Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Romance Germanic border Europe Sat 30 Jun 2018, 23:22
Commented a message of LiR in the Tumbleweed: "Alsace-Lorraine (Elsass-Lothringen) ther you say something...we people of the "borderland" as I and my compagnon Isleifson of the Lorraine tudesque have a lot to say about it...the borderland from Belgium till the former Yugoslavia now Croatia or is it Slovenia?...Alsace-Lorraine several times changed between Germany and France...triste histoire...look once to the "malgrés-nous" (they had it in the now Belgian Oost-Kantons too)...Oradour and all that...and yes the languages..."
I thought that it was perhaps a subject in its own right that because of its complexity needed an apart thread... The language border which start at Dunkirk to the nowadays border of Slovenia-Italy-Austria, wher eit goes over in the Germanic-Slavic language border...as I said a sad history of the borderland, especially in WWI and II...as in Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, Italian-Austrian border and I saw today also in Slovenia during WWII at the Germanic-Slavic border... To start with a map that I found on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Where-do-Germanic-Latin-and-Slavic-people-originate-from-respectively
Posts : 5122 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : Pyrénées-Orientales, France
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Sun 01 Jul 2018, 19:24
Going west to east across continental Europe it is true there are very roughly three bands of language: Romance-Germanic-Slavic. But that's very simplistic. Romanian is a romance language now separated from other Romance speaking areas by Hungarian and Slavic speaking regions. Indeed what of Hungarian itself ... and Finnish, Estonian and Albanian ... none of which are closely related to Latin, German, or Russian, and I'm not sure even if they are at all closely related to each other (except probably Estonian and Finnish). Indeed there's Greek as well, and of course Turkic/Arabic which is currently the predominant language of Eastern Thrace.
Slovene by the way is a very similar to Czech and I'm fairly certain they are largely mutually comprehensible - yet their respective heartlands have long been separated by Germanic speaking Austria and on the peripheries by Hungarian- and Italian-speaking areas.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Sun 01 Jul 2018, 23:44
Meles meles wrote:
Going west to east across continental Europe it is true there are very roughly three bands of language: Romance-Germanic-Slavic. But that's very simplistic. Romanian is a romance language now separated from other Romance speaking areas by Hungarian and Slavic speaking regions. Indeed what of Hungarian itself ... and Finnish, Estonian and Albanian ... none of which are closely related to Latin, German, or Russian, and I'm not sure even if they are at all closely related to each other (except probably Estonian and Finnish). Indeed there's Greek as well, and of course Turkic/Arabic which is currently the predominant language of Eastern Thrace.
Slovene by the way is a very similar to Czech and I'm fairly certain they are largely mutually comprehensible - yet their respective heartlands have long been separated by Germanic speaking Austria and on the peripheries by Hungarian- and Italian-speaking areas.
It is referring to the whole Romance-Germanic language border, but especially the history of language border starting originally far under Boulogne over the Lys along to the nowadays Brabant... And as I studied that much this question as in the Saxon coast question on both Historum and Passion Histoire... http://passion-histoire.net/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=40634 And my thesis that the original language border of the time of the Merovingians had to do with the relief: And see Map 1 of the book I mentioned
I promised to Almayrac to contact a professor of the university of Ghent (via the archaeologic site Raakvlak that I mentioned ot LiR or was it to Islanddawn) about the question and perhaps is it possible that he proposes it as a subject for a thesis...but to start the contact I have to be better prepared than now...and if I had more time...
"Romance-Germanic-Slavic. But that's very simplistic. Romanian is a romance language now separated from other Romance speaking areas by Hungarian and Slavic speaking regions. Indeed what of Hungarian itself ... and Finnish, Estonian and Albanian ... none of which are closely related to Latin, German, or Russian, and I'm not sure even if they are at all closely related to each other (except probably Estonian and Finnish). Indeed there's Greek as well, and of course Turkic/Arabic which is currently the predominant language of Eastern Thrace."
Of course you are right and that you will find in the second book that I provided (but you can only read a quarter of the book and it is too academic and not that much related to our question, so that I had better not mentioned it), where they comment in a very sophisticated way also the Caucasian languages, Greek, Albanian the Finnish-Ugric languages fractured by the push through them of the Slavic languages letting an Hungarian island at one side and the Finnish ones at the other side...and even that is perhaps too simplistic
Too late to expand further, see you tomorrow...
Kind regards from Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
perhaps is this subject too specific for the little audience that we have...BTW where are all the "people"? Too hot in England as overhere. In Dutch we can also say "luiden" for "people" ("waar zijn all de luiden" that used more in a colloquial, "boutade" way), in French "gens" and you don't believe it in Russian it is "ljoody" (now I found it ...copy and paste: "люди") nordmann you see a correlation between the Dutch "luiden" and the Russian "люди"? First I was a bit confused, while on internet in the sophisticated translators they translated "people" by "narod" in Russian. Of course that is right but it is the Dutch and German word "volk". What have you in English btw for "volk, Volk" Meles meles?
In many countries, this might be regarded as bizarre, but in Belgium, everything is divided along language lines - from political parties to schools, magazines and newspapers."
There is no ethnic diversity in Belgium, only three languages and those language communities have of course there own prerogatives to each community...but ethnies no...perhaps Morrocan, Turkish ethnies...the Italian, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese seems to be accepted as closer ethnies... Are the employees of the BBC also little Nigel Farages... I saw now in the sophisticated book that I mentioned above about Switzerland that they are organized along cantons and it can be that the German Kanton can't speak French to the neighbouring French Canton...The Kanton/Canton the base unit of the Swiss society...Have we to divide Belgium in 12 cantons ? OOPS and then there will only be 5 Flemish cantons...Will ask more at a Swiss member on the Passion Histoire....
But back to the language border...along the language border there were always frictions...and now some anecdotes for LiR...never had in Belgium some bloodshed and bombs as in other parts of the languageborder...but nevertheless some oddities... Arriving a Britain in Ostend...first he has to drive his car at the right side of the way (I wanted not to say the "right" side of the way, but just the other side of the left one...) from Brussels on, he, as he want to go to Aachen (tiens, in English it is the real German version) he see first Aken on the road signs then he sees further Aix-la-Chapelle and then at the end he sees Aachen (and as it is the same in English)... A bit in the same vein...travelling in the time to Dubrovnik along the then still Yugoslavian coast...arriving from Italy asking the way (no GPS in that time) to Rijeka (Croatian for brook? stream? (Dutch: beek) same as in Russian) People said "sempre diretta" puy a sinistra...I followed that way, but always road signs about Fiume...till I at the end arrived by mistake in the port of Trieste...and there at the end some good soul explained to me in English that Fiume was Rijeka in Italian ad that many people didn't want to say Rijeka because that before the war was Italian territory... But more a strained situation in the South Tyrol Bolzano/Bozen...Always seeking in the time along the way a "Zimmer frei" now they call it a "bed and breakfast"...arriving in a wood at an old kind of Roman villa in decline...in the inner side all testimonies of old glory...a friendly old lady, who spoke English to us...nice breakfast...later for the road as we did in the time (question of money) in a local shop some bread and other substances to compose a meal at the road side...entering a shop...trying in English and excusing for not speaking Italian...and saying that I could speak German too...the lady, quite going in a higher tune...hier können Sie ruhig Deutsch sprechen, hier sprecht man kein Italiänisch (here you can quite speak German, here speaks nobody Italian)...that was not too long after the bombing of TV pylons, who perhaps distributed Italian programmes... It all starts with such oddities, but as we have seen in Yugoslavia it can easely change in murdering each other...as I discussed with Islanddawn the Greater Albania, the Greater Macedonia...
Kind regards from Paul.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
My brother's wife is from Colombia (so first language Spanish). She teaches Spanish and says Rumanian people usually find Spanish easy to learn because both are languages that have their roots in Latin albeit they diverged some time ago.
I can't speak about the other people but the charger for my laptop broke and I was without internet access for a couple of days. I had unplugged the charger when I took the laptop upstairs to work but Macbook chargers don't seem to be all that robust so I will leave the laptop downstairs henceforth (unless I can get a second charger to use upstairs but Apple don't exactly give things away).
