LL-L "Language contacts" 2003.03.27 (05) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 27.MAR.2003 (05) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language contacts

Folks,

I’ve been thinking some more about what our good friends Stan Levinson and
James Ward said with regard to language contacts and the creation of new
language varieties:

Stan:

> It's not entirely inaccurate to say that Ladino WAS
> just a TRANSLITERATION of Spanish... of the 15th
> century, and of a particular region of Spain.  And
> what happened is that this dialect differs somewhat
> from what developed into standard Castilian.  Ladino
> (of which I personally would like to learn more)
> developed its particular character once it had left
> Spain and interacted with local languages in Northern
> Africa and the Ottoman Empire.  But while in Spain, it
> appears NOT to have been a separate language for Jews,
> anymore than saying "This food is kosher" makes this
> sentence "not-English", just because of the Hebrew
> word "kosher" in it.

James:

I tend to consider Ladino to be a language in its own right,
> before and after the expulsion, for several reasons.  When
> one says "This food is kosher," it's true that we can consider
> this to be English, but the Hebrew component in Ladino is
> really rather large, in a way that is similar to Yiddish.

Somehow I manage to agree with both of them, or, perhaps better put, to not
disagree with either of them.  Stan seems to have a point by saying the
occasional loanword does not make a new language.  James seems to have a
point in reminding us that it is really a matter of degree.

I feel that this is one of those cases where existing categorization and
labeling does not work well.  Most people would say that an inventory of
special terms (and phrases) shared by a certain community of speakers
creates what is commonly known as a “jargon,” a sub-variety of a given
language variety, a type of sociolect.  This can be determined by shared
professions, trades, interests, philosophies or religions, and no doubt
more.  In the case of ethnic minorities this usually includes the use of
culture-specific terminology.  Oftentimes cultural and religious
terminologies go together, as in the cases of Jews in Europe and European
colonies, immigrants from various Islamic-dominated countries to
Christian-dominated countries, and so forth.  Does such a “jargon” ever
develop into what most people would consider a separate language?  Probably,
namely where the imported inventory is so large that not being familiar with
it makes it impossible to understand the language variety, and the variety
then keeps developing independently.  However, I doubt that anyone could
really pinpoint the borderline in this continuum of degrees.  It would then
be up to perception.

In the case of New York “Jewish English,” for instance, most people would
consider it a dialect or sociolect of English -- with influences mostly from
Yiddish, not only cultural and religious terminology, but also interjections
(e.g., “Sha!” /ša/ ‘Shhh!’, “Shvike!” /švajk/ ‘Be quiet!”, “nebbikh” ‘May it
not befall *you*’) and phrases (e.g., “Get up already!”).  However, this
type of variety usually only stays around for a relatively short time,
though it tends to make its mark on the generally shared language (in this
case American English).

In the cases of Ladino and Yiddish, however, there are two very important
factors.  One, as has already been pointed out (by James, I believe), is
that they came to be “removed from their mothers’ laps,” so to speak: they
were exported to communities in which very different types of languages were
spoken, and they had to keep developing without “mother language” influences
(in this case Spanish and German respectively).  Another factor, which
really goes hand in hand with the former, is that of time.  Not only does
the exported language develop independently (with a lot of influence from
languages with which it is in contact), but the “mother language,” too,
keeps developing, and this usually means that the two develop away from each
other.  For this reason I was actually rather surprised to find that Ladino
did not differ from Modern Spanish more than it does.  I believe the main
reason is that its speakers tended to keep reading (and writing) Spanish.
(The Portuguese Sephardim of Hamburg kept reading and writing both
Portuguese and Spanish for centuries.  Many Sephardi communities had written
Spanish and Portuguese contacts with their Marrano/Crypto-Jewish relatives
back in Iberia and kept up with the new from there.)  Contacts between
Eastern Yiddish and German were less strong, though never totally absent,
which explains why mutual comprehension between Yiddish and Modern German
varies between difficult and impossible, depending on the subject matter
talked about.  (I had to learn Yiddish as a foreign language, and it was
certainly harder than learning Dutch and Afrikaans.)  This is not only
because of lexical differences but also because Eastern Yiddish essentially
developed independently from a late medieval German dialect group and has
derived much of its phonology and syntax from Slavic.

I have a feeling that all of this is also quite relevant to the development
of Afrikaans from language varieties of what are now the Netherlands.  My
hunch is that, if there is any analogy, this case is closer to that of
Ladino versus Spanish (Castilian).  After all, contacts with (developing)
Dutch were not severed; Dutch served as the official written and oratory
language for a long time, certainly until Afrikaans had been well and truly
accepted as a separate language with a considerable degree of native speaker
pride.  Nevertheless, lexical and morphological differences between
Afrikaans and Dutch are considerable, and mutual comprehension again depends
on the subject matter discussed.  (The more Africa-specific the subject
matter the less comprehensible Afrikaans is to speakers of Dutch.)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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