Germanic languages

“ No one of all the modern languages has acquired a greater force and strength than the English, through the derangement and relinquishment of its ancient laws of sound. The unteachable (nevertheless learnable) profusion of its middle-tones has conferred upon it an intrinsic power of expression, such as no other human tongue ever possessed. Its entire, thoroughly intellectual and wonderfully successful foundation and perfected development issued from a marvelous union of the two noblest tongues of Europe, the Germanic and the Romanic. ”

“ But farther, few or none will be found to question that all those formative elements which belong to the Germanic languages alone, of which no traces are to be discovered in any other of the branches of the Indo-European family, which constitute the peculiar patrimony of some or all of the dialects of our branch, must have been gained by the latter since their separation from the common stock, and in the same way with the rest, even though we can no longer demonstrate the origin of each affix. ”

“ It was only in 813 that Charlemagne introduced the Germanic languages to the knowledge of the educated, by ordering that homilies should be written in the native dialects. There does not exist the slightest evidence that, with the possible exception of some Gothic tracts, which Bishop Ulphilas is said to have written in the fourth century, the Germans used their native dialects for any literary purposes. ”

“ In the grammar much aid has been derived from Paul’s Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik, second edition, Halle, 1884, and Weinhold’s Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik, second edition, Paderborn, 1883. The former work, besides containing by far the most complete syntax, is also the only Middle High German Grammar which is based on the present state of German Philology.... I believe that the day is not far distant when English students will take a much more lively interest in the study of their own and the other Germanic languages (especially German and Old Norse) than has hitherto been the case. ”

“ Traces of an old locative occur in what is called the uninflected dative singular of hūs, house, beside hūse, and in proper names like Engellant beside Engellande. The vocative is like the nominative.
In MHG., as in the older periods of the other Germanic languages, nouns are divided into two great classes, according as the stem originally ended in a vowel or a consonant, cp. the similar division of nouns in Latin and Greek. Nouns whose stems originally ended in a vowel belong to the vocalic or so-called strong declension. ”

“ In respect to its stages, we have the Old Frisian of the Asega-bog, the Middle Frisian of Gysbert Japicx, [31] and the Modern Frisian of the present Frieslanders, Westphalians, and Heligolanders.
§ 39. The Low German and Platt-Deutsch.—The words Low-German are not only lax in their application, but they are equivocal; since the term has two meanings, a general meaning when it signifies a division of the Germanic languages, comprising English, Dutch, Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon, and Frisian, and a limited one when it means the particular dialects of the Ems, the Weser, and the Elbe. ”

“ The languages of this whole family sustain to one another a relation which is the same in kind with that subsisting between the various Germanic dialects, and differs from it only in degree. That the signs of their relationship escape the notice of a superficial observer—that the school-boy, or even the college-student, when toiling over his Greek and Latin tasks, does not suspect, and might be hard to persuade, that the classical languages and his mother-tongue are but modified forms of the same original, is evidently no ground for discrediting the fact. ”

“ Even that coalescence of nearly equal populations, languages, and cultures out of which has grown the tongue we speak, has, as was pointed out in the fourth of these lectures, left the language of common life among us—the nucleus of a vocabulary which the child first learns, and every English speaker uses every day, almost every hour—still overwhelmingly Saxon: the English is Germanic in its fundamental structure, though built higher and decorated in every part with Romanic material. ”

“ GERMANY, Language and Literature of. The formation, the history, and the philological affinities of the German tongue have been treated at length in the article Germanic Races and Languages, and we shall therefore restrict our remarks in this article to a brief sketch of the modern High German language as now spoken and written. In this the five vowels, a, e, i (y) , o, and u, sound as in Italian, the sound being lengthened by doubling the vowels: ä (or ae) , when long, is like a in mate, when short almost like e in met ”

“ In fine the Germanic has created for itself a place apart, amongst the other Indo-European languages, though the excessive poverty of its conjugation, which only knows three tenses—the present tense and two past tenses—and which has lost in particular the imperfect or secondary present, the future, and the sigmatic aorist, and which has not had strength to regain those losses by the aid of new composite tenses, with the exception of its dental preterite. The Celtic has preserved the three tenses which the Germanic has lost. ”

“ And a host of points in the structure of the tongues of our Germanic branch which still remain obscure would, as we know, be cleared up, had we in our possession relics of them at a yet earlier stage of their separate growth. The extent to which the history of a body of languages may be penetrated by the comparison of contemporary dialects alone will, of course, vary greatly in different cases ”

“ As regards political nationality and the history of civilisation, the evidence of speech is of still greater weight. In many cases of the mixture of nations the language of the dominant civilisation prevails, as where Latin dialects superseded the native tongues in Western Europe, and Germanic languages encroached on Turanian in Finland, on Slavonic in Russia, and on Keltic in the Scotch High lands. In other cases, where one nation has received elements of civilisation from another, language is apt to keep record of the process by adopting foreign words and ideas together. ”

“ Among the Indo-European languages, Gothic diverges widely from the primitive tongue, and must be considered as a younger sister of Sanskrit. Gothic was not the oldest of the Germanic tongues, though its literary documents date back further than any other. Old High German, old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Gothic were probably sister dialects; at least no one of them appears to be derived from any of the others. Old High German comprises a number of dialects which were spoken chiefly in South Germany, as the Thuringian, Frankish, Swabian, Alsatian, Swiss, and Bavarian. ”

“ The languages of the Germanic and the Neo-Latin races, as compared with the pure German tongue, are lifeless and mechanical. No people which had not a free and original national feeling could have taken up and worked out to a glorious termination the great idea of the Reformation. ”