Many years ago (I in my late teens) my parents and I and my younger brother did a coach trip to Austria and there was a day trip to Italy (Tyrole) but I noticed that the graves, or at least the older ones, in a local church had German inscriptions. At my school (because I attended Catholic schools from age 6) there were some children whose parents were Polish - either their Dads had been with the free Poles during the war or they were displaced persons after the War (World War II). I have heard of the changing of the Polish borders after World War II - my Dad said "Poland took some of the old Germany and USSR took some of the old Poland" (paraphrasing). I think this subject was touched on at some time on Res Hist. Of course people with the knowledge (not myself obviously) could probably write veritable theses (plural) on changing frontiers. I know that Berwick (the town - not North Berwick) used to be in Scotland rather than England hundreds of years ago but Berwick the county is still in Scotland. I'm not up to date on the current political boundaries in the "Black Country" (an area roughly between Wolverhampton and Birmingham) but the community of Dudley certainly used to be part of the county of Worcestershire separated from the main body of Worcestershire and surrounded by Staffordshire. And don't get me started on the USA taking over "New Spain". Texas and California used to be part of "New Spain" I know.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
My brother's wife is from Colombia (so first language Spanish). She teaches Spanish and says Rumanian people usually find Spanish easy to learn because both are languages that have their roots in Latin albeit they diverged some time ago.
I can't speak about the other people but the charger for my laptop broke and I was without internet access for a couple of days. I had unplugged the charger when I took the laptop upstairs to work but Macbook chargers don't seem to be all that robust so I will leave the laptop downstairs henceforth (unless I can get a second charger to use upstairs but Apple don't exactly give things away).
Many years ago (I in my late teens) my parents and I and my younger brother did a coach trip to Austria and there was a day trip to Italy (Tyrole) but I noticed that the graves, or at least the older ones, in a local church had German inscriptions. At my school (because I attended Catholic schools from age 6) there were some children whose parents were Polish - either their Dads had been with the free Poles during the war or they were displaced persons after the War (World War II). I have heard of the changing of the Polish borders after World War II - my Dad said "Poland took some of the old Germany and USSR took some of the old Poland" (paraphrasing). I think this subject was touched on at some time on Res Hist. Of course people with the knowledge (not myself obviously) could probably write veritable theses (plural) on changing frontiers. I know that Berwick (the town - not North Berwick) used to be in Scotland rather than England hundreds of years ago but Berwick the county is still in Scotland. I'm not up to date on the current political boundaries in the "Black Country" (an area roughly between Wolverhampton and Birmingham) but the community of Dudley certainly used to be part of the county of Worcestershire separated from the main body of Worcestershire and surrounded by Staffordshire. And don't get me started on the USA taking over "New Spain". Texas and California used to be part of "New Spain" I know.
Lady, happy to see you back.
"My brother's wife is from Colombia (so first language Spanish). She teaches Spanish and says Rumanian people usually find Spanish easy to learn because both are languages that have their roots in Latin albeit they diverged some time ago."
Of course Spanish is close to Rumanian, but in my opinion not as much as Italian to Spanish... https://goo.gl/WmGScz I can not understand the text, although I see that there are many Latin words in the language... But with my Latin and French I could understand written Spanish (I agree studied it a bit with an assymil book). Read even already two books in Spanish (with my dictionary at hand)...Can even understand the newsreader of TVE, because I know the context and as she speaks slower than the average and pronunciate the official language very well. The same for the Italian RAI... But those two languages are much much more related to French and Latin... https://goo.gl/BNESCe https://lingua.com/italian/reading/colombo/
"unless I can get a second charger to use upstairs but Apple don't exactly give things away" " don't exactly give things away" You English have always a way to express it so scenic and to the point...perhaps we would say the less expressive: Apple don't give it away for nothing?
"Many years ago (I in my late teens) my parents and I and my younger brother did a coach trip to Austria and there was a day trip to Italy (Tyrole) but I noticed that the graves, or at least the older ones, in a local church had German inscriptions. At my school (because I attended Catholic schools from age 6) there were some children whose parents were Polish - either their Dads had been with the free Poles during the war or they were displaced persons after the War (World War II). I have heard of the changing of the Polish borders after World War II - my Dad said "Poland took some of the old Germany and USSR took some of the old Poland" (paraphrasing). I think this subject was touched on at some time on Res Hist. Of course people with the knowledge (not myself obviously) could probably write veritable theses (plural) on changing frontiers. I know that Berwick (the town - not North Berwick) used to be in Scotland rather than England hundreds of years ago but Berwick the county is still in Scotland. I'm not up to date on the current political boundaries in the "Black Country" (an area roughly between Wolverhampton and Birmingham) but the community of Dudley certainly used to be part of the county of Worcestershire separated from the main body of Worcestershire and surrounded by Staffordshire. And don't get me started on the USA taking over "New Spain". Texas and California used to be part of "New Spain" I know."
"I have heard of the changing of the Polish borders after World War II - my Dad said "Poland took some of the old Germany and USSR took some of the old Poland" (paraphrasing)" Your dad was right LiR...and there is still up to this date a lot of resentment among the Germans as for instance from their "Verband": De Bund der Vertriebenen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Expellees especially those of the former Ost-Preussen (East-Prussia) nowadays Kaliningrad. I said once on a forum to such people: and what have then those Poles to say, who were expelled from their ground by the Soviet-Union the same way as you... And even among the German people themselves there is some friction...from another anecdote...journey (because it was a cheap destination ) in Varna Bulgaria in 1989: the year of "Die Wende" (the turning?)...as it was usual up to then many East-Germans were overthere...but also a lot of Western Germans on the beach...as I already then spoke fluently German learned a lot from these Eastern Germans, who were just free...but about the West-Germans on the beach...heard some gypsy like people, who spoke an old-fashioned German...and in my immediate neighbourhood some West-German older ladies (but not that old according to their physiognomy) speaking not to loud about those gypsy like people a bit further...look at those Wolga Deutscher...dirty people and they can't even speak "richtig Deutsch" (right German?)...and that lives among us... But all this has nothing to do as with the deep feelings in the former Yugoslavia: the Albanians of the greater Albania: the UCK, who wanted to free Kosovo from the Serbs...some claims on "Northern Macedonia". And the Slavic Macedonians aren't angels too...as the Bulgarians, who claim that the Slavic Macedonian language is in fact Bulgarian...not to speak of all those together against Greece as Idiscussed with Islanddawn...
Kind regards from Paul.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
I saw a documentary a long time ago (late 1960s) about some former German prisoners of war who had remained in England after the war. One spoke English with a pronounced Welsh accent and another said that after the war he did not really have much to go home for because Breslau was his home. I can't find anything of that documentary on YouTube but I guess it was before video recorders. I don't think VHS tapes came in till the 1980s though there might have been video recorder for very rich people before.
In the 1990s I remember talking to a lady who worked as a teaching assistant in a school where a few children from Kosovan refugee families attended. A police helicopter had flown overhead and a couple of little Kosovan girls had run and taken cover so I dread to think what experiences they had had in Kosovo of helicopters.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
I always heard Oder-Neisse line (i.e. where the current western frontier of Poland is situated) as "Oder Neesen line" but I see there is no 'n' in Neisse. Still - without any insult intended to Jewish people - I thought Yom Kippor was 'yonky por' for a quite some time. I can't remember the exact context now but I did mention on this site once something about coining new words. There was a glove puppet character of a bear called Sooty on children's TV where there was a song which I heard as "Sooty ever so naughty, Sooty ever so courty' though I didn't know what 'courty' meant but Temperance explained the line was actually "Sooty never gets caught-y". Though I'm rather getting off topic about the German border.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
If I had the ability I should have wanted to compare the wiki versions in Russian, Polish, Chechoslovakian, Hungarian and other languages as well, as I am - almost - certain of there being large differences in the connotations of the languages.
Many of those expelled organized the Federation of Expellees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Expellees - in German https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bund_der_Vertriebenen where I should have liked to compare the linguistics as well.
Due to the possibility of public editing of wikipedia, this cannot in itself be considered a reliable source.
