LL-L: "Orthography" LOWLANDS-L, 07.APR.2001 (02) [E]

Sun Apr 8 02:33:01 UTC 2001

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 07.APR.2001 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Frank Verhoft [frank.verhoft at pandora.be]
Subject: Orthography

Geachte heer Pijffers, geachte Laaglanders

Mr. Henry Pijffers [henry.pijffers at saxnot.com] asked:
>I have a few questions about the _ij_ in Dutch, before it got the
>pronunciation it has
>nowadays. I don't know whether they can be answered, but maybe someone has

>some good ideas or speculations about it.
>1. How was it written before the current pronunciation? _ie_, _ii_, _y_ or

>_ij_?
>2. Was there a difference in pronunciation regarding  the combination
_ie_?

I can only try to answer to first two questions, the ones concerning Dutch.

I hope you don't mind if i give some references in Dutch now and then, nor
that this will give rise to any quarrels ;-)).

I'll use < > to refer to graphemes; /i:/ and /e:/ for the long i and
e-sound; (due to probs with my Outlook Express) non-IPA /ei/ for the
nowadays pronunciation of <ij>; ("gebroken") /i@/ (i +schwa) for the
phonetic rendition of Middle Dutch <ie>, at least in the cases discussed
below.

Since I hardly have any good ideas myself, I've based my explanation on
following sources:
1. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Taal (red. Van Toorn e.a.)
Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 1997
2. Van Loon: Historische fonologie van het Nederlands
Leuven, Acco, 1986
3. Hogenhout-Mulder: Cursus Middelnederlands
Groningen, Wolters-Noordhoff, 1985
4. CD-Rom Middelnederlands (red. Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie)
Den Haag, Sdu/Standaard, 1998
5. The few still/hardly readable personal notes which I made during the
courses

>1. How was it written before the current pronunciation? _ie_, _ii_, _y_ or

_ij_?

Middle Dutch /i:/ (<IE /i:/), out of which Modern Dutch /ei/ <ij> evolved,
was written down as , both in open and closed syllables (as long as the
14th century), and as <y(e), <ii>, <ij>. The quite abundant variation is
due
to the lack of a "Woordenlijst van de Nederlandse Taal" and of orthographic

standards, and due to the fact that the change /i:/ > /ei/ seemed to have
occurred at different places and at slightly different periods (1).
I couldn't find a "logical"/regional distribution for the different
graphemes. On the other hand, a lot of medieval authors didn't stick to
their native region, hence exported (remnants of) their spelling traditions

to other cities or centers, Jacob van Maerlant being a good example.

In the so called Early Modern Dutch period (ca. 1500/1550-1650) Middle
Dutch
monophthong /i:/ started/continued to get diphthongized, at least in those
dialects on which later Standard Dutch (Algemeen Nederlands) was based,
viz.
Brabantian and Hollandian (2). I'll concentrate on these two variants in so

far they influenced the standardization of Dutch and in this attempt.

The pronunciation of /i:/ was first modified to an /i/+/j/ sound, then the
two elements dissimilated, resulting in the actual diphthongization. The
"newly forged" diphthong /ei/, which got more and more written as <ij> or
<y>, coalesced with the already existing /ei/, written as <ei> or <ey>.

No diphthongization, however, took place in words as "lier", "vier",
"wierook" due to the medializing influence of /r/. Also, a lot of
expressive
words such as "griezelen" (compare "afgrijzen"), "piepen", "kieken" (now
dialectic, compare Standard Dutch "kijken") didn't change sounds. Those
kind
of words got predominantly written with <ie>, in which <e> marks a
prolongation (as e.g. in "ghaen" (gaan), "raet" (raad) etc.).

>2. Was there a difference in pronunciation regarding  the combination
_ie_?

In the periods before the diphthongization of /i:/, the grapheme <ie> seems

to have been used for
(a) the sound that evolved out of Westgermanic /eu/ (<IE /eu/), in so far
it
wasn't influenced by the i/j-Umlaut (ca. 800 AD), the one that was, erm,
responsible for "diet" versus "duutsch".
e.g. Early Old saxon (800) _leof_ > OS (850) _liof_ > Late OS (1000) _lief_

> Middle Dutch _lief_ (3)

(b) the sound that evolved out of Common Germanic (Gemeengermaans) /e:/2.
(as opposed to palatal IE /e:/1)
In the Old Dutch era, Common German and Early Old Dutch /e:/2 is "broken"
into /i@/
e.g. OS _he:r_ / OHG _hiar_ / ODutch _hiera_ ("hier")
e.g. OS _fe:l_ / OHG _fial_ / ODutch _fiel_ ("viel") (3)

Both sounds described under (a) and (b) have been pronounced as
("gebroken")
/i@/, have become one phoneme, both represented by <ie>, and from then on,
they have evolved the same way.

