Talk:sitten

English form

I went ahead and added the English form of sitten, since it is listed in the appendix of irregular English verbs. It might require some additional markings in parentheses, but I figured it should at least be listed.

Low German conjugation

Here are some basic forms from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern:

Infin.	Indic. pres.		Indic. praet.		Imper.	Participium
	1. pers. sg. (ick/ik ...)	2. pers. sg. (du ...)	1. pers. sg. (ick/ik ...)	1. pers. pl. (wi ...)	2. pers. sg.
sitten	sitt	sittst	seet	seeten	sitt	seten
sitten	sitt	sittst	satt / set	seten	sitt	seten

The first one is from Wiggers' grammar (p. 60) and the author did not differ between a past singular stem and a past plural stem. The full title of the grammar is this:

Julius Wiggers: Grammatik der plattdeutschen Sprache. In Grundlage der Mecklenburgisch-Vorpommerschen Mundart. Hamburg, 1858.

The second one is related to Fritz Reuter. It's based on his works, maybe also on a grammar or any dictionary to his work. The grammar would be this:

Alfred v. d. Velde: Zu Fritz Reuter! Praktische Anleitung zum Verständniß des Plattdeutschen an der Hand des ersten Kapitels des Fritz Reuter’schen Romanes: „Ut mine Stromtid“. Leipzig, 1881.

Velde has past singular satt and past plural seten. If I remember correctly, different works by Fritz Reuter or different editions of Fritz Reuter's work had both, satt and set. Generally speaking, Fritz Reuter used differet spellings in his works (that was quite common in older German texts too), and there are different editions of his work. -Ikiaika (talk) 00:33, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

This is all correct. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg dialects retain either a the twofold past /sat/ vs. /seːt-, sæːt-/ (MV, BB) or regularise /seːt-, sæːt-/ for all forms (note that thus 1st/3rd person preterite thus receive an ending /-ə/). But to what end are you sharing that here? Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 09:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Korn, hello.

• The entry mentions one conjugation. Wouldn't it be nice, if it would mention more conjugations? But well, several complete inflecion tables for one word could be too much. Possible solutions that I saw were (a) creating pages similar to de:Flexion:sitzen and Citations:word which would require a discussion somewhere else, and (b) just mentioning basic forms (like English go, went, gone). For (b) one could use a table like this:

Dialect/Orthography	infinitive [not needed, here it's always sitten]	....	past participle
Münsterland	sitten	...	siäten
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern	sitten	...	seten

But for such a table one needs to know the basic forms. As I wrote the text above, I didn't had the time to differ between usages in texts and mentionings by grammarians, and I didn't had the time to give proper references. For me that feelt in some way like not knowing the basic forms.

• The spellings I found for 1st/3rd person singular for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern were satt, set, seet, all without an ə or e, at least in writing.
  Velde gives the past conjugation 1.sg. gaw, 2.sg. gawst, 3.sg. gaw, 1.pl. gewen, 2.pl. gewet, 3. pl. gewen, and he mentions five basic forms: "Hauptformen (Pr. S. 1 und 2, Impf. S. 1, Pl. 1, Ptc.)", that is 1.sg. and 2.sg. present, 1.sg. and 1.pl. imperfect or past, and past participle. That together with the information that it is 1.sg. past satt and 1.pl. seten implies a past conjugation of sitten as 1.sg. satt, 2.sg. sattst, 3.sg. satt, 1.pl. seten, 2.pl. set't, 3. pl. seten, doesn't it?
  (Note: It is often said that Low German has a single form for the verb plural, a so called "Einheitsplural" either in -t or -en. While this might be true for most dialects, it's not true for all.)
  Wiggers has seet, seetst, seet, seeten, seet't, seeten (well, he conjugates liggen, past leeg-, and states that sitten is conjugated in the same way). Also, he uses ee to mark a long vowel, while with the spelling set, a short vowel would have been marked as *sett.
  Usages in Fritz Reuter's work:
  • "Hanne Nüte un de lütte Pudel" (1860) has the forms satt and sattst. No translations are given, so one has to interpret the text. "As Du dor bi Din Gösseln sattst" should mean "Als Du da bei Deinen kleinen Gänsen saßt" or "As you sat there next to your little goose", and "as wenn s' up Nadeln satt" should mean "als wenn sie auf Nadeln säße" (translating Low German imperfect indicative as High German present conjunctive) or "as if she sat on needles". So Velde's conjugation should be correct (too).
  • "Ut mine Festungstid; Läuschen un Rimels" (C. Bertelsmann Verlag, according to Google from 1968) has the word satt (once with the translation saß). Google did not find sattst and seetst, but setst and settst. setst could be the imperfect form, while settst (from setten) should mean setzt (from setzen) or put. "un denn setst du dor as de Pogg up't Glattis" could mean "und dann saßt/säßt du da wie der Frosch auf dem Glatteis".
  • "Reis' nah Belligen" (1898, according to Google) has set with the translation saß, e.g. note 17 on page 77 (page number according to Google).

Fritz Reuter died in 1874, so the editions from 1898 and 1968 maybe were edited by other people.

-Greetings, Ikiaika (talk) 02:13, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Don't worry, it's perfectly normal on en.Wiktionary to apply multiple inflection tables. If you want to add Mecklenburg and Münsterland inflections, just put them on the page, that's fine. They collapse, so they don't eat space.

