Open Syllable Lengthening
Open syllable lengthening, in linguistics, is the process by which short vowels become long in an open syllable. It occurs in many languages at a phonetic or allophonic level, and no meaningful distinction in length is made. However, as it became phonemic in many Germanic languages, it is especially significant in them, both historically and in the modern languages. Open syllable lengthening affected the stressed syllables of all modern Germanic languages in their history to some degree. Curiously, it seems to have affected the languages around a similar time, between the 12th and the 16th centuries, during the late Middle Ages. The languages differ mainly as to the specific vowels that were lengthened the specific environment but also in the result of the lengthening. There is substantial variation, and in many languages, the process has been obscured by paradigmatic levelling. Sometimes, the newly lengthened vowels merged with existing long vowels, but in other languages, they r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses Outline of linguistics, many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal grammar, universal and Philosophy of language#Nature of language, fundamental nature of language and developing a general ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Old Saxon
Old Saxon (), also known as Old Low German (), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It is a West Germanic language, closely related to the Anglo-Frisian languages. It is documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it gradually evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken throughout modern northwestern Germany, primarily in the coastal regions and in the eastern Netherlands by Saxons, a Germanic tribe that inhabited the region of Saxony. It partially shares Anglo-Frisian's ( Old Frisian, Old English) Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law which sets it apart from Low Franconian and Irminonic languages, such as Dutch, Luxembourgish and German. The grammar of Old Saxon was fully inflected with five grammatical cases ( nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three grammati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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West Germanic Languages
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic languages, Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic languages, North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages, East Germanic languages). The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided into three branches: Ingvaeonic, which includes English language, English, the Low German, Low German languages, and the Frisian languages; Istvaeonic, which encompasses Dutch language, Dutch and its close relatives; and Irminonic, which includes German language, German and its close relatives and variants. English is by far the most-spoken West Germanic language, with more than 1 billion speakers worldwide. Within Europe, the three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch. Frisian, spoken by about 450,000 people, constitutes a fourth distinct variety of West Germanic. The language family also includes Afrikaans, Yiddish language, Yiddish, Low ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Danish Language
Danish (, ; , ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the northern Germany, German region of Southern Schleswig, where it has minority language status. Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Age, Viking Era. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the ''East Norse'' dialect group, while the Middle Norwegian language (before the influence of Danish) and Bokmål, Norwegian Bokmål are classified as ''West Norse'' along with Faroese language, Faroese and Icelandic language, Icelandic. A more recent c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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North Germanic Languages
The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish language, Danish, Faroese language, Faroese, Icelandic language, Icelandic, Norwegian language, Norwegian, and Swedish language, Swedish scholars and people. The term ''North Germanic languages'' is used in comparative linguistics, whereas the term Scandinavian languages appears in studies of the modern standard languages and the dialect continuum of Scandinavia. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are close enough to form a strong mutual intelligibility where cross-border communication in native languages is very common, particularly between the latter two. Approximately 20 million people in the Nordic countries speak a Scandinavian language as t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Friesland
Friesland ( ; ; official ), historically and traditionally known as Frisia (), named after the Frisians, is a Provinces of the Netherlands, province of the Netherlands located in the country's northern part. It is situated west of Groningen (province), Groningen, northwest of Drenthe and Overijssel, north of Flevoland, northeast of North Holland, and south of the Wadden Sea. As of January 2023, the province had a population of about 660,000, and a total area of . The province is divided into 18 municipalities. The Capital city, capital and seat of the provincial government is the city of Leeuwarden (West Frisian: ''Ljouwert'', Liwwaddes: ''Liwwadde''), a city with 123,107 inhabitants. Other large municipalities in Friesland are Sneek (pop. 33,512), Heerenveen (pop. 50,257), and Smallingerland (includes town of Drachten, pop. 55,938). Since 2017, Arno Brok is the King's Commissioner in the province. A coalition of the Christian Democratic Appeal, the People's Party for Freedom a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Silent E
In English orthography, many words feature a silent (single, final, non-syllabic ‘e’), most commonly at the end of a word or morpheme. Typically it represents a vowel sound that was formerly pronounced, but became silent letter, silent in late Middle English or Early Modern English. In a large class of words, as a consequence of a series of #History, historical sound changes, including the Great Vowel Shift, the presence of a suffix on the end of a word influenced the development of the preceding vowel, and in a smaller number of cases it affected the pronunciation of a preceding consonant. When the inflection disappeared in speech, but remained as a historical remnant in the spelling, this silent was reinterpreted synchronically as a marker of the surviving sounds. This can be seen in the vowels in word-pairs such as ''rid'' and ''ride'' , in which the presence of the final, unpronounced appears to alter the sound of the preceding . An example with consonants is the wo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with the High Middle Ages, High and Late Middle Ages. Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography. Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for the most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the movabl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature dates from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman language, Anglo-Norman (a langues d'oïl, type of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles (tribe), Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Trisyllabic Laxing
Trisyllabic laxing, or trisyllabic shortening, is any of three processes in English in which tense vowels (long vowels or diphthongs) become lax (short monophthongs) if they are followed by two or more syllables, at least the first of which is unstressed, for example, ''grateful'' vs ''gratitude'', ''profound'' vs ''profundity''. By a different process, laxing is also found in disyllabic and monosyllabic words, for example, ''shade'' vs ''shadow'', ''lose'' vs ''lost''. Trisyllabic laxing Trisyllabic laxing is a process which has occurred at various periods in the history of English: #The earliest occurrence of trisyllabic laxing occurred in late Old English and caused stressed long vowels to become shortened before clusters of two consonants when two or more syllables followed. #Later in Middle English, the process was expanded to all vowels when two or more syllables followed. #The Middle English sound change remained in the language and is still a mostly-productive process in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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High German
The High German languages (, i.e. ''High German dialects''), or simply High German ( ) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German" – comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Benrath and Uerdingen isoglosses, i.e., in central and southern Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and eastern Belgium, as well as in neighbouring portions of France (Alsace and northern Lorraine), Italy ( South Tyrol), the Czech Republic (Bohemia), and Poland ( Upper Silesia). They are also spoken in diasporas in Romania, Russia, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Namibia. High German is marked by the High German consonant shift, separating it from Low German (Low Saxon) and Low Franconian (including Dutch) within the continental West Germanic dialect continuum. "Low" and "high" refer to the lowland and highland geographies typically found in the two areas. Classification As a tech ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |