What's your favorite Germanic language?

What is your favorite Germanic language?


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I made my sincere answer to Joey D - I see you say otherwise; have you more details about your statement (it's true I was speaking for official Dutch as it's learned somewhere, you're living in the very country what is not the same! Have you some records of the common Northern Dutch (not the Saxon or Frisian dialects, but the way they pronounce Dutch? I heard Dutch people (army) in my country and I noticed it seemed as they were of different Germanic speaking lands!!!) It's more striking when all regions Dutch people as gathered together what a tourist cannot hear when travelling in the country region by region. Thanks beforehand.

Moesan the official Dutch, or Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands, is with an hard G/CH. Very difficult to pronounce for other (even Germanic speaking) people. Fact or fiction but around ww2 they said they could detect German spy's when they had to pronounce the place called Scheveningen.[emoji6] very hard for not natives. People from Southern Netherlands don't use the hard G/CH but that's due to their local dialect.


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I made my sincere answer to Joey D - I see you say otherwise; have you more details about your statement (it's true I was speaking for official Dutch as it's learned somewhere, you're living in the very country what is not the same! Have you some records of the common Northern Dutch (not the Saxon or Frisian dialects, but the way they pronounce Dutch? I heard Dutch people (army) in my country and I noticed it seemed as they were of different Germanic speaking lands!!!) It's more striking when all regions Dutch people as gathered together what a tourist cannot hear when travelling in the country region by region. Thanks beforehand.

And an clear example of Dutch influenced by the Groningen dialect is that of the old top EU man Sicco Mansholt:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dfwEgI3QJRk

This is the authentic Groningen language:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zxb3xCgRCOc



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Thanks - curious; in past Nederlands was teached with two similar sounds, but with a difference in sonority (G voiced, CH unvoiced, at least in normal initial or central position; late evolution or academism mixing diverse dialects to produce an "etymologic" difference between written G and CH? It's true a Dutchman I heard this summer in camping seemed having only ONE sound (hard) for the two signs;
That said i 've not problem to produce the two sounds, even before rounded R what is difficult for a lot of people; but I like phonetics. Thanks all the way for your postings; good week-end!
 
Thanks - curious; in past Nederlands was teached with two similar sounds, but with a difference in sonority (G voiced, CH unvoiced, at least in normal initial or central position; late evolution or academism mixing diverse dialects to produce an "etymologic" difference between written G and CH? It's true a Dutchman I heard this summer in camping seemed having only ONE sound (hard) for the two signs;
That said i 've not problem to produce the two sounds, even before rounded R what is difficult for a lot of people; but I like phonetics. Thanks all the way for your postings; good week-end!

Your are absolutely right, originally this was different, the G, as in Gut in German or Goal in English, got harder, throat sound ;) Explained here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jtGRIUvvbk But no use If you can't understand Dutch.
 
Your are absolutely right, originally this was different, the G, as in Gut in German or Goal in English, got harder, throat sound ;) Explained here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jtGRIUvvbk But no use If you can't understand Dutch.

Thanks but I think we are in a no-end talk here! LOL - I don't mistake /g/ with what I write 'gh' which is MY soft aspired 'g' distinct from 'ch' !!! It spites me I cannot use my phonetic fonts here (copy and paste don't make it correctly) - thanks for the links; I hardly can understand spoken Dutch (only short phrases pronounced slowly for strangers) when I can read usual phrases; it seems to me I heard common /g/ sound with this singer, heard in Frisian, not the aspired 'g' I spoke about.
OK. I stop it. THat said, some form of aspired 'gh' existes in some German dialects, when in intervocalic or final position; in East German of some places, initial germanic G- became /j/, what for me is the proof it had been aspired before palatalization (same in some Scandinavian languages and dialects) - in Danish it was loosely aspired in the same positions (middle, end) before tending to fade out in today colloquial Danish giving way to /j/ or /w/;
we have too english gate/yate, yellow, yard, light /j/ opposed to borough, bow (ex /w/ << /gh/, elsacian dialects wage(n): /vavë//vagë//vaghë//vöjë/... see Pfaltz Franconian or Schwabish /vojnër//vögnër//vangnër/...roughly cited for wagner showing tendancies to soften and to be influenced by vocalic environment; all this proves old Germanic G knew a very unstable condition during centuries, the diverse results being found in very close places in a patchwork or tartan way!!! It's why I said Dutch was very conservative on this point.
 