“ The Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit forms have been added to show the degree of relationship of the Germanic to the cognate groups of the Aryan or Indo-European family of languages. The primitive tongue is understood to be the mother of all, and gives the forms from which linguistic scholars derive those of the most ancient as well as of the modern Aryan dialects. ”

“ Taking as the centre of a group, those forms of speech which have been recognised as Indo-European (or Indo-Germanic) , from the first recognition of the group itself, we find the languages derived from the ancient Sanskrit, the languages derived from the ancient Persian, the languages of Greece and Rome, the Slavonic and Lithuanic languages, and the languages of the Gothic stock; Scandinavian, as well as Germanic. ”

“ These verbs had a long vowel in the pret. singular in the oldest period of all the Germanic languages, cp. also Lat. ēdī.
§ 84. To this class also belong the three verbs:—
bit (t) en, OHG. bitten from *bidjan; ligen, OHG. liggen from *ligjan; sitzen, OHG. sitzen from *sitjan, see §§ 14, 31, 3. The inf. ligen is sometimes contracted to līn, see § 37.
Class VI.
§ 85. The verbs of this class belong to the sixth ablaut-series (§ 12) , and accordingly have a in the present; uo in the pret. singular and plural; and a in the past participle. They have umlaut in the second and third pers. ”

“ Another circumstance contributed to Latinize the German races outside of Germany. After the invention of a Gothic alphabet by Bishop Ulfila, and his translation of the Bible, we hear no more of a written German language until the eighth century. There was at least none which was accessible to the people, and the Latin continued to be the language of government and religion. The priests were nearly all Romans, and their interest was to prevent the use of written Germanic tongues. Such learning as remained to the world was of course only to be acquired through a knowledge of Latin and Greek. ”

“ If the study of dead languages can perfect a living language, then surely the German language should have become the world's model in every desirable attribute, and German books should be taken as the world's standards of the finest lingual achievement. If the virtues of grinding in Latin and Greek are so great as they are alleged to be, German writing should be the type of lucidity, elegance, conciseness, and force of expression. ”

“ It cannot be expected, therefore, that in England many people will care to read in the original the ancient epic poems of the “Nibelunge” or “Gudrun,” or acquire a grammatical knowledge of the Gothic of Ulfilas and the Old High-German of Otfried. Gothic, Old High-German, and Middle High-German are three distinct languages, each possessing its own grammar, each differing from the others and from Modern [pg 003] German more materially than the Greek of Homer differs from the Greek of Demosthenes. ”

“ All direct comparisons between German and neo-Latin languages are therefore null and void, and are obliged to discuss things which are not worth discussing. If the intrinsic value of the German language is to be discussed, at the very least a language of equal rank, a language equally primitive, as, for example, Greek, must enter the lists ”

“ For German literature is not only exceedingly rich in original works in every branch of mental production, which, owing to the imperfection of the translation into other languages, cannot be fully enjoyed except when read in German, but it contains, in its superior translations, an almost complete treasury of all the literature of the world and of all ages, ancient as well as modern. ”

“ This, however, is no reason why the dialects, whether of Low or High German, should be despised or banished. Dialects are everywhere the natural feeders of literary languages; and an attempt to destroy them, if it could succeed, would be like shutting up the tributaries of great rivers.
After these remarks it will be clear that, if people say that the inhabitants of Schleswig-Holstein do not speak German, there is some truth in such a statement, at least just enough of truth to conceal the truth. It might be said, with equal correctness, that the people of Lancashire do not speak English. ”

“ But the perception of historical connections is made more difficult when the earlier stages of the language are not so accessible as Latin is for the history of Romance words. A scientific knowledge of German etymology rests upon facts, whose coherence can only be explained by going beyond the limits of the chief civilised languages. It is impossible, however, for the student to go so far back, unless all the difficulties are smoothed and explained, and all the necessary details for ascertaining the history of a word are placed before him. ”

“ The males of a family being more abroad than the females, learn English more readily, and while the father, mother, daughters, and servants may speak German, father and son may speak English together naturally, and not with a view to have two languages, as in Russia. Foreign Germans who go into the interior usually fall into the local dialect in about a year, and one remarked that he did so that he might not be misunderstood. ”

“ In geometry, we puzzled our heads with problems, which neither the teacher nor the pupils understood, and which would be useless to us in after life. The study of languages was a perfect misery. Alas! Our beautiful German is dressed up in a way to break one's heart. For many years it has been laden by foreign words, yes, even sentenced to death by their high jurisdiction. If a German lad wishes to do honour to his pure mother-tongue, then dozens of highly learned men rush in with their Greek and Latin, the dead letters of the dead language destroying even the German sounds. ”

“ The seeds of human speech, planted in those vast wildernesses, sprouted readily into new and luxuriant languages. English, Flemish, German, French spring from German roots hidden in Celtic soil. The Latin element, afterwards engrafted, is exotic, excrescent, and not vital to the organization. In Italy, where a language, a grammar, a literature already existed in full force, the German element was almost neutralized. The Goths could only deface the noble language of Rome. They gave it auxiliary verbs,—that feeblest form of assistance to human eloquence,—and they took away its declensions. ”

“ But the German language, German literature, and the Germans! The writer has already stated his opinion with respect to German; he does not speak from ignorance or prejudice; he has heard German spoken, and many other languages. German literature! he does not speak from ignorance; he has read that and many a literature, and he repeats—p. 328however, he acknowledges that there is one fine poem in the German language; that poem is the ‘Oberon’—a poem, by-the-by, ignored by the Germans—a speaking fact—and, of course, by the Anglo-Germanists. ”