Old English and Its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages 1st Edition by Orrin W. Robinson (PDF)

Description

At first glance, there may seem little reason to think of English and German as variant forms of a single language. There are enormous differences between the two in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, and a monolingual speaker of one cannot understand the other at all. Yet modern English and German have many points in common, and if we go back to the earliest texts available in the two languages, the similarities are even more notable.How do we account for these similarities? The generally accepted explanation is that English and German are divergent continuations of a common ancestor, a Germanic language now lost. This book surveys the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the earliest kown Germanic languages, members of what has traditionally been known as the English family tree: Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian, and Old High German.For each language, the author provides a brief history of the people who spoke it, an overview of the important texts in the language, sample passages with full glossary and word-by-word translations, a section on orthography and grammar, and discussion of linguistic or philological topics relevant to all the early Germanic languaes but best exemplified by the particular language under consideration. These topics inclued the pronunciation of older languages; the runic inscriptions; Germanic alliterative pietry; historical syntax, borrowing, analogy, and drift; textual transmission; and dialect variation.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “The task of writing a book like Robinson’s is very difficult. His contains much to be admired and is a worthy handbook … Good students can learn much from the wealth of information in the present work, and it is to be recommended to them.” — Journal of English and Germanic Philology”Orin W. Robinson’s Old English and its closest relatives makes an extremely valuable contribution to the group of texts that specialists in one or more of the historical Germanic dialects can safely rely upon for introducing students to comparative Germanic historical linguistics.” — American Journal of Germanic Linguistics”This book certainly fills a gap. Without it, one would have to assemble a set of handbooks of the old dialects. These would have the disadvantage of various degrees of outdatedness and divergent arrangement of materials. Robinson brings the grammatical material into alignment in a manageable number of features, selected for their significance as means of comparison. . . . The readings give some impression of the variety of language and genre, while the tribal histories add a touch of life to a possibly dry topic. . . . The focus of the work is linguistic, and in this respect there is much to admire in the selection and parallel organization of the material.” — Seminar”General textbooks introducing the Germanic languages are scarce. This work claims to provide a resource available to monolingual English speakers with a minimal background in linguistics. The task seems hardly possible, but Robinson accomplishes it and he does so with flying colors. . . . In general, Robinson’s text is pedagogically sound and definitely recommended either on the undergraduate level or in an introductory class for graduate students filling in a linguistics requirement.” — Scandanavian Studies“This well-structured, terse account of the early Germanic languages fills an obvious gap in reference books on historical linguistics. Striking an excellent balance between readability for the nonspecialist and sufficient detail for classroom usage, the volume begins with a straightforward chapter on the background of English and German in the Germanic family of languages and the Indo-European system at large. . . . Extremely useful for linguistics and medieval literature courses at all levels; belongs in all college and university libraries.”―Humanities”There is much to be valued in this book, the strength of which lies in bringing together representative texts and concise but generally informative discussions of historical background, grammar, versification, and the like, and unified by chapters on the Germanic language family and its grammatical system.” — Germanic Notes and Reviews”This generally engaging work is well-thought out and well-organized. . . . Robinson has written [a book] that deserves attention.” — Colloquia Germanica”[Old English and its closest relatives] is well designed and well written. It is thorough, yet not too encumbered by linguistic facts and linguistic jargon. . . . [Robinson’s] goal, to introduce the reader to the earliest Germanic languages and their interdialectal relations, has been masterfully accomplished.” — The German Quarterly”The execution of Old English and its closest relatives is workmanlike and conscientious. It is appropriate as a textbook for students who have had no prior exposure to [the Germanic] discipline and who require only a general introduction; it will certainly appeal to the curious lay reader. The book’s serviceability in the classroom is assured in a sense for the simple reason that there is no other single work that covers the material summarily.” — Language”Robinson has produced a highly useful book. Designed for an “Introduction to Germanic Languages” course, it will also be a welcome supplement for courses in the history of English, German, and the other Germanic languages. . . . [A] book that instructors would be wise to bring to the attention of students, since it will contribute clarity as well as understanding of important matters in philology and linguistics, in addition to the opportunity for ready introduction to the early Germanic languages. Instructors as well as students will be grateful to Robinson. . . .” — Michigan Germanic Studies From the Inside Flap At first glance, there may seem little reason to think of English and German as variant forms of a single language. There are enormous differences between the two in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, and a monolingual speaker of one cannot understand the other at all. Yet modern English and German have many points in common, and if we go back to the earliest texts available in the two languages, the similarities are even more notable.How do we account for these similarities? The generally accepted explanation is that English and German are divergent continuations of a common ancestor, a Germanic language now lost. This book surveys the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the earliest kown Germanic languages, members of what has traditionally been known as the English family tree: Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian, and Old High German.For each language, the author provides a brief history of the people who spoke it, an overview of the important texts in the language, sample passages with full glossary and word-by-word translations, a section on orthography and grammar, and discussion of linguistic or philological topics relevant to all the early Germanic languaes but best exemplified by the particular language under consideration. These topics inclued the pronunciation of older languages; the runic inscriptions; Germanic alliterative pietry; historical syntax, borrowing, analogy, and drift; textual transmission; and dialect variation. From the Back Cover “The task of writing a book like Robinson’s is very difficult. His contains much to be admired and is a worthy handbook. . . . Good students can learn much from the wealth of information in the present work, and it is to be recommended to them.”—Journal of English and Germanic Philology“This generally engaging work is well-thought out and well-organized. . . . Robinson has written [a book] that deserves attention.”—Colloquia Germanica Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I think it appropriate to include a bit of background on myself first since it probably affects my impression of the book – over the years I’ve taken 8 semesters of German, 7 semesters of Russian, and two of French and I lived in Germany for two years so while I am not a professional linguist I do have some background that helps me better to understand the material. Robinson states his purpose for this book (to create a book for his introductory class on Germanic languages that includes some background and history on the people who spoke the languages) on the first page of the preface and he nails it it. Other books might cover the individual material in more depth but I don’t know of any that pulls it all together like this at just the right level to provide a good introduction to the subject. I made an effort to read the passages in each of the languages. I wasn’t particularly successful with Gothic or Old Norse but I think I did well with the west Germanic languages. Actually something that surprised me is the order I would place the languages in in terms of the ease with which I could understand them. Starting from easiest to most difficult: Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old English, Old Low Franconian, Old High German, Gothic, Old Norse (although for the last two all I could really do was pick out recognizable words). One might have thought that as a native speaker of English and someone who is relatively fluent in German that Old English and Old High German would have been easier to understand but that is just not the case. Just for fun I went out on the web and found some examples of spoken Niederdeutsch, the modern language decended from Old Saxon, at radiobremen.de and listened and found that I can understand it reasonably well. Not as well as German of course but considering that I can barely understand a word of spoken Dutch I was a bit surprised.Before I finish I’m going to give one criticism, a nit-pick really, which might be the only I’ve seen in all the reviews: while the book is an outstanding work and is still sitting on my nightstand so that I can pick a section to review for 15 minutes or so before I go to bed at night, I think it would even better still if it included a CD or link to a website where you could listen to someone pronouncing the sounds that are unfamiliar to a monolingual English speaker and maybe even someone reading some of the passages alound so that you could hear how they are supposed to sound. I realize of course that Robinson wrote the book as a text for his class and presumably if you took his class he would provide those pronuncians and readings but for the general audiance who are not fortunate enough to take the class this would be a great boon. (Hmmm…now that I think about it, I bet if I google it I can find something like that out there. Still, it would be nice if it were included).

