Barbarians - Is the Germanic Language Accurate?

"Barbarians" is a Netflix Show set in Germania in the early first century AD in the run up to the famous victory of the Germanic tribes under Arminius over three Roman legions under Publius Quinctilius Varus at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. In this video I'll take a look at the language being spoken by the "barbarians" those Germanic tribes responsible for the legions' demise and how it's portrayed within the show. I'll be looking at the Proto-Germanic language and how linguists have attempted to reconstruct parts of it and how and why this process is different to the Classical Latin being used by the Roman characters in the series.
Link to Barbarians Trailer:
• Barbarians | Official ...
Link to the Metatron's Video on Latin in Barbarians:
• Barbarians: Is The LAT...
Link to Simon Roper's Video on Reconstructing Proto-Germanic:
• Reconstructing 'Stone'...
Raid the Merch Market:
teespring.com/en-GB/stores/hi...
Go Fund My Windmills (Patreon):
/ historywithhilbert
Join in the Banter on Twitter:
/ historywhilbert
Enter the Fray on Facebook:
/ historywhilbert
Indulge in some Instagram..?(the alliteration needs to stop):
/ historywithhilbert
Music Used:
The Pyre by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
The Escalation by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
"Sunday Dub” - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Send me an email if you'd be interested in doing a collaboration! [e-mail]
#Netflix #Barbarians #Deutsch

[@nuster7816]

"Is the Germanic Language Accurate?" Answer of 2 Seconds: No, its todays High German

[@uwehansen2915]

From a German that are Modern German it woudt by better if it wear in dialekt High German not that old

[@dividendgrowth]

Exactly, I'm quite surprised they let them speak very modern German (not even the German I hear from those WW2 broadcasts)

[@nuster7816]

@@dividendgrowth but those WW2 German is basicly also modern High German. Just the way you speak changed a bit

[@forgalzz7]

@@uwehansen2915 Exactly. It's not the linguistic accuracy, but they sound like modern city dwellers, which just feels off. They should have gone for some rural regional dialect.

[@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc]

@@forgalzz7 Definitely, not the language of barbarians, more like some café sipping engineer or a college grad. I just can't take the show that seriously anymore since I was thinking of watching it when I found out the Latin was old school. They could have at least used some form of Old High or Low German to give it that grit.

[@aaron9828]

The question "is Germanic the same thing as German?" is easier in German: "Ist Germanisch das gleiche wie deutsch?" and the answer is quite obviously no.

[@pedrolmlkzk]

Blame the goddam Dutch

[@yarnevandenbrouck9227]

@@pedrolmlkzk nah not realy ... only in english you say 'dutch' while we say 'nederlands' and in german 'Niederländisch' .. we call the germans 'duitsers' and the language is 'duits' and the country is duitsland and they the nederlands 'Die Niederlande' so it's was just a confused english guy who did not know who was who....

[@pedrolmlkzk]

@@yarnevandenbrouck9227 up to the 1600s there was little difference in culture from Germany and the Netherlands, so the world "dutch" was used for both, but later the word started being used exclusively to refer for the nethelanders and the world German was used to refer to the ones in the remaining HRE

[@yarnevandenbrouck9227]

@@pedrolmlkzk thanks 😁

[@FightingCucumber]

well pretty sure the germanians didnt call their language germanic. germanic means near men in celtic and was given to them by the celtic gauls.

[@Siegbert85]

"Is the Germanic Language Accurate?" This should be a short video

[@mariokuppers5686]

For sure not. Because Germanic woulld be an mix mostly between Dutch and Frisian Platt with sparkels of any Norse language, Franconian , Saxon and English and than local variants in any village and that doesn´t exist anymore and even native Speakers in that regions wouldn´t understand anything. The closest official spoken language today would be dutch but even that is miles away from old germanic

[@11Survivor]

@@mariokuppers5686 Or they could just use alsatian, considering that's close to what the alamanni spoke and they directly bordered the romans.

[@ayachoo]

@@11Survivor It wouldnt make sense, because Cheruskians didnt speak like them.

[@1997xander]

@@11Survivor y'all could also watch the video. I've had the pleasure of hearing alsatian before. It's a pretty standard allemanic dialect and definitely does not sound anything like the reconstructed proto-germanic language talked about in the video.

[@demoman1596sh]

@@11Survivor Or you could watch the video and recognize that Alsatian as such didn't exist at the time the show is set. The Barbarians would clearly have spoken some form of Proto-Germanic.

[@williamcooke5627]

When Tolkien was at King Edward's School in Birmingham, his form staged a Latin play. It was set in the 4th century,, and Tolkien played the envoy from the Goths and spoke his part in Gothic-or as near it as he as a schooboy could reconstruct it using Joseph Wright's Grammar.

[@historywithhilbert146]

It's still the same grammar we're using in our Gothic endeavours in ASNC today!

[@Sk0lzky]

@@historywithhilbert146 you guys work on Gothic too? That's really cool, do you have a departmental journal or something like that?

[@TerencePetersenAjbro]

If I recall correctly, what we have of Gothic is mainly from a partial translation of the Bible made around 400 by Bishop Ulfila where he used a mixture of Latin and Rune letters.

[@_vinterthorn]

@@TerencePetersenAjbro Yup, it's parts and interpretation of "skeireins aiwaggeljons þairh Iohannen", the Gospel according to John.

[@Fredrikschou]

that´s a pro geek move

[@CelticCari]

me, a native German speaker: expecting a rant on the language and preparing arguments why they couldn't use Germanic languages also me, some minutes later: great education, I want an extended version of this video

[@someinteresting]

Tell us your arguments.

[@CelticCari]

@@someinteresting basically everything explained in the video :D

[@Larrypint]

Here an example of old High german from the 9th century Hildebrandlied, it starts in the 2nd minute . kzbin.info/www/bejne/n16km5KFm9GohMk

[@jarlnils435]

Die hätten auch ruhig für die Cherusker Hildesheimer Platt nehmen können oder Ambergauer Platt. Ist ja deren Siedlungsgebiet gewesen. Oder sonst irgendein Fahlen Platt. Nur kein Küsten Platt oder Harzer Platt. Engern Platt wäre wohl auch für die Cherusker daneben weil die Engern wohl Nachfahren der Angrivarier waren/sind.

[@Christoph2600]

@@jarlnils435 Platt wurde noch nicht gesprochen damals. Es ist sehr alt aber noch nicht so antike alt

[@drts13]

Last time I was this early, Varus didn't notice something was up

[@benjybrasington9508]

Same

[@historywithhilbert146]

Well played ;)

[@Leo_ofRedKeep]

Germanic writers of the 1st century AD are tragically overlooked. Someone ought to do something about it ;-(

[@inotaishu1]

Do you know any or would recommend any?

[@Guiscardo777]

@@inotaishu1 ahahahahahahah! I suspect that you didn't get the irony.. :P

[@inotaishu1]

@@Guiscardo777 Nope, I overlooked the smiley at the end. My bad.

[@kellerkind6169]

@@inotaishu1 Well, it's not a smiley, it's a frowney ;-)

[@historywithhilbert146]

Hear hear! Would love to see more in this vein if done right. Maybe Julius Civilus with the absolute Batavian bois..?

[@RKB74]

As you said, it's a German production, so the main characters speak German. It's just like the main characters in The Grey Zone speak English, even though they're portraying Hungarians.

