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Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3001 of 3959 20 August 2012 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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German was spoken for a long time at the Danish court, but I'd guess that by 1860 the switch from German to
Danish would have occurred. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3002 of 3959 21 August 2012 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually the new king from 1864 to 1906 was Christian IX (born 1818), who was the first king of the Glücksborg dynasty - so he had a purely German upbringing, but learnt Danish because he moved to Copenhagen in 1831.
The kings of the Oldenborg dynasty after Christian IV were certainly fluent in German - as late as 1780 a third of the inhabitants of Copenhagen had German as their native language. Besides the king ruled over Schleswig-Holstein all the way down to Altona (now a part of Hamburg), and south of Flensburg the main language was German (either High German or Low German, with a few Frisians scatteed along the coast). So the big question is when the Danish kings began to speak Danish. At least Christian V, who ruled from 1690 to 1699, spoke mostly exclusively German, and his queen was also German. The scholar N. M. Petersen writes as follows about this king (in Danish): „Om Kristian V er det næsten blevet til en almindelig tradition, at der ikke taltes andet end tysk ved hoffet og at kongen selv end ikke forstod dansk .... At det tyske .hofsprog betragtedes som landets officielle sprog, ses ydermere deraf, at der på den ved kongens færd omkring i Norge oprejste støtte blev sat en tysk indskrift .... Men kongen havde dog lært lidt dansk og forstod, foruden landets eget sprog, højtysk, plattysk og fransk. Hans egne dagbøger, der findes i gehejmearkivet, oplyse, at han især benyttede sig af tysk og dansk, det sidste, når han skrev om søetaten, det første, når noget skulde med- deles konsejlet og ministrene. Han skrev det ene mellem det andet, begge lige slet. Ofte er den ene sætning dansk, den næste tysk; når han har skrevet ét stykke på dansk, tilføjer han notabenerne på tysk, kønnet løber han gerne surr i, o. s. fr." Summary: king Christian wrote to the council and the army in German, but in Danish to his fleet. Although he could write one sentence in Danish and the next in German, and he had problems with gender etc etc - the poor man was clearly multiconfused. German kept its strong position at the court partly because of Schleswig-Holstein, partly because of all the Germans who had positions in the capital, the mostly German princesses who became Danish queens and the wholesale import of German nobility which followed after the proclamation of absolute rule by the king - the old Danish noble families mostly died out in this period. So it seems that the predominantly German atmosphere at the court continued until after the loss of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864. The current border (midtway through Scleswig) was drawn after a referendum in 1920, whose outcome mostly followed the linguistical isogloss between German and Danish. Edited by Iversen on 11 October 2012 at 4:39pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3003 of 3959 21 August 2012 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Many thanks Iversen; very helpful. I'll just add that the notes in the 2 editions of
the book I have, make it clear Fontane (writing around 1890) specifically pitched his novel in a time (actually 1859-61) that was pivotal, when some people (either through loyalty or being in denial) assumed Schleswig-Holstein would remain Danish, while others more realistically saw that it would become Prussian. (It's not really a historical novel though, in the usual sense). Originally a journalist, he had been a war correspondent in the ensuing conflict and so took an interest in the area. I don't know if he knew any Danish, but it wouldn't surprise me; he had apparently taught himself English easily enough. You didn't say whether you yourself had specifically studied "Old Danish" - or hasn't much survived to be read? Thanks again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 3004 of 3959 21 August 2012 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | ||