So, i guess there was a distinct difference in pronunciation between Middle

Dutch /i:/ and <ie> /i@/.
Furhtermore, I scrolled through a few Middle Dutch poetic texts, and i
could
find any cases of both sounds rhyming (no ineternal or end-rhymes).
I wonder by the way if there is still a difference in pronunciation in
regions where /i:/ didn't get diphtongized.

In the course of time, I think that in Brabant and Holland, or at least in
Standard Dutch, both the non-diphthongized /i:/ and /i@/ fully merged, and
that there is no distinction made anymore, phonetically nor graphemically.
/i:/ <ie> in "wierook", "hier" and "lief" have become the same phonemes.

*****
Notes:
(1) For a more extended explanation on the (non-) relation between the
Brabantian and Holland variations (not confined to the nowadays provinces),

and how they probably influenced eachother, I want to refer to
"Geschiedenis
van het Nederlands", page 281 ff.
(2) in West-Flanders, Zeeland, for example, /i:/ did not get diphthongized.

(3) Data from "Historische fonologie van het Nederlands". Mr. Van Loon
loosely equates Old Saxon with Old Dutch (or at least with Old Low
Franconian - Oudnederfrankisch), because both variants are closely enough
related, because Old Dutch texts are rather scarce, and because he needed
some examples to illustrate some specific sound changes. In other cases,
such as in the development of /e:/2, Old Saxon differed from Old Dutch and
Old Low Franconian. Please keep in mind that the book i'm quoting from is
an
*introduction* to historical phonology.
*****

I hope this helps (and, of course, that really big mistakes will be pointed

out).

Met vriendelijke groeten,

Frank Verhoft

------------

From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: Etymology

Henry Pijffers asked:

> I have a few questions about the _ij_ in Dutch, before it got
> the pronunciation it has nowadays [...]
> 1. How was it written before the current pronunciation? _ie_,
> _ii_, _y_ or _ij_?

<ij> had the pronunciation _ii_ IPA [i:] in the older Germanic
languages and Latin; what Dutch now spells as <ui> used to be
pronounced like modern Dutch _oe_ IPA [u:] a thousand years ago.

Dutch fronted old _u_ to [y:], like French <u> or German <ü>,
and this diphthongized to <ui>, "öü".

Curiously, Dutch, English and High German independenly
diphthongized the long high vowels  [i:  u:], and in High German
[y:], thus _min hus_ yielded English _my house_, High German
_mein Haus_ and Dutch _mijn huis_.   Platt, Frisian, the
Scandinavian languages did not adopt this innovation.

We can reconstruct the pronunciation using comparative
linguistics among Germanic languages and related languages, we
aalso have evidence from rhymes etc., and a few medieval writers
who described their pronunciation.  That's enough to reconstruct
the pronunciation with sufficient accuracy.
Some linguists have speculated that West Germanic *i: *u: were
already lightly diphthongal ([i@, u@]), in which case Frisian
and Low Saxon would have eliminated the [@].

> 2. Was there a difference in pronunciation regarding  the
> combination _ie_?

Old Dutch (inland Dutch minus the more Frisian coastal dialects,
by 800 AD) and/or West Franconian (the Franks in France, before
they were assimilated) diphthongized original long _o_ and _e_
to _uo_ and _ie/io/ia_, which then spread to Old High German.
These diphthongs later monophthongized to high vowels [i: u:],
which Dutch spells as <ie> and <oe>. Low Saxon and the
Scandinavian languages did not adopt this innovation either.
Neither did English, but when all the long vowels were raised,
it led to similar results: Engl. _here_ has much the same vowel
as Dutch _hier_.

In short:
  e [e:]  >  ie [i.@] >  ie [i:]
  o [o:]  >  uo [u.@] >  oe [oe]

Thus _her_ became _hiar_, which became _hier_

 and _don_ became _duon_, which became _doen_.

Thus <ie> no longer indicates a diphthong (except in southern
Germany).

> 3. How did the old Saxons pronounce their y's?

The letter <y> had referred to the sound [y y:] (Dutch ) in
Roman times, but it had become derounded to [i i:] by late Roman
times. Thus it was usually used as a variant of , the way
English does, but in some traditions, it was used for [y y:],
e.g. Swedish or modern German. Old Saxon used <y> almost only
in foreign words, where they were pronounced the same as .

Old Saxon orthography did not indicated u- or o-umlaut, thus
they used the letter <u> for [u u: y y:], likewise <o> stood for
[o o: ö ö:].

Stefan Israel

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