The Language Question
The Salic law code contains the earliest surviving attestations of Old Dutch. They consist mainly of stray words or glosses (Malbergse glossen), but include a full sentence:
| Old Dutch | - | maltho | thi | - | afrio | lito |
| Dutch | ik | meld | jou | ik | bevrijd (je) | laat* |
| English | I | tell | you | I | free (you) | freedman |
- A laat was a form of serfdom in the feudal system. He was a half freed farmer; connected to the land of his lord he worked for, but not owned by his lord. While a "horige" was in full ownership of the lord.
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Famous quotes containing the words language and/or question:
“This is of the loon—I do not mean its laugh, but its looning,—is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear,—hoo-hoo-ooooo, like the hallooing of a man on a very high key, having thrown his voice into his head. I have heard a sound exactly like it when breathing heavily through my own nostrils, half awake at ten at night, suggesting my affinity to the loon; as if its language were but a dialect of my own, after all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Like to the Artick needle, that doth guide
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—Francis Quarles (1592–1644)