This is why I no longer feel we can rely on university academia to explore subjects like this. Academic research is being strangled by extreme political correctness. Now it won't even allow us to identify our own ancestral language family as Germanic!? Thank goodness for yourself and Robert Sass, who we can rely on for research which avoids politics of either side. Keep up the good work!
Yeah, I try to avoid politics in general. Unless, of course, we have some sort of objective foundation to have the conversation on (like in this video). The whole right-wing Heathen / left-wing Heathen thing really needs to die if we want to move forward as a community.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 "The whole right-wing Heathen / left-wing Heathen thing really needs to die if we want to move forward as a community." It wont though. So called left-wing Heathenry is inherently Universalist in its morals and ethics, while So called right-wing Heathenry is inherently particularist. This is closer to the actual understanding of morals and ethics in pre-Christian Europe. Since moral universalism is something that was introduced with the Christianisation of Pagan Europe. Though pre-christian moral worldview was particularist, it can be said to be universal. In the sense of Humanities inherent ability to even conceive of a concept such as Morality, no matter where you are form or which Gods you sacrifice to. This is as true today as it was then even before the Abrahamic faiths.
To be clear: the whole R business did exist. It’s just that it is a purely Nordic, Younger Futhark phenomenon. It has nothing to do with the Elder Futhark system and the oldest runic inscriptions.
One also need to see this debate in a contemporay political light. During early 1800s you had very high political tension between Germany and Denmark, even wars in which Denmark lost lands the siuth of Jutland that they had controlled sice forever. I can imagien Denmark not being too keen on giving an inch of claim to old runestones in Jutland (even if only lingusticly or even termenologically) to Germany. On the other hand you had quite a strong pan-nordic movement where some quite prominent figures (including royalty but also many academics) were lobbying for a unified Scandinavia (similar to the Kalmar Union back in the day). So ofc scholars from the rest of Scandinavia would back Denmark up in this case.
A friend suggested I give this video a listen because I'm trying to understand runes a bit. Despite hearing these general ideas in the past (following Dr Shell and a few other scholars I respect), I still wasn't quite "putting it together". I'm so glad I listened to this again. This resolved my conflict/questions on "Old Norse" vs "Proto-Germanic" for runes. Thanks for a great video!!
I actually encountered the issue while I was in Denmark and Iceland, as well. When I was in Iceland, I used this word when discussing linguistics, and some of the Brits there were even offended by it. This "problem" goes well beyond UC Berkeley. Not saying you're wrong about UC Berkeley, though ;)
Wow. This was a very insightful video. I didn''t know that there was so much behind the final Nordic "R". Well done, Scott. Proto-Germanic is a good phonological and morphological tool for reconstructing unattested words in the descendant languages in a systematic matter such as the inflection stems of nouns and adjectives.
I would love to be educated enough in this to be able to follow along, and get the full lesson of your videos. Unfortunately I'm just now in the infancy stage if learning any of this.
These videos you create are great, easy to understand and very informative! Could you explain a little more about the time aspect in relation to the different defined terms for languages?
Most of my perspective comes from Elmer Antonsen. He was an American runologist who really had no stake in the matter of something being "Germanic" or "Scandinavian" based on any sort of political motivation (obviously, since he was an American). East Nordic was about 550 CE. North Germanic was around 450-500 CE. Northwest Germanic was around 150 CE. late Proto-Germanic was around 0 CE or a bit earlier. East Germanic probably split from Proto-Germanic around 50-100 CE. Before East Germanic split, it was unified with Northwest Germanic. This is what made Proto-Germanic. So, again, I don't see how Proto-Nordic/Proto-Scandinavian can fit into the paradigm. So, basically you have this: Proto-Indo European > Pre-Proto-Germanic > Proto-Germanic (this would be East Germanic + Northwest Germanic) > Northwest Germanic / East Germanic > North Germanic / West Germanic / East Germanic At the end of the day, Northwest Germanic is really what many of the Scandinavians are calling Proto-Scandinavian / Proto-Nordic. But again a proto language is something that is wholly reconstructed. So, Northwest Germanic is preferred since there are attested inscriptions. Also, I should make clear that I'm NOT adhering to the old Stammbaum-oriented idea that once a split occurs, its parent dies. French creoles exist, for example, while French still lives on. The same thing can be said for Dutch and Afrikaans.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 I think I've read an opinion that splitting PGmc into East (now dead) vs everything else may be a bit oversimplified. Are there features that either - but not both - North (Scandinavian) and West (German, English et al) - share with Gothic and not with each other?
