LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.07.01 (02) [E]
Lowlands-L
sassisch at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 1 21:35:09 UTC 2002
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L O W L A N D S - L * 01.JUL.2002 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian L=Limburgish
LS=Low Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
=======================================================================
From: <burgdal32 at mac.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language samples" 2002.06.25 (08) [E]
> From: <burgdal32 at mac.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Language samples" 2002.06.25 (05) [E]
>
>> Everyone, below please find the raw list, just Swadesh's basic list of
>> 100 words, minus the special additions.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Reinhard/Ron
>>
>> ***
On behalf of Marco and other readers I will try to improve the
(West-)Flemish list triing to diminish the inconsequentes in the
spelling of
the words.
> Here are my (West-) Flemish variants:
>>
>> ###: ENGLISH - (West-) Flemish
>> 001: I, me - ik(kke)- mie- me
>> 002: you - je- joe-gi
>> 003: we - we- wiedre
>> 004: this - dad'ier
>> 005: that - dat doar-dadde
>> 006: who - wie(ne)-wukjin
>> 007: what - wa(dde)
>> 008: not - niet(ten)
>> 009: all ol-ollemolle
>> 010: many - vele veel
>> 011: one - jin
>> 012: two - twji
>> 013: big - groôt
>> 014: long - lank-lange
>> 015: small - smal(E narrow) kljinn(e)
>> 016: woman - vro:mins (vrouwmens)-vrouwe
>> 017: man - man vint bing
>> 018: person - persoôn
>> 019: fish - vis(sel)
>> 020: bird - veugle
>> 021: dog - (h)ond
>> 022: louse - luze
>> 023: tree - boôm
>> 024: seed - zaod
>> 025: leaf - loôf
>> 026: root - wortle wortel workle
>> 027: bark - schorse
>> 028: skin - vel
>> 029: flesh - vljis
>> 030: blood - bloed
>> 031: bone - boône
>> 032: grease / oil - vet/olie
>> 033: egg - ei
>> 034: horn - (h)oôrne
>> 035: tail - steirt
>> 036: feather - vere
>> 037: hair - (h)aor
>> 038: head - (h)oôfd
>> 039: ear - oôre
>> 040: eye - oôge
>> 041: nose - neuze
>> 042: mouth - mond
>> 043: tooth - tand
>> 044: tongue - tonge
>> 045: claw - klouw
>> 046: foot - voet
>> 047: knee - knie- 'nie
>> 048: hand - (h)and
>> 049: belly - bu:k
>> 050: neck - nekke
>> 051: breast(s) -borst(en)-bost
>> 052: heart - (h)erte
>> 053: liver - levre
>> 054: to drink - drink'n and for some verbs also: drink" (the " being a short
blow through the nose! How do you spell that in SAMPA?)
>> 055: to eat - et'n - et"
>> 056: to bite - bit'n - bit"
>> 057: to see - zien
>> 058: to hear - oôr'n
>> 059: to know - kenn' wet'n - we"
>> 060: to sleep - slaop'n - slaop"
>> 061: to die - doô goan- sterven
>> 062: to kill - doôddoen- vermoôrden-keel'n
>> 063: to swim - zwemm'
>> 064: to fly - vlieg'n
>> 065: to walk - wandeln
>> 066: to come - komm'
>> 067: to lie (down) - goan ligg'n
>> 068: to sit - zit'n - zi"
>> 069: to stand - stoan
>> 071: to say - zegg'n
>> 072: sun - zunne
>> 073: moon - maone
>> 074: star - sterre
>> 075: water - waotre
>> 076: rain - rinne(rinni)- reegne(reegni)
>> 077: stone - stjin
>> 078: sand - zand
>> 079: earth - eirde
>> 080: cloud - wolke
>> 081: smoke - rook - roôk
>> 082: fire - vier
>> 083: ash - asne
>> 084: burn - brand
>> 085: path - pad
>> 086: mountain - berg
>> 087: red - roôd
>> 088: green - groene
>> 089: yellow - gilwe-geel
>> 090: white - wit
>> 091: black - zwart
>> 092: night - naht
>> 093: hot, warm jit warme
>> 094: cold - ko:t
>> 095: full - vul
>> 096: new - nieuw(e)
>> 097: good - goed
>> 098: round - rond
>> 099: dry - droôge
>> 100: name - naome
>
> Luc Vanbrabant
> Oekene
----------
From: <burgdal32 at mac.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.06.26 (01) [E]
> Luc Vanbrabant wrote about the Swadesh list he
> translated:
>
>> Here are the Flemish variants:
>
> Sorry to keep going on about this subject, but
> shouldn't this be WEST-Flemish? Some people
> already made clear that the name 'Flemish' is very
> confusing in this respect.
Sorry,
I should have mentioned my Flemish, and nevertheless i think that the
variations of Zeeuws-Flemish (in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen)West- and
East-Flemish
and French-Flemish can certainly be covered by the word Flemish.
