In Dutch: was ~ waren, vriezen ~ vroren, verliezen ~ verloren, and the past tense of "kiezen" used to be "koren", which is preserved in the word "uitverkoren"

Neat, I lived some tim on a road named after him: Karl Verners vej in Aarhus, near the university. While I knew he had a law named after him, I did not know the details. On a related note, the early researcher into the scandinavian languages and runes Ole Worm has given name to a nearby road, where he is given the voefully underused title: oldgransker.

@lakrids-pibe

2 ай бұрын

Verners vej og Verners vej og Verners vej ♬ Hu-un går rundt med numsen bar hurra ♬ (mel: The lion sleeps tonight, wimoweh, wimoweh)

@henriknielsen1662

Ай бұрын

@@lakrids-pibe : du må have suget for hårdt i lakridspiben. Det er på Vimmersvej, ikke Vernersvej, at der går en dejlig steg rundt med numsen bar 🙂

Swedish and Nynorsk have some examples of past tenses such as 'såg' "saw" and 'låg' "lay" where Danish and Bokmål have 'så' and 'lå'. In the former, the voiced Verner variant has produced the g which has spread to the singular. In the latter, the unvoiced Verner variant has produced *h > Ø which has spread to the plural.

5:29 In case it's not clear from the video, the s>z in Proto-Germanic also arises as s>r in Old English, which is how it gets into Modern English - it's not a result of Old Norse influence on English

@demoman1596sh

2 ай бұрын

I wanted to add that the change from Proto-Germanic *z to /r/ is actually common to all West and North Germanic languages, not just Old English. Only the East Germanic branch, including the extinct language Gothic, did not undergo this change. As you said, the fact that English shows this sound change is not due to Old Norse influence.

It saddens me a bit that a thousand years from now I won't be here to watch a video on how "Old American-English" evolved. Growing up, rooting for "Da Bears" didn't seem strange. Now I can see how the regional differences could form whole new and different languages.

@WGGplant

2 ай бұрын

well, if the world and internet exists for that long, at least your comment will be a part of history that people will probably study.

@hillogical

2 ай бұрын

@@WGGplant The world at large will exist. Given the genetic bottlenecks our species has overcome, I suspect humans will as well. We're sturdier creatures than we give ourselves credit.

@WGGplant

2 ай бұрын

@@hillogical it's literally impossible to know for sure. a massive spaceball could destroy the planet. anything could happen. but i too like to think that we will survive that long

@chloeedmund4350

2 ай бұрын

I think we're all too connected to have new languages. More likely Standard American English would take over regional dialects so you'd have to know how words were spoken to understand Huckleberry Finn or various jokes like Da Bears.

THIS is the content I LOVE to see, thank you!!

The theory of it was a little over my head but the example of how it’s retained in English as was-were is really fascinating

The Spanish word that contains all βðɣ is "la bodega", from Greek "Apotheka". We use it to exemplify our own two rounds of stop lenition (voiced ptk > voiceless bdg > fricative βðɣ) but it does work for people doing Germanic linguistics and already having a solid knowledge of any Iberian romance language.

I remember the was-were alternation being able to be traced back to PIE, but I didn't realize it was Verner's law that made it look this way. Thanks for the video!

The stress on the first syllable still exists in German, with some exceptions like loanwords and some specific prefixes like "ge-" or "ver-" (dénken, but gedácht; schénken but verschénken).

@johannesschutz780

2 ай бұрын

but then there are stressed suffixes like -íeren which show that initial stress is no longer a phonological rule

@weepingscorpion8739

2 ай бұрын

As for ge-, it also existed in Old English and traces of it are still seen in modern English, in the form of prefixes like a- and y-. Ge- was however, already a relic in Old Norse and usually just disappears altogether in daughter languages but you do see doublets like líkr-glíkr, nógr-gnógr, etc. in Old Norse. Faroese has granni (neighbour) as one of these words.

Excellent summary of an important and interesting subject

Also the best Ginger Ale. Hands down.

Great video.

