Additional "German" languages?

Does anyone know what sort of Germanic language the Buri spoke? There a little known people associated with the Suevi who settled in modern day Portugal in the fifth century. I wonder if the Buri had settled around Portus Cale and kept their language, what sounds would I hear.
 
There are a couple of diffenrences between Luxemburgs and German. You could classify as a seperate language. Just like Norse and Danish are seperate languages. Or Dutch and Afrikaans. As I said, it is mainly classified as a language to create a seperate identity from the Germans. If Luxemburg was German, it would probably be considered a dialect, but as I (and others have) said, the difference between a language and dialect is rather arbitrary. Afrikaans could easily be considered a Dutch dialect and would have been classified that way if South Africa had remained a Dutch colony. So is Luxemburgish a seperate language? Sure, why not. If they want it to be. There is no good reason not to consider it a seperate language.

Mind you it is often a political choice. The Netherlands is relatively lenient to consider Dutch dialects regional languages, while Flanders is less lenient. Because of the language struggles in Belgium Flanders wants as much Dutch speakers as possible. So Limburgish is a regional language in the Netherlands, while it is not in Flanders, even though both are very similar.
You could, but it's a meaningless classification if it's not backed up and if it ends up still with a state of diglossia. It would be as if Dutch was considered a separate language but the majority of people learned mostly German or English in scholl while paying only lipservice to the idea of Dutch being its own distinct language, add on top of that Luxemburgish is extremely small.
 
Last edited:
You could, but it's a meaningless classification if it's not backed up and if it ends up still with a state of diglossia. It would be as if Dutch was considered a separate language but the majority of people learned mostly German or English in scholl while paying only lipservice to the idea of Dutch being its own distinct language, add on top of that Luxemburgish is extremely small.
As I said, it is a political choice.

I don't mind if you don't recognise Luxemburgish as a seperate language. It is kind of like me not recognising Kosovo. It doesn't realy matter if a rather unimportant person does not recognizes a language (or country), but if you don't like it. Sure go ahead.
 
As I said, it is a political choice.

I don't mind if you don't recognise Luxemburgish as a seperate language. It is kind of like me not recognising Kosovo. It doesn't realy matter if a rather unimportant person does not recognizes a language (or country), but if you don't like it. Sure go ahead.
It's not about recognizing, it's about having an actual difference on the ground as opposed to having merely formal differences.
 
It's not about recognizing, it's about having an actual difference on the ground as opposed to having merely formal differences.
But it does have that. More people speak Luxemburgish than many other languages and the difference between German and Luxemburgish is larger than the difference between several other recognised languages. So, since the rules for regognising something as a seperate language are arbitrairy and Luxemburgish falls ithin the arbitrary parameters, it is a seperate language. Also I like Luxemburg, great country. So if they want their dialect recognised as a seperate language? Fine by me.
 
But it does have that. More people speak Luxemburgish than many other languages and the difference between German and Luxemburgish is larger than the difference between several other recognised languages. So, since the rules for regognising something as a seperate language are arbitrairy and Luxemburgish falls ithin the arbitrary parameters, it is a seperate language. Also I like Luxemburg, great country. So if they want their dialect recognised as a seperate language? Fine by me.
Well sure, but it's effectively a very weak language in terms of prestige even within its own home country, so much so that it is virtually 4th place to German, French and possibly English with a relatively large margin. I feel like in the context of this thread it wouldn't really count considering it's doing barely better than High German speeches within Germany and Austria. If formalities is everything that matters, then good for you but I think there is more to it.
 
Bavarian nationalism results in an independent Bavaria and Austro-Bavarian being considered a separate language from the Berlin-Based German Standard. Not too inconceivable considering the lack of mutual intelligibility between southern Bavarians and Prussians.

France doesn't kill off Alsatian, resulting in its preservation and officiation as a language.

A Jewish state is established somewhere in eastern Europe as a buffer polity and is officially Yiddish-speaking. Crimea, East Prussia (post-WW2), part of Belarus/Poland/Ukraine/Lithuania - somewhere.

Flemish and Dutch end up considered separate languages.

Preserve Scots more and you'd have another "German" language.

France retains the Rhineland but isn't quite able to get the locals to stop speaking German. They instead speak a variety of German in which the vocabulary is around half French (sort of like how Tajik Farsi is very very Russian-Vocab to the point that it's almost Russian intelligible) and thus linguists declare "Rhenish" to be separate from standard German.
 
Top