Last edited by Nielsen on Sat 07 Jul 2018, 05:22; edited 1 time in total
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
If I had the ability I should have wanted to compare the wiki versions in Russian, Polish, Chechoslovakian, Hungarian and other languages as well, as I am - almost - certain of there being large differences in the connotations of the languages.
Many of those expelled organized the Federation of Expellees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Expellees - in German https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bund_der_Vertriebenen where I should have liked to compare the linguistics as well.
Due to the possibility of public editing of wikipedia, this cannot in tiself be considered a reliable source.
Indeed Nielsen one has to be very careful about his sources. It is therefore that I always seek for the "about us", to see what kind of fish I have in the kettle. And even that, some prescribe themselves as an honourable site with scientific credentials, but after a while you see by comparing with other sources that they are not honest at all. I have a vague remembering of a site "HR", or something like that "historical review? no time to seek it back) which seemed at the end a right wing American site... And for instance for French history I seek always resources in French, English and even in Dutch and German. The same for the history of the Low Countries...how more serious sources you have how better you will understand your question... And mostly sites from the own country are better than the comments from other countries, as thy have many times better resources, but the danger there is that they can be biased to the defence of the national feelings of that own country, even by real historians...for instance the German Historikerstreit and the French Aristote au Mont Saint Michel...it is therefore that I prefer stuff from serious American historians about Europe
Nielsen you have not to underestimate wiki...if you want to do an in depth investigation Wiki is the first to consult for an overall picture to go then further in detail from more academic sources... And in this case I find the German wikis more stuffed (more detailed? more framed? plus étoffé?) than the English ones and certainly a complement to read after the English ones...
Kind regards from Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
I forgot to add that discussions on an historic subject can be that specific, especially as on the Historum, that one needs undependent historians, who are expert in the case...but where to find these expert historians?...as in a question from a Walloon expert, where I was involved too: Was the combativity of the Walloon soldiers better than the Flemish ones during the "18 days campaign" in 1940?
And thanks to your link I found something today that I was not aware of: In one of the wikis: the spread of the votes per "land" in the Nazi election of 1933
I see now the "Länder" are in black and you can't read them but if you click with the mouse on the picture and move you can nevertheless read them...
The region around the Low Countries less votes for the Nazis... Hamburg and Berlin also in the 30% class... South of Germany Bavaria and all in the 40 zone North East and Ost Prussia in the 55+zone The region around Alsace-Lorraine and the middle of Germany in the 45-50 zone
Going back to your original post, Paul, which referenced linguistic rather than political "divides", the map you posted shows very graphically and with huge accuracy a very important period in ancient history now encapsulated by the current dispersal of Latin and Latinate tongues.
The division between the western and eastern Roman empire, as dictated by Diocletian and others for what were purely military, administrative and economic reasons at the time, could not be more faithfully depicted even by a map addressing the contemporary and arbitrary divide these guys chose as a line down the middle of their empire. How little could they have foreseen the huge cultural implications of their almost incidental actions even as late as now, more than a millennium and a half after they made them.
Romania is also interesting; not so much a "Romance" language these days either as it is Latin itself, or at least a hybrid with extremely solid Latin roots still discernible today in its modern form - both in vocabulary and grammatically - much more than Spanish, French or any other derivative (or even Italian, it could be argued, when it comes to grammar). And this too shows another very important historical episode in Roman history, one that predates even the east-west division. When Rome conquered Dacia under Trajan it didn't follow conventional models of invasion, even by the often cruel and Draconian Roman standards of the day. What followed the conquest was genocide on a massive scale, a complete stripping of every conceivable asset the land possessed, and such a quick and effective wiping out of the local culture that even today there is huge debate regarding the nature, power, sophistication and wealth of the deposed people, so little could they leave to posterity by which to judge them. The clues point to a nation and culture that could operate in terms of diplomacy, sophistication and wealth as contemporary equals of "civilised" Rome, but which within one generation had not only been completely wiped off the planet but to the extent that the evidence of their culture's existence at all had been reduced to just the paltry few archaeological clues remaining to this day. Within that generation too the population was effectively replaced under Trajan and his successors' orders by Latin speakers from almost every corner of the empire, as current DNA research there also tends to support.
This debate extends within Romania today even among local linguists who wish to account for the high Latin content in their modern tongue. Some argue that it is down to later migrations of Latin speakers pushed up into Dacian territory as the Eastern Empire slowly shrank from the pressure of external invasion and cultural incursion further south and east. However though Romania did indeed form part of the Eastern Empire in the end, it is also true linguistically that such immigrants would have largely brought Greek rather than Latin with them. For Latin to stubbornly survive in this cultural enclave it is more likely therefore that it was down to it already having been established with such rigour and vigour in the first place, and a vigour that meant it continued in that vein even as it found itself for many centuries part of that greater Hellenistic vestige of Roman rule that was the Byzantine Empire.
I always remember being fascinated by the TV news reports around the last days of the Ceausescu regime as protesters and interviewees spoke their native tongue, the first time I had heard it, and I found that I could understand a huge amount of what they said thanks to my rudimentary Latin lessons at school!
Meles meles Censura
Posts : 5122 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : Pyrénées-Orientales, France
Thanks for that Nordmann. I'd always been intrigued why the Romanian language had such a clear/pure Latin origin, whilst being surrounded by regions that had for the most part lost that ancient linguistic influence (or only acquired it again later from medieval Italy, or during the 18th/19th centuries from French; the language of diplomacy, law, the court, and enlightenment science and philosophy).
I was aware that Dacia was a Roman province but I had always assumed it had been conquered/absorbed into the empire in much the same way as other 'barbarian' provinces like Gaul, Hispania or Britannia. That is, a fair bit of random violence to start with, even a few atrocites and massacres, just to put the locals in their place, but thereafter a softer approach to sucker in the region's nobles, religious leaders and merchants so they fully appreciated the benefits to themselves of overall Roman rule. And then, hopefully, business as usual but taxes now being paid to Rome. I hadn't realised that the conquest of Dacia had been so different ... and so brutally accomplished. But why was Dacia treated so roughly?
I travelled through Romania shortly after Ceausescu's regime had fallen and I too was struck by how readily I could understand Romanian. Using just school-boy French (and my even weaker school-boy Latin), I found I could comprehend a good bit of basic written, and even spoken, Romanian ... and indeed I was even able to express myself, albeit badly and incorrectly, but at least fairly intelligibly.
This was in complete contrast to the country I'd travelled through to get to Romania: Hungary. There, when faced with a printed card on a bar table, I really had no idea whether it was a description of the dish-of-the-day; the list of the ice-cream flavours currently on offer; a notice politely asking patrons not to smoke, or that dogs were only permitted at the tables outside; or indeed if it was just a flyer from the Budapest Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses promising all the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Despite Hungarian using a latin alphabet the language was completely unintelligible to me, and as splendidly and uniquely alien as if it had been written in Mandarin.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Thanks for that Nordmann. I'd always been intrigued why the Romanian language had such a clear/pure Latin origin, whilst being surrounded by regions that had for the most part lost that ancient linguistic influence (or only acquired it again later from medieval Italy, or during the 18th/19th centuries from French; the language of diplomacy, law, the court, and enlightenment science and philosophy).
I was aware that Dacia was a Roman province but I had always assumed it had been conquered/absorbed into the empire in much the same way as other 'barbarian' provinces like Gaul, Hispania or Britannia. That is, a fair bit of random violence to start with, even a few atrocites and massacres, just to put the locals in their place, but thereafter a softer approach to sucker in the region's nobles, religious leaders and merchants so they fully appreciated the benefits to themselves of overall Roman rule. And then, hopefully, business as usual but taxes now being paid to Rome. I hadn't realised that the conquest of Dacia had been so different ... and so brutally accomplished. But why was Dacia treated so roughly?
I travelled through Romania shortly after Ceausescu's regime had fallen and I too was struck by how readily I could understand Romanian. Using just school-boy French (and my even weaker school-boy Latin), I found I could comprehend a good bit of basic written, and even spoken, Romanian ... and indeed I was even able to express myself, albeit badly and incorrectly, but at least fairly intelligibly.