@@karencarlson1693 I need more information about the theories being oversimplified to respond appropriately. Yes, there are. This isn't a surprise, though. I would expect that to even be the case. In fact, there was originally a theory that you had something basically like Northeast Germanic (instead of Northwest Germanic) and then West Germanic. This has long been rejected, though.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 Ah - I found what I think I was vaguely remembering. It's in Prokosch's "Comparative Germanic Grammar" so yeah, pretty dated (1938). It's in Chapter 5, Part d. I copy the relevant stuff here in case you are interested and don't have this book. "It is generally assumed that Gothic was more closely related to Norse than to West Germanic. The principal arguments for this view are 'Holtzmann's Law' (uw > ggw, ij > ddj, ggj) and the ending -t of the 2 sg. pret. of strong verbs. But these are hardly more important than the parallels between Gothic and West Germanic on the one hand, and Norse and West Germanic on the other. Among the former, the most conspicuous are the use of Go. "is," OHG "er" as anaphoric pronoun as against ON "hann;" the development of a prepositive article from the "to-"demonstrative in Gothic and West Germanic as against a post-positive article from the "n-"pronoun in Norse; the different treatment of the reflexive; the prevailing use of Go. "haban," WGmc (OHG) "haben" as against Norse "eiga." Norse-WGmc. parallels are chiefly the rhotacism, the loss of the reduplicated preterit, the umlaut, and the loss of the medio-passive."
@@karencarlson1693 Luckily for both of us, I'm very familiar with Prokosch! Heck, that was one of the textbooks that was used in my Comparative Germanic course. My former adviser, Irmengard Rauch, was a huge supporter of Prokosch. I can also tell you that Elmer Antonsen, someone who influenced me quite a bit when it came to all things runic and linguistic, was impressed with Prokosch's work. Prokosch used the phrase "Urnordisch" (Proto-Nordic) because it was still very much en vogue at the time. This is what Antonsen more or less equates to Northwest Germanic (NWGmc). The way that I read Prokosch's commentary above is just saying that they all share similarities because they all come from the same parent language, i.e., PGmc. He could also just be coming from his ideas of relative chronology and language splitting. In fact, he clearly even admits Northwest Germanic exists, but doesn't discuss it when writing about the various branches. This makes it a bit confusing since he uses the word, but doesn't discuss where the split was. Look on page 91 for his use of the word (Germanic Developments). Either way, I'm convinced of Elmer Antonsen's proposal that the earliest runic inscriptions equally share features of both North Germanic and West Germanic. I highly recommend checking out Antonsen's "Runes and Germanic Linguistics" (2002) and then formulating your own opinion to support this idea or not :)P.S. I never would have guessed someone would throw Prokosch out here in the comment section. You know your stuff! By the way, Antonsen was not the first to propose the Northwest Germanic branch. If you want to look at its origins, look into Hans Kuhn's material.
I do not understand the academic basis even, for the notion of “Proto-Nordic”. Is this supposed to have been an actual discrete language spoken by actual humans in Scandinavia before all the Norse but after Proto Germanic? Has anyone advanced any particular inscription or anything as being an example of Proto Nordic?
I had not known that the term, Germanic, was fraught with alternative connotations. Is there any other term that can unify Scandinavia with the Continent?
Trust me, many of them don't want to be unified. I have friends in Denmark who are strongly against any proposed EU connection. They want to remain Danish; they don't want to be unified with the rest of Europe. There are, nevertheless, some Danes who want to be unified.
