In my readings for a paper on the influences of Old English, I’ve
noticed the lack of any definite treatment of Angle or Saxon languages.
I’m told that Saxon and Old Saxon are definitely not the same thing, but
not effort seems to be made to explain either language (dialect) in
relationship with the others. Any help here?
TES
31
Jan
What exactly was Saxon
posted by admin in Uncategorized and have Comments (3)
In article <Cyv020….@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> tesie…@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Todd Sieling) writes:
>From: tesie…@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Todd Sieling)
>Subject: What exactly was Saxon
>Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 18:44:23 GMT
> In my readings for a paper on the influences of Old English, I’ve
>noticed the lack of any definite treatment of Angle or Saxon languages.
>I’m told that Saxon and Old Saxon are definitely not the same thing, but
>not effort seems to be made to explain either language (dialect) in
>relationship with the others. Any help here?
>TES
In the mid 5th century there was a complex dialect continuum of
Germanic speech covering what is now the coast of the Netherlands,
the area around the mouths of the Weser and Elbe in Germany, and
extending northward into the southern part of Sschleswig-
Holstein. Further inland it blended with other West Germanic dialects, which
formed continua characterized by various bundles of isoglosses and
extending well into the Alps and eastward to the Elbe and beyond.
The speech of the part of the continuum bordering on the North Sea/English
Channel is often referred to as North Sea Germanic or Ingvaeonic. It had
undergone several sound changes which seprated it from the Germanic speech
used further inland. These include:
1) the loss of *n before fricatives, e.g. English tooth/German Zahn, English
us/German uns, English other/German ander
2) extensive palatalization, e.g. English yesterday, yellow/German gestern,
gelb, English church, cheese/German Kirche, Ka"se
3) the fronting of *a before velars, e.g. English day /dei/ (OE daeg) (also
Frisian dei)/German dag
4) third person singular masculine pronouns in h- rather than e- (cf. Gothic
iz), e.g. English he/German er
The large-scale emigration of a part of these speakers of Ingvaeonic meant:
1) a bifurcation of the speech community into a continental source and an
insular isolated offshoot;
2) the establishment of different geographical and social conditions for the
further linguistic development of continental as opposed to insular
Ingvaeonic
The Saxons who went off to England eventually founded several kingdoms, the
most important of which were Essex, Sussex, and Wessex.
The Saxons who stayed behind (and who eventually came to be referred to as
the ‘Old Saxons’) eventually mixed with the non-Ingvaeonic Franks, many of
whom took over the former Saxon territory which had been abandoned by those
who left for England. This resulted in the Saxon which was left behind
acquiring features from the dialects of the Germanic continuum which had
previously been spoken further inland.
By the time Old Saxon appears in written records (mid 9th century), it
had undergone four centuries of linguistic development (in conditions in
which centralized states were just evolving and vernacular literacy hardly
existed) as well as mixture with more southerly and eastern types of
Germanic.
The transplanted Saxon dialects spoken in England had undergone a path of
linguistic change which involved their replacing the Celtic (and, to a
lesser extent, vulgar Latin) previously spoken there and interacting with
the closely related Anglian, Jutish(?) and Frisian tribal dialects which had
also been imported, as well as with the ecclesiastical Latin used by
missionaries of the rapidly expanding Catholic Church.
Consequently, these very different sociolinguistic conditions resulted in a
situation in which four centuries of separation ensured that insular Saxon (
Old English) and continental Saxon (Old Saxon) were no longer mutually
comprehensible.
Little is known about the characteristics of Anglian, the dialect introduced
into Mercia (=borderland, cf. Germanic mark) and Northumberland, or Jutish (
primitive Frisian?), the dialect introduced to Kent.
You can read about these things in:
Orrin ROBINSON: Old English and its nearest relatives (clear, simplified,
but to the point).
Roger LASS: Old English (clear, with copious documentation and a
scientifically sophisticated treatment)
Herbert KUFNER & Frans VAN COETSEM: Towards a Grammar of Proto-Germanic (
contains several important articles on the classification of and
interrelations between the older Germanic languages)
Ju"rgen HUTTERER: Die germanischen Sprachen. (A comprehensive handbook
giving basic information and maps on the development of all the Germanic
languages)
Academy of Sciences of the USSR: Sravnitel’naja grammatika germanskih
jazykov. tom I. (A detailed accountof the relationships between the Germanic
languages).