This was in complete contrast to the country I'd travelled through to get to Romania: Hungary. There, when faced with a printed card on a bar table, I really had no idea whether it was a description of the dish-of-the-day; the list of the ice-cream flavours currently on offer; a notice politely asking patrons not to smoke, or that dogs were only permitted at the tables outside; or indeed if it was just a flyer from the Budapest Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses promising all the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Despite Hungarian using a latin alphabet the language was completely unintelligible to me, and as splendidly and uniquely alien as if it had been written in Mandarin.
Meles meles,
first I join you in your positive evaluation of the nordmann message...it was all new to me..will comment tomorrow... -the news from the nordmann message -the understandabilty of Romanian -as I already explained about the Hungarian language and the Finnish-Ugric...
Kind regards to both from Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
nordmann wrote: When Rome conquered Dacia under Trajan it didn't follow conventional models of invasion, even by the often cruel and Draconian Roman standards of the day. What followed the conquest was genocide on a massive scale, a complete stripping of every conceivable asset the land possessed, and such a quick and effective wiping out of the local culture that even today there is huge debate regarding the nature, power, sophistication and wealth of the deposed people, so little could they leave to posterity by which to judge them. The clues point to a nation and culture that could operate in terms of diplomacy, sophistication and wealth as contemporary equals of "civilised" Rome, but which within one generation had not only been completely wiped off the planet but to the extent that the evidence of their culture's existence at all had been reduced to just the paltry few archaeological clues remaining to this day. Within that generation too the population was effectively replaced under Trajan and his successors' orders by Latin speakers from almost every corner of the empire, as current DNA research there also tends to support.
I am seeking nearly one hour on the internet and found a thread on Historum about Roman atrocities, but the Dacian war atrocities weren't that much worser than all the other ones... The only reference I found was in the book: Ancient Rome The Rise and Fall of an Empire https://goo.gl/aHjr6U Page 292 nordmann, I think you have the good reference and indeed in the mentioned book you see that it existed as you say...but why no more references on the internet...has the internet preferences? or are it the quantity of contributors from one direction, which determine what you will find on a specific subject?
you and nordmann seem to understand better Romanian than I, here and there I recognize some Latin words...perhaps if it is spoken you understand more than in written text? For me with my French and Latin the easiest languages are Italian and Spanish (Portuguese as it sounds in my ears as a dialect I don't understand as Spanish)
Meles meles, it is quite normal that Hungarian and for that reason Finnish too is not understandable for you and me, as they are diiferent from both Western and Slavic languages From this thread: "Of course you are right and that you will find in the second book that I provided (but you can only read a quarter of the book and it is too academic and not that much related to our question, so that I had better not mentioned it), where they comment in a very sophisticated way also the Caucasian languages, Greek, Albanian the Finnish-Ugric languages fractured by the push through them of the Slavic languages letting an Hungarian island at one side and the Finnish ones at the other side...and even that is perhaps too simplistic"
Kind regards from Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
nordmann, I think you have the good reference and indeed in the mentioned book you see that it existed as you say...but why no more references on the internet..
The "internet" as a research resource, especially when it comes to serious historical research based on something rather more than the record of incidental comment made by observers who themselves have conducted little or no research (99% of the "internet"), is something like having an old set of encyclopedia in the living room to which one refers solely when attempting to assimilate data new to oneself. As a source it may be authoritative and even largely dependable, but its use comes always with a nagging doubt as to whether the data contained within it may not in fact have been superseded or improved in the intervening years. The "internet" also carries such a caveat in that it presents an amalgam of data assembled in response to key word searches which, by definition, will yield results that have a huge bias towards that which has most often been repeated in the past, not that which is most accurate, and especially not that which is recent and which may in fact supersede previous assumptions. Accurate data may or may not be present within the amalgam but it will be dwarfed often anyway by the preponderance of inaccurate or redundant data, and for certain people this ratio is misinterpreted as validation of the inaccurate purely because of this preponderance (the "99% of scholars can't be wrong" mentality) as if truth is determined by incidental majorities of expressed opinion within unspecific quora within unspecified parameters of relevance (that which, in Britain, they call a "referendum").
When it comes to Dacia we have, for two thousand years now, been largely dependent on Roman official records (including the magnificent Trajan's Column) to surmise its pre-conquest character. In the official version of events Rome and Dacia went to war with each other, Rome won, Trajan celebrated a triumph, and that was that. However we also know from official contemporary sources that the triumph itself was the first many people knew in Rome that they'd even been "at war", that the booty from the war was impressively massive, even by Roman standards (several people commented on this at the time), and that as soon as the war was over Dacia disappears from mention almost completely, a very strange thing to happen with an incorporated provincial territory compared to other such conquests before and after.
What has long been suggested in interpreting this anomaly, and based also on official contemporary records related to Rome's administration in general, is that Trajan was presiding over one of the first massive economic crises the empire had faced - imperial Rome up to that point being an expansionist political entity feeding an inflationary economy which had, prior to this "war", simply run out of expansion opportunities. The "conquest" of Dacia not only solved this dilemma in one fell swoop (and swoops don't come more fell than that one), but in fact created for a while a dilemma of another sort as Rome went into a deflationary economic cycle which basically eliminated the opportunity for central monetary control by the emperor and led to a collapse in earnings and profits for a wide section of the middle classes that itself led to subsequent political and military unrest and ultimately some rather unpleasant coups and counter-coups that threatened Rome's survival as a single state several times afterwards.
Until recently this was more or less as far as general interpretation of the Dacian "War" went - it was just another conquest but one which yielded huge financial rewards for Rome in terms of booty and subsequent control of mines (gold, silver and tin) and agriculture in the region. However in Romania itself, and especially since the end of the communist regime, there has always existed a slight dissatisfaction with this summary. In the official version one is almost expected to believe that the vast benefits from exploiting the region's mineral and agricultural assets suddenly started with Roman administration. This just didn't comply with common sense, let alone historical precedent. And yet if these resources had been exploited by pre-Roman Dacia to even a fraction of the degree to which the Romans then set about the task, the Dacian state would not only have been very wealthy, but also extremely stable - two ingredients which traditionally make a state of the period one of the big players and well represented in historical records. Dacia however was suspiciously absent from the record.
Archaeology in Romania in recent years has concentrated on (literally) unearthing any evidence that may suggest the existence of such a state. Do one of your usual "research" internet searches and you'll see that Romanian archaeology has traditionally been fixated on the area's Roman past as a "colony", and in fact you will also see almost as many references to the area's description as a "terra desserta" - literally an unpopulated territory which is how Rome itself described the region at the time of the war and afterwards. This, along with a pointed avoiding of mentioning Dacia in any other context, smacks so much of "spin" along the same lines as Europeans employed with regard to their conquest of the "new world" that it has prompted historians to attempt to discern just what exactly existed prior to the invasion which traditional history neglects to address. Archaeology is one way to do this, and philological examination of written sources is another.
What both point to is not only a high population, but also one which existed in a pretty well run and (by the standards that generally apply in such matters) long-standing continuous political state. 150 years before the conquest Rome itself recorded during its aggressive expansion into Greek territories, including the neighbouring province of Thracia, that Dacia was "out of bounds". Rome negotiated at the time with Dacia - a procedure which normally amounted to "inviting" a state to pay them a regular levy so they wouldn't be invaded (a protection racket which often funded Rome's economy to as high a degree as any exploitation of conquered territories' assets). However in Dacia's case no such levy was agreed either. This was not a state therefore which was afraid of Rome, and under its king Burebista controlled huge mineral and agricultural resources stretching across modern Romania and Bulgaria which actually made it vastly more economically secure than even Rome could ever dream of. This state shrank and grew several times in subsequent years, but even in its periods of political weakness it stubbornly withstood any attempt by Rome to move in and take over (Caesar drew up a campaign plan at one point and abandoned it when he realised that it would bankrupt Rome to undertake the venture - pointing to an expectation of armed resistance on a par with Rome's other more well known "equal" bugbear, Persia).
