# Historical Germanic Languages: Mutual intelligibility



## woruldwīdwebcræftig

Many people claim that Norman French is responsible for English losing its M.I. with Old Norse (and other Gmc. languages). But I disagree for several reasons:

- Icelandic is not any closer to being mutually intelligible with German than English is.

- Written English seems to have changed rapidly between 1066 and 1300, but this is partly an illusion since the French caused a discontinuity in the writing of English. When English began to be written down again, the spelling conventions were more based on French than Old English. Thus, many (most?) Old English words were pronounced the same as or very similar to the way they would have been right before the Great Vowel Shift, but the spelling makes them look more foreign. The French influence on English, and the difference between Old and Middle English, is (IMO) exaggerated in the written language for this reason.

- Correct me if I am wrong, but while Icelanders can read ON easily, they have great difficulty with OE. (If they know Modern English, it would naturally be easier, but that would be "unfair".) I don't think ON and OE were mutually intelligible after about AD 800. Nor were ON and OHG after 800. (as far as I can tell)

- A final note: $ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Canada$ has a song in OE and NE, and $ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oben_am_jungen_Rhein$ (dollar signs not part of the URL) has a song in OE and German. The percentage of non-cognates between the OE and the NE is comparable to that between the OE and the German. Although nearly all of the non-cognates between the OE and NE are French words in the NE, there are roughly as many non-cognates between the German and the OE. The languages just diverge, French influence or not.


I would like to hear some others' views on this. All discussion about when the Germanic languages lost MI is welcome, but in particular, if someone thinks that it really was French that dealt the death blow to English's MI with others, can you back your argument up?


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## Athaulf

woruldwīdwebcræftig said:


> Many people claim that Norman French is responsible for English losing its M.I. with Old Norse (and other Gmc. languages).



West and North Germanic languages split almost 2,000 years ago. After such a long time, any two separated languages will totally lose their mutual intelligibility, so it doesn't make sense to look for "culprits". 



> - Written English seems to have changed rapidly between 1066 and 1300, but this is partly an illusion since the French caused a discontinuity in the writing of English.


Also, the 11th century formal written Old English was already archaic even in its own time. When Middle English literature started flourishing again, it was mostly written in the contemporary language of its time, which made the contrast with late Old English even more striking. 



> - Correct me if I am wrong, but while Icelanders can read ON easily,


Can they really read it "easily"? I suppose it's facilitated somewhat by the extreme puristic and archaizing language policies in Iceland, and I'd also guess that kids in Iceland are taught at least some Old Norse reading in schools. But nobody can really read thousand years old texts "easily" by just relying on their natural, modern native language. 



> they have great difficulty with OE. (If they know Modern English, it would naturally be easier, but that would be "unfair".) I don't think ON and OE were mutually intelligible after about AD 800. Nor were ON and OHG after 800. (as far as I can tell)-


The problem is that "mutually intelligible" is a very fuzzy notion. I would guess that Germanic languages in the period 800-1000AD were similar to modern Slavic languages: there was probably some mutual intelligibility even among the remotest ones, which however probably depended drastically on the context and the circumstances in practice. 



> - A final note: $ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Canada$ has a song in OE and NE, and $ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oben_am_jungen_Rhein$ (dollar signs not part of the URL) has a song in OE and German. The percentage of non-cognates between the OE and the NE is comparable to that between the OE and the German. Although nearly all of the non-cognates between the OE and NE are French words in the NE, there are roughly as many non-cognates between the German and the OE. The languages just diverge, French influence or not.


You can't really expect to prove anything with such off-hand comparisons. First, are the translations done so as to expose the maximum number of cognates? Then, are you sure that you know how to recognize cognates (they can be quite obscured by sound changes)? Furthermore, which cognates do you count as relevant for mutual intelligibility (sound changes make them less and less similar slowly, and semantic drift makes their meanings gradually more and more different, so there is no sharp cut-off point)? And so on. I'm not saying that your approach doesn't make any sense, but it has to be done much more carefully.