DK: Det stukke pâ dansk kan jeg godt forstâ! Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3005 of 3959 21 August 2012 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||
I can read Old Danish without problems because I also know some Icelandic and have some training in reading slightly aberrant spellings. There are actually a fair amount of Medieval texts in Danish left, mostly laws and juridical/administrative texts, but also letters. There are some collections of texts in their original form on the internet - for instance here (with texts from before 1500). One of the most important texts is the Jutish law from around 1240. You can see it several places on the internet, but the most enjoyable is this one, where there is a translation into almost as old Danish, written in gothic letters. The first line or so is known by many Danes, but few have reached even the second line. Please notice the extraordinary concentration of æ's - Middle Danish actually looks like that! Mæth logh skal land bygiæs, æn wildæ hwær man oruæs at sit eghæt oc latæ mæn nytæ iafnæth, tha thurftæ* man ækki logh with. Med lov skal land bygges, men ville hver mand nøjes med sit eget og lade folk [mænd] nyde tilsvarende, da behøvede man ikke lov [med] With law shall land be built, but would every mand be content with his own and let men enjoy the-same, then needed man not law with (=then you didn't need a law) Yes, and if the Moon was made of green cheese... PS: * "thurftæ" = "þurfti" in Icelandic (and presumably it is the same word as in German "bedarf") Edited by Iversen on 22 August 2012 at 11:26am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3006 of 3959 23 August 2012 at 12:07am | IP Logged | ||
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SP: Ahora mismo veo un programa sobre el baroco español con un guida inglés con el nombre típicamente inglés de Waldemar Januszczak. Es muy interesante, pero sé de esperiencias anteriores que escuchar la pronunciación tipicamente inglés de nombres de personas y lugares en otros idiomas ne está toda convincente, y por esoo he silenciado mi televisor - por suerte hay subtítulos. Y por suerte hay otras cosas para eschuchar.
AF: Byvoorbeeld, ek het 'n kopie van onderhoud op Afrikaans van die reeks "Die taal wat ons prat" no.7, met Professor Ernst Cotsier (?) en die tema van aanspreekvorme - hoflig en minder hoflik. Daar is ook onderhoude met luisteraars, die meeste bejaarde dames wat dink dat dit klank so goed, toen sê het "mynheer" en "mevrouw" en "u" gesê. Dit is interessant hoe diftonge in Afrikaans te sê. Byvoorbeeld, "respek" word uitgespreek as /re(r)speork/. Afrikaanse diftonge gaan meestal van gesluit klank oop open klank, terwyl die Nederlandse diftonge gaan van ope tot geslote klanke (ui, ei, ooei). Right now I watch a TV program about the Spanish Baroque while I work at my computer. It is excellent apart from the shock I get every time the presenter tries to say a Spanish place or personal name. So I have turned down the sound and instead listened to a number of sources on the internet. But in this moment I'm listening to program no. 7 in the series "Die taal wat ons prat" in Afrikaans. It is an interview with professor Ernst Cotsier (?) about more or less polite forms of address. First the professor spoke about things like "Salaam Aleikum" and English "you", and then a string of listeners were invited to ask questions. And lo and behold, most of these were elderly ladies who sadly deplored the good old times where people were polite and said "mynheer" and "mevrouw" and "u" to one another - at least among white Afrikaans speakers. Edited by Iversen on 24 August 2012 at 12:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3007 of 3959 24 August 2012 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||
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DU: Mijn bus-back-van-werk-Lezen is momenteel Bruce Donaldson z'n Comprehensive Dutch Grammar, die ik al lang had liggen in mijn slaapkamer. Maar dit had geen zin, omdat ik de neiging heb om in slaap te vallen zodra ik gaan liggen. Vandaag las ik over samengestelde werkwoordsvormen, die het boek zorgvuldig vergelijkt met de parallele Engels regels.
