LL-L: "Morphophonology" LOWLANDS-L, 11.OCT.2000 (01) [E]

Wed Oct 11 14:19:11 UTC 2000

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 11.OCT.2000 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Lowlands in Denmark

Helge wrote:

>The dialect of Esbjerg and  surroundings pronounces words like Danish
"Vest" ("West" in English) more like English "West" with a proper English
"W" sound nowhere else found in Denmark, in fact in Northern Europe, apart
from the UK. <

I once met an Austrian who pronounced the local town of "Wels" with a good
impression of an English "W". It seemed to be the result of a speech defect
or lisp. Is the same distortion found among speakers of Lowland languages?

In Cockney (or perhaps more generally London demotic), of course, "w" for
"v" and vice versa was once common. Sam Weller in "The Pickwick Papers" was an
exponent of this style of speech.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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From: Marco Evenhuis [evenhuis at zeelandnet.nl]
Subject: LL-L: "Folklore" LOWLANDS-L, 09.OCT.2000 (09) [E/LS/Danish]

Miene Leewe Frind:  Miene Grootmutta tald miene Finjasch soo:
Kleene Finja, Goltrinja, Lankhauls, Bottallekja, Lüskjekjnekja;
opp Enjelsch: little finger, ringfinger, longneck, butter licker
nitpicker(Licecracker)
Herman Rempel

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From: Marco Evenhuis [evenhuis at zeelandnet.nl]
Subject: LL-L: "Morphophonology" (was "Lowlands in Denmark") LOWLANDS-L,
10.OCT.2000 (04) [E]

Carl Johan Petersson wrote:

> As far as I know, a bilabial w is very typical of Southern Dutch as well,
> where it is clearly an archaism that has disappeared from the (Northern
> Dutch) standard language. To assume that the Flemish w-pronunciation would
> be the result of Anglo-Saxon influence seems far-fetched, to say the
least.
> Maybe some of the Flemings on this list can tell us more, though.

In both Zeelandic and West-Flemish the bilabial w is still very commonly
used, also by young speakers. This in contrary to what Henk Wolf wrote about
the situation in Friesland ("In West(erlauwer) Frisian it does [exist, ME],
although it's loosing ground"). One finds very strongly pronounced bilabial
w's in coastal villages like Westkapelle and Bruinisse and also in French
Flanders. This w is so 'strong', that the accent of a speaker of these
dialects when trying to speak Dutch, is sometimes mistaken for a Surinam
accent. I believe this very typical bilabial w can also be found along the
coast of the province of South Holland (e.g. Katwijk).
A very nice exmaple in RealAudio of such a strong bilabial w can be found at
http://www.sip.be/dialect/scholen/school9/poefra3.htm, where a poet from
French Flanders pronounces the sentence 'Zelve nuus Vlanderen het nie
espaert ewest / 'N winter mantel is daer en van 'n Oosthoek toet West /De
velden zyn vul sneeuw (...)'. Mind the w in West!

Talking of strongly pronounced consonants, the dialect of Westkapelle also
has a very interesting pronounciation of the l. I don't know the right name
for this feature, but when pronouncing an l, a speaker of the Westkapelle
dialect puts his tongue very far backwards to his palate. A bit like in
French (elle) but much further back and the sound is hold on quite long.
I'm wondering if there are any other Lowlands languages or dialects that
have the same l as Westkapelle? A Norwegian fisherman told me that this l
sounded pretty much the same in some villages in his region.

For those interested: somewhere in the Lowlands-L archives, I read a
discussion about the pronounciation of the West-Flemish word 'lytje'
(little, a bit), probably of Saxon origin. Well, at the same website as
mentioned above, one can hear the sentence 't is een lytje oude mode maer
oek een lytje schonder' pronounced by the same poet. The exact adress of
that fragment is http://www.sip.be/dialect/scholen/school9/poefra2.htm. What
puzzles me about this word is that it's not preserved in the Picard dialect
now spoken in the Saxon region around Boulogne. The more Hollandic form
'bitje' is preserved there as 'bètche' (un bètche froid - a bit cold - een
bitje koud), so this could mean 'bitje' was dominant in this Saxon region
where one would expect 'lytje' to have been the usual form....

Marco

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From: Henry Pijffers [hpijffers at home.nl]
Subject: LL-L: "Morphophonology" LOWLANDS-L, 10.OCT.2000 (08) [E]

Ron wrote:
>
>The velarized /l/ you mentioned (e.g., as in English _ball_) is also an
>allophone in Low Saxon (Low German) dialects.  It tends to be a syllable-final
>allophone of /l/, in some dialects only after back vowels and in some dialects
>after any type of vowel.  You can still find it shown for instance in Keller's
>"North Saxon" section (Keller, R. E. (1961); _German Dialects: phonology &
>morphology, with selected texts_; Manchester (UK): Manchester University
>Press).
>
>Might this be an areal feature eminating from the area of what are now
>Southern Jutland and Sleswig/Slesvig/Schleswig, with a possible continuation
>in English and Scots?
>
>I believe this is one of those phonetic features that is on its way out in LS,
>at least in Northern Germany.  It may still be found in fairly solidly
>LS-speaking communities and also in the dialects of older speakers elsewhere.
>(Do you still have it in the Netherlands?)
>
I haven't got a clue what all these terms like "velarized" mean, but the way
I pronounce "ball" in LS, is with the same /l/ as in English. So I guess I got
a velarized /l/, right?

