LL-L: "Orthography" LOWLANDS-L, 05.DEC.2000 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: James Krause [sodshanty at usa.net]
Subject: LL-L: "Orthography" LOWLANDS-L, 05.DEC.2000 (01) [E]

Henry, I beg leave to plead ignorance.  At the moment, I feel quite
unqualified to answer your question, as I am a rather new student to Low Saxon
and Mennonite Plautdietsch.  I am used to hearing long vowels thus:
ee=English ay, as in "bay" Plautdietsch Ex. dree
oo=English oh, as in "so"  Platudietsch Ex. boot
uu is replaced by ü  as in Plautdietsch Es. Hüs  This use of the umlaut may be
too much like High German.  Also somewhat confusing is the substitution of ä
for ee.  I have seen email with the salutation "Läwa Plautdietscha"  Yours,
Jim

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Orthography

Henry, you wrote:

> First of all, In my Low-Saxon writing, I try to apply the rule
> which says that in a closed syllable you write long vowels
> with double letters, as in:
>
> br_ee_d (wide)
> d_ee_r (animal)

Are you sure these are long monophthongs and not diphthongs?  In North Saxon:

[brEIt] 'wide', 'broad' (breed, breet, breyd, bräid, breit, braid, etc.)
[dE.IA(t)] 'animal' (Deert, Deer, deyrt, Deirt, Daiert)
[broUt] 'bread' (Broot, Brood, Brout, Braut)

> p_aal_l (pole)

This is a long slightly-to-fully rounded monophthong in our dialects,
apparently not in yours.

[p`Q:l] ~ [po:l] 'pole'

> But, there is also the letter "u". Now should I write
> "h_u_s" or "h_uu_s"? Both sound and look the
> same to me.

What sound are we talking about?  Is it short [{oe}] or [Y], or is it long
[y:], or long [u:]?

In our dialects it's [hu:s] (with a long _oo_ sound as in English _pool_).

> Second, how about words that end in a vowel, like:
>
> hog_e_ (high)
> drög_e_ (dry)
>
> Do you treat these final syllables as open or closed?

They are *short and unstressed*, probably a schwa or, as in our dialects, a
short [e]-type sound.  Germanic stress is penultimate.  Thus, if you write
_hoge_ or _hooge_ you automatically know that the _-e_ is short, even though
it is in an open syllable.  Open syllables can have short or long vowels.  If
the final _-e_ is stressed and long and thus takes the main stress --
especially in loanwords -- you can write it double (e.g., _portree_
'portrait', _see_ ~ _seed'_ 'said') or use an accent (e.g., _portré_
'portrait', _sé_ ~ _seed'_ 'said').

> And last, something about the animal called bear.
> In (my) Low-Saxon, this is pronounced exactly like in
> English, except for the r at the end. I was thinking
> about how to write it. The Dutch write it as "beer" and
> the Germans write it as "bär", but I think neither would
> do well in Low-Saxon. So I was thinking, would it be
> logical to write it as in English, as "bear"? Makes sense
> to me at least...

It should be _beer_ ([be:A]) then.  If this sound is different from the sound
in 'beer' (the drink), it's likely that the former is a monophthong and the
latter is a diphthong (as in out dialects): /beir/ ([bEIA]).

By the way, 'bear' is [bQ:A] or [bo:A] in our dialects and is conventionally
written _Baar_, _Bor_ or _Boor_.

Henry, it's absolutely important that you distinguish long monophthongs from
diphthongs.  Supposedly long vowels (written as long vowels, _ee_ and _oo_)
are pronounced as diphthongs in many Dutch dialects, and I am wondering if
this is a source of confusion for you.

It is extremely difficult to help you without getting real language samples of
your dialect, either in IPA script or in audio form.  We'd have to have a
number of word examples for each sound that you feel is separate from other
sounds.  Only then can we judge if it is an allophone (i.e., a phoneme that
undergoes a change due to a specific environment) or an actual phoneme (i.e.,
a distinct underlying sound).  Only a phoneme needs a symbol in ordinary
writing.  An allophone constitutes a variant of a phoneme, is the phonetic
output of it under certain circumstances.  Giving it a special symbol in
ordinary orthography is unnecessary, is necessary only in phonetic
transcription for scientific purposes.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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