Talk:Weser–Rhine Germanic

should this article exist?

See RFC here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Istvaeonic_languages#RFC._Merge?_Split?_Re-name? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:16, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Note about article history

Future editors please note that some editing and talk page history relevant to this article is included at Istvaeonic languages which was temporarily a merged article incorporating material relevant to this article and also Istvaeones (which is now split). Here is the relevant talk page material on the redirect article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:34, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Assumed daughter languages

This whole section needs re-thinking. It seems to suggest that W-R Gmc can be equated with Old Dutch, and equates Elbe Gmc with OHG. That means it is completely muddled about the origins of all Frankish dialects apart from Low Franconian. Also the material in the second half gives the appearance of being well sourced, but in fact both the Swan and Wells sources are about the views of Vennemann (the Swan ref is for a volume edited by him, but the chapter is by Vennemann), whose idiosyncratic views on "Low Germanic" and "High Germanic" are not widely shared. Niebaum does not seem to be the source of the statement attributed to him - it looks like someone has drawn their own conclusions from his maps. As far as I can see this stems mostly or entirely from an edit in Istvaeonic Languages and is consistent with the nonsensical map that was previously on that page. If it was just up to me, I would scrap the whole section and rewrite it from scratch. --Pfold (talk) 19:18, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

No one's done anything about this for 3 years, so I'm deleting the section. --Pfold (talk) 14:06, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Eventually this article needs to explain doubts and criticisms of Maurer?

As this is a slow moving article, I'll just use this new section to collect quotes and comments for the future.

• Beck, Heinrich and Müller, Rosemarie. "Rhein-Weser-Germanen: ". Germanische Altertumskunde Online, edited by Sebastian Brather, Wilhelm Heizmann and Steffen Patzold. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2010. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/ GAO/entry/RGA_4637/html. Accessed 2021-08-31. From Beck's opening section Sprachgeschichtliches: Maurers interdisziplinärer Ansatz (neben der frühgeschichtl. Arch. bezog er auch die Volkskunde in seine Argumentation ein) hat die Sprachgeschichtsforsch. bewegt, letztlich aber kein Fundament schaffen können, das Bestand gehabt hätte - das gilt auch für die weitere These Maurers, daß die merow. Kultur die Voraussetzungen geschaffen hätte für die späteren ,westgerm.` Sprachgemeinsamkeiten (wie die Konsonantengemination; 1). Zur kritischen Beurteilung vgl. (3, 36. 161). The critical reference '3' is Schützeichel R. . Die Grundlagen des w. Mitteldeutschen, 1976.

• Just using google translate for the main bit Maurer's interdisciplinary approach (in addition to the early historical arch. He also included folklore in his argumentation) has linguistic history research. moved, but ultimately unable to create a foundation that would have lasted - this also applies to Maurer's further thesis that the merow. Culture would have created the prerequisites for the later 'Westgerm' linguistic similarities--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:26, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Strata

This article should not, whether purposely or accidentally, suggest or imply that Weser-Rhine Germanic is the (i.e. singular) direct ancestor of the modern West German dialects. Weser-Rhine Germanic is, supposedly, the first stratum, correct, but the influence of Elbe Germanic, i.e. the later Upper German dialects which greatly influenced West Central German both phonologically and idiomatically; both through language contact and Standard German cannot be left out. The exact phrasing is, as far as I am concerned, open for discussion, but this article must include and mention later and immense influences of the High German consonant shift when linking modern West Central German and Maurer's pre-migration period conceptions. Vlaemink (talk) 11:55, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but I am entirely unconvinced. Could you please give us some respectable sources. The problem is that what you say implies that West Central German is the language of speakers of another branch of West Germanic who overlaid the Weser-Rhine speakers. WHat could be the evidence for that? Which other group of Gmc speakers could these be? Influence alone does not make a superstratum, only population change does that, and I would be very surprised if you could provide sources for that. The fact that UG influenced CG in later centuries does not make UG a superstratum. I can only conclude that you are misusing the term "substrate". Your wording posits a very specific ethnological development, whereas the original wording is much more general. Your wording could be completely wrong (my view), the original wording is IN ANY CASE at least partly if not wholly right. Until there are sources for your very specific claim and we reach consensus on this matter, the original wording should stand. It is less controversial. --Pfold (talk) 16:57, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood or misread what I've said, or at the very least intended to say, because my remarks are far from controversial. It is the current linguistic consensus that the Second Germanic consonant shift emerged during the early 6th century CE and reached a considerable part of the Frankish-speaking areas, specifically what is now considered the Central West German area, shortly thereafter. (c.f. Joachim Herrgen and Lars Vorberger:"15. Rheinfränkisch". Volume 4, in Deutsch: Sprache und Raum - Ein internationales Handbuch der Sprachvariation, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2019, pp. 478-515.) and it is equally the current current linguistic consensus that the Second Germanic consonant shift is an innovation which arose within the dialect area of the supposed Elbe Germanic grouping. (cf. Jochen Bär: "3. Deutsch und Vordeutsch – sprachhistorische Daten und Fakten" in Handbuch Sprache in der Geschichte, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 105-132.). Hence it is quite uncontroversial to state that the modern West Central German dialects are a product of both Rhein-Weser (their base, or initial position starting within Old Frankish) and Elbe Germanic, as evidenced by the SGCH and a significant influx of Upper German vocabulary. Do you have sources contrary to this position that are considered within the academic consensus? I mean, I am aware that Theo Vennemann opposes the first statement written above with his so-called Bifurkations- und der Zurückdrängungstheorie, but it's difficult to see him as representing linguistic consensus. In any case, this influencing needs to be properly explained/noted within the article. If only because Maurer (though I'm basing this on memory, I do not have the actual work at hand) primarily associated "Rhein-Weser Germanic" with Old Frankish (and maybe also unattested Hessian?) rather than modern West Central German dialects. Like I mentioned before, this article shouldn't be worded in such a way, that a casual reader might infer stronger descent than is warranted by either Maurer's original work nor modern linguistic consensus.

