LL-L "Resources" 2004.04.16 (03) [E]

Fri Apr 16 16:50:10 UTC 2004

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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
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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: Language maps

Wednesday evening I bought some books in the Furet bookshop downtown Lille
(France) and I would like to comment on one of these about world languages:
Roland Breton, Atlas des langues du monde, 2003, Paris, Editions Autrement,
ISBN 2-7467-0400-S, 80 pp., 14.95 euro.
Robert Breton is professor emeritus of the University of Paris 8
(Vincennes - Saint Denis)
Quite some maps are squeezed together without much comment on these 80
pages. The maps I'm referring to below are scanned and posted for just a few
days in a temporary directory on my website. Copyrights do apply, so I leave
them there for a very short period, just for making understandable what
follows below.

a. I'm most puzzled by a map, which is erroneously printed (p 42) without
text in the book (correction is made through an errata insert). It concerns
gypsy languages and slang (? I guess that is what is meant with "parlers
yénish"???)
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/zig_p42.jpg

1. The comment in the book speaks about one language, "romani", originated
from the province "sindhie" in India, more particularly from the caste of
the "dom".
The map though gives several variants. I'm wondering whether these are just
variants of the name of the language, or real language variants or dialects:
POGADI-CHIB in the UK
CALÒ in Spain
SINTI in the Alps mountain area
FOLDITKA-FINTIKA in the Baltic
VLACH in Rumania
URSARI at the Western Black See coast
LOMAVREN in the Caucasus
DOMARI on the border between Turkey and Syria
LAMBADI in Western Iran

2. For these people we have different names, as e.g. gypsy, zigeuner etc.
Listing them here would be too long (They are in italics on the map)
Just one comment: In my South-West Limburgish their name is "bohemer(s)".
This is consistent with "bohémien" apparently used in Northern-France as to
the map.

3. I'm most puzzled by a third category, called "parlers yénish". Could that
mean "slang"? ("bargoens" in Dutch; "Rotwelsch" in German, just one would
rather use "argot" for this in French, rather than the very strange
expression "parlers yénish")
It gives (quote from the top right on the map):
[UK]: gaélique: shelta, sheldru, cant
ango-écossais: traveller (with double ll)
scandinave : rotwelsch [?], tatarre, rodi
arabe : jat, jataki

b. A few comments on some other maps

USA:
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/usa_p39.jpg
I'm surprised by the strong reported presence of French in New England, as
well as by absence of reference to the Walloon presence Wisconsin & Northern
Michigan.

CANADA
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/can_p32.jpg

FRANCE
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/fr_p18.jpg
Flemish is still on the map, but it is combined with "Belgium" as
"néerlandais". Actually the author regularly uses the official languages for
some countries (where there are more than one official languages) and the
regional languages for other countries.
For an undisclosed reason "Picard" and "Normand" are combined.

BELGIUM
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/bel_p33.jpg
contrary to France, where we got the distribution of regional languages,
for Belgium we just get the official languages.
So we miss: Flemish, Brabantish, Limburgish, Picard, Walloon, Champenois,
Gaumais-Lorrein, Ripuarisch, Moselle-Frankish, Luxembourgish. I think the
author missed an opportunity here.
The same holds for Switserland, where, I think, e.g. Reto-Roman should be
further split-up; since these variants are even supported by different
manuals in Swiss schools. (I didn't put that one on the server)

UK
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/uk_p38.jpg
A little map tells something about the border (and old borders) between
Celtic and Germanic variants. But no effort has been done for specifying
Anglo-Saxon regional variants.

FRISISH
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/fri_p39.jpg
This little map had to share with Breton the space left over on p 39, below
the US language map (cf. above)

YIDDISH
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/yi_17.jpg
West-Yiddish reportedly survived till the 20th century in the Netherlands. I

wonder if one is not confusing real West-Yiddish, dead out before, and
pre-war Yiddish from Amsterdam, which contained quite some Dutch vocabulary
loans.

GERMANY combined with ITALY
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/geit_p16.jpg
Here one finds the French words for the German dialect groups.
Low German is clearly marked as one of the big dialect variants in Germany.
No comment though specifying it having a relation to German  that differs
from the relation Southern German dialects have. Modern German is told to be
based on Thüringish in the comments beside the map.

Regards,

Roger

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

Hi, Roger!

Thanks.  Boy! Your library must be pretty darn extensive by now.

> It concerns
> gypsy languages and slang (? I guess that is what is meant with "parlers
> yénish"???)

I am afraid the author mixed Roma ("Gypsy") varieties with "jargon"
varieties.

Yenish, Rotwelsch, Rodi, Traveller(,) Cant and Shelta are not Roma
varieties, though they contain Romany elements.  They are "mixed" varieties
used by mostly nomadic or semi-nomadic social and/or ethnic groups (often
referred to as "Travellers") that do not consider themselves Rom, though
some of them may be partly of Rom descent.

As far as I can tell, all the rest are Roma varieties, thus are dialect
groups of Romany, though the speakers of some of them consider them
separate.

POGADI-CHIB in the UK
CALÒ in Spain
SINTI in the Alps mountain area
FOLDITKA-FINTIKA in the Baltic
VLACH in Rumania
URSARI at the Western Black See coast
LOMAVREN in the Caucasus
DOMARI on the border between Turkey and Syria
LAMBADI in Western Iran

Yes, among others.

The map and the above listing are poorly presented in other ways also.  For
example, Sinti is shown as located in Alpine areas.  This group of varieties
is far more wide-spread than that, being used in Austria, Belgium, Croatia,
the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan,
Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Switzerland, one of its main centers being
in the Lowlands, namely in and around Hamburg, Germany, where its speakers
are sedentary residents and thus were more readily fell victim of Nazi
attrocities than many nomadic Roma.  (I was born and raised in a part of
town with the highest Sinte concentration and also knew the local "queen.")
They rarely or never mix with the nomadic Roma that also camp in my home
area in fairly high concentrations.  Also, even in my childhood days they
did not usually wear their own costumes while other Roma did; thus, they
tend to be less conspicuous.  (By the way, Hamburg is the European Roma and
Sinte center and one of the top world centers.)

Admittedly, exact data about the above language varieties are difficult to
come by, since traditionally their speakers are very secretive, believe that
their lives are nobody else's business, will often even provide researchers
and official with false information to throw them off.  (The reasons for
this are a complex mix, the main ones being long-seated antagonistic
relationships with _gaidzhe_ [non-Roma] and India-derived Roma caste and
purity laws that require separation, mechanisms of shielding from polluting
alien contacts and intrusion, even within Roma society.)  This makes data
collecting outside Eurasia especially difficult, because immigration
countries do not usually go by ethnicity but by country of origin, unless a
person makes a special case about his or her minority, which Roma are
unlikely to do where they feel this would be disadvantageous, which is their
default assumption.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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