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## berndf

woruldwīdwebcræftig said:


> ...there are roughly as many non-cognates between the German and the OE.


Sorry, but that doesn't say anything. The OE version is less of a translation than a transcription. Taking the first stanza, it is just the German text where each word is transformed into the corresponding OE forms, same grammatical form, same sentence structure. The difference in the first two lines is more a "correction" of the unidiomatic German expression. If you replaced the first two lines by the more idiomatic "Über dem jungen Rhein liegt Liechtenstein" then the two versions would match 100%. Hence, the "OE" text is in reality German with the German words having been replaced by their OE cognates and morphological equivalents.


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## woruldwīdwebcræftig

Athaulf said:


> West and North Germanic languages split almost 2,000 years ago. After such a long time, any two separated languages will totally lose their mutual intelligibility, so it doesn't make sense to look for "culprits".



What? Latin was last spoken around the "year 0", and yet many of the Romance languages of today (save French and Romanian) are still to some degree M.I.



Athaulf said:


> The problem is that "mutually intelligible" is a very fuzzy notion.



Let me be clear. Suppose, hypothetically, broadcast TV existed in the year 900. If the Norse had a show about, say, hunting or sailing, could the Anglo-Saxons watch and understand it without subtitles? Similarly, if the Anglo-Saxons did the show, would a Viking have needed subtitling?

More generally, if the show were to be done every century in all the Germanic languages living at the time, when would the people of each language first need subtitling for each other language? Would there be a time when only the Frisian show would not need subtitling to be shown in England?


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## trance0

woruldwīdwebcræftig said:


> What? Latin was last spoken around the "year 0", and yet many of the Romance languages of today (save French and Romanian) are still to some degree M.I.


First of all, Latin was not spoken last around year 0. Secondly, I believe I am not shooting in the dark when I say that most Romance languages of today show little to almost no mutual understandability with Latin.



> Let me be clear. Suppose, hypothetically, broadcast TV existed in the year 900. If the Norse had a show about, say, hunting or sailing, could the Anglo-Saxons watch and understand it without subtitles? Similarly, if the Anglo-Saxons did the show, would a Viking have needed subtitling?


There is no way of knowing this, because it is virtually impossible to know how the native speakers of dead languages would perceive each other`s tongues. Several other factors also influence the understanding of languages, like how quick a language is spoken and what vocabulary is used in it to convey meanings etc.



> More generally, if the show were to be done every century in all the Germanic languages living at the time, when would the people of each language first need subtitling for each other language? Would there be a time when only the Frisian show would not need subtitling to be shown in England?


 This question cannot really be answered.


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## Sepia

woruldwīdwebcræftig said:


> Many people claim that Norman French is responsible for English losing its M.I. with Old Norse (and other Gmc. languages). But I disagree for several reasons:
> 
> - Icelandic is not any closer to being mutually intelligible with German than English is.



Historically Icelandic and Danish are even closer related with Old Norse than with High German. Despite this, the MI was lost long time ago and grammtically you may even find more similarity with High German than with Danish. This without any bad guys from France messing up the beautiful language. So on that count, I'd say you are right. 

One basic difference, however, between the development of the language in Iceland, Denmark, and England is that the old tradition of story-telling survived in Iceland far into the modern age of paper, pen and ink. Lots of the old stories about people, gods and other characters of the other world were actually written down. This this happened but in a few cases in the area that became Denmark. These few exceptions, I suppose, were not suffiecient material for the language in its original complexity to be conserved like it happened in Iceland. The situation in England seems to have been similar. We all know how important the literature of a culture is for its language - people who are excellent in their language are usually people who read a lot. So it seems likely that the drastic change in the languages may not mainly have resulted from a cultural influence from the outside rather than the lack of influence from the inside: Consider the following hypothesis; if you succeed in doing away with a culture's literature (novels, religious books, everything) with whichever means possible, if this culture does not posess complicated administrative functions, the language is only going to be used for normal everyday communications for a long, long time. This is obviously going to have influence on the further development of this language. 

