German questions

[WeepingElf]

sometimes nouns ending with -ik stress the final syllable (e.g. Politik) and sometimes they don't (e.g. Grammatik). is there a way to tell which way a word is going to work? or an overall pattern with a list of specific exceptions?

I'm at least not aware of any such rule.

[Linguoboy]

I have the feeling that Politik is the outlier here, at least when it comes to fields of study. All of the others I can think of (e.g. Linguistik, Germanistik, Informatik) have penultimate stress.

With the exception of Katholik, the common nouns with stressed final -ik seem to be recent borrowings from French (e.g. Aspik, Fabrik). Politik is derived from French politique, so perhaps that's the reason for this stress pattern.

[Travis B.]

Maybe it is specifically recent French loans versus words based on the set of words of Latinate derivation common to western Europe? This would definitely explain the difference in stress pattern.

[WeepingElf]

Maybe it is specifically recent French loans versus words based on the set of words of Latinate derivation common to western Europe? This would definitely explain the difference in stress pattern.

Maybe. But Politik is not the only -ik noun with final stress, Mathematik, Physik, Kritik and a few others are stressed that way, too. All these words are ultimately Greek in origin, but may have entered German via French, but I don't know.

[Creyeditor]

Could it be that these are actually two suffixes? -tik from Ancient Greek tékhnē as in penultimate-stress Grammatik and -ik as in final-stress Physik, Kritik from Ancient Greek -ikos? I don't know if there is a real correlation though.

[Travis B.]

Maybe it is specifically recent French loans versus words based on the set of words of Latinate derivation common to western Europe? This would definitely explain the difference in stress pattern.

Maybe. But Politik is not the only -ik noun with final stress, Mathematik, Physik, Kritik and a few others are stressed that way, too. All these words are ultimately Greek in origin, but may have entered German via French, but I don't know.

Note English physique and critique, which similarly have final stress and are obviously recent loans via French. (Mathematik could also be from French mathematique.)

[Travis B.]

I really wish I had access to Duden right now... it could definitely answer these questions...

[Travis B.]

I really wish I had access to Duden right now... it could definitely answer these questions...

Actually, I do have access to the free version of Duden online. It says that Mathematik, e.g., comes directly from Latin (ars) mathematica, itself from Greek mathēmatikḗ (téchnē). However, its form, especially its final-syllable stressed long vowel, is suspiciously Frenchy...

[jal]

In Dutch most of the words the are stressed penultimately in German, have antepenultimate stress since we have an extra -a at the end (informatica, grammatica). If the do not have the -a, we have final stress (linguistiek, germanistiek, politiek, Katholiek, fysiek, kritiek, techniek). The stress shifts (but afaik it does in German too) when suffixes are added (e.g. politicus, technicus, with antepenultimate stress).


JAL

[Travis B.]

When considering frequency across the vocabulary (rather than in the corpus), StG /d/ seems to be much more common than English /θ ð/, despite the fact that they all come from PGmc *þ, aside from some English loans from ON, where they may come from PGmc *d, and some words in StG where /d/ actually comes from PGmc *d (e.g. dialect borrowing, loans from Low German?). Is there any reason why this is so? (Is this just an artifact of that StG proportionally retains more vocabulary from PGmc than modern English does?)

[Creyeditor]

I think part of the answer might be that German actually inherited some /d/s from PGmc *d. I tried to come up with an example but I could only think of the present participle ending -end (Wiktionary: "From Middle High German -ende, from Old High German -enti, -anti, from Proto-West Germanic *-andī, from Proto-Germanic *-andz (present participle ending).").

[Travis B.]

I think part of the answer might be that German actually inherited some /d/s from PGmc *d. I tried to come up with an example but I could only think of the present participle ending -end (Wiktionary: "From Middle High German -ende, from Old High German -enti, -anti, from Proto-West Germanic *-andī, from Proto-Germanic *-andz (present participle ending).").

