LL-L "Language use" 2003.07.27 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 27.JUL.2003 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Ze굷s)
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From: thomas byro <thbyro at earthlink.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2003.07.16 (04) [E]

Ron:

When I lived in DC,we had a houseguest, an archeologist from Krakow.  His
grandfather was German and had moved to Lemberg and married a Polish girl
and raised a family.  Our guest and his parents were raised bilingual,
German/Polish.  After WWII,the Poles were ethnically cleansed from Lemberg
and he and his family were settled in Schlesien,which had been ethnically
cleansed of its German population.  He said that in traditional Poland, the
towns and cities were populated by Germans and Jews and the countryside by
Poles. The question of nationality is not a straightforward one. Under
traditional German law,our guest would have been considered German, although
he saw himself as primarily Polish.  The many people from Schlesien who were
settled in my home area were viewed by many of the locals as Poles.The
question of Copernicus' nationality thus remains an open question.

I still have a textbook from when I was in 2nd grade, Freude und Frohsin,
published under the auspices of the Niedersaechishes Kultusministers in
1952.  The book is mostly in Hochdeutsch but actually contains a lot of
poetry by Groth and others and even a song, Jezt Dantzt Hannemann.  There
are no translations of Platt into Hochdeutsch, not that anyone in my area
would have needed any.  Rather,the problem was the otherway around. Did this
pattern of interjecting at least some Poetry and songs in Platt into
textbooks continue after I left?

Subject: Language use

The situation Gabriele describes above may be more of an exception.  In most
schools, Lowlands Saxon (Low German) was at best tolerated outside formal
instruction and tokenism such as teaching LS songs and rhymes.

Educational matters are up to state policy, with only general directives
coming from the central government.  This is why there is much variation in
this regard.  As I mentioned on earlier occasions, German was and is the
predominant language in German state schools.  In the late fifties or early
sixties, Hamburg schools, which had a relatively larger budget, included the
teaching of LS songs and verses within the framework of _Heimatkunde_ (ca.
local history).  This was the first subject to be dropped when there was a
budget crunch.

You need to bear in mind that with the end of World War II a very large
number of people from all the regions ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union
had to be accommodated in the area of what is now Germany, and the majority
of them settled in Western Germany.  Many of those that settled in the north
were speakers of German.  Those that spoke LS tended to speak the
far-eastern dialects of Western and Eastern Prussia, and they tended to
perceive the northwestern dialects as foreign --  _Nu wardt hier al Enjelsch
jereedt!_ 'Now they've started talking English here!', as a much-quoted
reaction goes, because the North Saxon dialects, spoken in the British
occupation sector, tend to sound "English" to speakers of German and of
other dialects, problably because of "English-like" diphthongs such as [eoU]
and [e.I] and a larger number of obvious cognates of English words.   This
influx (including intermarriage) was the death-knell to many of the
northwestern varieties as well as far-eastern ones, because it caused a
sudden community-wide switch to German, reinforced by German dominance in
rapidly developing and standardized education and the media.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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

Thanks, Tom.  It is a reminder that ethno-linguistic "planning" is fast
becoming a thing of the past.

For the benefit of others on this list, please allow me to add a key to the
better-known versions of the names you used:

Schlesien (German) =  Śląsk (Polish) =  Silesia (English)
Krakau (German) = Kraków  (Polish) = Cracow (English)
Lemberg (German)  = Lwów (Polish) = L'viv (Ukrainian) = Lvov (Russian,
English)
Hochdeutsch (German) = High German, Standard German
Platt (German) = Low German, Low(lands) Saxon
Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium (German) = Ministry of Kultural Affairs,
Lower Saxony

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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