[@willparker9874]

Hilbert said it himself, proto Germanic has even more complex grama than modern German. No wonder why they didn't dare do it in proto Germanic then 😂

[@gcanaday1]

@Jakob Carøe Lind Yeah..much the same way that modern English still has gender and case, but also only in pronouns, and the cases are cut in half now.

[@TerencePetersenAjbro]

I think the grammar was as complex as classical Sanskrit. Indians will tell you that every language comes from Sanskrit!

[@SuperUser-qt9ph]

Sorry. It is not Proto-Germanic. Proto-Germanic is before Germanic. But the people in that time spoke Germanic. The languages you have to compare are modern German and Germanic.

[@philomelodia]

Nice joke. But, in all seriousness, the complexity of the grammar would not have been an obstacle because Latin has more complex grammar than modern German. It has two more cases for one. The verb system is far more complex as well. Hell, Russian as it is spoken today has arguably more complex grammar than German. Plenty of movies in Russian. What? It’s not ancient? OK. Sanskrit. Eight cases. Very complex grammar. Lots of movies exclusively in Sanskrit.

[@philomelodia]

@@TerencePetersenAjbro A lot of their languages do. Not true for everyone else though.

[@metatronyt]

Very interesting and well made video and thank you for mentioning me. Your Latin pronunciation Is excellent both for Classiclan and Ecclesiastical. Where are you from If I May Ask? Keep up the good work

[@MaestroBlur]

If i remember correctly, he's Dutch (Frisian) but living in England. Also great videos!

[@andreascovano7742]

NORTHUMBRIAN LAD, WITH FRISIAN CHARACTERISTIC!

[@opiwaran354]

A subtle clue to where he's from: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z329f2WOrK-tkKc&ab_channel=HistoryWithHilbert

[@kuroazrem5376]

He's Dutch, from Frisia, but lives in England.

[@jonsmith5626]

@@kuroazrem5376 I thought he was English but had Dutch parents?

[@inotaishu1]

Thank you for saying that German and Germanic are not the same thing. I get so tired of having to say that to people all the time.

[@historywithhilbert146]

Absolutely same my dude! Needed to be said in my opinion.

[@brittakriep2938]

We germans don't have this problem. We call ourself deutsch, when we speak of Germanen , then we mean either all germanic people , or our tribal ancestors before HRE.

[@inotaishu1]

@@brittakriep2938 Aren't you forgetting some of our ancestors then?

[@brittakriep2938]

@@inotaishu1 : To be more exact. With Germanen we mean us Germans ( all persons speaking german/ deutsch) and the dutch,afrikaans, flemmish, english, danish, norwegian, swedish, icelamdic, faroish and scotts( not gaelic ) people. Or the ancestors of this peoples/ nations, before the current nation names had been used. ( What was the start of Germany? 843 when with the treaty of Verdun the frankish empire was devided into three pieces? 911 when in east frankish empire the last Carolingian died? 919 when with saxon Heinrich l the first non frank ruled current Germany????)

[@inotaishu1]

@@brittakriep2938 you haven't answered by question

[@bramhopman5407]

I like the way they did it in thecseries the vikings. Opening in the reconstructed language as new langauges are introduced and then switch to the modern language when you are observing them as one of them.

[@starkraft2506]

This was a cool effect; old Norse and old English are far more well attested though, we are talking about another 800 year gap in history from Teutoburg to Lindisfarne.

[@nerysghemor5781]

@@starkraft2506 Yeah, not only is Old Norse well attested-modern Icelandic is only about 200 years off from it (figuratively speaking).

[@mattilatvala4164]

In Vikings, most Nordic names are pronounced laughably wrong. But, as we can see from the clothes and helmets, it is a near-fantasy series. Here, I think the German language could have been a bit altered to sound ancient.

[@goldminer754]

@@mattilatvala4164 You cant really alter modern high German to sound ancient, I think they should have just spoken old-Saxon or middle low German (its succesor) as it is decently attested and most likely a lot closer to what they spoke in the region around Bielefeld where the battle is supposed to have happened

[@chizzieshark]

@@goldminer754 Nice try, but the battle couldn't possibly have taken place around Bielefeld because Bielefeld doesn't exist ;) (Sorry, I couldn't resist!)

[@IHateEveryone]

Everyone should always only speak the most obscure language that could possibly be somewhat appropriate for any situation. That’s why I pondered learning Catalan to piss off my Spanish teachers back in school.

[@CorvinTheSwasian]

Great idea - this comment is brought to you by the swissgerman speaking gang

[@rmcewan10]

There's a very bad series on Netflix right now called La Catedral del Mar, which is set Catalonia in the 14th Century. The language they speak? Modern Castilian. That isn't the only problem with the series, but I was astonished that they didn't bother to hire Catalan actors and instead decided to go with a complete ahistorical and have the characters speak what at the time would probably have been a language they hadn't ever heard and which they would have only understood a little of.

[@rmcewan10]

@@CorvinTheSwasian Netflix also has a series called Freud (which is better but still not great) which naturally is set in fin de siecle Vienna, and the working class characters in the show speak like full, proper Viennese dialect. I consider my German to be fairly good, but I barely understood a word.

[@rmcewan10]

@Brantius Riximium Well, just in terms of historical accuracy, in the first episode alone you can see a man digging a field with his bare hands (wildly inaccurate - fields were ploughed by oxen) and a noble arbitrarily taking advantage of the almost certainly mythical droit de seigneur, before demanding the main character rape his own wife, for which she bears a grudge against him, despite the fact that it was involuntary and done at the point of a sword (which, if nothing else, is psychologically inaccurate). It completely misrepresents the relations between feudal knights and serfs - these sorts of crimes might have taken place during war in foreign territory, but they broke with both medieval law and custom and would likely have been exilable or even capital offences for the nobles involved. I’m from Great Britain and am indifferent to the question of Catalan independence. I don’t see what the ethnic makeup of modern Catalonia has to do with conditions in the 14th century. It’s also worth noting that by the 14th century Catalan had expanded down the entire east coast of Spain and would certainly have been the dominant language among the peasants in Catalonia. Navarro-Aragonese, unsurprisingly, was confined to Aragon proper, and anyway, having looked at some comparative vocabulary, Aragonese looks to be more immediately intelligible with Catalan than it does with Castilian. That’s not to say that Catalan peasants couldn’t communicate with Aragonese peasants - even if they couldn’t fully understand one another in their native tongues, they could also speak to one another in that Mediterranean pidgin that even the Manchegan Sancho speaks in the Quixote. Nevertheless, it is absurd that their language or their lingua franca would be Castilian, which was still largely confined, again unsurprisingly, to the historical Kingdom of Castile.

[@rmcewan10]

@@user-xr5up3ed3z the show I was watching I watched with German subtitles on during the parts in dialect because it wasn’t worth the effort trying to guess what they were saying. I suspect a native German speaker might enjoy more success, but I gave up after about five minutes of it.

[@AnthonyEvelyn]

If Hilbert likes Barbarians it can be watched.

[@internet5076]

#ad

[@robinwillmann6693]

@Dan oz shouldn't be compared with TLK or Vikings. This show is good and historically more accurate than TLK or Vikings but not as good as them

[@historywithhilbert146]

I feel like I'm going to get a lot of flack for this..

