European ethno-linguistic assimilation

Carolus I said:

Afaik the linguistical frontier in Silesia corresponded more or less to the religious frontier. Lower Silesia was German-speaking and Protestant, while Upper Silesia was mainly Polish-speaking and Catholic.

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Indeed. This map shows the percent of Roman Catholics around years 1900 - 1910:



Description:

And this map shows Polish pupils as percent of all pupils in Prussian schools by region in years ca. 1905 - 1914:

a map (from 1890) about the percentages of Protestants and Catholics in the German Reich:



http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Verbreitung_der_Konfessionen_im_deutschen_Reich.jpg (with higher resolutions)

and here a linguistical map from 1894:



http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Brockhaus_1894_Deutsche_Mundarten.jpg

a map (from 1890) about the percentages of Protestants and Catholics in the German Reich

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Thanks! But I don't like the colours of this map of confessions. They make it unclear.

Let's compare it to some maps showing the distribution of Poles by E. Romer and K. Nitsch.

The first of these two maps was used during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919:

About ethnic transformations in the Warmia (Ermland) region:

"SURNAMES OF INHABITANTS OF THE LIDZBARK DISTRICT (1500-1772)":

http://www.uwm.edu.pl/human/duch/komornictwoang.pdf

This study is about inhabitants of the area of Lidzbark (Lautenburg) in Warmia (Ermland) in period 1500 - 1772.

Table of contents:



Several pages from the Introduction:






Some examples of surnames of Old (Baltic) Prussian or possibly Old Prussian linguistic origin from this study:

Nadram
Naprat
Padelucke
Penquit
Same
Schaybott
Scodick
Tinger
Warskeit
Waskait
Wille
Woppain
Nenchen
Kadau
Sebirmann
Weller
Willen
Alshoff
Wellerstein
Anutta
Pobos
Grunaw
Konegen
Maraun(en)
Napratten
Worein
Neima
Dengel
Mazut
Moszal
Mykol
Proyke
Kersch
Reinick
Rose
Tidigk
Zin(g)k
Dettki
Kap
Kater
Welek
Vannegut

Examples of surnames which did not imply any probable interpretative associations (so maybe also Old Prussian, maybe not):

Hempner
Nuntersche
Plohett
Rickgarbe
Sohm
Stapuch
Tondar

Map showing Irishization (Celticization) of 12th century Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland:

http://celticowboy.com/appv.htm

Scottish Clan - Mac Domhnaill / Mac Dhòmhnuill
Light Blue Territory = Native Irish (Main Clans highlighted in white).
Blue Territory = "Degenerate English", ie Anglo-Normans who adopted the Irish Language, Irish customs and Irish laws and also Irish names; for example FitzGerald became Mac Gearailt, de Burgo became de Búrca or also Mac Uilliam, FitzGibbon became Mac Giobúin, de Courcy became de Cúrsa, FitzMaurice became Mac Muiris, de Clare became de Cléir and so on. They became the Hiberno-Normans (Main Clans highlighted in yellow).
E.A. D'Alton says in his book " History of Ireland" of the de Burgo family: "renouncing their allegiance to the English King, they renounced their name and nation...... and in the sight of the English garrison at Athlone cast aside their distinctive Norman dress and arms and assumed the saffron robes of an Irish chief. Their example was widely followed."
1= The English Pale, where English laws and customs remained

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When English people start acting like Irish people, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're becoming more Irish - often quite the reverse is true, and they're quite literally taking those customs from the Irish and thereby making it impossible for them to be used as markers of an Irishness that is opposed to Englishness. The famous example of this phenomenon would be Roman adoption of Greek art, which in no way meant that the Romans were becoming 'captives' to Greece - or indeed British people in the days of empire taking on aspects of colonial life once they got home.

They started speaking Irish language, and that was the main point of that post.

What does it even mean "acting like English", or "acting like Irish", by the way?

Roman adoption of Greek art, which in no way meant that the Romans were becoming 'captives' to Greece

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Well, the Byzantine Empire is today considered to be Greek rather than Roman.

On the other hand, Western Romans never started speaking Greek language.

Also this does not sound like "not becoming Irish":

"renouncing their allegiance to the English King, they renounced their name and nation...... and in the sight of the English garrison at Athlone cast aside their distinctive Norman dress and arms and assumed the saffron robes of an Irish chief. Their example was widely followed."

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Or does it ???

Domen said:

Well, the Byzantine Empire is today considered to be Greek rather than Roman.

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Only in the sense that it spoke Greek, which is rather tautological, or else for political reasons - certainly its inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and regarded Hellen as an insult.

With Romaioi I agree. But those Irish-speaking guys in Ireland did not call themselves English, but either Irish or Hiberno-Normans.

Normans were equally alien in England as they were in Ireland, since their native duchy was in Normandy, from which they came to England.

So I'm not sure how can you claim that despite speaking Irish they retained their "Englishness" (as if they ever had it in the first place).

