, especially Jutish and Anglish.

The English of the North, however, was very different from that of the South, not only in grammatical in-flexions, but also in vocabulary and in the pronunciation of words common to each.


I will not here enter into the geographical limits and distribution of these linguistic divisions. It will be sufficient for our present purpose to speak of our old dialects under the terms Southern, Midland, and North-ern, or, as they are sometimes designated, West-Saxon, Mercian, and Northumbrian.


What happened to Jutish? From what I have read so far that disappears from the article altogether and the 'southern' language is from henceforth known as 'West-Saxon'. And while we're at it what happened to the East Saxon and South Saxon or Mid Saxon?

I miss the Jutes and their poetic tongue.
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Re: Lingua Frankie

Postby Boreades » 9:37 pm

I'm glad Tisi has raised this subject.

TisILeclerc wrote: And while we're at it what happened to the East Saxon and South Saxon or Mid Saxon?


Err, is that the same as Essex, Sussex and Middlesex? Or summat else?

Besides the lingering lingua logistics, and despite the best efforts of the author of THOBR, I too am still confused. Especially by the business of accents. Which (in my naivety) I thought would go hand-in-hand with dialect, or at least run parallel in some shape or form.

But according to Wiki authorities, the West Country accent is the same as West Saxon.

The Late West Saxon dialect was the standard literary language of later Anglo-Saxon England, and consequently the majority of Anglo-Saxon literature, including the epic poem Beowulf and the poetic Biblical paraphrase Judith, is preserved in West Saxon dialect, though not all of it was originally written in West Saxon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Country_English


That still confuses me, because all the "West Country" accents I know get stronger as you go further west away from the traditionally "Saxon" areas. Or north into Norfolk and even as far north as North Lincolnshire where there are still folk with a burr in their voice.

I don't believe it's the fresh air, or digging turnips that gave rise to that accent. Sadly, within living memory, we are losing our awareness of the true extent of that accent. I have in my younger years met many native people in Oxfordshire, Hampshire and West Sussex with a distinctly "west country" accent. But they are dying out or disappearing under a tide of received-pronunciation and emigrants from London with BBC-speak.

You might say this is nonsense, and the West Country accent is the same as West Saxon. In which case, where are the folks in or around Saxony/Germany who speak with a "West Saxon" accent? Is there a treasure trove of German humour taking the piss out of Saxony country folk who talk like our West Country folk?

Ooo arr, git orf moi Fränkische Bratwurst.
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Re: Lingua Frankie

Postby Mick Harper » 9:46 pm

Allow me to bring order into chaos. For a start there is no language called 'Saxon'. This is obvious if you consult where Saxony is -- everywhere and nowhere, baby. Sometimes it's Denmark, sometimes it's Hamburg, sometimes it's Dresden. A Saxon is a salt-trader exporting salt from the saltmines of ... wait for it ... Old Saxony via the Elbe into the North Sea and the Baltic (too cold, too fresh for cheap sea salt). Saxons spoke and speak German, or at any rate a modified dialect of what is nowadays called hochdeutsche.

The Angles may be be from Angeln but if so they spoke Danish. The Jutes may be from Jutland but if so they spoke Danish. There is no (spoken) language called Anglo-Saxon so I doubt if (m)any of them actually spoke it. However it is possible to learn to speak artificial phonetic languages in certain circumstances so it is possible.
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Re: Lingua Frankie

Postby TisILeclerc » 10:13 pm

They probably all spoke Danish. But not English. And English won.

Frances Pryor thinks they may not have invaded anyway. In this programme he investigates post-Roman settlements in the 'Dark Ages' as well as continuing trade with Turkey with tin being exported from post Roman Britain. Carry on regardless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iejwIpAKPyg
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Re: Lingua Frankie

Postby TisILeclerc » 8:50 pm

A Saxon is a salt-trader exporting salt from the saltmines of ... wait for it ... Old Saxony via the Elbe into the North Sea and the Baltic (too cold, too fresh for cheap sea salt). Saxons spoke and speak German, or at any rate a modified dialect of what is nowadays called hochdeutsche.


Is Saxon really Hochdeutsche?

Wiki has it as Low German or Dutch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Low_German

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Low_Saxon

As far as I'm aware High German tends to be further south.

They may have been salt traders but then Salzburg and other places were also salt traders. But it seems as though it was the ability of the Saxons to sail on the north sea that marked them out from other groups. Whether they were trading salt or not I don't know.