As Christianity was introduced in the North of Europe its "carrier language" was Latin and stayed Latin for a long time. No real substitute. Here we must also remember, that nobody had the possibility of hiding books that might not be looked upon with approval by the Christian leaders, because they did not have any books in that sense. Their "books" were the people who told the old stories. There is not much evidence as to what happened to these "books", but it is obvious that the Icelanders had them for a long time parallel to the introduction of reading and writing. And the Danes, and probably also the English, did not. And today, about a Millenium later the Icelandic language is still highly complex and not so different from Old Norse, whereas Danish and English have changed drastically.


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## Sepia

woruldwīdwebcræftig said:


> ...
> Let me be clear. Suppose, hypothetically, broadcast TV existed in the year 900. If the Norse had a show about, say, hunting or sailing, could the Anglo-Saxons watch and understand it without subtitles? Similarly, if the Anglo-Saxons did the show, would a Viking have needed subtitling?
> ...



Where do you see the big difference between Vikings and Anglo-Saxons? People from Jutland settled in England together with Anglo-Saxons. Sure they did not have the same language, but neither did those from Jutland have the same language as those of the islands. However they seem to have been able to cooperate in their settlements. When is a North Germanic people Viking, and when is it not. Weren't the people in Haithabu Vikings?


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## berndf

woruldwīdwebcræftig said:


> More generally, if the show were to be done every century in all the Germanic languages living at the time, when would the people of each language first need subtitling for each other language? Would there be a time when only the Frisian show would not need subtitling to be shown in England?


Swiss German is subtitled on German TV and and I have seen a French Canadian Show even dubbed on French TV. Even much more closely related languages or dialects may loose M.I. amoung speakers not acustomed to each other's language or dialect very quickly.


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## Sepia

berndf said:


> Swiss German is subtitled on German TV and and I have seen a French Canadian Show even dubbed on French TV. Even much more closely related languages or dialects may loose M.I. amoung speakers not acustomed to each other's language or dialect very quickly.


 
Also Swiss German shows are occasionally dubbed in High German. I think it was "Eurocops" that ran on ARD with dual-channel sound so that you could switch languages. 

Even though a certain MI is expected among the languages DK, NE and SE, the broadcasters run the shows with subtitles. So this is really no foundation for measuring the degree of MI.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Athaulf said:


> woruldwīdwebcræftig said:
> 
> 
> 
> - Correct me if I am wrong, but while Icelanders can read ON easily
> 
> 
> 
> Can they really read it "easily"? I suppose it's facilitated somewhat by the extreme puristic and archaizing language policies in Iceland, and I'd also guess that kids in Iceland are taught at least some Old Norse reading in schools. But nobody can really read thousand years old texts "easily" by just relying on their natural, modern native language.
Click to expand...

I would say that Icelanders can probably understand ON with less difficulty than Danes, Swedes or Norwegians, and it's not just due to current Icelandic language policies. Don't forget that Iceland, being geographically isolated, has had less external influences over time that may have had impact on grammar and syntax. Language policies alone do not explain while Icelandic has retained case endings for nouns, for example, while Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have lost virtually all of them.

Even if ON grammar and vocabulary are obviously not the same as in modern Icelandic, at least ON ought to look less foreign to an Icelandic speaking person than to others, if we believe that Icelandic has evolved less far from ON than the other Scandinavian languages.

/Wilma


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## Athaulf

woruldwīdwebcræftig said:


> What? Latin was last spoken around the "year 0", and yet many of the Romance languages of today (save French and Romanian) are still to some degree M.I.



Notice I said _separated_ languages. This has definitely not been the case for Western Romance languages. As you note, Romanian has been separated, and it indeed has nearly zero mutual intelligibility with Western Romance, except for Latinisms that have been artificially introduced in recent history. 



