Anglo-Frisian languages
| Anglo-Frisian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | Originally England, Scottish Lowlands and the North Sea coast from Friesland to Jutland; today worldwide |
| Linguistic classification |
Indo-European
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Glottolog | angl1264[1] |
 Approximate present day distribution of the Anglo-Frisian languages in Europe.
Anglic (or English): Hatched areas indicate where multilingualism is common. | |
The Anglo-Frisian languages are the West Germanic languages which include Anglic (or English) and Frisian.
The Anglo-Frisian languages are distinct from other West Germanic languages due to several sound changes: the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, Anglo-Frisian brightening, and palatalization of /k/:
- English cheese and West Frisian tsiis, but Dutch kaas, Low German Kees, and German Käse
- English church and West Frisian tsjerke, but Dutch kerk, Low German Kerk, Kark, and German Kirche
The early Anglo-Frisian and Old Saxon were spoken by intercommunicating populations, which led to shared linguistic traits through assimilation. English and Frisian have a proximal ancestral form in common before their divergence as geography isolated the settlers of the island from mainland Europe except contact with communities capable of open water navigation which resulted in Old Norse and Norman French influences on Modern English whereas Modern Frisian was subject to contact with the southernly Germanic populations restricted to the continent.
Classification
The Anglo-Frisian family tree is:
- Anglo-Frisian
- Anglic (or English)
- Frisian
- West Frisian
- East Frisian
- Saterland Frisian (last remaining dialect of East Frisian)
- North Frisian
Anglo-Frisian developments
The following is a summary of the major sound changes affecting vowels in chronological order.[2] For additional detail, see Phonological history of Old English.
- Backing and nasalization of West Germanic a and ā before a nasal consonant
- Loss of n before a spirant, resulting in lengthening and nasalization of preceding vowel
- The present and preterite plurals reduced to a single form
- A-fronting: WGmc a, ā → æ, ǣ, even in the diphthongs ai and au (see Anglo-Frisian brightening)
- palatalization of Proto-Germanic *k and *g before front vowels (but not phonemicization of palatals)
- A-restoration: æ, ǣ → a, ā under the influence of neighboring consonants
- Second fronting: OE dialects (except West Saxon) and Frisian ǣ → ē
- A-restoration: a restored before a back vowel in the following syllable (later in the Southumbrian dialects); Frisian æu → au → Old Frisian ā/a
- OE breaking; in West Saxon palatal diphthongization follows
- i-mutation followed by syncope; Old Frisian breaking follows
- Phonemicization of palatals and assibilation, followed by second fronting in parts of West Mercia
- Smoothing and back mutation
Comparisons
Numbers in Anglo-Frisian languages
These are the words for the numbers one to ten in the Anglo-Frisian languages:
| Language | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten |
| Scots[3] | ane ae* |
twa | three | fower | five | sax | seiven | aicht | nine | ten |
| Yola | oan | twye | dhree | vour | veeve | zeese | zeven | ayght | neen | dhen |
| West Frisian | ien | twa | trije | fjouwer | fiif | seis | sân | acht | njoggen | tsien |
| Saterland Frisian | aan | twäi twäin twoo |
träi | fjauwer | fieuw | säks | soogen | oachte | njugen | tjoon |
| North Frisian (Mooring dialect) | iinj ån |
tou tuu |
trii tra |
fjouer | fiiw | seeks | soowen | oocht | nüügen | tiin |
* Ae /eː/, /jeː/ is the adjectival form used before nouns.[4]
Words in English, West Frisian, Dutch and German
| English | West Frisian | Dutch | German |
|---|---|---|---|
| day | dei | dag | Tag |
| rain | rein | regen | Regen |
| way | wei | weg | Weg |
| nail | neil | nagel | Nagel |
| butter | bûter | boter | Butter |
| cheese | tsiis | kaas | Käse |
| church | tsjerke | kerk | Kirche |
| door | doar | deur | Tür |
| fork | foarke | vork | Gabel |
| sibling[note 1] | sibbe | sibbe (dated) | Sippe |
| together | tegearre | samen tezamen | zusammen |
| morn(ing) | moarn | morgen | Morgen |
| until | oant | tot | bis |
| key | kaai | sleutel | Schlüssel |
| have been (was) | ha west | ben geweest | bin gewesen |
| two sheep | twa skiep | twee schapen | zwei Schafe |
| have | hawwe | hebben | haben |
| us | ús | ons | uns |
| horse | hynder | paard ros (dated) | Pferd Ross (dated) |
| bread | brea | brood | Brot |
| hair | hier | haar | Haar |
| ear | ear | oor | Ohr |
| green | grien | groen | Grün |
| sweet | swiet | zoet | süß |
| through | troch | door | durch |
| wet | wiet | nat | nass |
| eye | each | oog | Auge |
| dream | dream | droom | Traum |
| it goes on | it giet oan | het gaat door | es geht weiter/los |
Alternative grouping
Ingvaeonic, also known as North Sea Germanic, is a postulated grouping of the West Germanic languages that comprises Old Frisian, Old English[5] and Old Saxon.[6]
It is not thought of as a monolithic proto-language, but rather as a group of closely related dialects that underwent several areal changes in relative unison.[7]
The grouping was first proposed in Nordgermanen und Alemannen (1942) by the German linguist and philologist Friedrich Maurer (1898–1984), as an alternative to the strict tree diagrams which had become popular following the work of the 19th-century linguist August Schleicher and which assumed the existence of an Anglo-Frisian group.[8]
See also
Notes
- ↑ Original meaning was "relative" which has become "brother or sister" in English.
References
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Anglo-Frisian". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ↑ Robert D. Fulk, “The Chronology of Anglo-Frisian Sound Changes”, Approaches to Old Frisian Philology, eds., Rolf H. Bremmer Jr., Thomas S.B. Johnston, and Oebele Vries (Amsterdam: Rodopoi, 1998), 185.
- ↑ Depending on dialect 1. en, jɪn, in, wan *e:, je: 2. twɑ:, twɔ:, twe:, twa: 3. θrəi, θri:, tri: 4. 'fʌu(ə)r, fuwr 5. fai:v, fɛv 6. saks 7. 'si:vən, 'se:vən, 'səivən 8. ext, ɛçt 9. nəin, nin 10. tɛn
- ↑ Grant, William; Dixon, James Main (1921) Manual of Modern Scots. Cambridge, University Press. p.105
- ↑ Also known as Anglo-Saxon.
- ↑ Some include West Flemish. Cf. Bremmer (2009:22).
- ↑ For a full discussion of the areal changes involved and their relative chronologies, see Voyles (1992).
- ↑ "Friedrich Maurer (Lehrstuhl für Germanische Philologie - Linguistik)". Germanistik.uni-freiburg.de. Retrieved 2013-06-24.
Further reading
- Friedrich Maurer (1942), Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Strasbourg: Hünenburg.
- Wolfram Euler (2013), Das Westgermanische [subtitle missing] (West Germanic: from its Emergence in the 3rd up until its Dissolution in the 7th Century CE: Analyses and Reconstruction). 244 p., in German with English summary, Verlag Inspiration Un Ltd., London/Berlin, ISBN 978-3-9812110-7-8.
- Ringe, Donald R. and Taylor, Ann (2014). The Development of Old English - A Linguistic History of English, vol. II, 632p. ISBN 978-0199207848. Oxford.