If you ever make it to the area I recommend you have a look at the recent excavations in Sarmisegetusa, Dacia's pre-Roman capital. As recently as 2010 a whole new quadrant of this forgotten city has been examined and its foundations reveal a complex urban development of temples, meeting houses, an arena and domestic dwellings which were the contemporary equivalent of anything Rome had produced up to that point. Archaeologists reckon in fact that only about 10% of the city's full first century CE extent has been found, suggesting a city that in fact rivalled in size even the most prestigious and highly populated Roman provincial capitals and ports. Not bad for a "terra desserta", and which alone gives the lie to Rome's subsequent claims that it had annexed a practially empty land which "fortuitously" yielded mineral resources and vast wealth. It had in fact been the very painful realisation for many years that such wealth existed outside its control which had eventually prompted an envious and desperate empire into finally undertaking the bloodbath that Caesar had first contemplated, and with a thoroughness in its elimination of the previous occupants, along with any trace of their past, that emulated its previous treatment of Carthage. Sarmisegetusa, or at least its remaining faint vestiges, is testimony to what really occurred.
A temple complex within Sarmisegetusa.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
I'll join my fellow Res-Historians in thanking nordmann for the information provided. I have a memory somewhere of there being something on TV some years ago about the annihilation of the people in what is now Romania by the Romans (in a documentary) but I can't remember what it was called or who presented/made it and can't find anything on YouTube. Not that YouTube is the be all and end all. I mentioned that at one time I did spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at some of the more "way out" corners of the internet. I'd rather do something useful with my time really but to err is human. Thinking back to the media coverage collapse of the iron curtain, I can't remember being able to understand anything in Romanian unlike other commenters. I did find this video about the Dacian Wars (commentary is American it seems) though I've not watched it all the way through yet.
Rome, as it was inclined to do with all those it elected to be its "enemies", presented Dacia to its citizens as a succession of warrior kings antipathetic to the empire and to be regarded therefore as a threat. Its recorded interaction with these kings over some centuries was invariably bellicose (with establishment of "pax" frequently cited without a trace of self-irony as its own prime ambition), and the whole narrative culminated in a bellicose "solution" to the threat.
However what the narrative omits - and this is typical of Roman assessments of many of the states it targeted for takeover - is any mention or appreciation of how well administrated this foreign state obviously was, how little evidence there ever was that it was excessively bellicose to the extent that it constituted a military threat, how its people probably exceeded in terms of welfare, wealth and living conditions that which was standard in Rome, how educated they may have been, indeed how in fact they may well have been more "civilised" than the Romans themselves. It was much easier and to Rome's huge advantage to discount all such rival civilisations as "barbarians". Dacia shared this patronising and dismissive assessment of them by the Romans with many other quite sophisticated civilisations who also fell foul of Roman expansionist policies over time - Judea, Persia, even Britain, for example - but that which is unique in Dacia's case is the absence of recognition of the very thing that enticed Rome in the first place to seize this land. Trajan had one objective - to get his hands on the loot and the means of producing it with which Dacia abounded. Nothing else mattered and anything that stood between him and total control of mineral resources - even the people - were simply wiped from existence at the first opportunity. There was to be no "client state" pretence of semi-autonomy, no fabled heroes or heroines against whom Rome would favourably compare its own glorious military achievement, not even continuity of the old state's urban developments. Rome did a "Year Zero" number on the Dacians, and even Trajan - once the "triumph" was celebrated - knew that it was now best everyone simply didn't mention the episode anymore. His successors carried on with this policy too - hence the rather skewed and frustratingly sparse references to Dacia which up to now have collectively been its traditional "history". Historians are trying to redress this now, but in fact so thorough were the Romans in eliminating evidence of the Dacians' existence that modern archaeology - while uncovering new proofs all the time of something very impressive indeed having once been there - is tending simply to throw up even more frustratingly unanswerable questions than already pertained to this state's character and true history prior to being eliminated by Rome.
The programme you found - like the Wikipedia article about pre-conquest Dacia - is still heavily reliant on the Roman perspective, which we know is a travesty of whatever reality actually pertained at the time. It was designed to be a travesty of course - the truth simply didn't fit into the Roman empire's self-perception as a mighty and equitable bringer of "peace" to barbaric "tribes". I recommend you read Terry Jones and Alan Areira's "Barbarians: An Alternative History of Rome" for a slightly less skewed reconstruction of what occurred in Dacia with less emphasis on the so-called "kings" as on the events themselves and the true motives at play, and even this in fact has been superseded in recent years by archaeological evidence that perhaps even Jones and Areira, who were very much on the Dacians' side in their assessment, may have underestimated just how powerful, civilised, and influential in a European context this perceived rival to Rome actually was.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
due to my wading through the data of the Afghan war for Tim in the thread, I started some time ago, I lost a lot of time... Thank you very much for your valuable and as always erudite reply. I had already a reaction in mind, but that will be for tomorrow.
Kind regards and with esteem, Paul.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Yes, thank you for the information you have provided, nordmann. I don't intend to wade through it now - I'm actually going to "turn in" early because I'm very tired and have just done an online class. Besides Dacia, I want to try and "bone up" on how Charlemagne divided his lands after his death - or intended for them to be divided. The French group finally finished with Jeanne de Clisson on Tuesday this week - but the group has finished for the summer now.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
And that was the start of the fight for the Lorraine part, even up to WWI and yes even WWII. And Lady, as you can see the Holy Roman Empire took most of it... And as you can see the border between Francia and the later HRE divides the nowadays Belgium, as I already said somewhere, not horizontal along the language border, but vertical into Flanders (Francia) and Brabant, Hainaut, Luxemburg (HRE)...
Kind regards from Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Rome, as it was inclined to do with all those it elected to be its "enemies", presented Dacia to its citizens as a succession of warrior kings antipathetic to the empire and to be regarded therefore as a threat. Its recorded interaction with these kings over some centuries was invariably bellicose (with establishment of "pax" frequently cited without a trace of self-irony as its own prime ambition), and the whole narrative culminated in a bellicose "solution" to the threat.
However what the narrative omits - and this is typical of Roman assessments of many of the states it targeted for takeover - is any mention or appreciation of how well administrated this foreign state obviously was, how little evidence there ever was that it was excessively bellicose to the extent that it constituted a military threat, how its people probably exceeded in terms of welfare, wealth and living conditions that which was standard in Rome, how educated they may have been, indeed how in fact they may well have been more "civilised" than the Romans themselves. It was much easier and to Rome's huge advantage to discount all such rival civilisations as "barbarians". Dacia shared this patronising and dismissive assessment of them by the Romans with many other quite sophisticated civilisations who also fell foul of Roman expansionist policies over time - Judea, Persia, even Britain, for example - but that which is unique in Dacia's case is the absence of recognition of the very thing that enticed Rome in the first place to seize this land. Trajan had one objective - to get his hands on the loot and the means of producing it with which Dacia abounded. Nothing else mattered and anything that stood between him and total control of mineral resources - even the people - were simply wiped from existence at the first opportunity. There was to be no "client state" pretence of semi-autonomy, no fabled heroes or heroines against whom Rome would favourably compare its own glorious military achievement, not even continuity of the old state's urban developments. Rome did a "Year Zero" number on the Dacians, and even Trajan - once the "triumph" was celebrated - knew that it was now best everyone simply didn't mention the episode anymore. His successors carried on with this policy too - hence the rather skewed and frustratingly sparse references to Dacia which up to now have collectively been its traditional "history". Historians are trying to redress this now, but in fact so thorough were the Romans in eliminating evidence of the Dacians' existence that modern archaeology - while uncovering new proofs all the time of something very impressive indeed having once been there - is tending simply to throw up even more frustratingly unanswerable questions than already pertained to this state's character and true history prior to being eliminated by Rome.
The programme you found - like the Wikipedia article about pre-conquest Dacia - is still heavily reliant on the Roman perspective, which we know is a travesty of whatever reality actually pertained at the time. It was designed to be a travesty of course - the truth simply didn't fit into the Roman empire's self-perception as a mighty and equitable bringer of "peace" to barbaric "tribes". I recommend you read Terry Jones and Alan Areira's "Barbarians: An Alternative History of Rome" for a slightly less skewed reconstruction of what occurred in Dacia with less emphasis on the so-called "kings" as on the events themselves and the true motives at play, and even this in fact has been superseded in recent years by archaeological evidence that perhaps even Jones and Areira, who were very much on the Dacians' side in their assessment, may have underestimated just how powerful, civilised, and influential in a European context this perceived rival to Rome actually was.
nordmann,
"Rome, as it was inclined to do with all those it elected to be its "enemies", presented Dacia to its citizens as a succession of warrior kings antipathetic to the empire and to be regarded therefore as a threat. Its recorded interaction with these kings over some centuries was invariably bellicose (with establishment of "pax" frequently cited without a trace of self-irony as its own prime ambition), and the whole narrative culminated in a bellicose "solution" to the threat."
