'HALB-ESTNISCH' IN ALTLIVLANDZU DEN ESTNISCHEN PREDIGTEN VON GEORG MÜLLER (UM 1600)

• Authors: Hetzer A.
• Languages of publication: DE

Abstracts

EN

The aim of the article is to give an overview of borrowings from German (loan words, loan constructions) in Modern Estonian which result from enduring language contacts. The lexical borrowings most likely have their origin in the Middle ages, since they display characteristic traits of Middle Low German, the language of Hanseatic towns. Around 1600 A.D. the Baltic Germans adopted a variety of High German, so that we can exclude recent borrowings. The most voluminous linguistic monument of early Estonian is the collection of sermons by Georg Müller (1598-1606), discovered in 1884 and edited in 1891. These texts display an abundance of 'mistakes' (definite article, no gradation, elative case instead of genitive etc.), but obviously those are not caused by insufficient knowledge of Estonian. The same mistakes occur in written documents before and after Müller, up to the 2nd half of the 17th century. Moreover, they are corroborated in the first Estonian grammar (by Heinrich Stahl, 1637). This state of things leads to the hypothesis, that since the Middle ages a kind of lingua franca or Creole was shaped that served the German settlers in communicating with local people (even in contracts and letters). It seems that this development was stopped by cataclysmic war, crop failure, famine and plague during the period from 1560 to 1720. As a result, the country (Livonia) lost most of its population, and the continuity of German settlers was interrupted. The stratum of Estonians living in close contact with Germans in a dozen of towns was extinguished and new people coming from the countryside did not continue the old speech habits.

Keywords

EN

CREOLE IN LIVONIA; MÜLLER GEORG

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk
• Journal: Lingua Posnaniensis
• Year: 2005
• Volume: 47
• Pages: 65-74
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Hetzer A.

• A.Hetzer, Universitaet Bremen, FB 10, Postfach 33 04 40, D 28 334 Bremen, Germany

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

06PLAAAA00671691