@@karencarlson1693 Given that Teutonic originally just referred to a single tribe (which may have even been Celtic), I don't believe it is any better. It would be like saying, let's call everything Saxon, Frankish, Alemannic, or Bavarian. I see your point, though.
@@karencarlson1693 my ex husbands family was Jewish and my actual name is very German. When I told an uncle my last name he narrowed his eyes and said, “yeah. I thought you looked Teutonic.” 😂 Then I got called a Kraut by a college history teacher. It’s real fun being German, especially since my family came here in the 1800s and fought in both world wars but, you know, let’s be racist against Germans anyway.
What languages did you know prior to starting your MA? You say in the video that you learnt Old Norse during your PhD. Had you studied any old Germanic language prior to starting your linguistics degree?
At that time, I only knew German and a little bit of Middle High German. When I pursued my MA, they encouraged me not to do anything Indo-European. This is pretty common in linguistics departments. So, I focused on Papua New Guinea languages and eventually Minimalism. In the end, they allowed me to write a thesis on modern German and the Minimalist approach. I carried my knowledge of linguistics over with me to Berkeley when I pursued my PhD in Germanic linguistics. It sort of helped, but the Germanicists really have their own way of approaching linguistics as opposed to the modern general linguists.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 Thank you immensely for your reply. Im a graduate seeking entry into the exact same field as you but Im unsure as to how educated I must be prior to an application. Guidance like this is hard to find.
@@tamerofhorses2200 No problem at all. If you're going to apply to a linguistics department, you do not need to be fluent in any other language. They look at languages and describe how they function. Fluency is irrelevant to the person making the observations. They examine things like head-initial vs. head final languages, positions of determiners relative to nouns (e.g., the book or book the), etc. However, if you want to pursue something like Germanic or Scandinavian linguistics, these programs can only be found in their respective departments. To that end, you will most likely need to have native or near-native fluency in German or a Scandinavian language (again, depending on the department).
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 Yeah I wanna pursue philology (historical linguistics + textual expertise), but exceedingly few institutions seem to allow for any specialisation in something like that. I have taught myself Old English but lack the credentials in something like Linguistics to enter into that field and focus on the historical. Been thinking about an English MA, focusing on the Medieval Period, then maybe jumping to Linguistics for my PhD.
If the current state of the world wasn’t enough proof, those first two stories only serve to strengthen the idea that some of the dumbest people are academics…. Great vid!
Or even just the basic fact that politics are apparently superior to objective, non-biased study. Like my former adviser always told me: "let the data do the talking." Here's a passage from a runologist I think you'll appreciate: "Every now and then it is useful to review the history of a discipline in order to gain insight into the origin of opinions prevailing in it. In doing so, one sometimes finds that extraneous factors played a significant role in the development of theories that have come to be accepted as dogma and have been passed down unquestioned from generation to generation in the firm belief that these theories are grounded solely in "scientific" considerations." *This is a reference to the situation of the elhaz rune I discussed in the video.
As a German, German isn't even called German in German so i don't care if the language is called Germanic or something else. Scandinavian would be misleading though because its suggests a language that was only spoken in Scandinavia.
At this point the term proto-Germanic is firmly established and has been for a long time. The politically oversensitive folks are always trying to play these language games, we should not let them redefine what is already clearly defined.
This is why I no longer feel we can rely on university academia to explore subjects like this. Academic research is being strangled by extreme political correctness. Now it won't even allow us to identify our own ancestral language family as Germanic!?
Thank goodness for yourself and Robert Sass, who we can rely on for research which avoids politics of either side. Keep up the good work!
Yeah, I try to avoid politics in general. Unless, of course, we have some sort of objective foundation to have the conversation on (like in this video). The whole right-wing Heathen / left-wing Heathen thing really needs to die if we want to move forward as a community.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 I think individuals like yourself and Robert have struck the right balance.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464
"The whole right-wing Heathen / left-wing Heathen thing really needs to die if we want to move forward as a community."