[@elwray3506]

@@historywithhilbert146 Not at all. German here and I´m glad you pointed out, that any attempt of using Proto-Germanic in this series would be quite a stretch. It should be obvious, that we know Old Latin way better than the tongue of people, who really didn´t have much of a written language at that time. There is a reason why in German(y) we refer to ourselves as (die) Deutsch(en). The English language still uses "Germany" or "German", which can be confusing at times, because it´s so close to "Germanic".

[@lvd8122]

@@robinwillmann6693 honestly I would say its actually better then those two, but that is also because I prefer a series that tells one overarching story without to many sidetracks, which really isn't possible if you have a lot of episodes(15+ I'd guess). Also helps if you understand German, it really changes how the story feels

[@Kaiyanwang82]

"Arguably spoken in Switzerland too" ... uh, well... about that...

[@linchen008]

nooot really

[@HoganTon]

*Laughs at you in swiss*

[@Harrock]

Grüzi mit enandr

[@thedogman7846]

Both high german and swiss german are spoken in switzerland so. It‘s true

[@alexanderthompson5713]

When I watched this show on Netflix, the Germans were speaking English. Now I'm really confused.

[@rajsheaj]

You could have changed language in settings....

[@alexanderthompson5713]

@Dan oz Holy crap. They did such a good job with it that I didn't even notice.

[@alexanderthompson5713]

​@Dan oz Personally I don't like vikings very much. The Last Kingdom is pretty good. I'm a huge fan of the Saxon Stories book series that its based off of, much better than the show. Barbarians is definitely better than Vikings and as good or maybe even better than the Last Kingdom.

[@asor4653]

Maybe the producer thinks that it's okay as long as it's a germanic language...

[@carlosandleon]

@@asor4653 No it's a german show for german audience. It's like game of thrones people speaking english

[@appleslover]

I know German and a bit of dutch(currently working on it) So it's fun and interesting to compare the two. Can't wait to start with Scandinavian languages. I remember my first contact with Dutch 😂😂 it sounded and seemed like a mispronounced and misspelled German. I couldn't say this for Romance languages though. Note: Dutch people, please don't kill me for saying that.

[@benjybrasington9508]

Ich spreche Deutsch

[@junior7841]

What is your native language?

[@appleslover]

@@junior7841 Arabic

[@Dasbelg]

To be fair a lot of the vocabulary in duth and german is basicly the same word with slitely different spelling and prenounciation. If you take a broad definitian of wat constitutes a language you could ague (altho you wouldn't necessarily be right) that they're just two dialects of the same language.

[@appleslover]

@@DasbelgLol, that's what I do considering Arabic dialects are as much as (if not even more) different from one another but still seen as one language. I take a German word when I don't know its dutch equivalent and Dutchify it. And un/surprisingly a lot of the times it's correct. Just like how I used to do with German For example: to suck - suckieren To click - klicken Fandom - fansschiff

[@gareththompson2708]

There is the question of whether or not we have reconstructed a large enough vocabulary of Proto-Germanic for actors to deliver all of their lines in it for the duration of an entire movie or TV series. The rule of thumb that I was taught was that you need around 2000 words to express any concept (with a few awkward circumlocutions), around 5000 to sound like a native speaker, around 10000 to speak as well as a high school graduate, and around 20000 to fully appreciate a difficult novel. If we have reconstructed 2000 words or more of Proto-Germanic we might be able to get away with a TV show spoken entirely in it, though we would be very grateful that there are no native speakers of Proto-Germanic around to criticize. If we don't have enough words then perhaps we could fill in the gaps with Gothic and hope no one notices? There is also the added difficulty in training the actors to speak the language well enough to deliver their lines naturally. But perhaps we could get away with fewer words if, instead of a movie or TV show, we were using Proto-Germanic in a video game as you wouldn't need to record anywhere near as many lines (assuming the game isn't too story heavy for the available vocab). I move that all Germanic people in video games set from ~500BC to ~300AD speak Proto-Germanic (if I got the timeline for when it would have been spoken wrong then let me know and I will edit this with the correct timeline).

[@Lausanamo]

The proto germanic wiktionary contains, at the moment, 5,112 lemmas. This is not including the inflected forms of these words, in which case we know tens of thousands of proto germanic "words". There are also many words that have been reconstructed but which have not yet been added as entries in wiktionary. I think a show featuring at least some proto germanic is possible, I also think it would be an amazing idea. Also, "filling the gaps with gothic" can be done more easily by calquing, making word for word translations of gothic expressions into proto germanic.

[@iremainproductions4827]

Thank you for the work that you put in to your videos!

[@Horhne]

I saw a clip of this and was fascinated by it. Now you have reviewed it, I can't wait to watch it.

[@NikkyElso]

when I heard them pronounce their V's correctly I knew it would be good

[@DTux5249]

Well, the language was good. Their set ups and a lot of actions taken are weird XD

[@Woeschhuesli]

FYI Swiss-German is an Allemanic version of German, therefore older than modern high German. It actually has a lot more in common with Dutch, as we strongly noticed this summer when we were in the Netherlands!!

[@historywithhilbert146]

Very cool I didn't know that!

[@brittakriep2938]

True! As a swabian, also using ,modern allemanic' i saw many years ago a photo of a dutch art event in a german newspaper. A number of different dressed women sat on chairs, over their heads was a sign : De frouwen niet anreken- in swabian: Dia Fraua (n)et areega.

[@torrawel]

In my experience (vice versa ;)), it has more to do with the sounds (most notable the strong G/CH sound of course) than with the actual language. Sure there are a few words that might be (more) similar but the sound changes of standard German, the grammar (case system in particular), and yes, the majority of the vocab is still, I think, closer to the High German languages. Look at the verb to be for example: SWG - SGG - D (= Swiss German - standard German German - Dutch) i(g) bi - ich bin - ik ben (sound change 1: it's a CH-sound in most of the German speaking word while it's a K-sound in 99,9% of the Dutch speaking world) du bisch - du bist - jij bent (du in almost all forms of German, jij in Dutch. Also, the S-sound for the 2nd person has dropped from Dutch, just like in English) är isch - er ist - hij is (again, the pronoun is similar in Switzerland & Germany, different in Dutch where it is more like in English) si/sia isch - sie ist - zij is (In Dutch a lot of long I-sounds changed into IJ, which looks more like German EI & English I. In most Dutch regions, Z is pronounced Z. Not in the west though) äs/as isch - es ist - het is (Important sound change that distinguishes Dutch, English & Low German languages from the south: T in the north, S in the south (and in standard Germand) mir/wir sy - wir sind - wij zijn (same as above I > IJ. But also, for the pronoun, Dutch and standard German are more similar in it's initial letter W, while SWG & SGG always have this R at the end. Dutch doesn't have this) ier/dir syt - ihr sind - jullie zijn (again, Dutch is very different here. In the pronoun, but also in the verb where there is no difference for any plural form. In the east of the Netherlands though, where they speak a form of Low German, it is similar to other German forms: with a T or D) si sy - sie sind - zij zijn (I > IJ) It also shows why Dutch is seen as a separate language, while Swiss German most of the times as a form of German (but, of course, there is nothing wrong with that at all ;))

[@bwoah525]

@@brittakriep2938 Dutchie here, it's 'De vrouwen niet aanraken', still very cool

[@brittakriep2938]

@@bwoah525: I saw this photo many years ago, so that i have forgotten the writing, but i was rather surprised about the similarity between dutch and my dialect ( in this case).

[@sinisterjutsugaming2706]

What an amazing video, well made, and informative. Thanks and keep it up, you just earned a sub.