As for final /-ə/, that only surfaces after voiced consonants. So using the most conservative Mecklenburgish forms, on one hand /sat/ [zæ̞t] becomes /seːtə/ [zeɪt] without a noticeable /ə/, but on the other hand: /laɣ/ [læ̞x̠] becomes /leːɣə/ [leːɪɣ] (instead of /leːɣ/ [leɪxʲ]), /bad/ [bæ̞t] becomes /beːdə/ [beːɪð̠] or [beːɪɾ], and /ɣav/ [ɣæ̞f] becomes /ɣeːvə/ [ɣʲeːɪv]. Authors do not usually reflect that in writing, even to this day. Nerger complained about that in his book, and Kohler 1986 showed that the absence of vowel lengthening is a marker of a non-native speaker. As such I think our tables should reflect it. And I also underline again that non-native speakers are no source for a dictionary, so scrutiny in source-checking is required.

Neither Old Saxon nor Middle Low German knew "gafst", as far as I'm aware, so it's a secondary regularisation.

A split plural is copied from German. Low German never had it, nor provided any basis to natively create it. It only appears when words like 'Woch' (week, instead native 'wäk') appear in the language too. I'm not sure whether we should include it, though I'm aware that e.g. Reuter used it. But Reuter was from a very German-heavy social class and area and used tons and tons of German words. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 09:44, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

@Korn: It's only collapsed if one has Javascript and doesn't use something like NoScript. (I'm using NoScript so for me tables aren't collapsed, but for me that's no problem.)
Well, I'd dislike the spelling set or seet, if it is not pronounced like /seːt/ but like /seːtə/. Is there a spelling like *sete or *seete, and would it be pronounced like /seːtə/ (and not like e.g. */seːte/)? If there is a "correct" spelling (with some e), one could use it and could note the "incorrect" spelling in a note. If there is no "correct" spelling, one couldn't add it or only as (re)constructed with a *.
As for Nerger: I've seen his work (Karl Nerger, Grammatik des meklenburgischen Dialektes, älterer und neuerer Zeit, Leipzig, 1869), but my impression was that his spelling was based on soundings, pronunciations, and not on real spelling as they were/are used in real Low German texts. English pronunciations are very different from the spellings, but Wiktionary's entries are still based on spellings and not on pronunciations. Soundings could be attested by movies, audio books and songs, but could there be an entry like /seːtə/ (Wikisyntax does treat [[/seːtə/]] differently)?
As for the plural -en/-t/-en: Well, it was used and is attested. That means, that it can be mentioned (somehow). However, one could add a note about it's origin etc. -Ikiaika (talk) 14:56, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

1. Please read my post again. During no point I proposed using a spelling sete for Mecklenburg, nor did I say the word was pronounced [seːtə]. 2. I think Low German is a low attestation language where grammars can be used for verification of entries. So as all Low German texts are based on pronunciation, Nerger is no different from Reuter and his book is worth no less as a source. You could ask at the Information Desk about it. But you shouldn't get hung up on spelling. Low German for the most part is no literary language and we have some 10.000 'spellings as actually used' in the Wenker sheets alone. Though, I stated my point on this in the discussion on T:ANDS. 3. As for inflections: Multiple tables are still the standard way to go about this kind of situation. If you got a more space-saving solution, go ahead and draft it. 4. Note on origin sounds good to me as long as the split plural is cited with a proved native speaker. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 15:12, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

ps.: I think the best solution is to only give the original indicative preterite as 'indicative preterite', maybe with the addition of neologisms like 'gafst' when citable, and then add a usage note that for some speakers, the optative preterite replaces the indicative preterite. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 15:23, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Post scriptum for gawst: Velde has gaw in his conjugation paradigma, but gaww in his table of irregular verbs. The spelling gawwst can be found in Fritz Reuter's work. The spelling gawst can be found in Fritz Reuter's work too and also in other books (or at least another book).
The original form should be mentioned in entries for GML or Old-Saxon. In case of NDS it should IMHO only be mentioned, if it is attestable. If both forms are attestable, one maybe could treat them like different dialects. To denote the "neologism" one maybe could add a note like "gawst ¹" and "¹ a younger form, replacing GML ...".

Isn't Fritz Reuter a native speaker? -- Ah, yes, in general that's a plausible rationale. Though maybe one could also use works by non-natives, if the non-native is a scholar who knowingly and voluntarily used -en/-t/-en and not a learner who made errors? Zesen was a famous High German scholar who invented many new words. If a High German scholar like Zesen would have used Low German and would have invented Low German words or word forms to improve Low German (in his opinion), then IMHO that be worth mentioning too, well at least if the author or his works were or are famous or if his inventions were used by (several) other people. One could or rather should still note that he is a non-native etc. But well, maybe there never was such a scholar.

In case of Ancient Greek often a single table with many annotations is used. That saves space, but IMHO that's not (always) very nice. But ἐγώ#Ancient Greek even has seven tables.
A sub page for inflections (like Inflection:sitten) wouldn't save space, but could be nicer. But that would require a general discussion elsewhere.

Greetings, Ikiaika (talk) 00:44, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

That we only enter forms which are attested really should go without saying. What I'm saying is that we don't need to clutter the table by entering all the optative forms into the indicative when we just can put a note into the table explaining that the optative forms can be used for the indicative. If we handle it like that, we can even use gawst as the sole indicative form, although I think it was recreated rather than kept from Middle Low German. And no, secondary speakers are never acceptable as a source, especially not for non-standard exemptions, especially not for those which are modeled on a foreign language. If we start like that, we can just as well wrap up the dictionary and go home. If Zesen was so successful in his inventions, we can quote the native speakers who picked them up. I don't know if Reuter was a first language speaker, but I don't think anyone is doubting him as a source. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 09:42, 17 July 2016 (UTC)