It does seem to me that some cases of OHG /nt/ turned into MHG /nd/, such as in MHG unde (even though that turned back into /nt/ with apocope in NHG).

[Creyeditor]

Looking through Wiktionary, there are also several (or many?) entries that include a note like "The modern consonantism is Central and Low German", see here for example: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dunkel#German. I guess one could reinterpret this as saying that the change was not completed in Standard New High German.

[Travis B.]

One thing I noticed from listening to the song Nebel by Rammstein is that Till Lindemann pronounces the word geküsst as what sounds like gek[ø]sst to my ears. Note that while Till Lindemann sings in StG, I have heard things from Germans saying he pronounces it with a noticeable accent beyond mere aspects of "stage German". Any thoughts on this?

[Linguoboy]

One thing I noticed from listening to the song Nebel by Rammstein is that Till Lindemann pronounces the word geküsst as what sounds like gek[ø]sst to my ears. Note that while Till Lindemann sings in StG, I have heard things from Germans saying he pronounces it with a noticeable accent beyond mere aspects of "stage German". Any thoughts on this?

I've always been struck by how close German /eː/ sounds to /iː/ so I did some reading up on German vowels and found that actual measured values seem to vary quite a bit. Have you noticed this same lowering in other words with /ʏ/? Otherwise it could just be a one-off.

[WeepingElf]

One thing I noticed from listening to the song Nebel by Rammstein is that Till Lindemann pronounces the word geküsst as what sounds like gek[ø]sst to my ears. Note that while Till Lindemann sings in StG, I have heard things from Germans saying he pronounces it with a noticeable accent beyond mere aspects of "stage German". Any thoughts on this?

Lindemann likes to give his words a darker tone when he sings; few Germans actually speak like that. I once heard a comedy act who was caricaturizing Hitler, and he spoke in a similar way.

[Linguoboy]

Lindemann likes to give his words a darker tone when he sings; few Germans actually speak like that. I once heard a comedy act who was caricaturizing Hitler, and he spoke in a similar way.

Interesting. So lowered vowels sounds "darker" to you?

(This is particularly germane to my speech, since my /eː/ is noticeably lower than typical. Of course, with the other Alemannicisms in my speech, most folks would likely just read this as dialectal. I've never noticed if, say, my /øː/ is lowered too but it stands to reason.)

[Travis B.]

One thing I noticed from listening to the song Nebel by Rammstein is that Till Lindemann pronounces the word geküsst as what sounds like gek[ø]sst to my ears. Note that while Till Lindemann sings in StG, I have heard things from Germans saying he pronounces it with a noticeable accent beyond mere aspects of "stage German". Any thoughts on this?

I've always been struck by how close German /eː/ sounds to /iː/ so I did some reading up on German vowels and found that actual measured values seem to vary quite a bit. Have you noticed this same lowering in other words with /ʏ/? Otherwise it could just be a one-off.

I would have to re-listen to a bunch of Rammstein to tell whether Till's /ʏ/ is typically lowered.

[Travis B.]

Lindemann likes to give his words a darker tone when he sings; few Germans actually speak like that. I once heard a comedy act who was caricaturizing Hitler, and he spoke in a similar way.

Interesting. So lowered vowels sounds "darker" to you?

Seconded. Usually to me "darker" vowels would indicate backer vowels.

(This is particularly germane to my speech, since my /eː/ is noticeably lower than typical. Of course, with the other Alemannicisms in my speech, most folks would likely just read this as dialectal. I've never noticed if, say, my /øː/ is lowered too but it stands to reason.)

My own /eː/ is certainly lower than is typical of German, but to me that would just be my having an American accent rather than anything else.

(My own /øː/ seems to be much higher than my /eː/ due to a lack of interference from my native English phonology.)

[Travis B.]

Now that I think of it, going along with this Till Lindemann's /eː/ is notably lower than the typical German almost-/iː/, being much closer to my native English /eɪ/ [e̞(ː)].