LL-L "Morphology" 2002.02.25 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 25.FEB.2002 (05) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Morphology

Folks,

A few seconds after I sent off the preceding issue (Ian and John Magnus
on "Morphology"), I remembered that I grew up saying in German for 'to
ask' _frag-_ - _frug_ - _gefragt_.  However, bear in mind that in my
early years I was primarily exposed to a speech mode range between
"broad" Hamburg German and outright Missingsch (German on Low Saxon/Low
German substrate), with an admixture of (mostly closeted) Low Saxon.
"Proper" German was something you could only try to aim at over the
years, and it was confined to school, media and rare encounters with
"posh" folks (most of whom, however, spoke "posh" *Hanseatic* German of
Hamburg, which at that time was a far cry from what is considered
"proper" these days).  It was only after I got sufficiently "educated"
and figured out that my low-class "accent" caused discrimination that I
switched to preterite _fragte_, i.e., treated _fragen_ properly as a
weak verb.

I assume that the preterite form _frug_ was inspired by Low Saxon
_fröög_, which in the Hamburg dialect and other Lower Elbe dialects is
pronounced [frOIC] and is spelled _freug_ or _freuch_.  Or is the
distribution of _frug_ independent?

What is interesting to me now is that my mother liked to pronounce
_frug_ [fru:k] rather than "properly" Missingsch [fru:x], Missingsch and
Missingsch-based dialects fricativizing syllable-final /g/ the same way
Low Saxon does.  She only used the [fru:k] pronunciation when she wanted
to sound "extra proper," if not sophisticated, such as when speaking
with outsiders, probably because not fricativizing the /g/ sounded "more
southern," like in the speech of some media speakers.

Does any of you have similar stories to share about "posh non-standard"
modes?  If so, we might have to discuss this under a new subject line.

Thanks and regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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