Just returning to this (been on holiday!), I too have old Dutch texts which differentiate between both sounds: one being voiced and the other being unvoiced - and I can recall being confused by this because they both sounded the same to my ear, and my Dutch friends later confirming that as far as they were concerned, it was the same sound - so somewhere along the line, if they were two different sounds, they have come together.

To be honest, being familiar with the sound myself, I can't for the life of me imagine how you can possibly make a voiced version of the sound.
 
English is universal. Easy grammar, melodic, versatile and the most useful language.

But if there was no English, German would be my favourite. It is not very melodic, but rather robotic, orderly. It suits me... subjective thing.
 
Just returning to this (been on holiday!), I too have old Dutch texts which differentiate between both sounds: one being voiced and the other being unvoiced - and I can recall being confused by this because they both sounded the same to my ear, and my Dutch friends later confirming that as far as they were concerned, it was the same sound - so somewhere along the line, if they were two different sounds, they have come together.

To be honest, being familiar with the sound myself, I can't for the life of me imagine how you can possibly make a voiced version of the sound.

I have no problem to articulate in two ways. The matter is only a question of strength in blowing the global articulation is still the same; do you know about the diverse arabic aspirated guttural sounds? they are very more numerous than the almost unique modern hebraic guttural (for my ears can identify).
If ancient 'gh' was the same as the ancient 'ch' sound in lower-german languages why could have Flemish softened or abandoned only the 'gh' in some positions when (if I don't mistake) it doesn't for 'ch'???

so it's possible that people have melted the 2 sounds in a lone one today, but it's not so evident for past.
 
Just for a bit of fun, and out of personal interest, and because clearly I have far too much time on my hands, I dug out some old Dutch texts I've been keeping in boxes in the garage for 20+ years.

My wife always asks me, do you really need all these old books? and my answer is always the same: you just never know when I'll need to pull them out!

The first one I pulled out was Dutch: Grammar and Reader by Smit and Meijer. I'll be honest, I can't recall ever looking through this book before, and it's in excellent condition, meaning I probably never have. Note: first published in 1958, and the 2nd edition I have was published in 1978 - so I would not be surprised if it's a bit behind the times.

Anyway, on the very first page, we find this (which is consistent with a lot of our discussions above):

Hard consonants: p, t, k, s, f, ch, h.
The letters ch represent a single sound identical with ch in Scotch loch. [personally, I think it's a tiny bit harder]

Soft consonants: b, d, z, g, v, w, j
g represents the soft variation of ch. The difference between g and ch is often lost, especially with speakers from the western part of the Netherlands.



Ok, this is starting to confirm what we're all thinking - they may have been a difference once, perhaps more noticeable in different parts of the country, but it has probably all now merged into the one sound.

Now this is even more interesting, at some point I was going to say that personally, I didn't see all that much difference beween Dutch F and Dutch V.

Smit and Meijer say in the very next line: v is a soft f, but here too the difference is not always noticeable.

That's what I reckon too!
 
Next, I pulled out some books by Bruce Donaldson, known here in Australia as an expert on Germanic languages, and a profilic writer on the Dutch language.

I always enjoyed this particular book of his: Dutch: A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium, published in 1983.

On page 51, he talks about the fricatives, and opens with g and ch:

The fricatives g and ch are usually transcribed as [ ] and [X], i.e. as voiced and unvoiced respectively. However, nowadays in the North this represents more what was, that what is the case; they are now usually both voiceless, but this point will be discussed a little later.


This is consistent with what Northerner mentioned in an earlier post, and is clearly bit more up to date than the Smit and Meijer quote above.


He goes onto to say:L It is undoubtedly the common occurence of [X] which leads the layman to label Dutch a 'gutteral' language. Footnote: In English circles one often hears the same of German but the gutterals are not as hard nor as frequent as in Dutch, after all, g is a stop in German.


He then provides this interesting table, consistent with what I wrote above:

g > ch : now usually devoiced in all positions in northern ABN although a degree of voicing can still occur intervocalically; it is considered regional to give g a voiced pronunciation consistently.

v > f : may be, and usually is devoiced in initial position north of the rivers, but not intervocalically.

z > s: cannot be devoiced anywhere in a word without being considered socially inferior. This does not include devoicing of z under the influence of assimilation however.

On page 15, Donaldson writes:

There is one sound in particular which betrays a southern origin, namely g. The Dutch refer to the southern g as a zachte gee...
 
Next, I pulled out some books by Bruce Donaldson, known here in Australia as an expert on Germanic languages, and a profilic writer on the Dutch language.

