LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 27.AUG.2000 (02) [E]

Sun Aug 27 20:02:58 UTC 2000

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 27.AUG.2000 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Roger Thijs [roger.thijs at village.uunet.be]
Subject: Language politics

People living in some regions feel their area has a marked identity and
eventually cheer up local languages, even when only spooken be a very few,
as symbols of regional / national identity.

In Belgium the regions didn't find their languages but the language split
came first and delimited the (new) regions. Virtually all old territories
and new provinces were redivided along the linguistic border to form the
new territories of (an extended) Flanders, Wallonia, the bilingual Brussels

(and the small German speaking area in the East). I presume it's simular to

what happened to the Swiss canton of Bern, that got a split-off of the
French speaking Jura, to form a new canton a few years ago.

The question was raised in this list why Belgium does not split and why
Flanders does not merge with the Netherlands. Quite some Belgian
politicians promote a split. Nobody, I'm aware of, promotes a union with
the Netherlands. The last few years the tension between Flemish and
Walloons diminished, and this is reflected by some political actions
reported in the press.

Concerning the Netherlands, the papers highlighted political position
taking against the immigration of Dutch people into Belgium; some titles:
"Stroom Nederlanders moet worden ingedijkt"
"Stop uitverkoop Belgische bouwgrond aan de Nederlanders"
Actually the immigration (mainly for tax reasons) is as big that it has a
significant effect on prices of real estate over half of the territory of
Flanders. (One could say it's not only negative, some people take benefit
out of this soaring of prices)
New fact is that Dutchmen can deduct interests on loans for buying real
estate in Belgium from their income taxes in the Netherlands starting Jan
1, 2001 and Belgian people fear the immigration rate will be a multiple of
what it allready is.

Positive in the international relationship though is that the Belgian
(Limburgish) municipaly of Riemst made an agreement with the medical
services in Maastricht (Nl) for setting up systematically first line
medical intervention from within the Netherlands to this municipality. It
will reduce the reaction time from 12 à 16 minutes (Tongeren medical
services in Belgium) to 6 à 8 minutes. The municipality will pay for
differences that may be due to differences of the costs of medical
services. Obviously their is no linguistic problem since at both sides of
the border the very same Limburgish, as well as Dutch, are spoken.

Also the last few days a discussion has been set up to encourage walloon
people to come to the North, where there is a shortage of skilled people.
Plans were set up to recrute 3000 truck drives in Eastern Europe, but some
politicians are promoting to recrute in Wallonia, where the unemployment
rate is relatively high. The language is an issue, but some groups are
allready following basic language training. In West Flanders quite some
workers come from the North of France, since it's easier to recrute them
than Walloons, since in Belgium unemployment payments are quite high, and
not really encouraging people to do much efforts for getting a new job.

Other issues:
While our railways are still federal, our local public transportation
(trams and busses) are regionalized. The Flemish "De Lijn" issues pasports
for those over 65 in Flanders to travel completely free of charge. No
problem with the Flemish region, but the Flemish people from the Brussels
capital region, felt excluded. A change was announced that also those
Brussels people, who have their official pasports in Dutch, would get free
"De Lijn pasports". Needless to say, some Brussels politicians judge this
policy to be "racistic". The debate is not closed.

De Standaard of 25 Aug. dealt with the "purification" of place names in
South Africa:
"Kafferboom kan niet meer-
Zuid-Africa wil af van Europese en racistische namen"
The Chelmsford-dam will become the Ntshingwayo-dam,
Natal became Kwazulu Natal (with the Natal suffix to be dropped soon)
Piet Retief and Amsterdam will be absorbed in "NP303"
Pretoria will be absorbed in Tshwane
etc. etc.

Regards,

Roger
r.thijs at ieee.org

----------

From: Andy Eagle [Andy.Eagle at t-online.de]
Subject: LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 26.AUG.2000 (03) [D/E]

Matthew McGrattan wrote commenting on Ian:
> Subject: Re: LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 23.AUG.2000 (03)[E]
>
> > The first example reminds me of usage with latinate verbs in
> > traditional Scots writing, e.g. "That wud be appreciate" (not
> > "appreciateit") or "A'm acquent wae him" (not "acquentit").
>
> I don't know if it's the influence of English on me but both of those
> traditional Scots examples just seem "wrong" to me.
>
> I would have to say "A wisnae acquentit wae him" - the "-it" ending
> would not be optional to me.
>
> I don't know enough about the history of Scots grammar to say - but is
> this "regularisation" the effect of the influence of English or simply
> there result of the same process - internal to the language rather
> than driven from outside - that has led to various strong verbs in
> English
> (i.e. where, for example, the vowel changes to
> reflect tense, etc "sing/sung/sang") becoming weak (i.e. those where
> the
> endings of the verb change - "climb, climbed", etc)?
>
> (And actual historical example of this temporarily slips my mind...)
>
This regularisation in more likely the result of regularisation internal to
the language.
I assume, After the Union when Scotland's ruling classes decided to ape
their English superiors, Scots suddendly became a 'provincial dialect'
lacking in status.
As a result Scots was no longer the language of state, hence there was no
'official standard' to follow. The above mentioned practice pertaining to
latinate verbs was regularized by the provincial peasant masses. This is
often mentioned in relevant literature (the latinate verbs - not the
peasant
masses).

Andy

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