Also, though besides the point, but your claim that only only population change can result in a sub- or superstratum seems quite peculiar to me. Would you happen to have sources for that? Vlaemink (talk) 15:16, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, I will look at this again. --Pfold (talk) 15:52, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

A single sound change, however significant, and some borrowed vocabulary do not create a superstratum - if existing speakers adopt a few features, as you cite, then that is perfectly normal borrowing . In any case the adoption of the sound shift in WCG is only partial and very varied between the various WCG dialects. I'm sorry but I find the use of the term "superstratum" entirely inappropriate. The fact that WCG borrowed some stuff from UG doesn't change the fact that W-R Gmc is the fundamental source of WCG dialects at the beginning of the OHG period.

The reference you give is unhelpfully lacking a precise page number, but I can find no use of the terms "super-/substrate" in that article. But I quote from p.114 "Die Rheinfranken zwischen Nieder- und Mittelrhein sprechen andere Dialekte, in denen die Grundlage der westmitteldeutschen Mundarten zu sehen ist." That is effectively what the article used to say - the very source you cite supports the original wording, it certainly does not use the term "Superstrat", and does not, as far as I can see, mention any UG influence on WCG apart from the sound shift (I'm not disputing that there were other later influences.)

The original wording here was "dialects ancestral to Dutch and to the West Central German. dialects". That seems to me absolutely correct. In any case, this is the wording of the lede we're discussing, a place to introduce the subject, not get bogged down in detail. If anything, the points you raise belong in the WCG article itself. This article is specifically about the Gmc background, so doesn't need that detail about later developments in the dialects which are not strictly the subject of the article (they indicate the historical significance of the topic), and certainly not in the lede. --Pfold (talk) 15:08, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Before I start, I would first like to ask you to take on a slightly more friendly approach to this discussion. Calling someone who is going out of their way to provide you with authoritative references "unhelpful" because a topic includes multiple pages is totally unnecessary and frankly unwarranted. As far as I'm concerned, this is a cordial exchange.

Alright so having said that, there's quite a lot to unpack here. First of all, the Second Germanic Consonant Shift (SGCS) isn't a single sound change. Rather, it's a complex and extensive series of sound changes which affected an enormous part of the pre-SGCS vocabulary. Yes, the adoption of the SGCS is limited, but that wording can be misleading as every single West Central German variety has adopted at least more than half of the SGCS-features (see: Stefan Sonderegger: Grundzüge deutscher Sprachgeschichte. Diachronie des Sprachsystems. Band I: Einführung – Genealogie – Konstanten. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1979, pp. 129/131). I'm focusing more on the SGCS than changes in (core) vocabulary here because these are more easily recognizable for people not intimately familiar with this dialect grouping; but influences on vocabulary were extensive as well (see: Werner Besch: Sprachgeschichte: ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung, Walter de Gruyter, 2003, pp. 2320-2325.)

In a way, this is all besides the point though; as going from Weser-Rhine Germanic to West Central German is to skip a language phase and go beyond what Maurer claimed. Maurer used [Weser-Rhine Germanic] as a form ancestral to [Old Frankish] and [Old Hessian], rather than assuming (as was common in his day) that all West Germanic languages of the Early Medieval Period had sprung from a common Urwestgermanisch. He doesn't really seem to touch West Central German.

I could see a way, as this article does, to argue that Weser-Rhine Germanic is more or less directly linked to Old Dutch (and hence modern Dutch) because of the fact that the differences between Old Frankish and Early Old Dutch are relatively minute or even arbitrary to a certain degree; but this also goes beyond Maurer. In the case of West Central German though, to argue that Weser-Rhine Germanic is ancestral to West Central German without mentioning the incredibly extensive Elbe Germanic/Upper German influences is beyond the pale. West Central German is the result of the mixing of Old Frankish and Old Alemannic + Old Bavarian. Do these dialects then descend from Frankish? To a varying extent, very probable, but to omit the other essential component of what makes West Central German what it is, is, frankly, a bit ludicrous.

The easiest way to solve the current discussion is to cut out the "Wikipedia-ing" from the source material and to merely state what Maurer claimed, that is: that Old Frankish (the language of the Franks) and Old Hessian (the language of the Chatti) descended from this proposed grouping; without explicitly mentioning current varieties (including Dutch of course).

Also, the article should ideally mention that Maurer's theory isn't as well liked in modern Germanic philology as it once was. It has come under a lot of criticisms from prominent linguists over the past decades. Vlaemink (talk) 13:51, 8 November 2022 (UTC)