> Let me be clear. Suppose, hypothetically, broadcast TV existed in the year 900. If the Norse had a show about, say, hunting or sailing, could the Anglo-Saxons watch and understand it without subtitles?


This is still not a clear question. The level of intelligibility would probably depend dramatically on the content, manner of speech, and regional dialect of these Norse speakers. In any case, I'd bet that even speakers of different Anglo-Saxon dialects had trouble understanding each other around 900AD, so subtitles would likely be necessary.


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## Sepia

... and what the puristic language policies are concerned: One thing way the introduction of new words, another thing is the basic structure of a language. 

And what the Danes and ON or Icelandic are concerned: I don't know any Danes who would be able to understand but a few words of a written or spoken text in ON or Icelandic, if they hadn't studied those languages.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Sepia said:


> And what the Danes and ON or Icelandic are concerned: I don't know any Danes who would be able to understand but a few words of a written or spoken text in ON or Icelandic, if they hadn't studied those languages.


This would be true for Swedes also. Personally, I find modern Icelandic, ON or OE about equally unintelligible - many words look familiar but may not mean the same as today, and the syntax is alien, so I wouldn't understand the meaning of it without a full translation in modern Swedish.

/Wilma


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## robbie_SWE

Athaulf said:


> Notice I said _separated_ languages. This has definitely not been the case for Western Romance languages. As you note, Romanian has been separated, and it indeed has nearly zero mutual intelligibility





Athaulf said:


> (well...I'm not so sure about that!...a subject worth discussing) with Western Romance, except for Latinisms that have been *artificially introduced*(??...it somehow has a negative cling in my ears) in recent history...


 
Intersting point, but I believe that it should be discussed in another thread. 

 robbie


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## trance0

*The manuscript text, letter for letter*

ÞgeiR blundr systor s egils v þar aþingino & hafði gengit hart at liþueizlo við þst. h bað egil & þa þstein coma ser t staðfesto ut þangat a myrar h bio aðr fyr suNan huit a fyr neþan blundz vatn Egill toc uel aþui. oc fysti þst at þr leti h þangat fa ra. Egill setti þorgeir blund niðr at ana brecko En stein fǫrði bustað siN ut yf lang á. & settiz niðr at leiro lǫk. En egill reið hei suðr anes ept þingit m flocc siN. & skilðoz þr feðgar m kęrleic

*
The same text in normalized, Old Norse spelling*

Þorgeirr blundr, systursonr Egils, var þar á þinginu ok hafði gengit hart at liðveizlu við Þorstein. Hann bað Egil ok þá Þorstein koma sér til staðfestu út þangat á Mýrar; hann bjó áðr fyrir sunnan Hvítá, fyrir neðan Blundsvatn. Egill tók vel á því ok fýsti Þorstein, at þeir léti hann þangat fara. Egill setti Þorgeir blund niðr at Ánabrekku, en Steinarr fœrði bústað sinn út yfir Langá ok settisk niðr at Leirulæk. En Egill reið heim suðr á Nes eptir þingit með flokk sinn, ok skildusk þeir feðgar með kærleik.


*The same text in Modern Icelandic*

Þorgeir blundur, systursonur Egils, var þar á þinginu og hafði gengið hart að liðveislu við Þorstein. Hann bað Egil og þá Þorstein að koma sér til staðfestu út þangað á Mýrar; hann bjó áður fyrir sunnan Hvítá, fyrir neðan Blundsvatn. Egill tók vel á því og fýsti Þorstein, að þeir létu hann þangað fara. Egill setti Þorgeir blund niður að Ánabrekku, en Steinar færði bústað sinn út yfir Langá og settist niður að Leirulæk. En Egill reið heim suður á Nes eftir þingið með flokk sinn, og skildust þeir feðgar með kærleik.


Comparing the above texts, reveals even to the total layman, that modern Iclandic is EXTREMELY similar to Old Norse, of course only the written language, as many sound changes in pronunciation have come into being since the Old Norse era. I believe that an average Icelander has no trouble reading and understanding Old Norse Sagas, while the same is virtually impossible for a Swede or a Norwegian.