[@Horhne]

Excellent video. I love this subject matter but must congratulate you on its structure and delivery.

[@raytheron]

My mother tongue is Afrikaans, but I taught English for 24 years, majored in General Linguistics and absolutely love languages in general, as well as having a great fondness for etymology. So I really enjoyed this video for a number of reasons. Interestingly enough, Afrikaans, the most modern of the West Germanic languages and also the grammatically most simplified one, uses "ek" for "I", unlike the other modern West Germanic languages, the closest being the Dutch "ik".

[@macwinter7101]

All living Germanic languages are equally modern. It's a common misconception that languages stop evolving once they form. Afrikaans is obviously just a version of Dutch that formed in Dutch colonies in South Africa. But it is not any more modern than the Dutch spoken in the Netherlands or any other living Germanic language for that matter.

[@danieltaylor5231]

A Hilbert and Metatron collaboration would be awesome if Hilbert had the time. Darn you higher education!

[@historywithhilbert146]

I'll do my best!

[@radiojet1429]

Excellent video. Keep up the good work!

[@colorin81colorado]

I'm here because of Metraton's videos! Great explanation of the Proto-Germanic languages!

[@Sk0lzky]

Last time I was this early german shows for german audience weren't in modern german.

[@appleslover]

Old German is rarely talked about compared to latin and old English

[@historywithhilbert146]

Always love seeing your profile picture in my comments ;)

[@Sk0lzky]

@@appleslover I think that's because OG is a term similar to "old slavonic" and refers to a plethora of languages, there was no cross-regional form of it. Following this comparison OHG would be similar to OCS (only religious sources survived/ever existed and we don't know the relation of OHG dialects to that religious form). From what I remember OLG is basically Saxon and it is often talked about together with Anglic and Frisian which are closely related (as is *insert Dutch anthem* old Dutch), it even made its way into some obscure media like a M&B:Warband mod and a recent polish fantasy book! PS Take it with a grain of salt, my knowledge in the topic is very generic, I don't work with Germanic languages and they've never been my focus :)

[@Sk0lzky]

@@historywithhilbert146 thanks! I'd love to refer its author but I'm afraid I've had it for so long I can't even find it on my PC anymore, not to mention finding the sauce

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@Sk0lzky, it is a myth that languages are more divided in the past than today. They weren't.

[@krisdudas-hjelms7036]

Hilbert could we please get some more content on Barbarians including more of an opinion video as well as an evaluation of its historical accuracy maybe 🙏😁

[@historywithhilbert146]

I can look into it - not normally my period but will do my best :)

[@marcocapelle]

It was very interesting to learn about the process of reconstruction of an ancient language, thanks.

[@MarschelArts]

I find that whole topic very interesting. I'm not educated in this matter, but I find it very interesting to find similarities between related languages. Ever since i've tried to read the chronicle of my hometown, which is written in old high german since it is so old, and found how close it is to the modern dialect that is still spoken there. Thanks for the insight in how the langages might have developed!

[@laamonftiboren4236]

I would be fascinated to see Barbarians dubbed over in Proto-Germanic!

[@niceguy1891]

The reason for both Norwegian and Icelandic spelling stone as "stein/steinn" and Swedish spelling it as "sten" without the I is because in old West Norse they tended to spell every word that has an E in the middle of the word as "ei", while Old East Norse which is the forefather of Swedish and Danish just used "E". This can still be seen in the languages, such as surnames, where for example if a person has the surname of "Silfverhem", (which means "Silver Home") the person probably has it's roots from Sweden, while the Norweigian version of the name would be "Silverheim".

[@okwathne]

well.... stein/sten are both proper bokmål. (Bokmål is based on the danish language.) Sten would be the one more used in cities and Finmark where they more or less speak bokmål. Stein in the rest of the country where we have loads of dialects and more people using the other written language nynorsk. Loads of -heim surnames, but I'm pretty sure they are all based on the name of a farm or a place. Farm/ place is the most common source of surname followed by patronymic surnames, and the rest is mostly from people moving to Norway from the rest of the world. When it comes to the patronymic surnames -sen ending is most common here, but we do have loads of -sson/-son endings too, possibly from Swedes moving over.

[@bartgielingh2212]

@@okwathne I guess -sson would be -ssen, like in Danish or in Dutch ( Janssen, Jakobsen, etc.)

[@brittakriep2938]

@@bartgielingh2212 : In the most northern part of Germany , where Niederdeutsch/ Low German ( the language from the german lowlands) is spoken , names ending with sen are common.

[@brittakriep2938]

@@okwathne : As family names, in Germany you sometimes hear names ending with heimer. We have a lot of towns or villages, ending with heim. So someone, whos name ends with heimer came from ...heim. It is especially the er ending, the ancestors of former chancellor Adenauer came from Adenau. Au means land near the water.

[@tob]

That's not correct. The reason is that Old West North retained the /ei/ diphthong, whereas Old East Norse (Swedish and Danish) mostly monophthongized it to /e/. It was not just a written convention.

[@Fenditokesdialect]

Btw the *h in Proto-Germanic was likely a /x/ sound so even rougher

[@petrajakovac6409]

I think it would be very interesting to have a series with all the tribes/people involved speaking their historical languages.

[@Leofwine]

I'd love to see a series that uses period-accurate dialogue exclusively (well, *with* modern subtitles). Maybe I'm just weird.

[@aragorn1780]

Something to note (I was a German major btw) In the Horn inscription you see that in the German example holtijaz translates to von Holt, however, in German there's also a genitive case that would turn Holt into Holts/Holtes, given that this genitive case is considered grammatically conservative in the modern Germanic languages, the -ijaz ending seems to indicate this old genitive function in its older form!

[@MXknowsHow]

In modern German the Genitiv is used to indicate possession. I don't think it is correct to use it in this case.

[@kmit9191]

"grammatically conservative" could you elaborate that to a German

[@ansibarius4633]

The German genitive ending derives from Proto-Germanic -as or -is, I think. In the case of "Holz", the Proto-Germanic form would be reconstructed as hultis / hultas, from hulta(n). Maybe the o could be used as an allophone for u, but I'm not sure. Anyway, this has nothing to do with the -ijaz, which is a suffix that is used to form adjectives.

[@macwinter7101]

@@MXknowsHow The use of the genitive structure has changed. You are expecting Proto-Germanic and German to be identical, but they are not. There are differences in grammatical structure in addition to vocabulary. Genitive forms in German are the descendants of structures used to indicate origin in Proto-Germanic. In fact, in various other India-European languages, possession and origin are often indicated with the same structures.

[@no-km3cc]

Thanks voor de video, want ik genoot er echt veel van, en ik vond het gwn cool dat nederlands ook een germaanse taal is dus suc6 met je kanaal ❤❤👍👍

[@Vargskinn]

The d>t is not really a thing. In German, while you write "Land" today, the pronunciation has been "lant" since Old High German. (It probably used to be "land" at some point.) This is called "Auslautverhärtung". That means that a soft plosive at the end of a word or even syllable becomes its hard variant, so the voiced variant becomes the voiceless variant.

[@ragingjaguarknight86]

Check "Smells like Teen Spirit" but its sung in classical Latin. The same guy also did "Horse with no Name" in vulgar Latin too. ^_^

[@qswaefrdthzg]

I'd love a Proto-Germanic series.

[@perceivedvelocity9914]

You name dropped a lot of the KZbin channels that I watch.