It wont though. So called left-wing Heathenry is inherently Universalist in its morals and ethics, while So called right-wing Heathenry is inherently particularist. This is closer to the actual understanding of morals and ethics in pre-Christian Europe. Since moral universalism is something that was introduced with the Christianisation of Pagan Europe. Though pre-christian moral worldview was particularist, it can be said to be universal.
In the sense of Humanities inherent ability to even conceive of a concept such as Morality, no matter where you are form or which Gods you sacrifice to. This is as true today as it was then even before the Abrahamic faiths.
Thanks. I never quite understood why the whole capital R business existed with the runic translations.
Glad I could help!
To be clear: the whole R business did exist. It’s just that it is a purely Nordic, Younger Futhark phenomenon. It has nothing to do with the Elder Futhark system and the oldest runic inscriptions.
Give ‘em Hel Dr Shell! Looking forward to Part 2!
Thanks, Jan!
Audio quality was excellent. Better than some with studios.
Hah! Good to know. Thank you!
Really enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with the greater public.
Of course!
Very interesting topic! Can’t wait to see part II
It'll be released on either Wednesday evening or Thursday morning!
Ausgezeichnetes Video wie immer!!
Hah! Thanks, Kaustav!
One also need to see this debate in a contemporay political light. During early 1800s you had very high political tension between Germany and Denmark, even wars in which Denmark lost lands the siuth of Jutland that they had controlled sice forever. I can imagien Denmark not being too keen on giving an inch of claim to old runestones in Jutland (even if only lingusticly or even termenologically) to Germany. On the other hand you had quite a strong pan-nordic movement where some quite prominent figures (including royalty but also many academics) were lobbying for a unified Scandinavia (similar to the Kalmar Union back in the day). So ofc scholars from the rest of Scandinavia would back Denmark up in this case.
Yep. Take a look at Part II of this series. I just released it today.
A friend suggested I give this video a listen because I'm trying to understand runes a bit. Despite hearing these general ideas in the past (following Dr Shell and a few other scholars I respect), I still wasn't quite "putting it together". I'm so glad I listened to this again. This resolved my conflict/questions on "Old Norse" vs "Proto-Germanic" for runes. Thanks for a great video!!
No matter what you do, no matter what you say, and no matter how you say it, someone from UC Berkeley will find a way to be offended by it.
I actually encountered the issue while I was in Denmark and Iceland, as well. When I was in Iceland, I used this word when discussing linguistics, and some of the Brits there were even offended by it. This "problem" goes well beyond UC Berkeley. Not saying you're wrong about UC Berkeley, though ;)
Wow. This was a very insightful video. I didn''t know that there was so much behind the final Nordic "R". Well done, Scott.
Proto-Germanic is a good phonological and morphological tool for reconstructing unattested words in the descendant languages in a systematic matter such as the inflection stems of nouns and adjectives.
Absolutely! And thank you! I’m glad you liked the video
I definitely would like to hear the debate on this it's a subject that I haven't really dabbled too much in
I would love to be educated enough in this to be able to follow along, and get the full lesson of your videos. Unfortunately I'm just now in the infancy stage if learning any of this.
You can do it! It takes time!
Time is something I have little of unfortunately. Working 60 hrs a week plus caring for my 5 kids
These videos you create are great, easy to understand and very informative! Could you explain a little more about the time aspect in relation to the different defined terms for languages?
Most of my perspective comes from Elmer Antonsen. He was an American runologist who really had no stake in the matter of something being "Germanic" or "Scandinavian" based on any sort of political motivation (obviously, since he was an American). East Nordic was about 550 CE. North Germanic was around 450-500 CE. Northwest Germanic was around 150 CE. late Proto-Germanic was around 0 CE or a bit earlier. East Germanic probably split from Proto-Germanic around 50-100 CE. Before East Germanic split, it was unified with Northwest Germanic. This is what made Proto-Germanic. So, again, I don't see how Proto-Nordic/Proto-Scandinavian can fit into the paradigm.