That sounds very modern
Your second paragraph is very informative and as I am used from you, well written. when I have a moment I will try to find more information starting from your information.
"The programme you found - like the Wikipedia article about pre-conquest Dacia - is still heavily reliant on the Roman perspective, which we know is a travesty of whatever reality actually pertained at the time. It was designed to be a travesty of course - the truth simply didn't fit into the Roman empire's self-perception as a mighty and equitable bringer of "peace" to barbaric "tribes". I recommend you read Terry Jones and Alan Areira's "Barbarians: An Alternative History of Rome" for a slightly less skewed reconstruction of what occurred in Dacia with less emphasis on the so-called "kings" as on the events themselves and the true motives at play, and even this in fact has been superseded in recent years by archaeological evidence that perhaps even Jones and Areira, who were very much on the Dacians' side in their assessment, may have underestimated just how powerful, civilised, and influential in a European context this perceived rival to Rome actually was." https://www.amazon.co.uk/Terry-Jones-Barbarians-Alan-Ereira/dp/056353916X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Ereira
Kind regards from Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
OOPS nordmann and now I see that I forgot to thank you for the excellent article of Tuesday morning...especially about the research on the "internet"...à ma décharge (I don't find it in English, they say in the dictionary "exemption"?) in my defence(?) ... I always seek for the "about us" I make a cross examination of the honest sources ...and above all I listen to persons more erudite than I am ...although even in that case I do a cross examination against the serious sources that I find on the base of this new information...
Kind regards from Paul.
Nielsen Triumviratus Rei Publicae Constituendae
Posts : 595 Join date : 2011-12-31 Location : Denmark
Thank you for bringing this topic up - as well as the references. It so happens that like you, Lady, I've become interested in this period of time and area of Europe.
My interest go back to when being a lad of some 12 - 15 years reading a lot of Classics Illustrated, and wondering why the Burgundian Dukes wielded so much power in between France and Germany? At the time I thought of France and Germany as they appeared geographically on the maps of the mid-1960'es - my first lack of comprehension. Then I thought in terms of the political national states of the mid-1960'es , and at the background of the still very much talked of WWII - my second lack. And I didn't understand that what Charlemagne and his followers and descendants brought with them in the form of feudalism was in a state of evolution which both replaced what had been - what?, and created new power bases for the invaders. And that the remnants of feudalism existed in e.g. the form of the many German mini states with some more or less still existing, like the Federal city States of Bremen and Hamburg.
Much more, that I so far haven't yet defined.
But what Nordmann writes above on the Roman conquest of Dacia make me think that the same may easily have happened there in what was - when looking from Paris - as the Northern and Eastern part of the Empire as well.
I can easily see that just by defining what I don't and want to know, I'm setting a task that looks insurmountable, and where I shall have to set some limits to what I accept from others and what I'll have to describe.
My motivation come from the Danish version of Pippi Longstockings put it, "Det har jeg aldrig prøvet før, så det kan jeg sikkert godt!" Or in my translation, "That's something I've not yet attempted, so I'll probably succeed!"
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
That's a handy quote, Nielsen, who would think one could gain inspiration from Pippi Longstockings? The PL series is one series of children's books I never read - maybe I was a bit too old for them when I came across them in English translation. Yes, it is too much to learn all at once (the Romance/German language border not the contents of Pippi Longstockings books*, though who knows maybe they would puzzle me?).
* Maybe it should be on the What we Learned from Children's Literature thread.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Mon 06 Aug 2018, 19:24
I haven't done much about studying this period of history and the locations concerned since last posting. I have (get your violins out to play a sad tune*) been out of sorts for about a week - sore throat, achy teeth and jaw/cheekbone and a painful knee. I spent most of yesterday in bed and am now comparatively improved though I think I'll have an early night but one thing I have discovered (not something of great import admittedly) was that in the song mentioned upthread En passant par la Lorraine the word "dondaine" didn't have a meaning but was just a nonsense word to rhyme with Lorraine. I suppose like the words "Fee fie fo fum" don't really mean anything in "Fee fie fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman".
* With regards to playing a sad song on violins I can imagine other Res Historians going "not flipping likely".
Meles meles Censura
Posts : 5122 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : Pyrénées-Orientales, France
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Mon 06 Aug 2018, 22:02
LadyinRetirement wrote:
... but one thing I have discovered (not something of great import admittedly) was that in the song mentioned upthread En passant par la Lorraine the word "dondaine" didn't have a meaning but was just a nonsense word to rhyme with Lorraine.
It is not actually a nonsense word although it's certainly not in common usage these days but une dondaine (sometimes written as une dondon) is an old word for the projectile fired from a crossbow, and so it's equivalent to the English 'bolt' or 'quarrel'. Although what exactly it denotes in the song is rather more uncertain as there seems to be quite a bit of intentional word play or at least ambiguity in the original 15th century words (for instance 'vilaine' can mean simply a rough peasant, but can also mean an ugly, or a naughty, mischievous, or even a thoroughly evil person):
En passant par la Lorraine, Avec mes sabots, En passant par la Lorraine, Avec mes sabots, Rencontrai trois capitaines, Avec mes sabots, Dondaine, oh ! Oh ! Oh ! Avec mes sabots.
Rencontrai trois capitaines, Avec mes sabots, Rencontrai trois capitaines, Avec mes sabots, Ils m'ont appelée : Vilaine ! Avec mes sabots, Dondaine, oh ! Oh ! Oh ! Avec mes sabots.
Ils m'ont appelée : Vilaine ! Avec mes sabots…
Je ne suis pas si vilaine, Avec mes sabots…
Puisque le fils du roi m'aime, Avec mes sabots…
Il m'a donné pour étrenne, Avec mes sabots…
Un bouquet de marjolaine, Avec mes sabots…
Je l'ai planté sur la plaine, Avec mes sabots…
S'il fleurit, je serai reine, Avec mes sabots…
S'il y meurt, je perds ma peine, Avec mes sabots, Dondaine, oh ! Oh ! Oh ! Avec mes sabots.
Last edited by Meles meles on Mon 06 Aug 2018, 22:27; edited 1 time in total
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Mon 06 Aug 2018, 22:26
You are quite correct MM but I was not lying. I had looked for "What does dondaine mean?" on the internet and came across more than one explanation (in English) that it was a nonsense word. However having read your post I searched "Qu'est que c'est qu'une dondaine"? (is that the right way in French?) and the Larousse French dictionary gave the explanation you provided. I should have checked in a monolingual (French) online dictionary instead of just looking for a translation but I did think I was right when I typed my previous post. Just shows how important it is to check things.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Mon 06 Aug 2018, 23:49
LadyinRetirement wrote:
You are quite correct MM but I was not lying. I had looked for "What does dondaine mean?" on the internet and came across more than one explanation (in English) that it was a nonsense word. However having read your post I searched "Qu'est que c'est qu'une dondaine"? (is that the right way in French?) and the Larousse French dictionary gave the explanation you provided. I should have checked in a monolingual (French) online dictionary instead of just looking for a translation but I did think I was right when I typed my previous post. Just shows how important it is to check things.
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Autocorrect had changed French word 'eat' to English word 'eat'! Tue 07 Aug 2018, 09:13
Well, Paul, I hadn't heard of "dondaine" in those other songs - in fact I'm not sure if I'd heard of those songs - in the UK we tend to do "Frere Jacques" and "Sur le Pont D'Avignon", "Y avait une Bergere" etc and because I went to a convent school for senior school I and my classmates learned (at around 12-13 years) "Il est ne le Divin Enfant" (sorry I haven't put the accents in). For some reason my computer won't copy over the links from either the Larousse or another site I found which I'll type manually:-
Educalingo gives the meaning of the arbalest bolt and also an onomatopoeic meaning taken from the sound of bells.
