LL-L "Language varieties" 2003.06.09 (08) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 09.JUN.2003 (08) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: "Peter J. Wright" <peterjwright at earthlink.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2003.06.09 (03) [D/E/French]

Ruud Harmsen wrote:

>>Yes, but on the whole the phonological variance is not as great [...]

>I often see the word "phonological" in this thread. But it think if
>the phonemes are the same, and only the sounds with which phonemes
>vary, phonetic would be a more correct term for this.

You may well be right, Ruud.  For some reason, my understanding of those
terms while I was at school was always sketchy at best, since my areas
of interest tended to be more in the direction of applied phonology
rather than phonetics or semantics.  People who knew these things in my
classes were always my friends . . . ;)

Cheers,

Peter Wright
New York, NY

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From:Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2003.06.08 (04) [E]

Ron wrote:
"Another thing we need to bear in mind is that among the participants in
the early development of Afrikaans there were speakers of Malay,
Javanese, Sundanese and other Malayo-Polynesian languages of what is now
Indonesia, oftentimes house servants and nannies, not to
mention
numerous persons of various Khoisan ancestry ("Coloureds"), who still
make up a large percentage of the Afrikaans-speaking population,
especially in the West Cape area."

Clearly. But what abiding influences have Malayo-Polynesian and Khoisan
- as well as Niger-Congo languages - had on Afrikaans?

Go raibh maith agat

Criostóir.

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

Criostóir:

> Clearly. But what abiding influences have Malayo-Polynesian and Khoisan -
> as well as Niger-Congo languages - had on Afrikaans?

Well, my point was that we ought to bear it in mind, in other words, to
be open to encountering such influences or considering the possibility
that some influences or features are non-European (not only in
Afrikaans).  We do know that Afrikaans was used by those non-Europeans
and the indigenous ancestors of the "Coloureds."  What exactly those
influences are, if any, I can't say, and I wonder if any relevant
studies have been undertaken.

Of course, there are *lexical* influences we actually know of.  This
includes at least one very basic Afrikaans word: Malay _banyak_
['banja'] > Afrikaans _baie_ 'much', 'many', 'very' (cf. Dutch _veel_,
_zeer_, _heel_, _erg_, etc.).

I can very well imagine that non-Europeans and their descendants
(probably together with speakers of European languages) participated in
morphological and syntactic simplification and regularization in
Afrikaans, such as creating uniform articles, dropping the infinitive
suffix (but at the same time frequently marking infinitives with _om
te_), and a tendency toward marking the dative case with _vir_ 'for'
(where European sibling languages use different or no prepositions,
e.g., _Jy het dit vir my gesê_ 'You told me that', 'You told that to me,'
_Dit lyk goed vir my_ 'This/that seems good to me', _Skaam vir jou!_
'Shame on you!').

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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