>When I was a child, you could still easily tell true native LS speakers
>(especially those who grew up speaking LS most of the time and have been using
>German as an actual foreign language) by the pronunciation of their German;
>they would have a "strong accent," and this velarized /l/ was one of its
>features, besides apical [r], vowel lengthening before sonorants, and
>noticeable vowel nazalization before nasal consonants. Hearing someone talk
>German with a "thick accent" like that is becoming rare.
>
The same applies in the Netherlands, I myself for an example have a thick
accent when speaking Dutch. They can always tell I'm from one of the
eastern provinces (if they don't jump to the "farmer"-conclusion first...).
Here it's not becoming rare, it's rather normal. There are even Dutch-only
speakers who have the accent, but never spoke LS.

grooten,
Henry

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From: niels.winther at dfds.dk
Subject: LL-L: "Morphophonology"

From: Niels Winther [niels.winther at dfds.dk]
Subject: Morphophonology

Ron wrote:

>> The velarized /l/ <..> I believe this is one of those phonetic features that
is on its way out in LS, at least in Northern Germany.  It may still be found
in
fairly solidly LS-speaking communities and also in the dialects of older
speakers elsewhere. (Do you still have it in the Netherlands?) <<

Apart from Dutch initial /l/ there seems to be a lot velarized /l/s around in
Dutch.

In Jutish both the palatized /L/ and the velarized /l/ have been loosing
ground.
But the velarized /l/ does not seem to be so much of a social stigma any more.
Perhaps even the opposite. When commenting recently on English /w/ and /l/ in
South West Jutish, I was a bit focused on the west side story, trying to show
that the "English pronunciation" in the Esbjerg area was the result of
overlapping pronunciations centred in opposite ends of Jutland. The east side
story is, that the velarized l is extending quite far north into the Eastern
Jutish area. It even seems that where final palatized /L/ is yielding to clear
/l/, a former final clear /l/ may develop into velarized /l/.

The apical [r] really seems to be on the retreat everywhere in Europe. In
France
as well as in Germany and even in northern Italy around Turin. Around
Groningen
in Nederland it is still holding on, and especially in Vlaams, I think it has
a
real stronghold because it is contrasting the French [R]. It would be nice to
hear a Flemish comment on that.

A Flemish comment on the future of the voiced velar fricative [G] in
Vlaanderen
would also be nice. I think that an initial /G/ is now more often heard with a
short rasping before the voicing, is this true? Is this an NL-influence, and
is
it increasing? The standard Danish voiced velar fricative /G/ has moved the
opposite way in my lifetime and is transforming into a [j] except in propria.

>> When I was a child, you could still easily tell true native LS speakers<..>
they would have a "strong accent," and this velarized /l/ was one of its
features, besides apical [r], vowel lengthening before sonorants, and
noticeable vowel nazalization before nasal consonants.  Hearing someone talk
German with a "thick accent" like that is becoming rare.<<

Although it might be a bit late, I think that there is a growing acceptance of
non-standard speakers both in politics, the media and the business world. A
few
years ago children attracted standard language from TV. The parents as well as
the teachers also promoted the standard vigorously. But this tendency has
slowed
down and some children are speaking like their grandparents, possibly because
of
increased contact. The shortage of institutions, and the fact that many stop
working around 60 may have made the difference.
Regions are more in focus than national states, and a certain measure of
nostalgia in the wake of ecology movements may also have contributed.
I think this tendency is apparent in varying degrees in the whole Lowland
area.

rgds
niels

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From: david strommen [si00924 at navix.net]
Subject: LL-L: "Lowlands in Denmark" LOWLANDS-L, 09.OCT.2000 (03) [E]

Some of the phenomenon that Lone discussed in modern Danish may well stem from
English, but also have parallels in the Nordic Languages themselves.  The word
for Church-Kirke "tjerk", as well as other words beginning with K (and G)
followed by the "soft" vowells of e, i, ø and y, was if I remember my Danish
Language history pronounced palatized (with a "j" sound) on Jutland up until
the late 18th and early 19th centuries and probably holds to some extent
today, as is still evident in Sweden and Norway. The tide of palatalisation
was turned back by the influence of Sjelland Danish as it grew in prominence
as "the" official pronounciation of the country.  When Lone discusses the "ae
hus" and then refers to "huset"  as the norm.. Is that to say that in this
western dialect they do not have the definite article following the
substantive, or is "ae hus" the same as "et hus" and in the definite form it
is "huse" or "husæ" as opposed to "huset" officially. If it were "ae hus"
>"the house", I guess I never experienced that phenomenon in  Jutland.  If it
is "huse" that is common in Norwegian where we spell it "huset" but pronounce
"huse".

"Wa er't do sejer" with the W sounds English but "Hvad er det du siger" is to
my ear just as "good" although it might not be the official way, although I am
sure just as acceptable and understandable.
The "W" sound intrigues me, because that would be a common sound particular to
English. The question is similar to the "chicken and egg". Is it a remnant of
the Anglo-Saxons in Denmark or could it have been introduced from a group of
Danish invaders and the Dane-law in England who happened to come from this
particular area of Denmark.  Looking at language development is not an easy
task when we start the unravelling process.  The joy I do see is that we stem
from so much common stock in the Germanic field, that ever more bridges that
once were burned can be built again.
Greetings. David Strømmen

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