Meles meles Censura
Posts : 5122 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : Pyrénées-Orientales, France
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Tue 07 Aug 2018, 12:31
Sorry, I wasn't trying to be nit-picky, and indeed in the song it is not at all clear whether "dondaine" does mean anything at all because quite frankly the words of En passant par la Lorraine is are all a bit enigmatic. As you say, 'dondaine' could very well be just a bell-like sound to complete the rhyme and maintain the meter. As a word for a projectile it is fairly obsolete even in French as these days a crossbow bolt would usually be called un carreau - which refers to the typical square cross-section and from which of course the English word 'quarrel' ultimately derives. Like Paul I couldn't find it in my big Collins dictionary nor in my Petit Larousse (which at over 2000 pages ain't actually all that petit) but I had encountered it fairly recently in a French history article about the Italian wars of the late 15th/early 16th century. The word had stuck in the memory as much because I couldn't immediately find what it meant ... until I'd searched online.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Over use of the word 'just' Tue 07 Aug 2018, 12:59
Oh, I wasn't trying to fault find MM, I was just saying that my first hunt around on the internet I only found that it was a nonsense word but you are correct that it also means an arbalest bolt - I simply hadn't found that on my first look for the meaning of the word. I never mind learning something new (as much as learning something historic can be "new") - that's partly why I joined this site in the first place (okay it was also to gripe about PG's interpretation of history). There is nothing wrong with your increasing someone else's knowledge - in the case mine.
Last edited by LadyinRetirement on Wed 08 Aug 2018, 13:46; edited 1 time in total
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Wed 08 Aug 2018, 13:44
I still haven't gone deep into Charlemagne's legacy. I found this video about the collapse of the Carolingian empire (which I haven't listened to yet)
and this one about sources concerning Charlemagne.
The lady in the second video has a soothing voice albeit quiet. Now to find if the sources she mentions can be found online.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Wed 08 Aug 2018, 13:59
For the avoidance of doubt, I was thinking about looking at linguistic differences developing as the Carolingian empire fell apart (though I do realise there would have been linguistic differences before that time). I've just been thinking in a "stream of consciousness" way - I realise this doesn't apply to the romance/germanic border solely but I wondered if the fact that in times past there were German settlements in areas that were not necessarily "Germany" or "Prussia" could owe anything to the human species being a nomadic one. (Don't all jump on me from a great height at once!!!).
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Thu 09 Aug 2018, 11:41
I found some of Charlemagne's capitularies online (Yale Law online site) - but possibly because they are translated (and even as I have mentioned before with some legends I have read via the internet in translation) they are very dry; reading them is a slog and nothing of their contents has remained in my mind.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Fri 10 Aug 2018, 22:32
LadyinRetirement wrote:
For the avoidance of doubt, I was thinking about looking at linguistic differences developing as the Carolingian empire fell apart (though I do realise there would have been linguistic differences before that time). I've just been thinking in a "stream of consciousness" way - I realise this doesn't apply to the romance/germanic border solely but I wondered if the fact that in times past there were German settlements in areas that were not necessarily "Germany" or "Prussia" could owe anything to the human species being a nomadic one. (Don't all jump on me from a great height at once!!!).
Lady,
it is more complex than that...languageborders are "born" by natural barriers (for instance I want to prove that the Germanic-Romanic language border was formed because of the "Flemish plain" hurted against the slopes of the Picardian hills (only 100-200 m (yards)) or by long duration conquest where the lanuage of the conquerors gradually gained power above the native one), or by acculturation (the higher culture imposes its language to the less developped culture)...the "volksverhuizingen" (people's migrations?) ended mostly in the new entering people adopting the language of the settled ones...or it had to be that the original population was "murdered out" (massacred?) And yes East-Prussia can be an example of it? First the massarces of the Teutonic Order and then after WWII again Polish speaking and even Russian speaking (Kaliningrad/ Königsbergen)?...
Kind regards from Paul.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Sat 11 Aug 2018, 11:59
Yes, you are right Paul that the development of language differences is not an easy one to explain. Louis XIV's desire for a natural border (at the Rhine) has already been mentioned I think. I haven't seen Catigurn (sp?) post here for ages but I think he mentioned that there was a school of thought that averred that the genetic make-up of Welsh people and English people was not so very different and that at the time of the Anglo-Saxon push into Britain, not all the previous ethnic Briton people may have been pushed into Wales, Cornwall and Brittany (now part of France) but some may have stayed and adopted the ways of/intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons and have picked up the language which was the ancestor of what is modern English.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Mon 27 Aug 2018, 13:29
I still haven't gone all that deep into this subject but for those who have a knowledge of French (and it's still the foreign language most taught in British schools I think) I found a pdf (in French) about Le Platt Lorrain. [url=www.culture.gouv.fr › ... › Langues et cité]www.culture.gouv.fr › ... › Langues et city[/url] I've put the link in case anyone wants to read it or read some of it. It's not entirely about the history of the language (dialect?) but also mentions Platt Lorrain (which is also called francique) as a minority language. I don't remember if it is mentioned in this pdf but there is apparently a Platt Lorrain community in Brazil - I'm linking an article but again it's in French [url=fr.assimil.com/blog/focus-sur-le-platt-2e-langue-parlee-au-bresil/]fr.assimil.com/blog/focus-sur-le-platt-2e-langue-parlee-au-bresil/[/url] Of course some of the search engines do offer a form of translation?
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Mon 27 Aug 2018, 22:55
LadyinRetirement wrote:
I still haven't gone all that deep into this subject but for those who have a knowledge of French (and it's still the foreign language most taught in British schools I think) I found a pdf (in French) about Le Platt Lorrain. [url=www.culture.gouv.fr %E2%80%BA ... %E2%80%BA Langues et cit%C3%A9]www.culture.gouv.fr › ... › Langues et city[/url] I've put the link in case anyone wants to read it or read some of it. It's not entirely about the history of the language (dialect?) but also mentions Platt Lorrain (which is also called francique) as a minority language. I don't remember if it is mentioned in this pdf but there is apparently a Platt Lorrain community in Brazil - I'm linking an article but again it's in French [url=fr.assimil.com/blog/focus-sur-le-platt-2e-langue-parlee-au-bresil/]fr.assimil.com/blog/focus-sur-le-platt-2e-langue-parlee-au-bresil/[/url] Of course some of the search engines do offer a form of translation?
