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In:Germanic Interrelations: Studies in memory of Hans Frede Nielsen
Edited by Stephen Laker, Carla Falluomini, Steffen Krogh, Robert Nedoma and Michael Schulte
[NOWELE Supplement Series 34] 2025
► pp. 240–268

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The Tienen inscription and the dialectal position of Tungrian

 | Bangor University
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Published online: 6 May 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/nss.34.14mee
Abstract
An inscription found in the early 1980s during an excavation at Tienen in Flemish Brabant, Flanders, appears to preserve the oldest attested Germanic sentence from Belgium. Dating to the same period as the earliest runic texts, the Tienen inscription is particularly interesting from the perspective of early Germanic dialectology. Languages such as Tungrian, the Germanic idiom spoken in the Roman Civitas Tungrorum, are rarely referred to by historical linguists. Yet the Tienen inscription seems to preserve a short syntactic text similar in its brevity to the earliest runic inscriptions, but which preserves at least one dialectal feature also found otherwise in Tungrian onomastics. Taken in the broader context provided by Tungrian onomastic evidence, the Tienen inscription can be understood as preserving the earliest recorded sentence in a West Germanic dialect.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Background
  • The Tienen inscription
  • The dialectal position of Tungrian
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (79)
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