So, basically you have this: Proto-Indo European > Pre-Proto-Germanic > Proto-Germanic (this would be East Germanic + Northwest Germanic) > Northwest Germanic / East Germanic > North Germanic / West Germanic / East Germanic
At the end of the day, Northwest Germanic is really what many of the Scandinavians are calling Proto-Scandinavian / Proto-Nordic. But again a proto language is something that is wholly reconstructed. So, Northwest Germanic is preferred since there are attested inscriptions.
Also, I should make clear that I'm NOT adhering to the old Stammbaum-oriented idea that once a split occurs, its parent dies. French creoles exist, for example, while French still lives on. The same thing can be said for Dutch and Afrikaans.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 I think I've read an opinion that splitting PGmc into East (now dead) vs everything else may be a bit oversimplified. Are there features that either - but not both - North (Scandinavian) and West (German, English et al) - share with Gothic and not with each other?
@@karencarlson1693 I need more information about the theories being oversimplified to respond appropriately.
Yes, there are. This isn't a surprise, though. I would expect that to even be the case. In fact, there was originally a theory that you had something basically like Northeast Germanic (instead of Northwest Germanic) and then West Germanic. This has long been rejected, though.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 Ah - I found what I think I was vaguely remembering. It's in Prokosch's "Comparative Germanic Grammar" so yeah, pretty dated (1938). It's in Chapter 5, Part d. I copy the relevant stuff here in case you are interested and don't have this book. "It is generally assumed that Gothic was more closely related to Norse than to West Germanic. The principal arguments for this view are 'Holtzmann's Law' (uw > ggw, ij > ddj, ggj) and the ending -t of the 2 sg. pret. of strong verbs. But these are hardly more important than the parallels between Gothic and West Germanic on the one hand, and Norse and West Germanic on the other. Among the former, the most conspicuous are the use of Go. "is," OHG "er" as anaphoric pronoun as against ON "hann;" the development of a prepositive article from the "to-"demonstrative in Gothic and West Germanic as against a post-positive article from the "n-"pronoun in Norse; the different treatment of the reflexive; the prevailing use of Go. "haban," WGmc (OHG) "haben" as against Norse "eiga." Norse-WGmc. parallels are chiefly the rhotacism, the loss of the reduplicated preterit, the umlaut, and the loss of the medio-passive."
@@karencarlson1693 Luckily for both of us, I'm very familiar with Prokosch! Heck, that was one of the textbooks that was used in my Comparative Germanic course. My former adviser, Irmengard Rauch, was a huge supporter of Prokosch. I can also tell you that Elmer Antonsen, someone who influenced me quite a bit when it came to all things runic and linguistic, was impressed with Prokosch's work.
Prokosch used the phrase "Urnordisch" (Proto-Nordic) because it was still very much en vogue at the time. This is what Antonsen more or less equates to Northwest Germanic (NWGmc). The way that I read Prokosch's commentary above is just saying that they all share similarities because they all come from the same parent language, i.e., PGmc. He could also just be coming from his ideas of relative chronology and language splitting. In fact, he clearly even admits Northwest Germanic exists, but doesn't discuss it when writing about the various branches. This makes it a bit confusing since he uses the word, but doesn't discuss where the split was. Look on page 91 for his use of the word (Germanic Developments).
Either way, I'm convinced of Elmer Antonsen's proposal that the earliest runic inscriptions equally share features of both North Germanic and West Germanic. I highly recommend checking out Antonsen's "Runes and Germanic Linguistics" (2002) and then formulating your own opinion to support this idea or not :)P.S. I never would have guessed someone would throw Prokosch out here in the comment section. You know your stuff!
By the way, Antonsen was not the first to propose the Northwest Germanic branch. If you want to look at its origins, look into Hans Kuhn's material.
When you're looking under every rock for dog whistles, everything starts to sound like a dog whistle. Including literal academic terms.
Norse is just north Germanic... smh..
