LL-L: "Phonology" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 28.AUG.1999 (02)

[Sandy Fleming]

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From: Henno Brandsma [brandsma at twi.tudelft.nl]
Subject: "Phonology"

>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: "Phonology"
>
>Henno Brandsma wrote:
>
>> I have several books on
>> Heligolandic (Halunder, they call it themselves), and the phonolgy is
>quite
>> like other Island North Frisian dialects, with some more deletion ate
>the
>> end of words (not written), plus the typical feature of pronouncing
>old
>> Germanic j as dj-, a feature that other Frisian varieties don't have.
>
>Henno, when you say "typical feature," do you mean to say it is a
>particularly well-known characteristic of Halunder, or do you mean to
>say it is typical as an areal feature found in Halunder but not other
>varieties of Frisian?

The latter: within Frisian varieties, this is unique to Halunder. Easy
thing if you try to determine the variety of Frisian one is dealing with
(stuff I ahd to do for my exams in Frisian dialectology).

>
>Many of you may be aware of the fact that this feature is found in Low
>Saxon (Low German) as well.  I am not totally sure about its geographic
>spread, but I believe it is fairly extensive and is predominant in
>coastal North Saxon dialects, including those of the Lower Elbe,
>apparently also in many northeastern dialects.  (It is usually not
>indicated in written samples.)
>
>This feature may be seen as being confined to initial /j/.

It is in Halunder as well.

 >As for the exact phonetic realization, there is some dialectal
>variation.  As far as I can tell, there are these two main variants (and
>I use SAMPA symbols <http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/x-sampa>):
>
>Fricative: [J/] (IPA turned f, or dotless barred j) or [z\] ~ [z'] (IPA
>curly-tailed z) (any difference?): much like Polish _zi..._ or _{z'}_ --
>the dentoalveolar (more frontal) equivalent of [Z] as in French _jour_
>and English _azure_.
>
>Affricate: [dJ/] or [dz\] ~ [dz']: as above but (crudely put) with a d
>before it, much like Polish _d{z'}..._.
>
>I understand that there is also the variant [dj], but I am not sure
>about that.  It could be only a less sophisticated way of
>orthographically representing the affricate variant described above.
>

I cannot say for sure, but the spelling is definitely dj, but as far as I
recall the pronounciation was not _very_ affricate, but only slightly so:
only natural that there should be some, as a byproduct of trying to say a
/d/ and a /j/ consecutively..


>There is also an emphatic variant of this affricate in Low Saxon: it
>comes to be devoiced and aspirated, often spelled _tj..._ (or even
>_tsch..._); e.g., _Tjung!_ 'Boy!', 'Son!' (instead of _Jung!_), also
>found in the ubiquitous _Tja ..._ '(Well,) yes ...', 'Well, then ...'
>(instead of _Ja ..._).
>

Also Dutch and West Frisian: tsja and tsjong(e).

>The question that remains is this:
>
>Did Halunder "borrow" this from Low Saxon, or was it the other way
>around?  I tend to assume the former, given that it is unique within
>Frisian but very wide-spread in Low Saxon, also given close contacts
>between Halunder and Low Saxon, with many Heligolanders speaking both of
>them (at least in the past).
>

Halunder is the variety of Frisian mostly affected by Low Saxon, whcih is
also klear lexically: e.g. it is the only type of Frisian that has "kark"
for "church", where other varieties have words staring in tsj or s (< tsj),
like West Frisian "tsjerke". Already Siebs noted the very strong Low Saxon
influence, and after the war all islanders lived for a few years on the
mainland (as they unsuccessfully tried to explode the island), which
"forced" them to use more Low saxon than before, I think.
Probably a look at the phonology will give some more signs of influence
(this will have to wait till after the weekend), though the phonology is in
general a more stable component of the language than lexicon is, a point
clearly illustrated by the so-called "town Frisian" dialects of
Westerlauwer Frysla^n: mostly a Dutch lexicon, with Frisian syntax and
phonology.

>Well, I guess there is one more question after all.  What is the origin
>of this feature?
>
>Best regards,
>
>Reinhard/Ron
>
Groetnis,

Henno

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