Do you have any insights into word order in Germanic languages, esp. how we get to the situation in Standard German where finite verbs in 'independent clauses' are rigidly in second position and then everything else gets tacked on the end in reverse order of subordination? Could that S(Aux/V)O((((V)V)V)V) word order be understood as another kind of Wackernagel's law? Also, how far back do tense and voice auxiliaries go in Germanic? I sort of wonder if, even though Latin habere and Germanic haban are false friends, their parallel adoption as past markers in Germanic and Romance might not be a coincidence.

Thanks for sharing. Very educative.

Very enlightening. I'd always thought that Verner's Law specifically pertained to the Low German -> High German shift. Clearly not!

Your videos are truly excellent, but the audio is very quiet.

@TitaniusAnglesmith

2 ай бұрын

They tend to be, but this one actually seems louder than usual

@mytube001

2 ай бұрын

Sound seems fine to me here.

@NG-lq8lc

2 ай бұрын

I agree. I often listen to Dr. Crawford’s videos while driving and for some of them I struggle to hear even at my car’s max volume.

@briantaylor9475

2 ай бұрын

He speaks quietly. He addressed this numerous times. It is the way he is. Basically, many of us have easily learned to live with it.

@michaelre7556

2 ай бұрын

@@briantaylor9475Old Norse ASMR?

So, something that I have noticed is that Old Norse does not allow voiceless fricatives in non-initial positions, only voiced. But what I haven't quite figured out is whether this is solely due to Grimm's and Verner's Laws or is there another sound change that sort of "blanket" changes all voiceless fricatives into voiced ones? Like what is the story behind words like *ferÞuz (cognate with Latin porTus) which becomes fjǫrÐr? It's something I'd really like to know a little bit more about.

@ThorirPP

2 ай бұрын

it is a later change in old norse. I don't remember exactly when it would have happened (based on runic evidence), but basically the voiceless fricatives þ and f became voiced inside of words, fusing with β and ð (with the exception of nþ and lþ, which instead became nn and ll). h however just disappeared inside words This effectively made the distinction between voicing of the fricatives non existent, hence why old norse could write f for both the voiced and unvoiced sound, and þ for both þ and ð (as seen in many manuscripts) This actually also happened in old english, but there s also voiced, giving the alternation of gras/to graze, bath/to bathe, staff/staves etc. Unlike in old norse however, ð and þ didn't mix because ð had already become d, so dead and death were distinct

@weepingscorpion8739

2 ай бұрын

@@ThorirPP Cheers, man. This one little sound change has bugged me for a while and it is good to now know for sure. Thank you again! :)

Wezen (Dutch).

Is "is" vs. "are" also an example of Verner's law effecting the verb "To be"?

@talideon

2 ай бұрын

Yep, though "are" is a bit of a complicated one. OE had "sind" and "earon", but the latter was a regionalism. The latter was indeed due to Verner's law. It seems that ON influence is what made "earon" eventually displace "sind".

Are there any female norse names that involve weaponry? like female archers, etc

@faithlesshound5621

2 ай бұрын

Brunhilda (Brynhildr) means armour - conflict. Do you count armour as weaponry? But a video I saw about elves yesterday said generally only elf-maidens were allowed to carry and use weapons in Norse mythology, not human women. Many of their gender roles were reversed relative to humans. We could consider them LGBQT+.

@Liethen

2 ай бұрын

Not what you asked for but here is a reverse instance. Gun (as in pew pew, bang bang) comes from the name Lady Gunhilda, which was a really big crossbow. Gunhilda comes from Gunnhildr. Technically it means battle-battle, but is typically meant to mean lady of war.

@MrKorton

2 ай бұрын

Any name starting with Geir- means "spear-" , any name starting with Hjálm- means "helmet", any name starting with Hjör- means "sword"-.Any name starting with Odd- means "weapon". And like said above, any name starting with Bryn- is "armour." Only name related to archery I can think of is male: Bogi: "Bow".

z to r must take long time and a lot of laziness.

How to spell Storm Breaker in old norse language. I think Marvel overlook old norse language when they give new weapon name Storm breaker should be in old norse words name language.