I am interested in learning how you reconstructed protogermanic words. What sources and literature did you use? Can you give some hints or tips how to do it, since I am interested in learning it?
I am interested in learning how you reconstructed protogermanic words. What sources and literature did you use? Can you give some hints or tips how to do it, since I am interested in learning it?
Last edited by belanus; 01-25-2009 at 11:38.
I know that blitzkrieg and fahrenheit did a lot of research on the proto-Germanic words, you could best PM them or wait to see if they'll post here.
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Reconstruction of long dead languages has been going on for a while in the linguistic field. I never complete much study in that (I was an anthropology major for a while in college) i'm not sure how they do it, but even an almost mythical language like indo-european (theoretical origininator of that family of languages) are being "reconstructed"
Edit: celtic must be even harder as very few celtic languages exist today and some groups of that language family are completely extinct (gaulish for example)
Last edited by HorusLupercal; 01-26-2009 at 03:51.
No, proto-Germanic is much tougher work: contrary to popular belief that "the ancient Celts wrote nothing down" there is a corpus of written Gaulish and Celtiberian... nowhere near what there is for Latin, Greek or Akkadian but still enough to be helpful.
'you owe it to that famous chick general whose name starts with a B'
OILAM TREBOPALA INDI PORCOM LAEBO INDI INTAM PECINAM ELMETIACUI
Ask blitzkrieg80 for more, he's an expert. I know some stuff about linguistics...blitz did EB "Germanic Indo-European" (as he calls it) based on Proto-Indo-European words fed through the first two phases of the germanic sound shift (according to Grimm's law). "PG" is what I will use to represent Proto-Germanic; *EB will represent EB Germanic Indo-European.
The first phase of the sound shift is voiceless stops becoming voiceless fricatives. After an "s," this doesn't apply. However, "sk" becomes "sh" later in some Germanic languages (example Old English scitte, "dung" becomes English shit)
p > f; English fish, PG *fiskaz, EB *fiskoz; PIE *pisk
t > þ; English three, PG *þriz, EB *þreiz; PIE *treies
k > **x; English heart, PG *xartan, EB *xardom; PIE *kardom
kw > hw; English what, PG *xwat, EB *xwod; PIE *kwod
The second phase is voiced aspirated stops becoming voiced [unaspirated] stops.
gh > g; English goat, PG *gaitaz, EB *gaidoz; PIE *ghaidos
bg > b; English brother, PG *brōþar, EB *brōþer; PIE *bhrehtēr
dh > d; English daughter, PG *duxtēr, EB *duhtēr; PIE *dhuktēr
The third phase is voiced stops (that were unaspirated in proto-indo-european, or PIE) become voiceless stops. This phase has not occured yet in EB.
d > t; English ten, PG *texn, EB *dexm; PIE *dekm
g > k; English cold, PG *kald-, EB *gold-; PIE *geld-
b > p (few examples beginning with "p")
*indicates reconstructed word
** "x" represents the sound represented by the greek letter Chi, the "h" in "heart" or the "ch" in German words. It is based off of the IPA symbol x, which represents the same sound.
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"To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace." -CalgacusOriginally Posted by skullheadhq
Also present in the Dutch geit, broeder and dochter.gh > g; English goat, PG *gaitaz, EB *gaidoz; PIE *ghaidos
bg > b; English brother, PG *brōþar, EB *brōþer; PIE *bhrehtēr
dh > d; English daughter, PG *duxtēr, EB *duhtēr; PIE *dhuktēr
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Or in German itself:
brother: Bruder
daughter: Tochter
If you spoke German, Dutch or any scandinavian language I think you would know what some of the native names mean without looking at the translations. There're still a lot of similarities...
Yes, German itself is a good source.
english -> german
goat - Geiss (Ziege)
brother - Bruder
daughter - Tochter
ten - zehn
cold - kalt
heart - herz
or others:
nouns:
table - Tafel (Tisch)
horse - Ross (Pferd)
hound (dog) - Hund
house - Haus
spear - Speer
shield - Schild
sword - Schwert
helmet - Helm
rose - Rose
plant - Pflanze
harbor - Hafen
year - Jahr
day - Tag
second - Sekunde
script - Schrift
man - Mann
wife - Weib (Frau)
verbs:
(to) do - tun
(to) make - machen
(to) shoot - schiessen
(to) go - gehen
(to) run - rennen
(to) hold - halten
(to) bow - beugen
adjectives:
good - gut
absurd - absurd
senseless - sinnlos
unholy - unheilig
awesome - EB
etc.
Last edited by SwissBarbar; 01-29-2009 at 17:01.
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