I always enjoyed this particular book of his: Dutch: A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium, published in 1983.

On page 51, he talks about the fricatives, and opens with g and ch:

The fricatives g and ch are usually transcribed as [ ] and [X], i.e. as voiced and unvoiced respectively. However, nowadays in the North this represents more what was, that what is the case; they are now usually both voiceless, but this point will be discussed a little later.


This is consistent with what Northerner mentioned in an earlier post, and is clearly bit more up to date than the Smit and Meijer quote above.


He goes onto to say:L It is undoubtedly the common occurence of [X] which leads the layman to label Dutch a 'gutteral' language. Footnote: In English circles one often hears the same of German but the gutterals are not as hard nor as frequent as in Dutch, after all, g is a stop in German.


He then provides this interesting table, consistent with what I wrote above:

g > ch : now usually devoiced in all positions in northern ABN although a degree of voicing can still occur intervocalically; it is considered regional to give g a voiced pronunciation consistently.

v > f : may be, and usually is devoiced in initial position north of the rivers, but not intervocalically.

z > s: cannot be devoiced anywhere in a word without being considered socially inferior. This does not include devoicing of z under the influence of assimilation however.

On page 15, Donaldson writes:

There is one sound in particular which betrays a southern origin, namely g. The Dutch refer to the southern g as a zachte gee...

OK: all that confirms we are right all of us for the parts we are aware of: historic local evolutions put differences for G - I recall that in gact some German dialects have a voiced fricatives for G in intervocalic position (Vogel, Wagen ...), as has Icelandic
Concerning the initial F- and S- for standard Dutch V- and Z- mark for me the more North-Germanic origin of some regions; the voiced sounds at the initial COULD be the mark of some ancient Belgae's input (I already wrote about that and same phenomenon in S-W English dialects and some Breton dialects apparently linked to SW-Britain (Dumnonia?)
 
OK: all that confirms we are right all of us for the parts we are aware of: historic local evolutions put differences for G - I recall that in gact some German dialects have a voiced fricatives for G in intervocalic position (Vogel, Wagen ...), as has Icelandic
Concerning the initial F- and S- for standard Dutch V- and Z- mark for me the more North-Germanic origin of some regions; the voiced sounds at the initial COULD be the mark of some ancient Belgae's input (I already wrote about that and same phenomenon in S-W English dialects and some Breton dialects apparently linked to SW-Britain (Dumnonia?)

Just al little remark I spotted that the Frisians also have the soft g of 'goal' and not the standard language hard g.


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Just al little remark I spotted that the Frisians also have the soft g of 'goal' and not the standard language hard g.


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True! I didn't speak of them because it was so evident: apart for some palatalizations, their consonnants are closer to Scandinavians who have only S, F, and not Z, V and yes they have not the "soft" but the truly "occlusive" G, as had, I suppose, ancient nieder-sachsisch speakers of N-E Netherlands before adopting the standard; this late adoption COULD explain the confusion between hard 'CH' fricative with "soft" 'G' fricative (GH in some texts) , I think.
G in intervocalic and final position is very often turned into fricative 'GH' in Germanic dialects of all sorts (and the same occurred to Anglo-Saxon too), sometimes turning into German 'ichlaut' (/ç/) or into /j/, and into /w/-> /v/ in back vowels environment (Elsassisch, English, spoken Danish...) BUT Dutch and Flemish languages are the only ones who have a fricative at the beginning of words, as you evidently know as you speak Dutch.
&: but Frisian knows 'Gh' fricative in other positions as a lot of Germanic dialects.

BTW, happy new year! Bloawezh mad deoc'h! (yearful good to-you)
 
Frisians: as Scandinavians, they have T and not D in place of old-Germanic 'TH'
 
How is Swedish different from other Germanic languages? It sounds more "open voweled" to me. Am I wrong?
 
I haven't heard enough of them to form a strong opinion.

I love a Scottish accent though.
 
No love for Norwegian, I would have thought that Norwegian is even more musical than Swedish.

I tend to prefer the flat accent of West Germanic languages, and I like Finland Swedish a bit better than Sweden's Swedish because of the loss of tones.
 
Swedish sounds somewhat archaic, because of it's vowel richness and many Old Nordic words that have been lost or replaced with Low German loan words in Norwegian or Danish. Of course Icelandic sounds even more archaic, but the Scandinavian languages have moved so far away from it, that Icelandic often appears more as a mysterious puzzle than an archaic version of our own languages.
 

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