Interesting is how freely those "Normans" were changing their language. Originally they were supposedly speaking Old Norse, but those in Normandy spoke French and behaved like French, fighting on horseback like feudal knights (not like Vikings). Those in England spoke Middle English (at least some of them, many continued to speak French, and that's how they influenced the transformation of Old English into Middle English, AFAIK). Later those who came to Ireland started speaking Irish. They were changing languages like a girl changes clothes, or perhaps even more often.

To me this sounds like a far too easy change of language, for an endogamous and exclusive group. It seems that those Normans were not all descendants of the same inbred group of Old Norse speakers, but rather that they incorporated locals into their ranks. Therefore French Normans were largely descendants of local Romance-speakers, melted with Old Norse speaking immigrants. Later when they conquered England, they incorporated many Anglo-Saxons into their ranks. Later, after they settled in Ireland, they incorporated many local Irish Celts into their ranks.

Or rather - the opposite thing - Irish Celts incorporated some of Anglo-Normans and pushed the rest into the English Pale, after defeating them.

And that was probably why changing languages was so easy for them.

The Normans (men of the North) were not only in Normandie, England, Ireland and even in Norway, but there was even a Norman Kingdom in Sicily: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_southern_Italy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman-Arab-Byzantine_culture

They probably changed from French to Sicilian/Latin and Arab.

However, those Normans who established a kingdom in Sicily came from French Normandy.

Norman kings of Sicily were descendants of Tankred de Hauteville from the Cotentin Peninsula.

So Normans came to both England and to Sicily from France. To Ireland - indirectly - also from France.

The decline of Sorbian-speaking territory since the 16th century to modern times:

https://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/xmlpage/1/article/302?htmlOnce=yes



♠ Catholic Sorbian communities
⌧ area devastated by brown coal mining
Grey — contiguous Sorbian-speaking area at the beginning of the 16th century
Light green — areas in which the older generation still spoke Sorbian around 1789
Dark green — areas in which the rural population spoke Sorbian around 1789
Blue — areas in which the majority of the population spoke Sorbian around 1884
Red — areas in which part of the population still speaks Sorbian today

Sorbian language in 1000 AD and in 1800 AD:

http://language-diversity.eu/en/knowledge/regions-of-europe/die-sorbenwenden-in-der-lausitz/





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In the islands of Hiddensee (Hycina) and Ruegen (Rugia) Slavic language continued to be spoken until the 17th century - especially in the island of Hiddensee as well as in the Wittow Peninsula (north), in the Jasmund Peninsula (northeast) and in the Mönchgut Peninsula (southeast) of the island of Ruegen:

http://koszalin7.pl/st/pom/pomorze_104.html

Check this map:

http://koszalin7.pl/img/pomorze/slowianie/ranowie_06.jpg

XV w. = Slavic-speaking areas during the 15th century
XVI w. = Slavic-speaking areas during the 16th century



Let's also add that 79,21% of all settlements on the island of Ruegen have names of Slavic origin.

Coming back to the Drevani people:

http://www.sharedlist.org/writing/T...nnenberg district of Lower Saxony-589/?i=1963

Carolus I said:

we can add the last Drevani people in Drawehn in 1890

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(...) to summarize it: in the census of 1890 about 600 people from this region stated "Wendisch" as their mother tongue. Further investigations led to the conclusion that the locals referred to themselves as Wenden, but spoke German dialects. There are some loanwords from the Slavic language of their ancestors. The Landrat (district administrator) from this region who also grew up there stated that the local population only spoke Low German (Plattdeutsch) and they only knew from narratives that in the past their ancestors spoke a different language.

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Full collection of existing Drevano-Polabian linguistic material was published by R. Rost in 1907:

R. Rost, "Sprachreste der Dravaeno-Polaben im Hannoverschen", Leipzig 1907.

And here something about Drevano-Polabian language and origins of its vocabulary from "Material Folk Culture of the Polabian Tribe of Drzewianie (Drevanen) in the Light of Lexical Investigations" by Barbara Szydłowska-Ceglowa:



Middle Low German was in use between ca. 1100 and ca. 1600 - during that period most of German loanwords were adopted into Drevano-Polabian (later, during the 17th and the 18th centuries, final Germanization took place and Drevano-Polabian language disappeared):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Low_German

A few examples of surnames of Slavic origin in Germany (these are of Obotrite, Veleti and Sorbian origin; rather than other Slavic):

Surname Pietsch: http://www.verwandt.de/karten/relativ/pietsch.html



Surname Wendt: http://www.verwandt.de/karten/relativ/wendt.html



Surname Radtke: http://www.verwandt.de/karten/relativ/radtke.html



Surname Liedtke: http://www.verwandt.de/karten/relativ/liedtke.html



These surnames are most frequent in eastern Germany, areas which used to be inhabited by Slavic Obotrites, Veleti and Sorbs.