The Saxons (Latin: Saxones, Old English: Seaxe, Old Saxon: Sahson, Low German: Sassen, German: Sachsen, Dutch: Saksen) were a group of Germanic tribes first mentioned as living near the North Sea coast of what is now Germany (Old Saxony), in late Roman times. They were soon mentioned as raiding and settling in many North Sea areas, as well as pushing south inland towards the Franks.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxons

One problem for me is the use of names to describe these various tribes. Presumably they would have names that would identify them so there should be some meaning in the name. However in the case of the Saxons it seems to be rather vague. I've seen one explanation that states they worshipped a goddess called Saxa or some such name. Or as here in wiki they were named after the swords they carried. Is that usual? Or even that for some reason they were named after a stone. This apparently from the Latin 'saxa' which is supposed to mean stone. Why would the Romans call them by such a name? Besides which why would the Saxons pick the name up themselves and use it to describe themselves?

It's interesting to see variations above on their name such as Sahson, Sassen which are both close to what they were called by the Scots, Irish and Welsh.

Anyway in England they called themselves English or Inglis. 'Ing' means, I believe 'people' or 'tribe' so they could be merely calling themselves 'people' as lots of people do.

It's interesting to see that some of them were from the region of the Saale which brings us back to salt perhaps. 'Salainn' is the Gaelic for salt and the same elements appear in other languages. Most languages in Europe I would imagine.
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Re: Lingua Frankie

Postby Mick Harper » 8:59 pm

I don't specially disagree with any of this. I'm really only concerned to establish that Anglo-Saxon is not a natural language because if it were the Anglo-Saxons would hold the world record for being the very first people in the history of the known universe to transcribe a natural language into alphabetic form. And my national pride would burst.
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Re: Lingua Frankie

Postby TisILeclerc » 9:15 pm

Mrs Bucket springs to mind. From humble origins she aspires to greater things and insists on Bouquet which seem more befitting her new station in life.

When people get culture they want to get the real culture. The same thing happened in Victorian England where we got scrap men making money and marrying their daughters off to the local Squire's family. They needed to know how to behave and what's just as important how to speak.

This led to a publishing industry of self help manuals. One thing they got wrong but which got embedded in the new pronunciation was the '-ing' at the end of verbs. The old aristos did and still do talk about 'huntin', shootin' and fishin'' which was correct. But the newly ennobled butcher was taught to say huntingg, shootingg and fishingg, which has stuck as correct English. And which marks the Buckets off from those beyond the pail so to speak.

There's nothing better for achieving a rarified brain than sitting down all day. Especially if that involves writing with strange squiggles that the plebs can't understand. The problem is that plebs are a bit sharper than they like to let on and it's possible some of them may have twigged on to what was being written. Children brought up in bilingual households will learn the second language with no problem and if that language is used as a secret language by parents or grandparents so much the better. The kids won't let on that they understand every word being spoken. Until they are eventually found out.

What better then than to invent complicated grammatical rules and theories on what the more refined language should be and develop that as a means of communication within the select society. We know they did this with religion where the magic took place behind screens with the congregation excluded while the priest did the magic.

So why not with an incomprehensible new language. Of course once the French arrived all of that was unnecessary. All they had to do now was learn French along with Latin and their secrets were safe.
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Re: Lingua Frankie

Postby Mick Harper » 9:21 pm

What better then than to invent complicated grammatical rules and theories on what the more refined language should be and develop that as a means of communication within the select society.


I am prepared to entertain such an idea if you know of anyone anywhere anywhen doing such an outlandish thing. You should be an academic.
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Re: Lingua Frankie

Postby TisILeclerc » 9:26 pm

Work in the civil service. It's full of non existent words.

Timeously, is one fashionable word they stick into every post sent to the minions to work better and harder. It means get the job done on time.

Have a look at all the Mission statements, and Vision statements hospitals come out with. Their websites are riddled with the stuff.

Engineering of course has its own language. But that relates to the real world.

Management speak is obfuscation for the sake of it.

Should be an academic? Is that an insult? Or was it meant kindly?
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Re: Lingua Frankie

Postby hvered » 7:49 pm

They were soon mentioned as raiding and settling in many North Sea areas, as well as pushing south inland towards the Franks.

Who is 'they'? Mentioning them is one thing, but is there any evidence?

It sounds suspiciously like the anti-Dane tirades so essential to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and which modern historians like to dub Viking raids.
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