So for me, as I stumble and bumble my way through learning French (mostly through DuoLingo, hey), I’m often thinking about this issue.
Now-- on the surface of things, Modern English is almost exclusively comprised of German & French, and almost every word in these sentences are specific examples of such in terms of direct etymology. Which is a big part of why I’ve typically regarded French & German as my sibling languages. It’s a nice, bright thought, anyway!
Let’s take the modern English word “fight”-- WP claims:
From Middle English fighten, from Old English feohtan (“to fight, combat, strive”), from Proto-West Germanic *fehtan, from Proto-Germanic *fehtaną (“to comb, tease, shear, struggle with”), from Proto-Indo-European *peḱ- (“to comb, shear”).
My point is that there’s so many ways to run with that over time… in any language whatsoever! Indeed, IIRC there was a “fisten” variation which meant an entirely different thing in earlier German.
But, “shear?” Yes, yes back in my schoolyard days, I wanted to shear my opponent like a little lost lamb, but… I don’t think that’s right.
So here’s my point, assuming you’ve lasted this far. Modern German in fact split from modern English maybe around ~~800AD? And Modern French, around… perhaps slightly earlier than the Norman Conquest (1066), meaning that even though Modern English is absolutely PACKED full of French & German pronyms, we can’t just assume they mean the same thing, anymore, as with the examples above.
It sort of breaks my heart, but it’s just reality, non?
Semantic drift always makes such a mess of cognates. One of my best examples of that is an etymological triplet in Portuguese:
- ⟨feitiço⟩ spell, witchcraft - inherited from Latin ⟨facticius⟩ artificial, made up
- ⟨factício⟩ artificial, made up - reborrowed from Latin ⟨facticius⟩
- ⟨fetiche⟩ fetish - borrowed from French ⟨fétiche⟩ fetish, in turn borrowed from Portuguese ⟨feitiço⟩
All three were originally the same word with the same meaning. Borrowing here, borrowing there, and now they’re three different words with completely different meaning.
So here’s my point, assuming you’ve lasted this far. Modern German in fact split from modern English maybe around ~~800AD?
A good reference date would be 450 or so, when the Jutes, Angles and Saxons invaded Britannia. It’s what created the geographical barrier between Germanic speakers, that allowed English to diverge considerably more from continental varieties (Frisian, Dutch, German “dialects” [actually local languages]) than it could otherwise.
For the French borrowings it’s complicated because they didn’t enter the language only once as a “nice set”, but across centuries. And they weren’t from a single Gallo-Romance variety but two (Norman and French).
And often the very fact that they’ve been borrowed changes the meaning. A good example of that is French ⟨porc⟩ pig, pork; it can be used for both the animal and the meat, but once English borrowed it as ⟨pork⟩ it was mostly used for the meat only, with then the old word ⟨pig⟩ being specialised to the animal.
Thanks!
God bless!
(not that I believe in neither, haha)But as I was bumbling around to find a quick word-example, I remembered something a friend had told me about the word “fight.” I hope people read your comment, because I love it! (it’s so much better than my clumsy ‘example’)
A good reference date would be 450 or so, when the Jutes, Angles and Saxons invaded Britannia. It’s what created the geographical barrier between Germanic speakers, that allowed English to diverge considerably more from continental varieties (Frisian, Dutch, German “dialects” [actually local languages]) than it could otherwise.
Excellent, thank you!
So moreso the German split happened around when Roma finally collapsed?
So moreso the German split happened around when Roma finally collapsed?
Roughly so. The date is mostly for reference though; you could argue that it happened even earlier, because even as far as 1 AD you already got some dialectal variation. To complicate it further, Standard German is slightly artificial, since it’s the result of a written standard shared by speakers of different varieties. So we might as well argue that what’s being dated is not the English-German split, but rather the split between English and those varieties that eventually formed German. (With then for example Dutch being the result of one of those varieties [Old Low Franconian] getting its own competing standard.)
But to the point: yes, Rome collapsing is a good reference, and directly tied to that.
Fascinating.
And thank you for for explaining. <3
Sorry for the late reply, but I love it!
It’s a bit sad that some of those languages are gradually disappearing with globalization.
Dialects, at least where I leave, are hardly spoken anymore, except by the older population. And tons of new words and neologisms use their English counterpart instead of being translated into my language (Italian).
On the one hand, we’re getting closer to a world unified by a single language, where everyone can understand each other. On the other hand, I feel like we’re losing something on the way there.
And the most vulnerable of those languages are always the ones that people simply don’t even notice to exist, because they aren’t associated with some independent government. Ask people about Polish, they’ll point to a country in a map; but if you ask them about Sorbian, they’ll simply say “there’s no Sorbia country”. Same deal if you ask them about Sardinian, Galician, Occitan, Low German varieties, etc.
It’s never caused solely by easier communication though; it has to do with the loss of the sense of identity between the speakers of those languages. Often forced - like a Franco or a Vargas telling you “use the country language or we’re going after you”, but sometimes through “softer” means (like turning a blind eye to linguistic prejudice).
Sorry for rambling about this. This topic is emotionally relevant for me.
Sorry for rambling about this. This topic is emotionally relevant for me.
Oh!! That really speaks to me.
Now is there a way I might touch on that in future, as I explore Euro-style art & comics across this community?(I get a big boost out of responses to my content, and I’m very grateful for that)
Now is there a way I might touch on that in future, as I explore Euro-style art & comics across this community?
The nearest that I’ve seen about the topic in comics fashion was not from Euro comics, but from a manga called Heterogenia Linguistico. At a certain point the protagonist is thinking about his grandma, who passed away as the last speaker of her language - so as she died so did her culture.
