Talk:Old Frankish

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from VfD:

Seems like rubbish, or at least not notable. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:12, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Keep, quite notable. Needs lot of work though. --fvw* 04:47, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)
• Keep and list on RfE. I can't believe the linguistic folks and medievalists have allowed this to be in this state. (I can't help, unfortunately.) Geogre 06:03, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Strong keep, article already has a cleanup tag. [[User:Radman1|RaD Man (talk)]] 06:05, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Needs cleanup and expansion, not deletion. jni 09:20, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Comment: There already is a redirect from frankish to an article at franks. Maybe move this to frankish (language)? Or even to frankish? Anyway, I've put in some wikilinks. No vote as yet. Andrewa 09:25, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: I went looking through to try to find this. I thought this was a bad duplicate, since obviously we'd have an article at Frankish. Well, Frankish redir to Franks, where there is a line saying there is the language Frankish language which goes to a disambig. to.... Old Frankish language. Four steps to get at what should naturally be at Frankish.Geogre 14:01, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • Comment: Isn't is Wikipedia standard to add the word "language" to all language article titles? Spanish language, English language, etc. RickK 00:23, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: You're right, but the inconsistency is in academics. Where "Spanish" could be the adjective, "Frankish" is kind of rarely used that way. At any rate, it's rare enough that we ought to at least be able to cut down one step in the redirect train. "Frankish" ought to be a disambiguation to the language or the people (as there is no country to which it could refer). Geogre 03:21, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Move to Frankish sounds good. Dr Zen 10:07, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• KEEP There seems to be a dislike of rare languages on Wikipedia. If there is space for the Klingon Language then there should be room here for real languages. -Ms. Greenberg 14:21, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Keep, definitely. FWIW, Frankish language is a disambig. Most knowledge of Old Frankish comes from reconstructions; there aren't any extended texts AFAIK and few inscriptions. Smerdis of Tlön 15:39, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Strong keep. Really interesting topic, too, and I wish I knew enough about it to fill out this article (hope someone else does). Antandrus 03:27, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Keep but do not move. While "Frankish" is rarely used as an adjective, it is sometimes used that way. (Fairly frequently in the current links that show up in "what links here" to the Frankish redirect page.) The way to shorten the redirect train is to go back and pipe the links to the correct destination. (forgot to sign my vote earlier. sorry) Rossami (talk)

end moved discussion

Contents 1 Information 2 Article scope 3 Danser 4 graper ? 5 "standard"

[edit] Information

OK, I created the original page, since there seemed to be many links referring to the subject. It is quite hard to find good information to include, though, since there are so few reliable sources. Ideallay, this page should include some information of how Frankish differed from other West Germanic languages of the same time, and how Frankish and other Germanic languages affected Old French. (I believe Old French also was affected by Old Norse, but since that was a distinct North Germanic language, I think these words should be relatively easy to distinguish.) I believe most of the sources the Franks left were written in Latin, though, so it isn't of much help for finding info about their language.

Hmmm, this page contains a few reconstructed likely frankish words, borrowed into old french and later english... http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=frankish&searchmode=none

[edit] Article scope

Do I understand correctly that this article deals with an entirely unattested language, guessed at from loanwords? Otherwise, it would have to be merged with Old Low Franconian. dab (ᛏ) 13:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I originally created the page, since there were links regarding it, but no article. Isn't there many other language articles on the Wikipedia with little or no attestation, anyway? 惑乱 分からん 18:02, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I was not objecting to articles about unattested languages, I was asking if this language is identical to Old Low Franconian. It does seem, however, that this is about the unattested predecessor of Old Low Franconian, so the article is perfectly fine on its own. dab (ᛏ) 15:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the point and focus of it. Thank you for clarifying. 惑乱 分からん 18:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Danser

I think words like "danson"/"danser" in the modern Germanic languages are borrowings from French, and not true cognates with Frankish (which, afaik, even had an other meaning for the word). 惑乱 分からん 18:02, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The Word Dancing is a Germanic word, that was borrowed by many romance languages not the other way around. Sandertje 18:22, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

You didn't understand me completely, what I meant was that the French word is borrowed from G Frankish, but the modern words in the G languages are borrowings from French. 惑乱 分からん 19:09, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Not in Dutch. Sandertje 19:10, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I thought that it at least changed its meaning, based on French, but if you say so, alright. 惑乱 分からん 19:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

many Frankish words were borrowed back into Germanic languages via Old French. "standard" is one example. "dance" is quite possibly another. "not in Dutch" is rather optimistic for a word the ultimate origin of which is not known. It may be Frankish. The Dutch word may derive Frankish directly, but it is much more likely that it is based on the French word. This is not a good example anyway, because of the uncertainty involved. dab (ᛏ) 15:10, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying that Dutch, a language deriving from Frankish, had "lost" the word for "dancing" since the extinction of Frankish and then somehow got it back from Old French?Highly unlikely. Sander 16:07, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

That was what I thought, as well. Anyway, I don't know much about it, so I'm not fit to discuss it further. 惑乱 分からん 18:45, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is any evidence for dance having a Frankish or Germanic origin. My copy of the Oxford English Dictionary has the following for the etymology of 'dance':

[Old French dancer, (also mod.) danser from Proto-Romance, of unknown origin.]

