LL-L: "Language variety" LOWLANDS-L, 16.JAN.2001 (03) [E]

Tue Jan 16 17:47:58 UTC 2001

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 16.JAN.2001 (03) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: Language varieties

Ron wrote about the "Hanover-syndrom":

> Anyway, I hardly think that forty years later you would find
> more than a
> small handful of serious "experts" who spout off such stuff
> and still hold
> their positions.  I would be quite dismayed if I were proven
> wrong.

Sad to say: I'm still hearing the myth among German teachers
hüben wie drüben--  no, not among people who have seriously
studied linguistics, but that's a small minority of language
teachers and grammar amateurs.  It takes time for new ideas to
diffuse, particularly if the old idea fills a need, such as
giving people (particularly Hannoveran!) a definitive if
exaggerated benchmark for the best language.  And
non-Hanoverians who think highly of themselves like to be able
to say they speak as well as an identifiable 'best speakers'.

Stefan

----------

Fraom: Eldo Neufeld [greneuf at interchange.ubc.ca]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 15.JAN.2001 (03) [E]

>From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
>Subject: Language varieties
>
>Eldo, you wrote (above):
>
>> Ron wrote:  "This [Hannover Standard Language Syndrome] is not shared and
>> mostly not even known in other German-speaking countries, and it barely
>> survives in Germany."
>
>I was not I who wrote this but Georg Deutsch.

Sorry, Ron.  I guess I didn't look carefully enough at whose name was the
proper one. My apologies to Mr. Deutsch as well.

As you said not to do, Ron, I just hit my Reply button and am sending this.
Let me know what the proper method of identifying my reply.  Thanks.  Eldo

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From: Georg.Deutsch at esa.int
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 15.JAN.2001 (02) [E]

Reinhard/Ron
wrote:

>...that German is the most
>difficult language to learn.  I don't know where this one comes from, but
>hopefully it, too, is on its way out.  Might it have originated in the
>north where Low Saxon (Low German) speakers had to struggle with German?
>The neighboring languages (Danish and Dutch) probably seemed more familiar
>in many ways, and they didn't "have so many cases" as German has.

This would fit to what I could learn in Holland:
Often I heard from Dutch speakers more or less seriously meant complains,
about the difficulties of German.
Sometimes I tried to pin down what exactly created this feeling. In most
cases, the essential difficulty could be narrowed down to the total lack of
understanding, or maybe better to say, lack of feeling, when to use the
Dative and when to use the Accusative.

In ealrier postings the today's relatively close-to-standard German of the
Hannover area was suggested to be seen as a consequence of the Low Saxon
substrat.

This reminded me on two cases where I have the suspicion a more direct
consequence of Low Saxon substrat is active in (Northern) Germany's German.
About the first one I am quite sure, about the second not at all. Maybe
somebody has more information about that.

1. <ST-> pronounced in Low Saxon as [s][t], is proncounced in German as [sh]
[t]. However, in many foreign words, the original [s][t] is kept in in
standard German, in the South. In the North often, I would say as a
hypercorrection because of the Low Saxon substrate, even in these words the
[sh] is applied.
Or is this already (Northern) German standard. "Standard" one example for
this. The standard proncounciation for "Standard" in the Germanspeaking
regions without Low Saxon possible underground is S-tandard, people from e.g.
Hannoever often (always?) say Sh-tandard. Whilst one could argue what is the
German standard proncounciation (if any) of 'Standard', the case  becomes
even more evident

----------

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

Eldo wrote:

> As you said not to do, Ron, I just hit my Reply button and am sending > this.
> Let me know what the proper method of identifying my reply.  Thanks.  > Eldo

Eldo, if you can manage to do so you should try to make your submission look
like or close to the way I have edited it into this issue (above).

Georg wrote:

> This would fit to what I could learn in Holland:
> Often I heard from Dutch speakers more or less seriously meant complains,
> about the difficulties of German.
> Sometimes I tried to pin down what exactly created this feeling. In most
> cases, the essential difficulty could be narrowed down to the total lack > of
> understanding, or maybe better to say, lack of feeling, when to use the
> Dative and when to use the Accusative.

This is also pretty much what North Germans used to experience in the past,
when Low Saxon (Low German) was still widely used as a home language and,
especially outside larger urban areas, as a community language, when
pre-school children would rarely hear German and would hear it truly as a
foreign language used by and with outsiders, and when a child was virtually
thrown into German on their first day in school.  Few people of modest
background, i.e., with basic schooling, ever managed to speak German "well,"
i.e., fully mastered things like distinguishing dative and accusative case
marking, and even those few would still have noticeable Low Saxon "accents."
Our own Ms. Kramer-Freudenthal is one such relatively rare case.  She, a truly
native speaker of Low Saxon, definitely has a Northern "accent," but her
German grammar is impeccable.