That said this topic is specially relatable for plenty Europeans, I think, so I’d be really surprised if we couldn’t find any Euro comic talking about it.
Language has always changed and evolved. It feels sad to lose something but other than documenting a “dead language” or dialect, not sure anything else can be done. You can force yourself to learn it if it is close to your language but then you also have to use it, or it will vanish again.
I remember reading about this Welsh PhD or Master student, I think it was for Chemistry. They were the first student ever to do the whole studying completely in Welsh. Including the thesis. They had to invent new words for scientific terms since they didn’t exist, I think they worked together with some association for Welsh language or something. But all of that will be gone if no one else is picking it up and in the sense of science it is also not a great decision because now you limit who can understand your work to the Welsh speaking community. Since you invented new words, maybe even those won’t get what you wrote.
My point of rambling, I am not sure you can do anything about changing languages. They are meant to be used or not. So while it feels like a sad thing to lose some languages, it should not because its just how languages work. Not sure that makes sense to say…
Absolutely, I totally agree. It’s Impossible to artificially keep a language alive, and forcing people to learn/use a language is wrong.
It’s just sad, that’s all. It’s like seeing a local shop close and getting replaced by a shopping mall, and then that mall closes and is replaced by internet shopping. Reality moves forward, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Speaking of disappearing dialects, this reminds me of what’s currently and gradually happening with Portuguese.
Although both Brazil and Portugal speak Portuguese, the Brazilian Portuguese is way different from European Portuguese spoken by the latter country, in a similar fashion on how American English is somewhat different from British English (cab vs taxi, color vs colour, spoken “computeRR/wateRR” vs “computAH/watHAH” (here I’m exaggerating for illustration purposes), and so on). Portuguese examples include “moço” vs “gajo” (both are words for “young adult man”, respectively Portugal’s and Brazil’s ), “moça” vs “rapariga” (both words for “young adult woman”; the latter, the European Portuguese variation, while being a common word in Portugal, is often seen as a swearing by Brazilian Portuguese) and so on.
However, with the international popularization of Brazilian influencers (such as Lucas Neto), Portugal is complaining about their kids starting to sound and speak Brazilian Portuguese instead of European Portuguese. Seems like Portugal is facing a reshape of their own Portuguese variation due to Brazilian influence.
Brazil itself has many dialects and accents. South uses “bergamota” while southeast uses “tangerina” to refer to tangerine. Northeast uses "macaxeira " and southeast uses “mandioca” to refer to cassava. Minas Gerais uses “trem” and São Paulo uses “coisa” to refer to “thing” (e.g. “could you please reach me that thing over there?”, a “mineiro” (people from Minas Gerais) would speak “ocê pega esstrem fazenofavô?” as a vocalized shortening for “você pega esse trem fazendo o favor?” while the paulista (São Paulo) would say “cê poderia pegá pra mim aquela coisa ali?” as shortening for “você poderia pegar pra mim aquela coisa ali?”). As you can notice, Brazilian Portuguese itself is so broad and multifaceted across the country. Even the same state has its differences (e.g. the capital city of São Paulo says “sinal” while the interior of the state says “semáforo” for “traffic lights”; also, São Paulo says “lotação” while the interior says “circular” for “shuttle bus”).
Internationally, non-brazilians learning Brazilian Portuguese often tend to learn the Carioca (Rio de Janeiro) dialect, because there are many influencers and internationally famous Brazilian people that are from Rio (also, IIRC, both Brazilian Olympics and Brazilian World Cup happened in Rio).
There are other countries that speaks Portuguese as well, such as Moçambique (Mozambique) and Angola. Their Portuguese variation is slightly different from both the European and the Brazilian, but I guess the same Brazilian cultural influence is also happening with Mozambican and Angolan kids.
I guess [email protected] might be a very good place to discuss this, @[email protected] is usually very knowledgeable
Thanks for the trust! Although I need to admit that I don’t know much stuff outside historical linguistics.
For example-- I can’t believe how close Celtic / Gaelic and Albanian are.
I always thought Albanian was a Slavic branch!
People think of the Celtic languages originated in Western Europe, but in reality the Celtic tribes were driven West by invading Germanic tribes. Looks like Albanian just happened to survive.
What a gorgeous mess! I sincerely don’t understand those who wish everyone would speak the same language. The language diversity means so many ways of seeing the world.
Hey Johnny, I thought you were a native French speaker for some reason! 😮 Must be your passion for bandes dessinées. So what’s your mother tongue? English? (Mine is French from Québec by the way.)
Must be your passion for bandes dessinées.
Exactly.
My mother-tongue is officially Castellano, followed by French.Unfortunately, as a Peace-Corps baby and child of divorce, I never really had a chance to ‘lock-in’ my first two languages.
But also, just-- I absolutely adore BD, followed by Euro comics. And French is the language of BD, so… you know… let Mohammed get his arse over to the Mountain, given a choice.
My mother-tongue is officially Castellano,
I didn’t know, are you already on [email protected] ?
I am NOW.
Which reminds me-- I’ve fucked-up all the links, didn’t I?
Is that from Stand Still Stay Silent?
It’s from her yeah. I recently checked her out and she has become a born-again Christian and stopped the comic. Wasn’t expecting that
Now that’s just sad…
Oh wow, I have no idea!
Me, I specifically love the ‘tree-like’ idea (with all the branching points) of showing how the major group (i.e., “our”) languages derived from proto-IE.It’s just so fascinating to me, and I’ve never seen a better tree-emblem, so to speak.
@@[email protected],
so this is from a comic…?It’s posted on the SSSS website but it’s not part of the story or anything, just infograps the author did in the same style and posted there.
Oh WOW…
