--- Roger Mills skrzypszy:
> John Cowan wrote:
>
> > My first guess would be that German had them once but lost them, and that
> > they might remain current in German dialects. Dutch and Polish are at the
> > extreme ends of the German dialect continuum, after all (particularly if
> > you believe the essentialist explanation that Polish is a light form of
> > Russian that even Germans can understand :-) ).
Interesting idea.
> That's certainly a possibility. The Suspect that leapt immediately to my
> mind was: mutual borrowing from French.
Another interesting idea.
--- Andreas Johansson skrzypszy:
> Since Dutch is essentially Low German with an army and a fleet,
LOL!! Have you got that one, John?
{On a sidenote: you want to call our so-called army an ARMY? ;)) )
> and I figure
> that Polish must've been in atleast as much contact with eastern variants of
> Low German as with NE ones of High German, it seems very possibly that they
> may've spread along the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts, but getting wiped in
> Northern Germany by the inroads of High German.
Also an interesting theory. It would certainly be worth to investigate it a bit
deeplier and see who of you is right...
Jan
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"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones
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