Lady,
we have on the Historum forum someone from the "Lorraine tudesque" (tudesque referring to "german" italian: "tedesco" a certain Isleifson, on the French forum his nom de plume is "Laumesfeld" and we two discussed the Francique in depth, but it is difficult to find it back on Historum with the "Lorraine franconian" one don't find much in English... Better in French with "francique" https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francique_lorrain
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Tue 28 Aug 2018, 13:03
Perhaps I need to have a lurk on Historum, Paul, though I don't know if I'll actually join unless I have a specific question to ask. I remember more than half a century ago when we met for Girl Guides at the local convent a girl from Basle who was doing a year noticed our meeting. She was working as a sort of au-pair only at the convent which looked after frailer old people and also had some boarders from the school (where I was a day pupil from age 11) rather than in a domestic household. She asked to join in; she spoke German as her native language I think and Basle (which I have passed through but much later) and did come along for some months until she went back home to Switzerland. There are if I remember rightly four languages in Switzerland of which German is one - Italian and French are Romance languages but I don't know what the roots of Romansch are (though I suppose I can look on Wikipedia later). But I'm digressing a bit; I remember (may have mentioned this somewhere before) visiting a town in northern Italy called Merano which had gravestones inscribed in German - and that it was earlier part of Germany. I think someone (might have been Paul) did explain the frontier changes. I travel advice site (Trip Advisor) says that as at 2018 the divide of the speaking of the languages in Merano is half and half [url=https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk › ... › Trentino-Alto Adige › Province of South Tyrol]https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk › ... › Trentino-Alto Adige › Province of South Tyrol[/url]
As an aside, I notice that there is a "Sissi Path" in Merano, and I wondered if that came from the historical Sissi who was depicted on film by the late Romy Schneider. But then maybe Sissi as a diminutive is Elizabeth is fairly common in German speaking countries including Austria.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Tue 28 Aug 2018, 16:06
Thinking of Swiss German rather than francique, I can remember being exposed to a couple of Swiss folk songs translated into English some decades ago. One was something about Appenzoll and went (not exact but from memory) something akin to "We have come from Appenzoll, Appenzollers we...." and another "From Lucerne to Weggis blue, ho-diddy-ria ho-diddy-ah, you may go without a shoe, ho-diddy-ria ho". I can't find anything online about the Appenzoll song though I did find a German (well Swiss German) sung version of the song about the trip from Lucerne to Weggis. I found something about Appenzell https://www.myswitzerland.com/en/appenzell2.html
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Tue 28 Aug 2018, 22:51
LadyinRetirement wrote:
Thinking of Swiss German rather than francique, I can remember being exposed to a couple of Swiss folk songs translated into English some decades ago. One was something about Appenzoll and went (not exact but from memory) something akin to "We have come from Appenzoll, Appenzollers we...." and another "From Lucerne to Weggis blue, ho-diddy-ria ho-diddy-ah, you may go without a shoe, ho-diddy-ria ho". I can't find anything online about the Appenzoll song though I did find a German (well Swiss German) sung version of the song about the trip from Lucerne to Weggis. I found something about Appenzell https://www.myswitzerland.com/en/appenzell2.html
Lady,
as the granddaugther is now living in Zurich and working in Liechtenstein and having in my last visit, because it was to hot outside, "done" the Swiss National Museum I know a little more about the German speaking Swiss... One point before closing for tonight (too late to elaborate): although I speak fluently German, but no dialects only "Hochdeutsch", I hear that Swiss German is a German dialect but for the rest nearly understanding no word...but they all understand Hochdeutsch and some if they make a lot of trouble for it can speak some reasonable "official" German...even the Swiss television has a strong local "accent"...
Kind regards from Paul.
LadyinRetirement Censura
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Wed 29 Aug 2018, 15:48
I did look at Historum yesterday about Lorrain but I can't find the thread now - I'll have to have another hunt round (and looking at my search history hasn't helped). How nice for your grand-daughter to be living in Zurich.
I remember that the post (on history) was by a contributor called Chlodio and appertained to a treaty dividing the kingdom of the Franks made before the first millennium but after the reign of Charlemagne but I can't find the post despite having been out and come home again and editing the thread. Sorry. Looking on the internet the treaty referred to may have been the Treaty of Verdun ttps://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Verdun - though Chlodio of Historum's elusive post dealt specifically with Lorraine.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Wed 29 Aug 2018, 20:04
LadyinRetirement wrote:
I did look at Historum yesterday about Lorrain but I can't find the thread now - I'll have to have another hunt round (and looking at my search history hasn't helped). How nice for your grand-daughter to be living in Zurich.
I remember that the post (on history) was by a contributor called Chlodio and appertained to a treaty dividing the kingdom of the Franks made before the first millennium but after the reign of Charlemagne but I can't find the post despite having been out and come home again and editing the thread. Sorry. Looking on the internet the treaty referred to may have been the Treaty of Verdun ttps://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Verdun - though Chlodio of Historum's elusive post dealt specifically with Lorraine.
Posts : 3329 Join date : 2013-09-16 Location : North-West Midlands, England
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Fri 31 Aug 2018, 09:31
There was another similar thread, Paul, but the one you found was a good read. For some reason when I think of 'tudesque' I think of 'Tudor' though there's absolutely no commonality in the roots of the words.
Sorry, fellow Res Historians, if I seem to jump about a bit in what I post, but I was thinking the other day about Romansch. I found a clip about some Romansch phrases which is quite short. Written out the phrases seem to have a flavour of a romance language though when spoken they can be quite guttural (influence of being close to German speaking people?) The sound is somewhat quiet on the clip.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Sun 02 Sep 2018, 00:00
LadyinRetirement wrote:
There was another similar thread, Paul, but the one you found was a good read. For some reason when I think of 'tudesque' I think of 'Tudor' though there's absolutely no commonality in the roots of the words.
Sorry, fellow Res Historians, if I seem to jump about a bit in what I post, but I was thinking the other day about Romansch. I found a clip about some Romansch phrases which is quite short. Written out the phrases seem to have a flavour of a romance language though when spoken they can be quite guttural (influence of being close to German speaking people?) The sound is somewhat quiet on the clip.
Lady,
after a copious dinner (again! No veggy) entered only late after checking my other fora as Passion Histoire and Historum...
"For some reason when I think of 'tudesque' I think of 'Tudor' though there's absolutely no commonality in the roots of the words."
"tudesque" has something to do with "thiois" and the Belgian name for the Flemish and Dutch dialects: "Diets" We have even an expression with it: "iemand iets diets maken" "explain something to someone" (litterally: someone something make "diets" (understandable) You understand French you said: Here is the full explanation: (I doubt that there will be anything in English?) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudesque L'adjectif tudesque est un mot utilisé depuis le XVIe siècle pour désigner tout ce qui est d'origine germanique (le mot est apparenté à l'allemandDeutsch « allemand », et à l'italienTedesco, de même sens), ou tout ce qui se réfère au Haut Moyen Âge germanique en français. Il s'agit d'un emprunt lexical à l'italien tedesco (comme le suffixe -esque l'indique) ; l'ancien français avait les formes tiois (masc.) et tiesche (fém.), conservées aujourd'hui sous les formes thiois et thioise. Le radical de l'adjectif allemand deutsch (vieux haut allemanddiutisc) provient du germanique *þiudiskaz (formé de *þeudō (« peuple », « nation ») suffixé en *-iskaz (allemand -isch ; anglais -ish)), que l'on peut traduire par « populaire » ou « national ». Le mot était utilisé en anglais et en allemand pour désigner la langue du peuple différente du latin ou des langues romanes ; on les qualifiait de « barbares »[2]
"tudesque" from the Italian "tedesco", in old French: "tiois": referring to the Germanic Early Middle Ages. Etymology: from the Germanic form for "people, nation" and the suffix "popular or national"
Lady, as I have listened to the Romansch words and sentences, I understand them mostly immediately. And for me it is a kind of Italian. In any case I understand them much much better than the Romanian that both MM and nordmann seems to understand much better than I, being that accustomed to Italian and Spanish...
Kind regards from Paul.
Meles meles Censura
Posts : 5122 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : Pyrénées-Orientales, France
Subject: Re: Romance Germanic border Europe Sun 02 Sep 2018, 07:36
PaulRyckier wrote:
Lady, as I have listened to the Romansch words and sentences, I understand them mostly immediately. And for me it is a kind of Italian.
Not really unsurprising in that both Romansch and Italian are descended from late Roman Latin ... but other than some loan words and other linguistic borrowings from northern Italian I thought Romansh evolved more or less independently and more directly from the Latin spoken in the late Roman empire. As such those words and phrases to me seem, at least in pronunciation, closer to classical Latin than even modern Italian. Modern Italian I believe mostly derives from the written language of medieval Tuscany, by which time it had already evolved quite a bit away from its Latin roots.
And talking of Italian I was surprised to learn that even up to the beginning of the 20th century (but before the formal post WW1 Italian possession of Trieste/Gorizia province in Slovenija, and later the 1939-43 invasion and occupation of Dalmatia, Montenegro, Albania and the Greek Ionian Islands) that Italian was widely spoken throughout all these regions as the principal secondary language after the local Slavic or Greek. I presume this was a legacy of the medieval Venetian trade 'empire' in the Adriatic coupled with Italian being an academic/diplomatic language during the renaissance and enlightenment. When I visited Albania in 1991 (just after the fall of Hoxha) Italian was still widely spoken as a second language, where in schools it was as likely to be taught as English or French. More surprising perhaps were the number of Albanians who claimed to be able to speak some Chinese - an effect of Hoxha's courting of Mao's China which was Albania's only major ally following his break with the Soviets in 1961 for being too 'revisionist'. Even in 1991 a lot of the industry and much of the public transport - such as it was despite all private vehicle ownership being illegal - was Chinese built from decades earlier.
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