Eric’s line “I am mortal” and discussion of how that impacts his views on AmiDeutsch hits harder than most things in these posts from Baen’s Bar.
For anyone who doesn’t know, AmiDeutsch is a combination of up-time English and German that develops post-Ring of Fire.
– Bethanne (Publisher, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine)
14 November 2018 07:56
I stopped following this thread quite a while ago because it didn’t seem to have any bearing on what we’re really doing here, which is writing FICTION. The way Amideutsch has been used in the series is mostly as a plausible form of linguistic handwavium so authors don’t have to be constantly interrupting the narrative to specify which language or dialect is being used in each and every scene.
I based the idea of Amideutsch on the historical model of the English language itself, which is a Germanic language at its base with simplified declensions (“the” as opposed to “der, die, das”) and conjugations (every verb is the same except in the third person singular) and a huge overlay of Latin-derived loan words. Here, it’s American loan words, many of which of course are derived from Latin via Norman French.
Before anyone gets too carried away trying to figure out the ultimate historical fate of Amideutsch, you need to remember two things:
1) I am writing fiction.
2) I am mortal.
The founding novel of the series, 1632, was published in February, 2000. The story itself begins in the spring of 1631. As of now, in real time, the 22nd novel of which I am either the sole author or a co-author will be published in April, 2019 — that is to say, nineteen years later. But in story chronology, only six years have passed. Roughly, the ration of real-time to story-time in 3:1.
Except that ratio is inaccurate because it’s steadily expanding because the series keeps broadening out as we progress. Here’s how the ratio evolved:
February, 2000: 1632 is published. The ratio is 1:1.25. (One novel covering about 15 months)
July, 2003: 1633 is published. The ratio is now about 1.3:1 (Two novels published in 3.5 years spanning 2.5 story years)
April, 2004: Galileo Affair is published. This is the first of the 1634 novels. The ratio is still 1.3:1.
September, 2006: Cannon Law is published, the first of the 1635 novels. The ratio is now about 1.5:1.
April, 2011: Saxon Uprising is published, the first of the 1636 novels. The ratio is now more than 2:1.
February, 2018: Volga Rules is published, the first of the 1637 novels. The ratio is now a little under 3:1
The pattern is obvious. By the time we get to the first 1638 novel — which I estimate will be in or around the year 2026 — the ratio will probably be up to 4:1.
Now let’s deal with mortality ratios. When 1632 came out, I celebrated the onset of my 53rd year of life. (My birthday is February 6, 1947.) As of the publication of 1637: The Volga Rules (February, 2018), I celebrated the onset of my 71st year of life. Projecting forward, I should be celebrating my 79th or perhaps 80th birthday — if I get that far, which I think is fairly likely. I would have to be at least 90 by the time we got to 1639 and I would have to be in my second century of life by the time we got to 1640. And by then, there’d be somewhere between forty and sixty novels in the series.
You can perhaps see why I DON’T GIVE A DAMN what the eventual evolution of Amideutsch will be. All that invented language needs to do is be plausible in its inception — which is certainly is — and last for at least ten years. Which is also completely plausible. For FICTION — which is what we’re doing here — that is plenty good enough.
More Thoughts
24 July 2016 02:49
Mike Knopp’s summary of the situation pretty well matches my own sense of Amideutsch. I hadn’t thought of his Dutch/Afrikaans analogy but it’s a good one.
(Mike Knopp 22 July 2016 23:12)
It is not a creole. A creole has to be nativized by children as a first language. Amideutsch hasn’t been around nearly long enough for that yet.
Also, while it does share some similarities with pidgin languages, it has some characteristics that are definitely not associated with pidgins.
While it could be considered a dialect of German. That is a bit of a stretch. The most similar example that I can think of is Afrikaans to Dutch. Afrikaans takes the vast majority of its vocabulary from Dutch, but adds in some Bantu, Khoisan, Malay, and other European languages. Where it greatly differs from Dutch is in grammar.
From what has been written in canon about Amideutsch it is very similar to Afrikaans. The largest part of its vocabulary will come from a mix of Low, Middle, and some High German, but there will also be a mix of vocabulary from up-time English (mostly in the technical and science fields). However, like a pidgin and Afrikaans it has a greatly simplified grammar.
As obvious as it should be, Amideutsch has the characteristics of an invented language. Mainly because it is an invented language.
However, if one wants to try to categorize it I would say that it was a constructed pidgin which was then codified through media into a Lingua Franca for the NUS, then the CPE, and finally the USE. One thing that Amideutsch will definitely not be, cannot be from what has been said so far in canon is a naturally evolving and inconsistent pidgin.
At least that is my take on it from my research. Look for my non-fiction article sometime in the next month.
I can tell you this.
Here are the key ingredients:
The language remains basically German in the same sense that English itself has a basically Germanic substructure. That’s why it’s so easy for English-speakers to learn German _initially_ compared to a Romance language but then gets steadily harder. That’s because a huge part of English multi-syllabic vocabulary is of Romance origin, where German uses compound words.
The grammar is greatly simplified, basically by being “Englishized” (or “Americanized”). As with English, tenses are very simple and there is no distinction made between masculine, feminine and neuter words. There’s none of this der-die-das business.
There are a huge number of English loan words and idioms.
The only extensive depiction I ever did of the evolution of Amideutsch is in the opening scene of Chapter 8 of 1634: THE GALILEO AFFAIR:
The steam crane made things easier, of that there was no doubt.
When the bastard thing was working, that was. Yard Foreman Conrad Ursinus stared at the machine and tried, under his breath, threatening it. The verdammte thing was squirting steam in all directions and held a mid-rib in the air like a hooked fish where it was no good to man nor beast.
Threatening it did no good, alas. Conrad took a deep breath and drew on an English curse word or two. Somehow they seemed–filthier? Stronger? More satisfying. Earthier somehow. He certainly felt better for wishing that the stinking thing get fucked. Sideways.
That attended to, he cupped his hands and hollered over the screech of the safety valve. “Was fur shit ist es now? Ist broke, oder was?”
Aloysius the crane-driver leaned out of the cab, his fat Frieslander face sweating red while he wafted steam away from himself. “Das verfuckter packing noch immer. Funf minutes while es kuhlt, dan kann ich es fixen.”
That made Conrad chuckle. They had two new words: fucken, straight from English, and fixen, which meant to mend something, but sounded exactly like the word they used to use for fucken.
There was probably a scholar somewhere writing about it even now.
Standardizing a Language
I should add this:
What really standardizes a language is when it takes a written form. But even that process doesn’t happen overnight. Take a look at written English during the Renaissance and Early Modern Era. You not only have wide variations in spelling but plenty of grammatical variations and variations in meaning. It takes a while for it all to settle down. Probably the single most critical turning point comes when someone produces a dictionary that most people accept as definitive. That didn’t happen in English until 1755 with the publication of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary. A somewhat similar role was played in France by the Academie dictionaries although it was a more protracted process. In German, that role was played by the Grimm brothers — but they didn’t produce their first dictionary (“Deutsches Wörterbuch”) until 1838.
My point is that even with the widespread printing industry that exists in the USE in the mid-1630s, it’s still going to be a while before any soret of standardized Amideutsch emerges. The fact that someone produces a dictionary will not automatically lead to its acceptance, certainly not its quick acceptance, unless it has some sort of really authoritative body or person behind it. I.e., some analog to “the King James Bible” like “Emperor Gustav Adolf’s Dictionary.” There are other possibilities.
