Re: double time signature problem

[David Kastrup]

David Wright <address@hidden> writes:

> Fair enough; I didn't know that. So how far back do you have to go in
> German to hear things that would sound archaic or stilted to modern
> ears?

I sound archaic or stilted to modern ears.  It's a bit of a moving
target, but Luther was a language trendsetter regarding written language
since he decided to write things as they were spoken.  So his German
reads quite different from that of contemporaries.  He is not the first
to translate parts of the Bible into German, but other attempts read
quite contrived and hard to understand to modern readers in comparison.

Luthers has been rephrased and reworded over the centuries as well and
does read a bit strange, but the grammar appears sound, it's just some
vocabulary and its usage.  Quite less of a change than "Get thee gone,
knave!  Thou speakest not in good faith." would appear to English
speakers who tend to horribly mangle attempts at constructing elements
of grammar still in use at Shakespearean time.  German has not really
retired grammar since then, and even archaic usage like "Rede Er kein
dummes Zeug!" fits into active grammar use well enough that native
speakers would not get it wrong.

In English you have the phenomen of the change from Middle English to
Early Modern English which is like a complete change of language.  It's
not as much as there actual was such a rapid change of language than a
geographical shift of the centre and mode of written culture, "nobody
talks like that here/anymore" catching up with a continuity of writing.

Luther basically has been the last major such moment in German, with the
shift from Mittelhochdeutsch already being behind.

> I know that Wagner invented an archaic form of German for the Ring to
> lend it "authenticity" but did he have sources/ examples to draw on?

Out of my depth here.

> ¹ But I don't keep up with contemporary composers.
> ² Almost all the *psalm* texts in Messiah are BCP, not KJV.

Ok, but the difference does not appear all that large to me regarding
the "archaicness".

-- 
David Kastrup