[@opperturk124]

I really liked this comparison of languege pls do more of these

[@ecurewitz]

I studied a little Latin in High school, and based on what I know, they nailed it

[@jccusell]

Fun fact: when an Englishman pronounces Frisian words, he does better than a Dutch speaker,: ostensibly a fellow countryman to a Frisian. I tell you it is eerie.

[@eveningstar7048]

May have been a good idea to compare the IPA for each language's realisation of "land", as this differs quite a bit between them :).

[@johncgibson4720]

I bought a few books to try to learn Latin, but the books were very tedious. But now, thanks to your info, I know how to restart my learning.

[@Jackissoocool]

I would love to see more media using period accurate language, but I understand that it's a huge undertaking that only really improves the show for nerds, so I get why it doesn't happen much.

[@Must_Do_Better]

I'm Frisian and would love to see a video of yours based around what the Frisians were like during this time. What did they look like? How did interacted with other Germanic tribes and Rome? Ect ect. Thanks again for the great content!

[@erikvandoorn1674]

Nice you refer to Simon Roper. He has really cool video's. I am a fan of his style.

[@sylamy7457]

They should've used Icelandic, its the closest living language to proto Germanic, considering it's basically a variation of old Norse. Also, the thing that Proto Germanic has that's been lost in all Germanic languages except 2, is the dental fricative (the Th sound in English).

[@vetar3372]

9:30 This happens in most of Norwegian too. Also i would recommend using Swedish if you are doing comparisons since in many ways it is the most conservative of the Scandinavian languages

[@DougWinfield]

I think there's an episode of True Blood where I they had Erik (Swede) and Godric (Dane) speaking Old Norse

[@Sbjweyk]

The “Ek” in the inscription kinda reminds me of “Ick” in the dialect spoken in Berlin, it can be pronounced very similar so maybe it’s a relict of that old language. Also I think it is probably almost impossible to recreate the language spoken by the tribes in that time period. The German language varies so much even today you have hundreds of different dialects, some unintelligible to one another and those dialects have (at least where I live) variations in every little town. I’d imagine that in a time with no standard language this would be even more prominent.

[@Marcovdlinden2000]

"Ek" or "Ick" would more like have connections with the Dutch (Franconian dialects) languages. "Ick" was used in middle Dutch and changed in modern Dutch to "Ik". Fun fact in Afrikaans they still use "Ek"!

[@Sbjweyk]

@@Marcovdlinden2000 Yeah they are probably all connected but only near the coast, further inland that connection is gone or never even existed.

[@dannicron]

@@Sbjweyk "ick" in Berliner Dialekt is definitely a Low German substrate. Most, if not all the Low German dialects use "ik" / "ick".

[@derwolf9670]

Super interesting. Thanks Greetings from Germany

[@mateowoetam]

Although it would be complicated to make and understand such a show it would be grate for one like such to be made, I would definitely watch it.

[@sanuku535]

If there only ever was a visualization of epoc of Gilgamesz...

[@bsseb2914]

"Is the Germanic accurate?" No. It's simply Modern German. That should've been a fairly quick answer.

[@DougWinfield]

Wouldn't be as interesting.

[@elwray3506]

Great video, thanks! Watching the series as a German and reading about the controversy of modern German (I´d rather speak of modern casual German than High German) vs. Germanic, I´d like to say that the choice for casual modern German made me really relate to the characters, while I get the point of the history purists, that it might take away from the immersion. I think the choice of the producers was more on character and storytelling than history telling, which is understandable, if you want to make a successfull series for a broader audience, at least in the German speaking regions.

[@noradrenalin8062]

"High German" doesn't say anything about whether the tone casual or not.

[@Doctor387]

Interesting comparison around English words ending in "-and" and their Frisian counterparts. Similar shift in Scots to "-aun"; "laun", "haun", "staun", etc. Not sure if this happened on its own or was due to Frisian influences around the burghs, but would be interesting to look into!

[@andreascovano7742]

2:58 HAHAHAHAHAHA Good One! You studied Italian I see!

[@gerardvanwilgen9917]

I think that the speech of the barbarians would have sounded more authentic if they had been speaking Dutch or Low German, because those languages preserved the Proto-Germanic consonants better than High German did.

[@largoembargo8090]

I have to say the German spoken in the series was somewhat distracting as a native speaker (or even more as someone grown up speaking German dialect). The language was very clean, somewhat theatrical Standard German. But I agree to use historically correct language would have been a great effort, probably very difficult to do for a full series. Thank you very much for the video, I really appreciate to learn more about Proto-Germanic, which I didn't hear so much about before. The video was very well done!

[@somegerman9502]

I didn't like it at all. The Actors speak extremly modern. I agree that it would be to difficult to have them speak historically correct, but they could have made an effort to let them sound a bit more old timey

[@somefuckstolemynick]

Hey! It has to happen that some proto-language finds support for a "created" word in some new find, right? How accurate do these languages seem to be?

[@Joker5086]

Also, the German they're speaking in Barbarians remarkably is quite colloquially modern. So they didn't resort to the old-timey style that you would typically hear in a historical drama. This makes them sound quite modern and naturalistic to me.

[@youreskimofriend2327]

It’s actually quite funny if you recognize the slight variations in pronunciation. Arminius for example is clearly Austrian.

[@gianz73]

Excellent explanation on an excellent series. This said, we should also consider that what we call classical Latin was not the language spoken by common people and soldiers, but by the educated elite in some contexts and not all the time. The lower classes spoke local variants of "vulgar" (=popular, from vulgus) Latin, which later evolved into Romance languages. So, the Roman soldier would have probably said something quite different from what we hear in the video. For further details, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin Again, this doesn't take anything from the quality of the episode, which is a very well-made and stimulating reconstruction.

[@Belckan500]

i really like Vikings approach to languages. when u have a scene exclusively in one language all speak modern English, regardless of the language they are supposed to be specking (old Norse, Frankish, Latin, Arabic old English) but when 2 groups meet and translation would have been needed they make on group of actors speak in a form of the old languages and the other in modern English, this way they include the process of translation into the dynamic giving it a more historical accurate feeling (not saying Vikings is historically accurate, that is more clear than the light of day) but don't make it to hard on the audience or the actors.

[@Sealdrop]

as a helveti, this is a great video

[@ThisisFerrariKhan]

🇨🇭

[@someguy3766]

It annoys me when people think 'Germanic' means German or that Germans are somehow 'more Germanic' just because we call them 'German'. That's just the name we have given to them in our language... Germans don't call themselves German. They call themselves 'Deutsch'. The English, Germans, Dutch, Danes etc all have equal claim to being 'Germanic'. None of us is the parent language, we are all essentially siblings in a linguistic family tree who share the same parent. We call that parent 'Proto-Germanic' in English. When people claim German is 'more Germanic' it is akin to claiming one of two sons from the same father is 'more his father's son' just because he was given his father's name while the other son was not. And in this case not even by that father, but by the other son. That's how silly it really is.

[@appleslover]

I wonder why they (English speakers) called the country "Germany" in 1871 and people of it "Germans" . So annoying. It's like calling the arab world "Arabia". German was an ethnicity not a nationality. For example austrians and the swiss are Germans, and always were calling themselves that until "German"y United they started building their own national identity as German became a nationality.