I do not understand the academic basis even, for the notion of “Proto-Nordic”. Is this supposed to have been an actual discrete language spoken by actual humans in Scandinavia before all the Norse but after Proto Germanic? Has anyone advanced any particular inscription or anything as being an example of Proto Nordic?
I had not known that the term, Germanic, was fraught with alternative connotations. Is there any other term that can unify Scandinavia with the Continent?
Trust me, many of them don't want to be unified. I have friends in Denmark who are strongly against any proposed EU connection. They want to remain Danish; they don't want to be unified with the rest of Europe. There are, nevertheless, some Danes who want to be unified.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 Except Denmark is united to the EU physically, economically and genetically 😆
Some people use "Teutonic." I don't know if that's any "better" than "Germanic."
@@karencarlson1693 Given that Teutonic originally just referred to a single tribe (which may have even been Celtic), I don't believe it is any better. It would be like saying, let's call everything Saxon, Frankish, Alemannic, or Bavarian. I see your point, though.
@@karencarlson1693 my ex husbands family was Jewish and my actual name is very German. When I told an uncle my last name he narrowed his eyes and said, “yeah. I thought you looked Teutonic.” 😂 Then I got called a Kraut by a college history teacher. It’s real fun being German, especially since my family came here in the 1800s and fought in both world wars but, you know, let’s be racist against Germans anyway.
What languages did you know prior to starting your MA? You say in the video that you learnt Old Norse during your PhD. Had you studied any old Germanic language prior to starting your linguistics degree?
At that time, I only knew German and a little bit of Middle High German. When I pursued my MA, they encouraged me not to do anything Indo-European. This is pretty common in linguistics departments. So, I focused on Papua New Guinea languages and eventually Minimalism. In the end, they allowed me to write a thesis on modern German and the Minimalist approach. I carried my knowledge of linguistics over with me to Berkeley when I pursued my PhD in Germanic linguistics. It sort of helped, but the Germanicists really have their own way of approaching linguistics as opposed to the modern general linguists.
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 Thank you immensely for your reply. Im a graduate seeking entry into the exact same field as you but Im unsure as to how educated I must be prior to an application. Guidance like this is hard to find.
@@tamerofhorses2200 No problem at all. If you're going to apply to a linguistics department, you do not need to be fluent in any other language. They look at languages and describe how they function. Fluency is irrelevant to the person making the observations. They examine things like head-initial vs. head final languages, positions of determiners relative to nouns (e.g., the book or book the), etc. However, if you want to pursue something like Germanic or Scandinavian linguistics, these programs can only be found in their respective departments. To that end, you will most likely need to have native or near-native fluency in German or a Scandinavian language (again, depending on the department).
@@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464 Yeah I wanna pursue philology (historical linguistics + textual expertise), but exceedingly few institutions seem to allow for any specialisation in something like that. I have taught myself Old English but lack the credentials in something like Linguistics to enter into that field and focus on the historical. Been thinking about an English MA, focusing on the Medieval Period, then maybe jumping to Linguistics for my PhD.
If the current state of the world wasn’t enough proof, those first two stories only serve to strengthen the idea that some of the dumbest people are academics….
Great vid!
Or even just the basic fact that politics are apparently superior to objective, non-biased study. Like my former adviser always told me: "let the data do the talking."
Here's a passage from a runologist I think you'll appreciate:
"Every now and then it is useful to review the history of a discipline in order to gain insight into the origin of opinions prevailing in it. In doing so, one sometimes finds that extraneous factors played a significant role in the development of theories that have come to be accepted as dogma and have been passed down unquestioned from generation to generation in the firm belief that these theories are grounded solely in "scientific" considerations."
*This is a reference to the situation of the elhaz rune I discussed in the video.
As a German, German isn't even called German in German so i don't care if the language is called Germanic or something else. Scandinavian would be misleading though because its suggests a language that was only spoken in Scandinavia.
At this point the term proto-Germanic is firmly established and has been for a long time. The politically oversensitive folks are always trying to play these language games, we should not let them redefine what is already clearly defined.
Incredible - how can these people be so ignorant? 🙄