LL-L "Phonology" 2002.06.04 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 04.JUN.2002 (05) * 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)
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From: Holger Weigelt <platt at HOLGER-WEIGELT.DE>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2002.06.04 (01) [A/E]

Ron answered to John's <johnno55 at excite.com>
message >Subject: E/a vowel shift in leeglanner languages

The Northern Low Saxon cognate _leeg_ ~ _leeg'_ is one of those
>unfortunate cases where German-oriented spelling is misleading in that
>most systems do not distinguish long vowels from diphthongs.  _Leeg_ has
>a diphthong rather than a long vowel, is pronounced as [lE.IC] or
>[lE:IG] and really ought to be written as something like _leyg_ ~
>_leyg'_ or _leig_ ~ _leig'_ or _l䩧_ ~ _l䩧'_.  German does not have
>such a diphthong and no way of writing it, so, in their endeavor to make
>Low Saxon of Germany look as much as possible like German dialects, they
>simply ignored the difference between non-German-sounding diphthongs and
>long vowels.

In Eastern Friesland LS we have a long e in _le:gh_. This long vowel is
coloured somewhat by the surrounding consonants but we can't accept it
to
be a real diphthong (we have a system of diphthongs differing from
German).
The system in EFLS is complicated by the existance of two types of long
vowels. The first are simple long vowels, the second are the "stressed"
ones.

>In Low Saxon, 'horse' is _Peerd_, again with a diphthong:
>[pE.I3t], and the plural form is _Peerd'_ (usually written _Peer_ in
>Germany) [pE:I3d] ~ [pE:I3] (< _Peerde_ ['pE.I3de]).
>

For example the singular for "horse" is "pe:rd" the plural is "pêer"
[p_e+accent-circonflexe_e_r]. (The pronounciation of the stressed vowels
is
long rising/short falling as if you are calling somebody distant to you
or
as if you want to attract someones attention.) There are also stressed
diphthongs.

>However, Low Saxon also has genuine long /ee/; e.g., _Weeg'_ [ve:.G] ~
>[vE:.G] 'ways' (< _Weg_ [vEC] 'way')

In EFLS we have sg. "wegh" (short e, in IPA: greek epsilon), pl. "wêgh"
[w_e+accent-circonflexe_gh].

>So you also get minimal pairs; e.g., _leev'!_ [le:.v] ~
>[lE:.v] 'live!' vs _leev'!_ [lE:Iv] 'love!'.

"Live" and "love" in EFLS are distinguished by the vowel resp.
diphthong:
le:ven - to live; le:vend - a) life, b) body; ik le:w - I live; ik lêw
- I
lived; läif [l_a-Umlaut_i_f] - kind, nice; läiefd
[l_a-Umlaut_i_e_f_d]- love (~äie~ is a stressed diphthong).

Regards Holger

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Thank you for your very interesting explanation (above), Holger.  I for
one eagerly lap up all you kindly share about Eastern Friesland Low
Saxon.  So, please, never feel that you are sending your pearls of
wisdom into a black hole!

I think your explanation, in conjunction with various lexical and
idiomatic characteristics we have been discussing on and off, makes it
pretty clear that EFLS occupies a very special place within the
language, certainly a dialect group that is a more loosely bound to the
rest of the language, i.e., not always systematically corresponding to
the other dialect groups, presumably due to a rather strong East Frisian
substrate.  (Might one go as far as comparing it to the position
Shetlandic occupies within Scots?)  Because of this (and because EF
speakers obviously consider their dialects to be very different, hence
the rejection of non-EFLS literature, as recently mentioned), I would be
in favor of SFLS (and also Plautdietsch) establishing its own standards
should the language community ever get it together to unify its
fractions and factions and think in terms of a whole language (which is
doubtful).  However, it would be nice if its standards were compatible
with those of the rest of the language so as to at least facilitate
mutual reading comprehension.

Thanks again for sharing your dialect with us, Holger.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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