Re: Linguistics thread
Posted: 2020-01-10, 11:09
I'm definitely not the best person to answer this, but anyway.
Christianisation lead to an influx of lots of loan words in many languages at least.
It's much older than that. Keep in mind that the standardisation project only really started with Luther. The shift started in the 6th century.
Synalepha wrote:The fact that Lithuania was one of the last European nations to be Christianised made a difference in terms of how much other languages could influence it.
Could you elaborate on that?
Christianisation lead to an influx of lots of loan words in many languages at least.
Standard German is considerably more conservative than spoken Upper German dialects, which mark only two cases on nouns (N/A and dative) and express both the past tense and subjunctive mood of verbs periphrastically. Moreover, the Second Consonant Shift and diphthongisation both begin (and go further) in the Upper German area.
But this is today or has it always been like this? (Ok, not literally "always" but ever since Standard German has been a thing)
It's much older than that. Keep in mind that the standardisation project only really started with Luther. The shift started in the 6th century.