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Why is Proto-Germanic written with *-az or *-oz endings but no Germanic languages use it? Does it really sound like "ahz"?
Tomorrow at 19:00cest - Crusader Kings 2 Charlemagne Gameplay Premiere
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Why is Proto-Germanic written with *-az or *-oz endings but no Germanic languages use it? Does it really sound like "ahz"?
Because Latin was still the Lingua Franca of learned men in Europe by Charlemagne's time and for hundreds and hundreds of years afterwards.
Any documents and books would be written in latin, and any King who aspired towards something greater would of course much prefer to use his name in Latin, because it was more prestigious.
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Merovingians are common knowledge? That would be like claiming that knowing the name of every Finnish region is common knowledge.
That looks so weird with first letter capitals and without the italics.
Did you get the point i was trying to make? Because if you did then why does it matter?
Did you get the point i was trying to make? Because if you did then why does it matter?
Oh, I totally agree with what you're saying since the illiterate Charlemagne went out of his way to educate himself and his children in Latin which started the whole Carolingian Renaissance resulting in the advancement of Western Europe today.
I was just pointing out that lingua franca written like this: Lingua Franca, just looks weird.
Because it comes from *karilaz* via Frankish *karil* and *karal* (mind that Frankish *karil and *karal* is not a proper Name though) via Old Dutch *keril*, *karal* and *karl*. There would be no "o" sound, but rather an absorbed/muttered "i" or "a" sound. The "o" of Carolus is mainly an attempt to latinize that. I think it would be best to portray Charlemagne's Name as "Karl".
The -az suffix is the most common nominative masculine singular ending. No modern Germanic language uses it but we have ample evidence for it: Old Norse has instead of it a -ʀ ending that had the approximate phonetic value of [*ɻ(ʲ)] (a possibly-palatal retroflex approximant), Gothic and Vandalic have instead -s, and Finnish preserves occasional words with -as because it lacks a "z" (such as "kuningas" < "*kuningaz"). As we're aware that /z/ > /r/ is a very possible as well as a likely change, and that /z/ > /s/ in word-final position is nothing alien, we can assume that the original form of the suffix had a voiced "z" at the end (this is somewhat supported by the shift of |"*wēzun" in Proto-Germanic to "were" in English and "veʀȧ" (not a direct descendant from this example word but closely related) in Old Norse). Finnish remarkably preserves an "-as" ending in loanwords, so we now assume it was probably "*-az" but we're not sure. The next step is to look at Proto-Indo-European, where the most common nominative suffixes were -os and -ós. The change of /o/ > /a/ is very well known for Germanic, but the change of /s/ > /z/ is a bit more wonky and that's where Verner's law comes in which is beyond the scope of this post but essentially a special case of the law transformed /s/ in stressed environments to /z/ when the stress shifted
If you want to make a game on medieval era, and especially a DLC upon Charlemagne, yes, you should know the Merovingians.
That's why they hire historians who read shit all day. The developers are there mostly to look at the Great Wall of Script Texts and then crying themselves to sleep.
Okay, Karl or Karil would be right. But at least Charles is absolutly wrong. It would be like Louis insteed of Chlodwech/Hlodwig. Charles is just the French form of Carolus -> Carles -> Charles. And then from French to English. Charles itself wasn't used be the Franks.
This is the simplified version, mind you
I love linguistics! Could you PM me a non-simplified version?
oYou're babbling on about a tangent that you feel emotional right now. We can talk when you get your stuff in order. I'd suggest nailing down what exactly you want to discuss first.
The only thing I said was that Charlemagne was not viable because we don't want a Charles I after him. Then you started going on about your Karol fancy, quite chaotically. There was no connection anyway.
Noone suggested that Charlemagne should be his name... Your text quoted this one:
He just want a Frankish name. Not Charlemagne. You also quoted this:
We all want him to have a Frankish name like Karl. You are the only one who speak about Charlemagne and regnal names... Noone here suggested to call him Charlemagne. We just want his proper Frankish name.
If he should be called Charlemagne it should atleast be after his crowining as an emperor.