>
> Some of your translations look very interesting
>
>>> 006: who - wie(ne)-wukjin
=wukiïn(D:welk één E: which one)
>
> and then
>
>>> 011: one - iïn
=jin
>
> As far as I know West-Flemish, in both these words
> _jin_ or _iïn_ or (as I would spell it) _eên_ sound
> exactly the same and stands for the same word, in
> my spelling _eên_, 'one' (_wukeên_ can litterally be
> translated as 'what one'). Am I wrong or is there
> another reason that you chose these different spellings?
I think i sometimes answer too quickly. There is for me a great need for
an
"official" spelling. With every word i ask myself how it can be spelled
without having to break the reading itself. I am willing enough to try
your
version but i like to have a look first. Can i find that somewhere on
the
net?
And for the list: I have given it another try in a new e-mail.
> As you see, where Zeelandic has a more open a,
> English has an open vowel as well. And where
> Zeelandic has a more closed a, English has a
> closed vowel as well. This is not always the case,
> but there are many, many examples where it is.
> Now Luc uses two different ways of spelling a,
> what I understand to be, open a:
>
>> 069: to stand - stoan
>> 073: moon - maone
>> 036: feather - vadre
>
> The last one is probably a small mistake.
It was!
I think
> Luc translated 'father' in West-Flemish rather
> than 'feather'. 'Feather' has to be something
> like _pluume_ or _veêre_...
> But I am interested in the different spellings
> _a_ (_aa?_), _oa_ and _ao_. Is there really a
> difference in the way these a's are pronounced?
> And if there is, is there some kind of system in it?
> I only know of a few dialects in the far south west
> of French Flanders, that have basically the same
> system as Zeelandic. That can be explained because
> these villages are so far away from the centre-dialects
> of West-Flemish that the so-called 'Brabantish expan-
> sion' wasn't really 'felt' there. The Brabantish expan-
> sion by the way, is the disappearance of a lot of
> original ingvaeonic features in West- and even more
> in East-Flemish in favour of linguistic features from
> the economically dominant region of Brabant in
> the 1400s.
> Due to this Brabantish expansion, East-Flemish is
> nowadays considered to be a Brabantish dialect and
> West-Flemish has a lot of Brabantish features, where
> Zeelandic has retained more ingvaeonic features (but
> then again 'suffered' from Hollandic expansion later).
> In 002 the _ou_ is clearly pronounced as in
> English 'you', but in 045 that can hardly be
> the case, since all West-Flemish dialects I know
> have an _au_ there (pronounced as in 'thou').
>
>> 049: belly - buik
>
> Why not _buuk_? _Buik_ sounds very Dutch
> or at least Brabantish ('boik'?) to me.
> The same goes for _skijn_ in the West-Flemish
> translation of the Häwelmann-fragment. Should
> that not be _skien_:
The problem is that i don't know a symbol for the sound.
Buik (D) sounds in my lang. something between 'b@:k' and 'bu:k'
>
> "Skien, oude maone, skien!" skreêuwde Kadulletje,
Skien doesn't feel allright , skIn would do better.
And i also say 'shIn'
> mao de maone wos nievers te ziene, en de sterren
> oôk nie; ze waren oltegaore naar bedde gegaon.
>
> Because of this translation, I finally know where
> Luc's village Oekene is situated ;-). It must be near
> Kortrijk, since that is the only part of West-Flanders
> where Dutch _sch-_ sounds as in English: _sk-_!
A bit difficult also because my mother was from the
Westhoekregion(Veurne)
(E:school is pronounced as sho:la) and my father was from
South-West-Flanders (skole), i live in Oekene (where they say tshole)
and i
work in Izegem (they say skole again) And that all in a few km.
>
> Regards,
>
> Marco
Groeten
Luc Vanbrabant;)
----------
From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Language varieties"
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> Lowlanders,
>
> Given Leonard's and Sandy's overview of the purpose of the Swadesh list,
> I wonder if the Afrikaans and Dutch (Thanks, Rudi!) entries for 018
> "person" should not be _mens_ instead of _persoon_. (See our updated
> list at http://sassisch.net/rhahn/lowlands/swadesh.htm)
I've been looking at that Swadesh formula again:
t = (ln c)/(2 ln 0.86)
where t is the time in millenia since two languages began to
separate, c is the number of surviving cognates (divided by 100)
between the two languages, and 0.86, I surmise, is a calibration
constant associated with the rate of loss of cognates between
the two languages.
I've calculated this as a table for anyone who would like to count
the cognates between any two languages in our Swadesh lists and
look up the number of years since the two languages started to
separate.
As I said, the formula doesn't seem to give believable results
for a Scots:English comparison. As well as that, the expected
accuracy seems ridiculous for such a small amount of data (only
100 words), but I wonder if anyone has a clear idea about when
some pairs of Lowlandic languages started to separate?