[@Siegbert85]

Actually the word "deutsch" had been used in the same manner as "Germanic" now. Medieval and early modern Germans spoke of "die alten Deutschen" when referring to the tribes of antiquity. The first proper recorded mention of the word is found in the song of Anno from the late 11th century. It speaks of "diutschi liuti" who helped Julius Cesar defeat his enemies.

[@Siegbert85]

@@appleslover Germany had been called that in English for way longer than 1871. Marlowe wrote of "Germany" in his play "Doctor Faustus" in late 16th century. The ethnonym came up during the same time and replaced the older "Dutch" which would be more closely identified with the people from the Netherlands henceforth.

[@phosphoros60]

3:00 *furious hand movements "Mamma mia, the Cesare Augusto has-uh appointud-uh il Senatore Quintilio Varo as Governatore di Jermania!"

[@hannibalbarca7220]

Insert Italian Pinching Hand Pic here *

[@Phrenotopia]

9:21 Actually, despite the exact same writing the pronunciation in Danish also drops the final -'d' and the 'a' is also pronounced more as a near-open front unrounded vowel, e.g. like in (common spoken forms of) English.

[@lhpl]

I saw the description of the various "-and" words, and noticed that the Frisian pronounciation with a long 'aa' and silent 'd' also is found in my native language Sønderjysk, despite this being a 'Danish dialect'. I would say "laan", "haan", "saan", "straan". Band (ribbon) I would change the vowel of, to "båån".

[@c.norbertneumann4986]

Neither do we know the Proto-Germanic language spoken when Arminius lived, nor we know the dialect the Cheruskians spoke. So it would have been senseless to let the actors speak an "accurate" Germianic language.

[@demoman1596sh]

I mean, technically you're right, but the implication of how you're speaking about this seems to be that we have no sense at all of how Proto-Germanic would have sounded at the time. This is obviously false. Sure, it would be difficult to know exactly how accurate our reconstruction is, but at the same time, using a scientific reconstruction of Proto-Germanic would obviously be more accurate than, say, using a modern Germanic language. I'm not saying that I have a problem with their choice of using modern German. I'm just arguing that using some scientific reconstruction of Proto-Germanic would be more accurate, regardless of exactly how accurate it is.

[@somegerman9502]

As a native speaker it is very distracting to hear them speak like everyday people. It breaks the imersion somewhat.

[@nirfz]

@@demoman1596sh I do agree that it would be more(!) accurate than high german. But i think they would have to use subtitles for every single conversation and both sides, as nobody would understand them. (in the current portrayal german speakers at least understand the side that portraits the germanic tribes) I am a native german speaker (as always this comes with the disclaimer that some germans would disagree ;-) ) and where i am from, the local dialect and pronounciation changes noticably roughly every 20-30km. I bet this was the case already back then as it is the rough range a person could cover in a day's journey and so the daily interactions with other dialects weren't enough to level out the dialect. (i hope it makes sense how i wrote it). Meaning they would have to reconstruct a few dialects as the area the tribes were from covers quite some area. I am no linguist, but i think latin back then had already "an agreed" form of pronounciation and grammar for a somewhat official language and i doubt that this was the case for proto-germanic (there was no such thing during the time of middle high german or old high german. The standardized form of todays high german was agreed on during the time of Maria Thersia!), so i think a reconstruction would be still far off, of what the tribes would actually have used. The reconstruction would be an amalgamation of all linguists know about, and material found across the germanic languages of the rough area and basically different from each dialect they really spoke.

[@JL-ti3us]

I wonder how much dutch has the Frisian vowel lengthening, I live in South Africa, so in Afrikaans it happens a lot, and it’s often just said to be less complicated, longer vowelled dutch.

[@historywithhilbert146]

From my knowledge it occurs with some frequency but not to the same extent as in English and in Frisian. To take the Ingvaeonic Nasal Spirant Law as an example you'll find it regularly in Anglo-Frisian: Old English: ūs Old Frisian: ūs Modern English: us Modern Frisian: ús Modern Dutch: ons (doesn't occur) Old English: tōþ Old Frisian: tōth Modern English: tooth Modern Frisian: tosk (this is actually borrowed from OFris "tosk" cognate to ModEng "tusk" Modern Dutch: tand (doesn't occur) Old English: gōs Old Frisian: *gōs Modern English: goose Modern Frisian: goes Modern Dutch: gans (doesn't occur) BUT then in the rare case Dutch does play along with the North Sea Germanic gang like in this example: Old English: fīf Old Frisian: fīf Modern English: five Modern Frisian: fiif Modern Dutch: vijf ("ij" is the same phoneme as Afrikaans "y" and clearly here the law does apply) Bit of a tangent but interesting I thought.

[@JL-ti3us]

@@historywithhilbert146 it is interesting. I always wonder how afrikaans came to differentiate from Dutch because originally it apparently arose from the Indonesian slaves brought by the ditch to the Cape who spoke dutch in a particular way later adopted by the Dutch settlers themselves. I wonder if Indonesian languages have a precedent for lengthening vowels, double vowels are fairly common in Afrikaans.

[@siyabongamviko8872]

@@JL-ti3us when you investigate you also have to look at the Kaapse Khoekhoe language or a form of !Ora Kovab (Kora language) because it played a huge role in the formation of Afrikaans which was later 'brought' closer to Dutch when the Boere and other west European settlers adopted it from the dominated classes. The examples of Khoekhoe in Afrikaans are many: Knob-kierie Dagga Kwagga Other words became more unfamiliar due to the outcomes of the early 20th century social and political debate to 'Dutchify' Afrikaans more. For example, bread was 'berep' but later became brood; hier is still pronounced 'hie' and waar is jy as 'waa' is jy, the 'jy' sound does not match the Dutch 'ij', it is a J as an in juice, thus jy is pronounced djy, but that's just an Afrikaans dialect I suppose.

[@_vinterthorn]

As a linguist and scholar of German and English literature aswell as having studied niche stuff like Gothic myself, I tend to say I'm happy that they made the actors speak Modern High German. An English or US-American filming crew probably would've settled for plain Present-Day English - and we'd have had much less to discuss, I think.

[@libelle8124]

The Latin sounds great and how I imagine it would have sounded like, but the thing in this little clip of the series Babarians, I noticed too. They boy would never have really said: "Verstehst du was er sagt?" and I don't think my ancestors spoke modern German, yet :-) However, I beg to differ that modern German is today spoken in Austria and parts of Switzerland. Do you not know that biggest difference between Austrians and Germans is the language? :-) in general the difference between Germans and Austrians is as if you compare a battleship with a walz, as the actor Christoph Walz once said in an interview. What the Swiss speak is on yet another level. Switzerduetsch sounds to me as if somebody drives on a very bumpy road whilst talking :-) Other than that, the video is great. Especially the bit where you explain Germanic and German. I have listened to some examples of the Germanic that was spoken in the time the video is set and if time travel was possible, there would be no way I could fluently communicate with any of them. A few words sound familiar, but on the whole it's a different language to me and it sounds more like Welsh to me. Funny is, that my ancestors mastered the TH Sound without any problem. Something that most modern Germans find difficult when learning English.

[@erikdalna211]

Frisian and Scots has the same sound change in the “and” words.

[@firstnamesecondname852]

I guess Scottish sounds as strange to the English as Frisian sounds to the Germans.

[@jarnickvanessen2625]

@@firstnamesecondname852 dude

[@derherrdirektor9686]

What I find most interesting is that Proto-Germanic and classic Latin seem to be closer related than German and Italian.

