Proto-Germanic

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NovusPrime313
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Proto-Germanic

Post by NovusPrime313 »

So out of sheer curiosity (and due to possibly way too much Europa Universalis 4 role-playing), I thought I would try to learn about Proto-Germanic and hopefully make a conlang from it. Problem is I'm having a hard time finding an actual lexicon/dictionary, assuming such a thing exists at all in public form. Does anyone have an Idea where I might find either a root list or a dictionary on Proto-Germanic?

I'm open to any and all sources about its grammer as well if that's all that exists so far.

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Re: Proto-Germanic

Post by mèþru »

Welcome to the ZBB! Have some pickles and tea! (It's a board tradition for welcoming new members)
ImageImage

Just google "Proto-Germanic dictionary" (I did it without quotes) and plenty of relevant results should pop up with no digging necessary.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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NovusPrime313
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Re: Proto-Germanic

Post by NovusPrime313 »

I appreciate the gifts ( I just had pickles, nuggets, and sweet tea so believe me I'm thrilled); however googling the subject has recently so far only got me into the grammar. The only dictionary/wordlist I could find so far is in German, and isn't easily translatable. Granted I'm using google translate but still.

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Re: Proto-Germanic

Post by Sumelic »

Wiktionary has a fair amount of pages. There might be some inaccuracies, inconsistencies or non-mainstream stuff, since it's publicly edited, but that shouldn't really matter I would think for conlanging purposes. The format is a bit awkward though, since apparently each entry is titled according to the format "Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/[actual lemma]". https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?t ... nic_lemmas

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Re: Proto-Germanic

Post by mèþru »

Try googling the exact phrase I wrote without quotes. Using the US version of google, I found six dictionaries in the top of the first page.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Proto-Germanic

Post by KathTheDragon »

Wiktionary definitely has the single most extensive dictionary I've come across. The pages also generally have inflection tables, and there are a number of appendices on the grammar. I think Wikipedia also has a couple of good articles.

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Re: Proto-Germanic

Post by mèþru »

I concur that Wiktionary is a really good resource. You can also find some other Proto-Germanic roots on the articles on Proto-Indo-European roots.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
kårroť

NovusPrime313
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Re: Proto-Germanic

Post by NovusPrime313 »

Thank you all for your input. Apologies for being dense; I've spent a far amount of time trying to consolidate information and I'm slightly frustrated.

Now I feel retarded. Thanks anyway though!

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Re: Proto-Germanic

Post by spanick »

Among the germlangers I know, it seems that wiktionary is the #1 resource. You can google "Proto-Germanic Lemmas" and the page on Wiktionary you get basically has all the morphemes and links to specific types (nouns, prefixes, prepositions, etc.) the alternative way to go about it to to search in wiktionary and English word and trace its etymology back to PG, or if the word in question is non-Germanic and no alternative is given, then click on the translations tab and check out the what the German or Icelandic words are. They might have etymologies.

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Re: Proto-Germanic

Post by Ephraim »

There are some Germanic etymological dictionaries with Proto-Germanic lemmas (at least two fairly recent):
Orel's dictionary appears to be available for free (with the author's permission) so I linked to it above. Fick et al. is old and in German but it is also available for free.

There is a very short English–Proto Germanic word list here, which might be useful for looking up Proto-Germanic lemmas in a more detailed etymological dictionary.
http://www.angelfire.com/ga3/arkan/pgmnlex.html

It may also be worth looking at etymological dictionaries of individual languages. Some may be found here:
http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/etc/aa_texts.html

For Swedish, in Swedish:
http://runeberg.org/svetym/
http://www.saob.se

There are also a number of grammars of Proto-Germanic (or partial grammars, concentrating on say the nominal forms).
Winfred P. Lehmann – A Grammar of Proto-Germanic is available online for free, although the site doesn't seem to work at the moment.
http://liberalarts.utexas.edu/lrc/resou ... oks-online

There is a pdf-version here which does appear to be working:
https://folksprak.org/common/material/p ... rmanic.pdf

Lehmann's reconstruction may be outdated in some respects. A more modern reconstruction is found in Ringe, Don (2006) – From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, and a second edition was published just days ago (if you want to buy it, you may want to wait). This is the first volume in a series. There is a second volume, The Development of Old English, which might be interesting for it's reconstruction of Proto-(North) West Germanic, among other things.

Some nominal paradigms, and a list of references, is found here:
http://tcoimom.suntuubi.com/?cat=4

And, as has already been mentioned, there is Wiktionary which is really good. The Wikipedia article on Proto-Germanic should also be used as a complement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Germanic_language

Note that different authors use different orthographic conventions for PG. There is probably more variation than for PIE, for example. Some authors (Orel) write the voiced fricative~stop series with symbols for voiced fricatives (<ƀ đ ȝ> in Orel's case), while others (Ringe, Kroonen) use symbols for plain voiced stops. Some authors (Orel) use <x> for the voiceless velar fricative, others (Kroonen, Ringe) use <h>. Some use ʷ for labiovelars, others use plain w (they did not contrast with Cw clusters). There is also some variation in how nasal vowels, overlong (trimoraic) vowels and *ē₂ are written. Some of those might not be reconstructed for PG by some authors.

Reconstructions may also differ, notably in the verbal morphology. Both Orel and Kroonen have weak verbs in *–ōjan–(an) and *–ēn–(an), which you won't find in Ringe or on Wiktionary. At least for the first category, this may partly be a chronological difference (Ringe would reconstruct medial *j for an earlier stage of PG).

Since Wiktionary is so popular among conlangers, the reconstruction found there (and on Wikipedia) seems to have become the standard reconstruction in this community, but it's good to be aware of the variation if you intend to be reading up on PG outside of Wiktionary and Wikipedia.

The Wiki-reconstruction is very close to Ringe, but there are some minor differences, notably in the reconstruction of overlong (trimoraic) vowels. Ringe reconstruct a lot more overlong vowels, I think Wiktionary/Wikipedia mostly have them word finally in some nominal forms. Ringe write the overlong vowels with a double macron <ō̄> while Wiktionary/Wikipedia use a circumflex <ô>. Also, Wiktionary, marginally, has an *ē₂, at least in *hē₂r.

So for the Class II weak verb meaning ‘to fish’, you may find the following forms from different sources:
Lehmann: *fiskōn
Orel: *fiskōjanan
Kroonen: *fiskōjan-
Wiktionary: *fiskōną
Ringe: *fiskō̄ną
(if it is hard to see, Ringe has an overlong ō̄ with a double macron)

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