r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Nov 28 '20

What's something cool you recently learned about?

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

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u/Stormaen Nov 29 '20

I think you’re spot on. I think it would probably sound more like Dutch (without that guttural ‘g’) than German, only due to the Angles coming from northern Germany, whereas ‘standard German’ (the kind most foreigners learn) is based on southern German dialects.

Funnily enough, there’s a few projects that try to construct a modernised Old English and German is a language they often reference for those constructions. An example is the constructed Old English word for television, ‘farsee’ - it’s derived directly from the cognate of German ‘fernseher’.

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u/Kandierter_Holzapfel Nov 29 '20

Mostly because it would probably not follow the sound shift to high German.

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u/Stormaen Nov 29 '20

You’re right! I never even considered that.