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Latin:Romance::???:Germanic | ||
Tags: Germanic Languages | History | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| diplomaticus Newbie United States Joined 3967 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 20 01 July 2015 at 1:51am | IP Logged |
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There was not enough room in the Subject line. Latin is the mother of romance tongues.
What is the equivalent for the Germanic ones? Or is there not a language predecessor that is well-defined for what came before all the modern Germanic tongues? I just never hear about it if there is one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4523 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 2 of 20 01 July 2015 at 2:06am | IP Logged |
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Proto-Germanic ... it's a reconstructed language though, probably with quite some
variation (a dialect-continuum). Gothic and Proto-Norse (which isn't really "proto") come close to how late versions of Proto-Germanic might have looked like. Edited by daegga on 01 July 2015 at 2:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| diplomaticus Newbie United States Joined 3967 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 3 of 20 01 July 2015 at 2:12am | IP Logged |
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But there isn't really an equivalent that one would study to learn like they might do
with Latin? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5230 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 4 of 20 01 July 2015 at 2:16am | IP Logged |
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You could study Proto-Germanic, but as with any reconstructed language, what we can reconstruct of it is limited
and uncertain, and there's no corpus. To each their own, but unless you really love the Germanic languages, I doubt it would be much fun. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4523 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 5 of 20 01 July 2015 at 2:21am | IP Logged |
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One would usually start with Old Norse, Gothic, Old English, Old German (High and
Low). Old Norse is the only one you would want to learn for its original literature, it's like the Latin of the North. All the other languages only get interesting in the Middle X periods as far as content is concerned. Edited by daegga on 01 July 2015 at 2:22am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5230 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 6 of 20 01 July 2015 at 2:22am | IP Logged |
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I should point out that the Latin that people study isn't really the mother of the Romance languages. They developed
from Vulgar Latin, which was a different dialect, that was not written down (except for a few examples). So it's sort of like Proto-Germanic in a fashion. Is there a reason you're asking about proto-Germanic? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| diplomaticus Newbie United States Joined 3967 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 7 of 20 01 July 2015 at 2:41am | IP Logged |
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Just curiosity. Other than Latin or Ancient Greek, I never really hear of people studying
the antecedents to modern languages, really. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4640 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 8 of 20 01 July 2015 at 2:42am | IP Logged |
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My understanding is that the old Germanic languages (eg Old Saxon, Old Norse, Old English, Old High German) have a lot of mutual intelligibility between each
other. So you could study one of them and move outwards from there fairly easily. I haven't studied any of them though and I'm interested to see if what I've said can be confirmed or corrected by someone with more knowledge. EDIT: Re Old-Norse being the only one worth learning for its literature. Maybe the Modern-English translators have been playing a massive practical joke on us by presenting their own original masterpieces as translations, but I think the more likely explanation is that Old-English is eminently worth learning :) Edited by AlexTG on 01 July 2015 at 2:59am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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