As far as I can see, there is no recorded native variant of "dance" in Old English; there are words for dancing, but none of them look like dansen. The German tanzen is essentially identical to the Frankish version after considering the High German consonant shift, which only suggests this word was in German before the shift occurred in the Dark Ages. The fact that this word is so consistent across the West Germanic languages is consistent with the OED's explanation of it being a Late Latin import.

I have therefore removed it from the as an example of a Frankish introduction. --Saforrest 11:51, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

According to Etymonline:

Dance c.1300, from O.Fr. dancier, perhaps from Frankish. A word of uncertain origin but which, through French influence in arts and society, has become the primary word for this activity from Spain to Russia. Replaced O.E. sealtian.

In the Dutch language, the only remaining Frankish language, it's "dansen" which could be seen as an indication that it truly was a Old Frankish word. I do not think it's a latin borowing into Germanic languages you see ...

However, as Etymonline says, it is not certain ... so its best not to include the word. Rex Germanus Tesi samanunga is edele unde scona 14:05, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad we agree about the word being here. I'm not sure I understand your point about the Dutch word dansen: sure, it looks a lot more like the Frankish danson than German tanzen or English dance does, but that doesn't prove anything: it merely shows that Dutch is a descendant of Frankish, which we already knew.

Anyway, my main reason for doubting that this is a Germanic word is the lack of native cognates in any other Germanic languages. Words don't usually come from nowhere: if dansen is a uniquely Frankish word, it probably was borrowed from somewhere, and aside from Celtic or Romance, there's just not a lot of other languages in that area to borrow from.

By the way, I don't think it's correct to say Dutch is "the only remaining Frankish language". However, I'll leave that to Talk:Frankish language. --Saforrest 16:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It being of Latin/Romance origin is quite unlikely, however not having a cognate does not mean it isn't Germanic. Rex Germanus Tesi samanunga is edele unde scona 13:52, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Didn't Old High German have 'Danson'? And Modern German also has 'Tanz'. As for no native cognates in other Germanic languages, I can't say for any others, but the English word 'Sealtian' was itself a Latin borrowing. It came from the same root as 'Saltation' and the Spanish word 'Saltar'. Maybe 'Sealtian' replaced the Old English cognate. Besides, I think 'Dance' is present in all the Romance languages because they all borrowed the word from French, which was at the time the language of high culture. 213.249.245.35 11:24, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] graper ?

In modern French, there is no such verb (graper). I never heard it (I'm French) and it's not in my dictionary, a famous French dictionary (Robert). HTH.

I found the words "gripper" and "grappin" in my Swedish-French dictionary from the 50's, though I have no idea if the words are common in modern French, or if they're directly derived from Frankish. 惑乱 分からん 15:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

According to Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, "gripper" is probably derived from Frankish, so I change the page accordingly. 惑乱 分からん 23:59, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

There's some confusion here. I don't know what the old Frankish words mean, but "gripper" in modern French means to physically grasp at someone or something; the sense of "comprehending" is given by the word "comprendre" which has a Latin, not a Frankish, origin. (24.201.253.66 00:09, 15 September 2007 (UTC))

[edit] "standard"

f. the OED:

aphetic a. OF. estandard, -art, -estendard, -art (mod.F. étendard) = med.L. standardum, -us, standarium, etc. Pr. estandard, -art, Sp., Pg. estandarte, It. stendardo; according to most scholars f. com. Rom. estend-ere (L. extend-re to stretch out: see EXTEND v.) + -ARD; a parallel synonymous formation with different suffix is It. stendale, late OF. estandale, -deille (med.L. standale, -lis). The Fr. word has passed into all the living Teut. langs.: MHG. stanthart (by popular etymology, as if ‘stand hard’), later standart, standert (mod.G. standarte), MDu. standaert (mod.Du. standaard, standerd), Da. standart, Sw. standar.

The origin of sense 9 (‘standard of measure or weight’), whence the other senses in branch II are derived, is somewhat obscure. It appears in AF. (estaundart) and Anglo-L. (standardus) in the 13th c., two centuries earlier than our earliest vernacular instance. It has not been found in continental OF.; the use of Du. standaard in this sense is believed to be imitated from English. It is noteworthy that in early instances the standard of measure is always either expressly or by implication called ‘the king's standard’, an expression which belongs to the older sense 1. It seems probable that sense 9 is a fig. use of sense 1; the king's standard being the point of reunion of the army, and the centre from which commands are issued.

The senses grouped as branch III are of doubtful, probably of various and in some instances of mixed origin. The notion of ‘something conspicuously erected’, involved in sense 1, would account for several of them; others may be referred to the idea of ‘something permanent, fixed, or stationary’, generalized from sense 9. Etymological association with STAND v. has, however, certainly affected the whole group, and it is possible that in some uses the word should be regarded as an alteration of STANDER. The senses of this branch are almost confined to English: OF. has estandart some kind of torch (rare1), and WFlem. has standaart mill-post (De Bo; standaert, Kilian); but the relation of these to the English uses is obscure.]

--VKokielov 18:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)