My bus-back-from-work-book right now is Donaldson's Comprehensive Dutch Grammar, which I for a long time had lying beside my bed - but to no avail, because I normally fall a sleep a soon as I lie down to sleep. Now I got through the chapter about compound verbal forms, where the book meticuluously compare the Dutch and the English rules. After that I have spent a full evening studying, but at the same time also watching TV. SW: På svenskt tv2 så jag ett program om näbbdjuret och myrpiggsvinet i Australien. Den utsente medarbetaren har tidigare haft en rad program om de svenska läns 'nationaldjur', som han brukade sitta och vänta på i timma etter timma. Och den träningan fekk hann verkligan användning för, för näbbdjuret lät honom vänta minnst 4 timmar tills han ga upp och fant en ägare av et tamt näbbdjur. Myrpiggen "Big Mama" var mer samarbetsvillig. IT: Ma per il resto questa è stato una sera Super Quark, e gli Italiani gloriosi hanno parlato tra altro delle tigri dell'India, della celiakia (una malattia che significa che non si può tollerare il glutine) e la formidabile crescita economica del Brasile. Ma a volte ci erano pubblicità sgradevoli, e perciò ho scoperto che TVE allo stesso tempo mostrava.. SP: ..el program Españoles en el Mundo, y hoy los españoles en diaspora si trovavano en Kuala Lumpur que yo he visitado en 1990 y 2010. Entre mis visitas esta ciudad cambió fundamentalmente. Dejí KL la primera vez con la impresión de una sucia ciudad donde los comerciantes tentava de hacer tanto ruido que posible. La segunda vez ví una ciudad moderna. BA I: Tuduhan utama saya melawan Malaysia adalah bahwa mereka tidak menulis buku-buku tentang ilmu di bahasa melayu. RU: В то время как я смотрел телевизор, учился и русские словари и больше статью о ирландском датских школ в Москве - что, мол, шесть таких школ. DK: I morges læste jeg an artikel i min morgenavis om en forsker, der mente at de sydeuropæiske lande havde rod i deres økonomi fordi de havde fremtidsformer i deres sprog - og nej, det var vistnok ikke en spøg. Ideen var at når man havde sådanne former, var det alt for nemt at se fremtiden som noget der ikke havde forbindelse med nutiden. Tyskerne, der bruger nutidsformer til at tale om fremtiden, skulle derimod være indstillet på at se fremtiden som fast bundet til nutiden, og dermed skulle de være mere ansvarlige. Ha! Min teori er at de pt. lider under eftervirkningerne af en hurtig vækst, der tildels var finansieret af EU. Og grækerne fik særbehandling, fordi Andreas Papandreou truede med veto hver gang nogen sagde ham imod. Det teoretiske grundlag for århundredets mest tåbelige økonomiske teori er naturligvis Sapir-Whorf hypotesen, der i sin mest rigoristiske form siger at folks tænkning dikteres af strukturerne i deres sprog. Det er der få der tror på i dag. Men i den milde form siger den blot at strukturerne får folk til at bemærke distinktioner der kræves for at kunne tale de pågældende sprog, og det lyder faktisk ret rimeligt. Problemet med den ovenfor beskrevne teori er blot at eksistensen af en separat futurum logisk set få folk til at tænke mere specifikt om fremtiden, og dermed burde folk med en futurum i deres sprog opføre sig mere ansvarligt end dem der ikke har sådan en. This morning I read in my newspaper that a professor somewhere had explained the economical problems of Southern Europe with the existence in the Romance languages of a separate futuric form. No, I'm not exaggerating - this was the message! The idea was that such a form would lead people to think about the future as something separate from the present. In contrast the Germans, who don't have such a form (but several other ways to communicate the same idea) should according to this academic genius be more liable to think about the future as something intimately tied to the present - because they would use the present tense to speak about the future. Ha ha ha! Ultimately this is a parody of the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which stated that people's thoughts were determined by the structures in their languages. The 'mild' version just says that those structures will nudge people to be aware of certain distinctions because they need them to express themselves grammatically correctly in their native language (which sounds plausible). However they will be also able to think other thoughts than those 'allowed' by their language - there will always be a way to do it, and else they will just create one. In the present case the simple rebuttal of the silly claim would be that the existence of a separate future in the Romance languages should push their speakers to become more conscious about the future, not less. Luckily there are other more realistic explanations for the current debâcle. Edited by Fasulye on 26 August 2012 at 6:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3008 of 3959 26 August 2012 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||
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LAT: Ego die Veneri adfui tridio festo medievali Horsentis, oppidum proximum Arosi. Etiam adfuit anniis 2003,4,5,6,10 et 2011, sed eo anno ego modo adfui die Veneri per quinque horas - musica mihi non tantum placuit quam antea quia fuerunt nimis multa carmina et non satis 'metallus gravis'. Prefero musica magna instrumentalis cum batteria tympanisque, utricularis, cornubus varibus, cornettibus, cornamusiis tibiisque. Etiam musica levior mihi placuit, sed foris et in mercato opus magno sonitu necesse est. Et defessus sum carminis - non refert quid de isto sentiebant homines medievales: de gusto non discutandum est. Spatium etiam angustior hoc anno fuit quam anno superiore et pompa initialis brevior, sed ad vias feliciter revertum est. Verus annus horribilis recens fuit dum stultissimus officiariusculus fere spectaculum ruinavit eum ex vias centri urbi relegans, sed ut videtur magistratus agnovit talis fatuitas festo vitam fortasse constitisse, et ad vias revertum est.