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## Sepia

systursonr Egils, var þar ... ok hafði gengit ... við ... Hann bað Egil ok ... til staðfestu ... hann ... Egill tók ... at ... hann ... fara ... fœrði bústað sinn út ... Egill reið heim ... með flokk sinn, ok ... með kærleik.

The above is all I understand of it, based on knowledge of Danish, Swedish, English, and High German. Not really enough to make any sense.


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## trance0

Well, it just proves how little Icelandic has changed since the Viking age compared to all the other Scandinavian languages.


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## Athaulf

robbie_SWE said:


> Originally Posted by *Athaulf*
> (well...I'm not so sure about that!...a subject worth discussing) with Western Romance, except for Latinisms that have been *artificially introduced*(??...it somehow has a negative cling in my ears) in recent history...
> 
> 
> 
> Intersting point, but I believe that it should be discussed in another thread.
Click to expand...


Don't worry, I don't mean anything negative by "artificially". I have in mind the process that's been going on in nearly all European languages -- educated writers consciously and intentionally introducing words from classical languages (mainly Latin) into their native languages. I call this process "artificial" because numerous Latinisms exist in most European languages only because their prominent intellectuals at various points in history thought "Latin is cool, let's borrow some words from it to sound smart", so their existence is due to conscious decisions, not spontaneous language development (admittedly, the line between these is fuzzy). 

The relatively good mutual intelligibility of modern Romance languages owes a great deal to this historical artificial Latinization. This is especially true for Romanian, whose modern standard form has replaced many old Slavic and other loanwords with Latinisms and borrowings from other Romance languages. This has not only boosted the number of Latin roots in modern Romanian, but also introduced many words that are far more lexically similar to other modern Romance languages than the original Romanian words inherited from Latin, which have passed through sound changes very different from those that happened in Western Romance languages, often to the point of mutual unrecognizability. (Not that there's anyting wrong with any of that, of course.) 

Without this historical unifying trend, the most distant Romance languages would surely have drifted away to a point of nearly zero intelligibility by now. Just try writing a few sentences in French, Italian, and Romanian without Latinisms and other classical and mutual borrowings, using a phonetic alphabet. What you get won't be that much more similar than if you did the same thing in three distant Germanic languages, between which there has never been any similar historical unifying trend. (In contrast, between Slavic languages, which have split more recently, you'd get much more similarity.)

(Although I am drifting a bit off-topic here, I hope the moderators will let this post stand, since it clarifies what exactly I meant by "separated languages" in my above post, and why my above claim applies to Germanic languages far more than Romance ones.)


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## dinji

Sepia said:


> Where do you see the big difference between Vikings and Anglo-Saxons? People from Jutland settled in England together with Anglo-Saxons. Sure they did not have the same language, but neither did those from Jutland have the same language as those of the islands. However they seem to have been able to cooperate in their settlements. When is a North Germanic people Viking, and when is it not. Weren't the people in Haithabu Vikings?


 
Today it is assumed that East Germanic (Gothic and its cognates) split off first and a form of North-West Germanic existed in the first centuries C.E. This language is reflected in so called Proto-Norse runic inscriptions in the older futhark. These inscriptions, up to the 5th century or so, contain no features which differ from reconstructed North-West Germanic. The material is scarce though.

I am pretty sure that Anglian, Saxon and settlers from Jutland communicated in Britain in the 5th-6th century with no more intelligibility problems than dialectal ones. The precursor of Old High German may have been more of a problem already at that time.

The situation in the Viking age however must have been very different already, especially due to the radical and partly divergent development of Late Proto-Norse in the 7th and 8th centuries. Intelligibility would have covered some/many nouns, adjectives and verbs but pronouns, particles an endings were so different already, that the difference in fluent speech must have been unbridgable without training.


