Comments | germanics: Just saying hello

artista4you in germanics

Just saying hello

Mar 12, 2008 01:38

Hello everyone, I'm a new member here.

I have studied German for about 5 1/2 years. The story of all it how started is really long so I'll refrain from recounting it. When I was studying abroad in Spain, I decided to spend my last month in Berlin seeing as classes weren't in session. It was a wonderful experience and I really wanted to go back ( Read more... )

Comments 6

lukadron March 12 2008, 13:55:36 UTC

Oh hej!
That sounds mightily interesting. I never considered Plattdeutsch to be present in the US, somehow it never occured to me. Dialectology's something I've always been curious about so I wouldn't mind you telling us more about it, seeing as you'd be the obvious expert on the field, with travelling around the world and all :)

artista4you March 13 2008, 08:03:10 UTC

Haha, I guess I'm an expert if you say so ( ... )

lukadron June 1 2008, 17:04:35 UTC

Thanks for the book recommendation :D
So you said it was closer to English, I heard that it was also close to Scandinavian. Any thoughts on that?
Aside from that I don't have any others questions :)

artista4you June 2 2008, 03:56:40 UTC

The claim that Low German is close to Scandinavian is probably because of the Hansa time. The Hanseatic League was a trade union along the North Sea. The official language of the HL was Low German, which at this point was actually a standardized language (Standard Middle High German was being used in the south at this time). Because of the fact that this was the official language of the league and the location along the North Sea, at this time there was a giant influx of Low German lexical items into the Scandinavian languages (especially Danish which was the gate way of the Scandinavian languages geographically and politically ( ... )

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