[@KommentarSpaltenKrieger]

Yes, because they branched off from a single ancestor. The further you go back in time, the more similar the different languages and even language branches become until they all converge into Proto-Indoeuropean. This is at least the mainstream theory at this point.

[@James-sk4db]

My favourite indo European language quirk is the word bear. In Northern European countries the word for bear is actually based off the word brown, and is thought that it was taboo to mention the bear by name so they would say brown one effectively. But in the southern less bear heavy areas they still used the original name which is closer to ursa or arctis.

[@AlteredState1123]

Yes, I would love to hear Protogermanic spoken in the series. I greatly enjoy stabs at authenticity when it comes to the spoken word.

[@SuperResnick]

I recommend you to the group Project Germani which goes into detail of the germanic languages at the time.

[@JL-ti3us]

Ek is still used in some west Germanic languages, like Afrikaans.

[@Guiscardo777]

quite similar to Greek Eko' and Latin Ego

[@JL-ti3us]

@@Guiscardo777 how is eko and ego used? We use ek as I.

[@JL-ti3us]

@Mershikov thank you for that clarification on the others behalf, it is appreciated

[@MellonVegan]

Icelandic too, iirc

[@duwang8499]

Basically every non High German West-Germanic language outside of English still uses ek/ik. Frisian, Dutch, Low German and Scots.

[@zoomerboomer1396]

Swiss-German and High-German are farther from each other apart than Swedish and Norwegians.

[@zoomerboomer1396]

@@user-xr5up3ed3z Don't think creating a written system would've been a huge deal, i think the main reason Switzerland never moved to declare Swiss-German to be it's own languages like the Luxemburgians did with their language is not to allinate the non Swiss-German speakers.

[@zoomerboomer1396]

@@user-xr5up3ed3z A language is a dialect with an army and a navy, there were and still are languages without any writing system. Switzerland has the political power to turn Swiss-German into it's own language without any writing system. And look at High German, a writing system can be created in a short time. And Swiss-Germans already write in Swiss-German to each other, there is just no official spelling(yet)

[@user-xr5up3ed3z]

@@zoomerboomer1396 i don't dissagree. It's just a different angle to look at languages. From a stand point of language politics you're right. That way you can explain why Norwegian and Swedish are seen as a different language. From a linguistic point of view it's more a matter of variations. If we try to see it as an "Ausbausprache", a standardized ortography is kind of required tho

[@zoomerboomer1396]

@@user-xr5up3ed3z I'm not an expert but i would assume that linguist still view the languages in Africa of which quite a few don't have a writing system as a language or all those past Celtic and Germanic languages which didn't have one. So i don't think the same would apply to Switzerland and again, i don't think it would be too hard to create one in a few years, if we in Switzerland really wanted to go down that route. But standardization is the death of diversity so i hope that this will never happen.

[@user-xr5up3ed3z]

@@zoomerboomer1396 well in linguistic language are mostly differentiated by "Abstand" and "Ausbau". Abstand means mostly that you have a language that in itself is different to other languages. Communication is not possible. Ausbau refers to a more general view on how far a language has developed it's own characteristics. Do I have a norm for grammar, syntax and ortography. Swiss german is not an Abstandssprache because German dialects that are closer to standard german can understand it. Only if these south german dialects would vanish swiss could be counted as an Abstandssprache. However as an Ausbausprache it could work if it's implemented as standard with norms. Coming from a language that already has an ortography, standard german, an ortography could be an important marker for that. Of course all of this is quite vague and subjective but in linguistics it's mostly defined by consens. And an ortography doesn't mean that i have to have a standard variation. For swiss one coulf use middle high german vocals like û â î etc because they are still in use and differentiate it from german. Like the ortography is normed but you write in Dialect. Similar to how it is in Norway

[@leonidusroberts]

Damn this is actually really cool

[@biornr.4031]

I'd love to see more languages, be they real or constructed, in media (if handled competently), but I absolutely love linguistics, so I'm quite biased

[@Nabium]

Wouldn't they have spoken Istvaeonic and not proto-Germanic? Or possibly maybe something inbetween the two?

[@historywithhilbert146]

I considered adding some distinguishing remark but at this point I don't think it's really necessary because the geographic split between Northwest and East has not happened because this is pre-Gothic migration which is normally seen as the start of the linguistic branching off. Dialectially yes of course there would be differences but we're quite in the dark about that so I didn't think it necessary to add any qualifiers to Proto-Germanic in this case.

[@Nabium]

@@historywithhilbert146 Ah, so Istvaeonic was at this point really just a dialect of proto-Germanic? That makes sense actually.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@Nabium, it wasn't. Really, it wasn't. They spoke Westgermanic in the Area of later Old High German.

[@Nabium]

@@SchmulKrieger So, Istvaeonic *IS* a West Germanic dialect, so saying they didn't speak Istvaeonic because they spoke West Germanic really doesn't make any sense. Maybe you wanted to say they were Irminonic and not Istvaeonic? Because both groups definitely fought against the Romans. But since the Roman wars on the Germanic tribes portrayed in the series Barbarians were mostly fought around the rivers Rhine and Weser, which was largely settled by the Istvaeonic, I chose that one.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@Nabium, Istvaeonic is the old term for Weser-Rhine-Germanic variant of Westgermanic around 1 AD. It later is a part of the Old High German. North-Sea-Germanic from the today's Denmark to the today's the Netherlands was called Ingvaeonic and become Low German, but the only difference is the sound shift which didn't happend there, happend half for the Middle German languages and happend full to the Upper German languages, which are actually one language called Westgermanic. The only language of the so called Westgermanic languages that isn't a dialect of each other is English, it really became somewhat new.

[@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi]

when Varus was still alive "German" meant "living across the Rhine from the Gauls", not that they spoke a particular language

[@11Survivor]

Hence 'Allaman', because they were the ones living on the other side of the Rhine.

[@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi]

@@11Survivor weren't the Alemanni documented like 200 years after Varus ?

[@11Survivor]

@@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi good point didn't think about that

[@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi]

@@11Survivor I would not be surprised if we discover that some of the "Germans/Germanics" that the Romans met early on were actually speaking languages related to Basque or other language isolates

[@d4n4nable]

@@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi I would be extremely surprised. There's plenty of historical and anthropological evidence that the "Germanics" they talked about were in fact the ethno-linguistic group we think about today (even if there were plenty of Celts mixed in closer to Rome).

[@JanIvarKorsbakken]

Great and interesting video. But always remember: spelling is not the same as pronunciation. "Land" is not the same in all the languages except Frisian, it is just *spelled* the same way. In at least Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic, the spelling reflects an earlier pronunciation of the word, but the pronunciation has changed in the modern languages. Both spoken Norwegian and Danish have lost the final -d (like Frisian), and the same is true of final -d in a lot of other words where it is retained in writing but not pronounced anymore. In Icelandic, the -d has been devoiced to a -t. And as usual, Danish also does strange things with the vowel.

[@speerboom]

In the 90s a piece was found near Tiel (Netherlands) with runes on it. Not many runes have been found in the Netherlands. There is consensus that the inscription is from about the year 450 CE and in Frankish or Old Dutch/Old Low Franconian. Transcribing the runes into Latin script is already difficult. The result doesn’t look very Germanic but it apparently is. Then the translation. It’s wild. Not a single word is recognizable to me, a native speaker of Dutch.

