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Loading... Old English and Its Closest Relatives (1992)293 | 2 | 89,777 |
(4.33) | 4 | At first glance, there may seem little reason to think of English and German as variant forms of a single language. There are enormous differences between the two in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, and a monolingual speaker of one cannot understand the other at all. Yet modern English and German have many points in common, and if we go back to the earliest texts available in the two languages, the similarities are even more notable. How do we account for these similarities? The generally accepted explanation is that English and German are divergent continuations of a common ancestor, a Germanic language now lost. This book surveys the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the earliest known Germanic languages, members of what has traditionally been known as the English family tree: Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian, and Old High German. For each language, the author provides a brief history of the people who spoke it, an overview of the important texts in the language, sample passages with full glossary and word-by-word translations, a section on orthography and grammar, and a discussion of linguistic or philological topics relevant to all the early Germanic languages but best exemplified by the particular language under consideration. These topics include the pronunciation of older languages; the runic inscriptions; Germanic alliterative poetry; historical syntax; borrowing, analogy, and drift; textual transmission; and dialect variation. Two introductory chapters set out the basic principles of language relationship and language change, with special reference to English and German, and the main elements of Germanic pronunciation and grammar. The final chapter discusses the relations among the seven earliest Germanic languages treated in the book and the theories that have been advanced to account for their similarities and differences. There is a bibliography for each language as well as a general bibliography.… (more) |
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PREFACE A number of years ago, I began teaching a class at Stanford entitled "Introduction to the Germanic Languages." On the face of it, the educated speaker would have little reason to think of English and German as variant forms of the same language. | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English (6)▾Book descriptions At first glance, there may seem little reason to think of English and German as variant forms of a single language. There are enormous differences between the two in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, and a monolingual speaker of one cannot understand the other at all. Yet modern English and German have many points in common, and if we go back to the earliest texts available in the two languages, the similarities are even more notable. How do we account for these similarities? The generally accepted explanation is that English and German are divergent continuations of a common ancestor, a Germanic language now lost. This book surveys the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the earliest known Germanic languages, members of what has traditionally been known as the English family tree: Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian, and Old High German. For each language, the author provides a brief history of the people who spoke it, an overview of the important texts in the language, sample passages with full glossary and word-by-word translations, a section on orthography and grammar, and a discussion of linguistic or philological topics relevant to all the early Germanic languages but best exemplified by the particular language under consideration. These topics include the pronunciation of older languages; the runic inscriptions; Germanic alliterative poetry; historical syntax; borrowing, analogy, and drift; textual transmission; and dialect variation. Two introductory chapters set out the basic principles of language relationship and language change, with special reference to English and German, and the main elements of Germanic pronunciation and grammar. The final chapter discusses the relations among the seven earliest Germanic languages treated in the book and the theories that have been advanced to account for their similarities and differences. There is a bibliography for each language as well as a general bibliography. ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description
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History, discussion, grammar, readings for seven early Germanic languages. Includes short glossaries. Readings in: Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian, Old High German. | |
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Of course, there are times when certain non-English comparisons were most appropriate — for example, his frequent recourse to Gothic or Old Norse is to be expected given their antiquity or positions as the only East and North Germanic languages in the book, respectively — but there were many instances where I felt the author ignored pointing out interesting connections between a given language and Old English, instead choosing to make that connection with, say, Old High German or Old Saxon instead.
As my rating demonstrates, however, this hardly detracted from my opinion of the book. It was interesting, informative, engaging and well-written. I'm very interested in comparative and historical linguistics in general, though, so the author not following through with what I felt was an implication that Old English would be the main metric of comparison was not a problem for me. However, if you're a student of English and not particularly interested in Germanic linguistics generally, and are looking for a book focused on Old English and how its cousins are similar to it, this book may be overkill for your needs. Put another way, imagine that this book was actually titled "A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages," without any special reference to English. If you'd still be interested in such a book, then you should check this one out. ( )