{"id":70396,"date":"2019-02-13T22:43:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T05:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=70396"},"modified":"2019-02-16T20:35:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T03:35:26","slug":"linguistic-change-with-a-brief-excursus-on-sausage-bacon-and-the-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/02\/linguistic-change-with-a-brief-excursus-on-sausage-bacon-and-the-like.html","title":{"rendered":"Linguistic change, with a brief excursus on sausage, bacon, and the like"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a>
A statue of the great German poet Walther von der Vogelweide (ca. 1170-ca. 1230 AD) that stands in the now-Italian town of Bolzano, the capital of South Tyrol, which is known in German as Bozen (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

You may perhaps have heard of the classical \u201cfallacy of the beard,\u201d which is also called the \u201ccontinuum fallacy.\u201d \u00a0One of the ways that it is used is to claim that there is no meaningful distinction between X and Y because no clear and distinct line can be drawn between them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A plain illustration of the fallacy, and apparently the one from which it derives one of its names, would be to argue that there is no difference between being bearded and being clean shaven. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because plucking one hair from a man\u2019s beard doesn\u2019t make him clean shaven. \u00a0Nor does plucking two. \u00a0And no obvious point occurs where plucking a single hair makes him suddenly clean shaven where, immediately before, he had been bearded.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I thought of that logical issue when reading this interesting article:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere Do New Languages Come From?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve often thought of how it is that Dutch and German became separate languages. \u00a0They stem from a common ancestor, and they\u2019re clearly separate languages today. \u00a0But at one point, exactly, did they separate? \u00a0When do regional variations become \u201cdialects\u201d? \u00a0When do different dialects become distinct \u201clanguages\u201d? \u00a0Manifestly, there isn\u2019t a single date that can be identified for the separation of Dutch and German. \u00a0The change happened very gradually.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Old English of Beowulf,<\/em>\u00a0which was composed somewhere between AD 700 and AD 1000, is very different from today\u2019s English. \u00a0But when, exactly, did Old English cease? \u00a0When, precisely, did Modern English begin?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A somewhat different issue, but still linguistic-historical: \u00a0I remember being struck once in traveling from the German-speaking Swiss capital of Bern to the French-speaking Swiss city of Fribourg. \u00a0They\u2019re about 23 miles apart. \u00a0And Fribourg obviously has Germanic roots, since its name is a form of the very-German Freiburg<\/em>. \u00a0How do such things happen? \u00a0Where exactly is the last German-speaking house along the road between them, and the first French-speaking house?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And once, when I asked a question in the tourist information office in the beautiful northern Italian town of Bolzano, I was amazed to hear the young woman behind the counter ask the young woman next to her for help with it in German<\/em>. \u00a0And then, walking out of that office, I noticed a statue in the square of Walther von der Vogelweide, one of the greatest of the medieval German Minnes\u00e4nger<\/em> or troubadours. \u00a0(See the discussion of the Wartburg in my immediately previous blog entry<\/a>.) \u00a0It turns out that Bolzano is, to a large degree, a German-speaking Italian town \u2014 though all of its residents speak Italian, as well.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a follow-up to my two posts on meat-eating and diet (\u201cA note on veganism and vegetarianism (1)\u201d<\/a> and \u201cA note on veganism and vegetarianism (2)\u201d<\/a>), how about this?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAvoid these \u2018ultraprocessed\u2019 foods and you might live longer\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walther von der Vogelweide lived only about sixty years. \u00a0I wonder whether, being a German speaker, he ate a lot of Wurst<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 You may perhaps have heard of the classical \u201cfallacy of the beard,\u201d which is also called the \u201ccontinuum fallacy.\u201d \u00a0One of the ways that it is used is to claim that there is no meaningful distinction between X and Y because no clear and distinct line can be drawn between them. \u00a0 A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3385,3394,3400,3397,3388,3391,3382],"class_list":["post-70396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bolzano","tag-dialect","tag-fallacy-of-the-beard","tag-language","tag-languages","tag-linguistic-change","tag-walther-von-der-vogelweide"],"yoast_head":"\nLinguistic change, with a brief excursus on sausage, bacon, and the like<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    You may perhaps have heard of 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