⭐The following words have always intrigued me: Deich (German) – dijk (Dutch) – dike (English) / Reich (G) – rijk (D) – reign (E). I wanted to know which was first the egg or the hen in the evolution of these words. Did the Saxons take these words from what is now Germany through The Netherlands and then to the UK or did Norse invasions bring them to the UK and The Netherlands and from there somehow to Germany? I bought the book mainly to get an answer to these issues and because the author included a brief history of the people speaking each language. The histories are excellent and concise and help you put the interaction between the languages in perspective.I supposed there was a straightforward answer to my question of which language inffluenced the others, but apparently it is not so easy, so I got a partial explanation for it. Dating of phonological differences is difficult since there are time periods without written texts to follow the changes; the spelling can differ from the pronounciation: a change in pronounciation might already have occured while the spelling remained the same or the same pronounciation can be spelled differently even by people of the same linguistic group (spelling was not regulated, copying mistakes, translation mistakes, etc.). Additionally, the cultures can inffluence each other back and forth by trade relationships, etc. However, it seems that there existed a Proto-Germanic language from which all three (German, Dutch and English) derived and departed.The original texts in each language were somewhat difficult, (for Old Norse, two pages took me five hours with some interruptions, the rest were easier). If you have not the patience to look up word by word in the included “dictionary”, this book is probably not for you. The grammar sections are also difficult and dry; I did not like grammar at school and I did not like it in this book either. Specially when you include all the cases and declinations found in germanic languages, you can get a headache.At the end of the book there is a chapter summarizing the language changing processes that affected each language and thereby establishes similarities and differences in the languages. I would have put this chapter as an introduction to better illustrate what the author was aiming to demonstrate throughout the book.For an excellent book on linguistic change and the laws behind it, I recommend

⭐. This one is less technical and therefore much less demanding but gives an excellent overview for non-linguists.

⭐Covering Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian and Old Low German, each chapter on each language covers the orthography, phonology and a certain set of grammatical features enabling comparison between the languages. Each chapter also has short sample texts in the language – where possible this includes the parable of the sower to give a comparison, although a couple of the languages don’t have a version of this so another text is selected instead. A glossary is given, and although there are translations in the back, the reader is encouraged to work through the passages and translate for himself.Each chapter also begins with a potted history of the speakers of the language, and after the grammatical section each chapter has some sections considering other aspects of the language which may touch on one of more of the other languages too; so for example the chapter on Old Saxon has a section on Germanic poetry via examples from Old Saxon and also from Old Norse, as being two forms at either end of a spectrum.There is also an introductory chapter followed by another with a grammatical overview of Germanic languages, and at the end a chapter considering the phylogenetic grouping of the languages, indicating that the standard division of East, North and West Germanic languages is not so simple as it seems and rather more problematical.It’s all at a relatively introductory level (pitched at undergraduate introductory text perhaps, but also accessible to the non-specialist and interested amateur) but none the worse for that. It’s a good précis of comparative Germanic linguistics.

⭐Met expectations.

⭐Very good

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