Talk:Frenkisch
The reference languages which I use for Frenkisch are:
- Dutch
- English
- German
- Danish, Norwegian (the Bokmål standard normally), Swedish
- French, Russian
My methodology borrows from Interlingua, what is called The Rule of Three: For a linguistic feature to be part of the Frenkisch, it should have cognates in the modern, standard varieties at least three of the above languages. By linguistic feature, I mainly mean words (and their meanings), but also aspects of phonology, orthography and grammar are judged by the rule of 3. With the following stipulations:
1. Danish, Norwegian, Swedish are treated as 1 unit. If a cognate word is present in just one language, that is well and good. But if present in all 3, that will count for presence in just 1 unit. So a word cannot enter the Frenkisch vocabulary if present in just Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. It would need cognates in at least 2 other source languages.
2. French and Russian are treated as 1 unit. A cognate can be present in just French, or just Russian, or both. But if present in both, that will count for presence in just 1 unit. So a word cannot enter Frenkisch if present in just French and Russian and only one Germanic language.
3. German and English are treated as "super" units. A word can be part of Frenkisch vocabulary if cognates are only present in both German and English -- it need not be present in a third unit (although it's even better when it is). This is to acknowledge the vast difference in numbers of 1st and 2nd language speakers of those 2 languages compared with other Germanic language speakers. So a word like lerne is based only on English learn and German lernen -- none of my other source languages have close cognates. So my Rule of Three includes 1+1=3 :-)
4. Synonyms are allowed and encouraged. However, the more units a word has cognates in, the more preferable it is. A word that has cognates in all 8 source languages is to be preferred over a synonym with cognates present in the bare minimum of 3. For example haus is preferable to heim (which has no cognate in modern Dutch).
5. Words can have multiple meanings/senses. Every valid meaning should be present in the cognates of at least the bare minimum of 3 source languages. Meanings that are restricted to only one or two languages should not be part of the definition. The meanings that are present in the greatest number of source languages should be primary meanings of a word.
