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Saxons article, language section

Hi Ermenrich, I know you've been working on related topics so I wonder if you would mind taking a look. I've been playing with the history related sections for some time, but I notice that the language section "stands out" with its strong Seebold based claims, and no competing perspectives. As I understand it there is no consensus about whether there is a major long term discontinuity between Frisian and Saxon? Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:58, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

The section looks problematic to me - I'm at a conference right now so not able to look into it further, but I'll try to when I get back (although it's also the first week of teaching then).--Ermenrich (talk) 22:47, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: I agree with @Ermenrich, that section is problematic—to say the least. It misrepresents the position of Old Saxon in relation to other languages at that time and also the position of its contemporary descendant dialects ("can all be considered to be types of German"—seriously? Sallands, Tweants...?). It also misrepresent its only source (Seebold 2003), who doesn't talk about "Weser Rhine Germanic" at all and does not claim that the entirety of Jutland was West Germanic speaking, etc. etc. And Seebold's narrative (which is mainly about the fluidity of "ethnonyms" and the resulting 'mismatch' between linguistic and "ethnic" markers) is one out of many, albeit a very interesting one. Ermenrich and I have collected a corpus of useful sources about the history and classification of the West Germanic languages, I'm sure we can revise the section to give a better picture of the languages associated with the various ancient groups that were called 'Saxons' at some point in history, and of Old Saxon "proper" and its modern descendants. –Austronesier (talk) 12:23, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

@Austronesier: that's good. I hoped you guys were working on similar topics, because I know enough to realize that this is over-simplified. (Pretty maps though.) I have read some of Seebold's articles, and other relevant material, and I think it needs adjustment on the Saxons article, but I don't see myself going down that path anytime soon. Whatever tweaks I've made in that section are not going to have helped much. Possibly that section should also make more use of links to more specialized articles on WP.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:29, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster - just so you know, I am still thinking about this. I'm just rather busy at the moment and trying not to get sucked into Wikipedia editing until I have a more open schedule.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:01, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Good to hear :) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:17, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

@ThaesOfereode: - perhaps this is something you, as someone informed on Germanic linguistics, might look into?--Ermenrich (talk) 13:53, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Sure thing. @Andrew Lancaster: My understanding is that there's been significant issues matching the linguistic and the archeological evidence. I would argue that the linguistic evidence is pretty conclusive that the Frisian, English, and Saxon comprised an Ingvaeonic subgroup which served mostly as a dialect continuum along the North Sea before splitting off into three (not two) languages in the 5th century. This is the majority linguistic view, but not the only one. Recommend Stiles (1995) for a look at the lingusitic evidence for a Ingvaeonic isogloss. I'm not an archeologist, but my understanding is that the archeological evidence supports the idea that the English (whatever their composition) and the Frisians were linked somehow thereafter. Colleran (2019) recounts that there's actually no discontinuity between Angles and Frisians from a genetic perspective:

The extra-linguistic evidence indicates that the Frisians of Roman times deserted the Frisian coast almost completely in the 4th century (A.D.). In the 5th century, Frisia was populated again by the same waves of Angles who colonized Britain (Härke, 2011; genetic studies above). The Anglo-Frisian ancestor suggested by the neogrammarians is a historical reality, at least in a genetic sense. The Frisians are really Angles.

Versloot (2021), Buczek (2020), and Bazelmans (2009) are good reviews of the competing linguistic and archeological evidence.

Re: the Saxons, the archeological evidence shows that the Frisii, whoever they were (probably not the Frisians we know today), evacuated the Frisian coast around the 4th century and Germanic tribes reappear there in the 5th century. I highly recommend Flierman (2021) in the same compendium as Versloot; he discusses the Frisian–Saxon situation in great detail, though it is less expressive on the linguistic side of things. For a more linguistic look at the Saxons, if you have access to the Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics (2018), Vol 2 deals with the Germanic linguistic framework is authoritative if you can read linguist-ese.

I don't have much else in the way of recommendation other than evaluations of its relationship to Frisian and English, which I still recommend you consider, especially Bremmer (2009), which is authoritative. There's not really a dedicated piece to the Saxons, but it is interspersed throughout. I'll see if I can't dig up anything else in the next little while on the Saxons specifically, but my personal life is going to be a little hectic too here shortly. ThaesOfereode (talk) 15:56, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Reversion in error

I believe your reversion of my grammatical correction was in error—I've explained on the Tacitus on Jesus Talk page. Thanks! Ekpyros (talk) 16:15, 23 March 2025 (UTC)