Sandor ROT: Old English. (A linguistically oriented textbook of Old English
containing much information on the non-linguistic factors which conditioned
its development)
Thomas MARKEY: Frisian. (A compresensive treatment of the Ingvaeonic
problem, with considerable focus on the Anglo-Frisian question)
Happy reading,
Eugene Holman
University of Helsinki
In article <holman.391.2EBE9…@katk.helsinki.fi> hol…@katk.helsinki.fi (HOLMAN EUGENE) writes:
>Path: news.helsinki.fi!PORSU-3.pc.Helsinki.FI!holman
>From: hol…@katk.helsinki.fi (HOLMAN EUGENE)
>The speech of the part of the continuum bordering on the North Sea/English
>Channel is often referred to as North Sea Germanic or Ingvaeonic.
This terminology is used by Caesar in his *De bello gallico* as well as by
Tacitus in *Germania*. One of the terms used by some of the speakers of
these dialects to refer to themselves was *sahs-, a term which refers to
their preferred type of handweapon. Interestingly, *Saksa*, the modern
Finnish word for Germany, (a pars pro toto designation, since the first
Germans one be likely to encounter sailing westward from Finland would be
those along the Baltic shore) is a good reminder of the conditions that
prevailed in the past.
After the merger of the continental Saxons with the Franks the name came
to be used to designate tribes living further south. Today if a German,
characterizing someone’s accent says ‘Er sa"chselt" (= ‘He speaks with a
Saxon accent’) he means that the person hails from the vicinity of Leipzig.
Mit den besten Gru"ssen,
Eugene Holman
University of Helsinki
In article <holman.392.2EBE9…@katk.helsinki.fi>,
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -
hol…@katk.helsinki.fi (HOLMAN EUGENE) writes:
>In article <holman.391.2EBE9…@katk.helsinki.fi> hol…@katk.helsinki.fi (HOLMAN EUGENE) writes:
>>Path: news.helsinki.fi!PORSU-3.pc.Helsinki.FI!holman
>>From: hol…@katk.helsinki.fi (HOLMAN EUGENE)
>>The speech of the part of the continuum bordering on the North Sea/English
>>Channel is often referred to as North Sea Germanic or Ingvaeonic.
>This terminology is used by Caesar in his *De bello gallico* as well as by
>Tacitus in *Germania*. One of the terms used by some of the speakers of
>these dialects to refer to themselves was *sahs-, a term which refers to
>their preferred type of handweapon. Interestingly, *Saksa*, the modern
>Finnish word for Germany, (a pars pro toto designation, since the first
>Germans one be likely to encounter sailing westward from Finland would be
>those along the Baltic shore) is a good reminder of the conditions that
>prevailed in the past.
>After the merger of the continental Saxons with the Franks the name came
>to be used to designate tribes living further south. Today if a German,
>characterizing someone’s accent says ‘Er sa"chselt" (= ‘He speaks with a
>Saxon accent’) he means that the person hails from the vicinity of Leipzig.
Yes, but this is because the name of the territory "migrated".
Originally ‘Saxony’ was indeed the the area around the mouths of the
Weser and Elbe in Germany, extending northward into the southern part of
Schleswig- Holstein.
In the early Middle Ages Saxony was one of the mighty territories of the
German Empire. The perhaps most prominent of its dukes was Henry the
Lion (Heinrich der Lo"we), the mighty opponent of emperor Frederic I.
("Barbarossa").
After the fall of Henry the Lion end of the 12th century Saxony was
divided, and the ‘Askanier’ who got the eastern part, transferred the
title of a ‘Duke of Saxony’ to their territories around Wittenberg
(northeast of Leipzig). The Duchy of ‘Saxony-Wittenberg’ and the
electorship (‘Kurwu"rde’) passed on to the house of ‘Wettin’ after the
Askanier family bacame extinct end of the 15th century. Later the
electorship and the title of a Duke of Saxony fell to the ‘Albertinian’
line of the Wettins whose family fief was the Margraviate of Meissen
(near Dresden).
Therefore still today three separate German federal states:
Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), Sachsen-Anhalt (Saxony-Anhalt), and
Sachsens (the Free State of Saxony) have ‘Saxony’ as (part of) their
names.
Mit freundlichen Gru"ssen,
Manfred Kiefer