The German Question, Part Four

Updated slightly 6/30/2015

At this point in our story, it should be noted that the Danes were also by now a separate and distinct Germanic group, but we aren’t truly finished with the Danes, as they will be involved in what became northern Germany for quite some time. The area in question is what is generally known as Schleswig, a part of the post-World War Two German state of Schleswig-Holstein.

As the Roman Empire declined, the Germanic tribe the Alemanni* took over much of the regions known as “Alsace” and “Lorraine”, but the Alemanni were then conquered by the related Germanic tribe, the Franks. These two areas were later included in the “middle kingdom” by the Treaty of Verdun (see Part Three), but it wasn’t long before they were conquered, and became a part of the German-dominated Holy Roman Empire.

Similarly, in the area of what is modern Switzerland, the Alemanni settled in a large part of the middle and eastern sections, with the western areas being under the control of the Burgundians. The Burgundians were a Germanic tribe whose members spoke an East Germanic dialect, and they had long since been seen as a distinct Germanic element.** The Franks also conquered this region, but eventually the entire area of modern Switzerland came under control of the Holy Roman Empire, although the Latin-based French language had already overtaken any Germanic dialects in the western areas, and to this day, these areas are French speaking, with slightly more than 20% of Swiss nationals speaking French.*** The extreme southern part of Switzerland was, and still is, Italian speaking (about 8%). There is also a small Romansch-speaking area of Switzerland (less than 1%).**** Nearly 70% of Swiss nationals speak German to this day.^

So we have progressed to about 1000 A.D., and we’re beginning to see “some” borders develop around the general area of Germanic-speaking people in the western sections of Europe. In fact, it might now be more appropriate to start calling these people “Germans,” and their language “German,” although just like other languages of those times, there certainly was no standard language, but rather a great number of dialects. Obviously there were also many non-German speakers within this area, and this mixture would often prove to be a problem as time passed. (A Word History is below the notes)

*The modern Alsatian-German dialect traces back to the Alemanni tribal dialect, while the German dialect in Lorraine traces back to the Franks. The German dialects in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, far western Austria and in the general area of Stuttgart, Germany, all trace back to the Alemanni.

** Burgundy, a province of France, is of course named after the Germanic Burgundians, who ruled that general area prior to being overtaken by the Franks.

*** Again, the Franks conquered much of Gaul, but eventually the Latin dialects spoken there absorbed the Franks’ Germanic dialects, although the name for the country became “France,” named after the Franks, and the language was called “French,” after the language of the Franks. Confusing, but true.

**** Romansch (also frequently spelled Romansh) developed from the Latin spoken in these areas during the time of actual Roman rule. It is “similar” to some dialects of southern France and northern Italy.

^ Within the German language world; that is, native German speakers, regardless of country, people have tended to grow up speaking their own regional dialect, as well as “standard” German. By “standard,” I mean the language taught in the schools. The Swiss are no exception, as they still use their own broad dialect (which has some regional variations of its own), but they also speak and write in standard German, but with some Swiss distinctiveness, especially in governmental and food terminology. So, the point is, a person from Berlin and a person from Bern (Switzerland) can easily communicate with one another in standard German, but not so much so in their respective dialects. Berlin dialect is called "Berlinerisch," and the dialect of Bern is called "Berndeutsch," in standard German, but "Bärndütsch," in the dialect itself.

WORD HISTORY:
Fee-The history of this word may surprise you somewhat. It goes back to Indo European “peku,” which meant “cattle.” The history is rather difficult to follow, since many of the Indo European languages had a form of this word (“peku”), and it is tough to tell when one form was borrowed from another language, or when it was already present in a language, but perhaps reinforced by a similar term from another language. From what I can tell, there must have been an Old Germanic spin-off (spelled with an “f” at the beginning), although I cannot find it. Whatever the term, some of the Germanic dialects began to give additional meanings to their own forms of that term, as, for example, Old English had “feoh,” which meant “property, money,” besides the meaning “cattle,” Gothic had “faihu,” which meant “wealth, money,” Frankish had “fehu-od,” meaning “cattle-property” (literally "cattle wealth" or "wealthy in cattle"), Old Norse had “fe,” also meaning “cattle, money,” and Old High German had "fihu," meaning "cattle." The “cattle, money, property, wealth” connection is that if you owned cattle in those times, you had property, and therefore you were thought to have some wealth/money. Latin seemingly borrowed the term from Frankish (“fehu-od”) as “feudum” or “feodum,” which also had the connotation of “property given for service” (you can see the emerging meaning of modern “fee” in this), although Old Latin had a form of the original Indo European word “peku,” as “pecus” meant “cattle,” and “pecunia” meant “money” (and still does in modern Italian). Old French, a Latin-based language, had “fie/fieu,” and the Normans, who spoke a French dialect, brought their form of the term to England with their successful invasion in late 1066 A.D. The term “feudal” developed from the same word during those times, and “fee” did actually mean “a feudal estate” back then, although that meaning has now died out in English (William the Conqueror gave land to his Norman knights who helped him subdue England as his payment to them; thus “land for service”). Whether this meaning combined with the extended meaning (“money") of the similar and related Old English word, if it was even still around, is unclear to me, but it would make sense (maybe TOO MUCH sense), that we would then have the modern meaning of “money for service.” Modern German still has "Vieh," meaning "cattle" (the "V" is pronounced "F," [all German nouns are capitalized] the "ieh" is pronounced as a long "e," giving us a pronunciation much like the English word "fee").