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## Alxmrphi

First of all, next time could people please STATE WHAT THEY MEAN when they use abbreviations, I read MI / OE / ON and had no idea what was going on for a while, as I think anyone who isn't used to the discussion or familiar with the branch of these languages would also.



> and I'd also guess that kids in Iceland are taught at least some Old Norse reading in schools. But nobody can really read thousand years old texts "easily" by just relying on their natural, modern native language.



I beg to differ, I know enough about Icelanders via people I know and my trips there that it is easy, consider the example with the comparison of Icelandic to Old Norse posted after this quote.



> And what the Danes and ON or Icelandic are concerned: I don't know any Danes who would be able to understand but a few words of a written or spoken text in ON or Icelandic, if they hadn't studied those languages.



An Icelandic friend of mine told me that through her experience with Danes (and also Swedes) that they find they can understand about 3/4 words out of 10 in Icelandic, not always getting the right meaning, but she can understand 8/9 words in Danish through the closeness of the languages, but then again that is the language they are taught at school as well as English so maybe that's also a big factor, but she assures me it's not.

But, if we consider the branch, and Danish and Swedish came from Old Norse, and Icelandic is so similar, maybe the understanding of this 'father language' explains why some things are more intelligable and not to others.

Also, everyone says that Icelandic survived by being isolated, which at first seems like the logical explanation, but after a bit of thought, Danish was the official language of Iceland for a long period of time, how did this not seem to have any effect?
Perhaps it was strictly for official communication? I really don't know.


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## Hulalessar

There is a bit of a problem with "mutual intelligibilty". If you do not speak one of the languages concerned it is difficult to work out what is going on. If you do speak one of the languages concerned you may not realise what is going on. Apart from the "nearness"  of one language/dialect to another, what may be important is the degree to which you have been exposed to the language/dialect that is not your own. Sometimes the intelligibility works better one way than the other. There is also confusion about whether you are talking about spoken or written language.

Your Icelandic friend saying that the fact that she can understand Danish has nothing to do with having learned Danish has to be taken with a very large pinch of salt, even if that is what she undoubtedly sincerely believes. We do not know what prompting her Danish and Swedish friends needed before recognising Icelandic words. If prompted, a speaker of English who does not know German can see that the German "Baum" is related to English "beam", but in listening to a German speaking about trees would not pick up the connection. Indeed, the mere fact that you can make out some words (particularly in their written form) is no aid to understanding what people are actually saying. If you do not speak Italian, I am sure that if I showed you an economic report from an Italian newspaper you would be able to make out some of the words, whilst at the same time not understanding what the report was saying.


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## Alxmrphi

Well, I did say I didn't know how much was related to the fact she learnt it, what I meant by "she assures me it's not", it's because of the obviousness.

I have been studying Italian for 3 years and I like to think I can read and comprehend it quite well, so I know a signficant amount of words, now let's just say I didn't, I think I would still be able to pick out _impossibile_, _possibile_, _numero_, _animale_, _penna_, _automobile_, _autobus_, _telefono_, _lettera _etc etc I could go on but I think the point has been made.

Now anyone else might say :


> friend saying that the fact that she can understand Danish *Italian* has nothing to do with having learned Danish *Italian* has to be taken with a very large pinch of salt


 
.. about me and Italian, but I am just talking about recognising words, I was never talking about understanding meaning, rather words (sorry if I should have made that clearer in my last post)

But my point is, just because you have learnt another language, doesn't mean _any salt has to be taken_ if they say they can recognise related words from their native language (in my case, English).


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## Frank06

*Hi,

The original question was about the historical Germanic languages.
"All discussion about when the Germanic languages lost MI is welcome, but in particular, if someone thinks that it really was French that dealt the death blow to English's MI with others, can you back your argument up?"

Since nobody seems to be willing to tackle this core question, we decided to close down this thread.

In case somebody might want to add something that does pertain to the question, please contact me by pm.

Groetjes,

Frank
Moderator EHL

*


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