[@darkdestiny1989]

Well Dutch isn’t a recognizable language to anyone 😂 sorry for this bad Joke. Looked for it and I’m even able to understand some words like the 3. Kuusjam, im not sure if it’s not kuurjam. I see the German Word Küren(..) to choose in there like the scholars. The jam ending sounds like a group of people or a noble person (formal speech) has chosen something and I strongly disagree with some scholars saying the 4. Word meaning sword. Neither in Durch nor German none English Loguns[uu/ow(e)/uv/ue] is near sword. BUT Log is an old word for Wood. Looks like someone has chosen wood for a group. The Ann looks like a preposition. The first is unrecognizable for me. Looks like a name. My bet The group of people from NAME/ the group of people of person NAME has chosen to make boats (since log is still used in a nautical speech today). Would make sense .. in some ways. Just my 2 cents. Groet uit Keulen.

[@speerboom]

@@darkdestiny1989 I didn‘t recognize Kuusjam but your Küren makes sense. The modern day derivatives are likely to be Keuren (Prüfen, to Test/Sample/Judge etc) and Kiezen/Keuze (Wählen/Wahl, to Choose/Choice). Perhaps loguns is somehow related to the modern word Oorlog (Krieg, War)?

[@darkdestiny1989]

@@speerboom That seems possible too. I was first struggling with the loguns. Very interesting indeed.

[@lakrids-pibe]

The asgards in the Marvel movies speak old norse. They had a linguistic professor assisting them. He was also involved with "Frozen". The professor has a youtube channel and he's pretty awesome. Jackson Crawford's Old Norse Channel. I would suspect that most fans of Hilbert know about Jackson Crawford, but if you don't, you should check him out.

[@GBW175]

I would love to hear more of this. I’m kind of a language geek & history nerd especial across Britain, Europe & such. Don’t care about Zulu🤣

[@elkknowsbetter3199]

Can you do a video on færeyinga saga?

[@StoneTitan]

~ 11:25 well regarding your wolf sample, there seem to be a bit of a jump in modern language as well norweigian and danish "Ulv" while swedish is "Varg" while Icelandic is "úlfur"

[@Leo_ofRedKeep]

The Frisian example is explained the wrong way around. When a vowel gets extended too much, the ending consonant falls off the edge of the word.

[@historywithhilbert146]

You could certainly be right because I chose a random example and applied my knowledge of linguistics to it though from my understanding vowel lengthening almost always occurs as a result of consonant loss rather than vice versa. Is there any particular evidence the order is reversed in this case in Frisian? Not meaning to say you're wrong but would love to know more if it is the case!

[@Leo_ofRedKeep]

@@historywithhilbert146 I have absolutely no idea. It just feels more logical to lose the end when the middle part is made longer. Wonder if this can be observed on live languages today.

[@historywithhilbert146]

​It's a valid observation but linguistically I'm led to believe it occurs with consonant loss first and that the lengthening is a result of this. It may be possible to observe but these changes normally take a long time as people don't usually consciously change their speech as a collective within an entire language. The actuation process can take a long time with phonemes slowly changing and then the diffusion process as it spreads from one speaker to another and one case to another takes even longer.

[@hennobrandsma4755]

In conservative Hindeloopen dialect of (West) Frisian we have “laand”, etc. So the lengthening is older, also East Frisian (Saters) “lound” (from lengthened old East Frisian “lond”, North Frisian also has evidence of lengthening before -d loss. So indeed the order was different, and more examples of such lengthening in Old Frisian exist, it tended to lengthen vowels before some have clusters or double consonants, like in “stôk” ( Saters “stook” etc.), “bêd”, etc etc.

[@AnneliesSiero]

@@historywithhilbert146 Hi, another Dutchie here, with Saxon roots. I spent some time in Denmark as well and tried to learn Danish. Fun fact: the Danes still write the 'd' at the end of these words as mentioned in the video, but they don't pronounce it. They kind of bite it off and short-stop the word. Still the middle part is pronounced in a short way. The way a Dane pronounces the word 'land' sound more like 'len'.

[@stephaniewilson3955]

Probably the reason modern German was used is so that the intended audience would understand what was being said by the 'heroes' of the show and be as baffled as them by the Latin. (Artistic licence?) They probably spoke dialects so a Proto Germanic is a supposition.

[@joshuaidugboe214]

The language the germans speak are the language you pout it in, if you watched it in spannish, they would speak spannish and not german but the romans would still speak english

[@Raidoton]

It's very unusual to have a movie or TV show in Germany where the main characters don't speak german. Foreign shows always get their main language dubbed. So it's not surprising that they made the germanic people speak modern german. It would've been funny though if they made them speak whatever the people spoke back then and then dub modern german over it for the german audience xD

[@windsaw151]

Some time ago I investigated how much I could find of the german (or germanic) language prior to the reign of Charlemagne and I came up almost emptyhanded. Nothing more than a few inscriptions like the ones shown. In contrast, I found lots and lots of references to Irish of the same time! That language is much better documented. (if you want an example, look up "Pangur Ban")

[@Checkyoursix77]

The Germanic people and language have its origins in southern Scandinavia. The people of the Nordic Bronze Age lived around the Baltic Sea and started to migrate south due to overpopulation when the climate got colder. The Germanic tribes in today’s western Germany that is portrayed in Barbarians came to that area no more than a couple hundred years before the battle took place. This part of Europe was sparsely populated at the time but the Celts where there before the Germanic tribes arrived from Scandinavia.

[@normannormiemates4844]

It would have been proto _West_ Germanic.

[@bartgielingh2212]

By Roman experience, probably Lower- Frankonian

[@normannormiemates4844]

@@bartgielingh2212 That's still West Germanic

[@duwang8499]

Probably something more like Pre-Northwest-Germanic I think.

[@MinecraftMasterNo1]

*Preußens Gloria intensifies*

[@caseyjones6677]

It was kinda of putting I feel actually... It seems to be much to universal among these Germans as well

[@jaspervankruijssen4916]

Same here. Every time I felt emersed when they spoke Latin it put me off again when they started speaking high German.

[@historywithhilbert146]

@@jaspervankruijssen4916 I do know what you mean actually. But maybe this is a problem that we, (going to presume you also) history and languages nerds have that stops us enjoying things as much as others who are unaware?

[@caseyjones6677]

@@historywithhilbert146 well I think movies especially are such a profoundly successful medium for historical emersion and actually getting a living image from a time, such a shame that portaying historical events accurately just does not seem to be the norm

[@jaspervankruijssen4916]

@@historywithhilbert146 I think it's also less of a problem for people that aren't familiar with German at all since they wouldn't be able to distinguish the dialect anyway. But it would have been nice imo if they at least used regional dialects. Other than that and the supersonic spear throwing it was a really nice show.

[@appleslover]

@@jaspervankruijssen4916 if the heroic spear throwing was off putting then watch some Turkish historical dramas talking about pre-ottoman Anatolia, you'd vomit

[@johnr9763]

I understand your point about this being a German show, so they used modern German to help the audience identify with the barbarians whom the show was about. It would however be interesting to see a programme about la later set of Romans and their battles with the Goths, who would then try to speak Gothic, or some reconstructed form of it. If done from the Roman point of view, we would probably have to have the Romans speaking in English.

[@michaelalancope9729]

I would love to see “the last kingdom” in Anglo Saxon and olde Norse and the small scenes with the Britons speaking Welsh