If you think about it, the equation must be wrong in general:
surely the rate of cognate loss between Scots and English (which
have strong commercial, political and educational ties) must be
lower than between, say, Scots and Dutch (which haven't)? Perhaps
Swadesh's formula applies better in the conditions in which he
worked (indigenous Canadian languages) than in a modern setting
with a lot of political, commercial and educational traffic.
On the other hand, perhaps those 100 words are particularly hard-
wearing, in some sense, even in the face of modern challenges?
But then again, do languages really "split"? When a community
migrates, won't the list take a sudden battering from the
subtrate languages? Consider the Scots invasion of Shetland for
example - that gives us a pretty accurate estimate for the start
language change between Scots & Shetlandic, but wouldn't cognate
loss have gotten a bit of a head start from Norn words that were
retained? Of course, we could perhaps take the Norn components in
the Swadesh list for Shetlandic into account.
However, with the Lowlands Swadesh lists we have, if someone
could suggest what the timescale really should be between a few
pairs of languages (preferably without studying the table below
or the table of Swadesh lists on Ron's Web page), then I could
recalibrate the constant and we could see if the results given
by the estimate for one pair of languages gives a table which
matches the estimates for other pairs of languages.
We could perhaps judge the strengths and limitations of the
formula from that.
Anyone care to give an estimate or two? I've really no idea
how I could decide when Scots and English started to split:
I can't really think of a time when they were the same (or
perhaps I should take the date of the Jutish invasion of
Caer Edin?).
The "Minimum" and "Maximum" columns show the "error bars"
suggested by the accuracy of the calibration constant (they
could be widened due to other factors, but not by much).
Surviving Years since Minimum Maximum
cognates split years years
1 15266 14698 15877
2 12968 12486 13487
3 11624 11192 12089
4 10671 10273 11097
5 9931 9561 10328
6 9326 8979 9699
7 8815 8487 9168
8 8373 8061 8707
9 7982 7685 8301
10 7633 7349 7938
11 7317 7045 7609
12 7028 6767 7309
13 6763 6511 7033
14 6517 6275 6778
15 6289 6055 6540
16 6075 5849 6318
17 5874 5655 6109
18 5684 5473 5912
19 5505 5300 5725
20 5335 5136 5548
21 5173 4981 5380
22 5019 4832 5220
23 4872 4690 5066
24 4731 4555 4920
25 4595 4424 4779
26 4465 4299 4644
27 4340 4179 4514
28 4220 4062 4388
29 4103 3950 4267
30 3991 3842 4150
31 3882 3738 4037
32 3777 3636 3928
33 3675 3538 3822
34 3576 3443 3719
35 3480 3350 3619
36 3386 3260 3522
37 3296 3173 3427
38 3207 3088 3335
39 3121 3005 3246
40 3037 2924 3159
41 2955 2845 3073
42 2875 2768 2990
43 2797 2693 2909
44 2721 2620 2830
45 2647 2548 2752
46 2574 2478 2677
47 2503 2409 2603
48 2433 2342 2530
49 2364 2276 2459
50 2297 2212 2389
51 2232 2149 2321
52 2167 2087 2254
53 2104 2026 2188
54 2042 1966 2124
55 1981 1908 2061
56 1922 1850 1999
57 1863 1794 1937
58 1805 1738 1878
59 1749 1684 1819
60 1693 1630 1761
61 1638 1577 1704
62 1584 1525 1648
63 1531 1474 1592
64 1479 1424 1538
65 1428 1374 1485
66 1377 1326 1432
67 1327 1278 1380
68 1278 1230 1329
69 1230 1184 1279
70 1182 1138 1229
71 1135 1093 1180
72 1089 1048 1132
73 1043 1004 1085
74 998 961 1038
75 953 918 991
76 909 875 946
77 866 834 901
78 823 793 856
79 781 752 812
80 739 712 769
81 698 672 726
82 657 633 684
83 617 594 642
84 578 556 601
85 538 518 560
86 500 481 519
87 461 444 480
88 423 408 440
89 386 371 401
90 349 336 363
91 312 301 325
92 276 266 287
93 240 231 250
94 205 197 213
95 170 163 176
96 135 130 140
97 100 97 105
98 66 64 69
99 33 32 34
100 0 0 0
Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
- C.W.Wade,
'The Adventures o McNab'
----------
From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties
Thanks for the list, Luc. I have entered it as an alternative to
Marco's, because I did not want to just override Marco's input.
http://sassisch.net/rhahn/lowlands/swadesh.htm
Sandy, wow! Thanks! What a useful list (although the formula is still
to be questioned)!
Folks, it appears I'm not the only one who still isn't sure where to
draw the line. Are we looking for cognates, or are we looking for
semantic equivalents, or both? So, what to do in cases of major
semantic divergence, such as English _small_ = Lowlands Saxon _lütt_
= English _little_, vs Lowlands Saxon _smaal_ ~ _small_ 'narrow'?
And yes, do languages really "split"? And what about divergence vs
convergence?
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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