LL-L "Language varieties" 2003.06.07 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 07.JUN.2003 (03) * 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 (Zeêuws)
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From: Ian James Parsley <parsleyij at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language Varieties

Guid Fowk,

Going back a bit, I'm inclined to agree that the
English of NZ sounds at least as similar to that of
Southern Africa as it does to that of Australia.

I suspect when we find out where an accent is from we
naturally begin to 'place' it, assuming that accents
from the same area of the world are identical or
similar, and that those from different geographical
areas are not.

Likewise, you will find similarities between some
Indian accents and Welsh or (Southern) Irish accents.
Whether this is just coincidence or something to do
with the 'Wellentheorie', I'm not sure. The fact that
I found spoken Swiss German to be clearly similar in
many ways to Dutch (and I assume to Low Saxon) is, not
doubt, because of that.

Best,
Ian.
-------------------
Ian James Parsley
Co Down, Northern Ireland

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

Ian, Lowlanders,

I have a feeling there is a lot we don't understand and may never
understand about the occurrence of linguistic features.  So we talk --
in my opinion for good reason -- about "regional features," but in many
cases we can't really be sure why a given feature is found within a
certain region, often across language boundaries.  You can only theorize
in most cases, such as assuming that a feature spread is due to contacts
(including intermarriage), but what sometimes seems to defy logic is
that for instance a phonological feature is spread across a certain
group of dialects of more than one language, but little or nothing else
is spread in the same manner.  I am afraid that we can only guess and
leave open the question if unknown and unknowable ancient linguistic
substrates account for certain distributions.  We have no idea what
sorts of languages were used in Europe (or Eurasia) before the coming of
Indo-European, and we will probably never find out.  Cases of surviving
relics like Basque and Caucasian language isolate are few and far
between.

Likewise, it is often difficult or impossible to understand why a
linguistic feature seems to spring up in a certain group of varieties
while related varieties do not have it.  Can we always be sure if it is
a newly acquired or a preserved feature, if it is language-internal or
substratal?  Think about tonality in South Slavonic languages
(Slovenian, Croatian, etc.), unknown in other Slavonic languages.  Did
Proto-Slavonic have tones and lost them elsewhere?  Or is it the other
way around (such as in some Northern Bengali dialects that are tonal --
unheard of in Indo-Aryan -- clearly due to Tibeto-Burman "hill tribes"
having been converted to Bengali)?  Did Southern Slavonic *acquire*
tones, and if so, was this from a pre-Slavonic substrate or via a
language-internal development?  Some argue that Swiss Alemannic is
tonal.  If so, why?  The same applies to Norwegian and Swedish, strange
given that Icelandic is not tonal and there is no sign of tonality in
Old Norse.  We have heard about the _sleeptoon_ ('dragging tone') in
Limburgish which may be argued to be a sign of tonality, since there are
minimal pairs of words with and without this tone.  Is this merely a
farther development of the _sleyptoon_ in Lowlands Saxon, where a vowel
receives extra length due to -e deletion?

In some cases, substrates may seem clearcut.  New Zealand English may
have Maori influences (though I do not know that for a fact aside from
lexical influences).  In that case it would be simple, because there is
a single substrate language with little variety.  It is far more complex
with English and French of North America, and Spanish and Portuguese of
Latin America, because indigenous languages have contributed to their
development, but details of this are poorly known, because this was
insufficiently studied in the past, and many of the languages
disappeared along the way.  I have a feeling that American Indian
influences on North American English has been largely ignored, unlike
the "Old World" origins of the various dialects.  A fairly large
percentage of North Americans have some American Indian ancestry (though
not all of them know about it or care to admit it), and the ancestors of
many had close contacts with Native Americans.  Indigenous linguistic
and cultural heritage may well have been underestimated so far.  Why is
it that many of today's American Indians sound "special" but alike in
English even though their ancestral languages are different (though
tended to share cross-language-group areal features)?  And why is it
that American Indian English sounds rather "Canadian" to me
(phonologically, including intonationally), even south of Canada?  Is
this a case of north-to-south spread?  Is it that Canadian English has
stronger indigenous influence?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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