Nimis longe non Latinam studebam et curiose esperanto (!) lingua est qui se eo intermiscebat - "kaj" pro "et(iam)", "mi " pro "ego" et cetera. Tamen heri Saxonis librum gestorum danorum diligenter studiens mihi aliquantum peritias meas recuperare insequit. SW: Självklart har jag också sett tv, men jag vil bara nämna en enda sändning på svenska TV: en dokumentär om växtornas historia, med kommentarer intalad på svenska, men också med passager med original ljud som spelats in av en fackman med skotsk accent. Att tänka: i begynnelsen var planeten världen varkan grön eller blå, men lila, eftersom anaeroba organismer var de enda som fanns. Men så uppfann någon smart organism grön klorofyll, och atmosfären ble fylld med syre. Ozonlagat tilkom, ock det blev möjligt för växterna att erövra marken där de kunde producera mer syre. I kulltiden var det faktiskt dubbelt så mycket syre i atmosfären som i dag, och det var därför enorma insekter i de tropiska skogar med ormbunksväxter, lummerväxter och annan vegetation. Friday from 16 to 21 o'clock I visited the Medieval festival of Horsens, just South of Århus. I have checked my old photos, and I have apparently been there in the years 2003,4,5,6,10,11 and now 2012. I try to come already Friday to witness the great parade, and in some years I have also been present Saturday. But I was slightly disappointed this time because the area taken up by the festival has shrunk, the parade was shorter and I missed some of the musical attractions of bygone years - but at least the festival is still occupying the main streets and the areas North and South of the townhall. A few years ago some jerk in the municipal administration had taken the horrible and disastrous decision to block it from the streets, and this would probably have killed the whole thing off within a few years if the powers that be hadn't brought it back to the town center. I don't know exactly how the decision was reverted, but for some incomprehensible reason I see for my inner eye the cacophoneous bard of the village of Asterix hanging down from a tree, wound tightly in kilometers of rope like a cocoon in a string. Nevermind, the festival is back, but I have the impression that the music has become softer and more polluted by singing. My preference in the good old days was loud instrumental pieces with lots of tamtams, gongs, sackbuts, shawms, cornetts and flutes. I also like the more peaceful pieces from the olden days, but they don't really stand a chance in a loud and boiserous market. And all that howling spoils my listening experience - yes, they certainly sang a lot back in the olden days, but they also had other unsavioury habits which nobody wants back. And I prefer the instrumental items. I won't write a lot about the TV I have watched Saturday, but one program stands out. It was on Swedish TV, so it had a commentary in Swedish, but the main speaker spoke in English with a Scottish accent. The theme was the history of plants, right back to the time where the atmosphere was devoid of oxygen (it had all been buried in some immense layers of rusty rocks). Instead the prevailing colour of the water was violet, due to the cyanobacteria. However some clever organism invented green clorophyll, and the world would never be the same again. Edited by Iversen on 26 August 2012 at 1:27am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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