My father grew up in a working-class area of Hamburg and later lived for years
in a solidly Low-Saxon-speaking rural community.  When he was a child, his
idea of "German" was Missingsch (a German dialect with Low Saxon substrate),
as opposed to "posh" (Standard) German, to which few people of his class
background would dare to aspire.  Standard German was a real challenge to him
and his classmates in the early part of the 20th century.  They rarely
encountered it outside school, because the kind of people with whom they
socialized were Low Saxon and Missingsch speakers too, and most local Polish
immigrants would understand Missingsch, if not also Low Saxon.  You would not
even encounter Standard German much at work unless you were a rare case of
moving "up" socially.  "Posh" German was something you pursued in school and
had to try to aim at on the rare occasion of writing a letter or filling out a
form, for which one tended to seek help from the local "nerd."  Needless to
say that my father had a real struggle with German, especially with things
like morphological dative and accusative distinction.  In his early days this
was not a real problem if you stayed within your native social class.  It
became a problem after World War II when social class boundaries began to
crumble, erosion of the Low Saxon base was accelerated (in part through
massive absorbtion of German speakers from Central Europe and Eastern
Germany), and radical changes in education and communication accelerated
Germanization with the result that the new generation had far better German
proficiency than the previous generation (but also dramatically poorer Low
Saxon proficiency).  (So, the much talked-about post-war generation gap and
alienation had an extra linguistic component in the North.)  I am pretty sure
that many people like my father walked around with massive linguistic
inferiority complexes.

> 1. <ST-> pronounced in Low Saxon as [s][t], is proncounced in German as > [sh]
> [t]. However, in many foreign words, the original [s][t] is kept in in
> standard German, in the South. In the North often, I would say as a
> hypercorrection because of the Low Saxon substrate, even in these words > the
> [sh] is applied.
> Or is this already (Northern) German standard. "Standard" one example for
> this. The standard proncounciation for "Standard" in the Germanspeaking
> regions without Low Saxon possible underground is S-tandard, people from > e.g.
> Hannoever often (always?) say Sh-tandard. Whilst one could argue what is > the
> German standard proncounciation (if any) of 'Standard', the case  becomes
> even more evident

First of all, let it be said that the Northern [st] and [sp] pronuciation in
native German words will soon be a thing of the past.  I think there are few
speakers left that still use it.  In fact, what is on the increase is the [St]
and [Sp] pronunciation in Low Saxon dialects that formerly permitted only [st]
and [sp].

As for [st] vs [St] and [sp] vs [Sp] in loanwords, this may be a matter of
"degree of nativization in phonological adaptation of lexical loans," an area
in which I am particularly interested.  A loanword first enters a language as
a foreign word, much like e.g. _raison d'être_ in English.  Speakers will
treat it as a foreign word and will approximate the donor-language
pronunciation as much as possible.  With frequent use, a loanword begins to
advance to the stage of "nativization."  It is phonologically no longer
treated as foreign.  In other words, it comes to be pronounced as though it
were a native word, such as "restaurant" is in most English dialects.  An
example of partial nativization in English is "garage": it is not or partly
nativized in most American English dialects ([g@'ra:Z]) but is partly or fully
nativized in some other English dialects (['gæra(:)dZ], etc.), or "herb" being
not or partly nativized in American English ([?3rb]) but being fully nativized
in other English dialects ([h3:b], [h3rb], etc.).

I believe that _Standard_ is now fully nativized in most German varieties that
are within the standard range: ['Standart].  I do not think terribly many
Northerners say ['standa:t] these days.  But sometimes it is hard to tell at
which stage a loan is.  It depends on the language variety and what it
considers acceptable or achievable as far as approximation to foreign
pronunciation is concerned.  Many Southern varieties may not have [st]
available as an option and prescribe [St] for *all* relevant foreign words.
Sure, the speakers may be *able* to pronounce [st] if they learn English,
Dutch, etc.  But the pronunciation [st] may not be *socially acceptable* when
they pronounce foreign words in their native dialects.  Yes, there is a
tradition of [st] and [sp] in the North with its Low Saxon (Low German) base,
and even German speakers there (i.e., people without Low Saxon proficiency)
who usually have the [St] and [Sp] pronunciation may have less of a
phonological and social problem with [st] and [sp].  So, if, say, an English
loanword with [st] (e.g., _Story_) or [sp] (e.g., _Speaker_) has not been
fully nativized people will tend to use the [st]/[sp] pronunciation.  It is
available and acceptable and is therefore used.  When English loans come to be
better established, some may be already fully nativized in all varieties
(e.g., _Sport_ [SpOrt]) while others, like _Standard_, may be nativized only
in some varieties and not in others (e.g., _Start_ [start] ~ [Start]).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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