LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.04.22 (12) [E]

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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: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.04.22 (08) [E]


Elsie wrote:
"Fred, keep in mind that Dutch is not that well understood by your average
Afrikaans speaker, yet a Dutch speaker might like to assume that the
Afrikaans speaker should understand everything because of the language ties.
They might have been embarrassed because you assumed that they understood
all your Dutch!"

Would I be right in characterising the relationship between Afrikaans and
standard Dutch as similar to that between standard English and Jamaican
Creole ('Patois')? For English speakers, the hardest aspect of Patois to
understand is the phonology, rather than the syntax or lexicon.

At least, I think so!

Go raibh maith agat

Criostóir.

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From: Montgomery Michael <ullans at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.04.22 (06) [E]

Dear All

The material presented under the subject heading below is from the book
_Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in North america_ by historian David
Hackett Fischer (Oxford University Press, 1989).  Only some of its
information is reliable, so Lowlanders are cautioned about citing it as
authoritative.  Usages like "they is judged" (i.e. "is" with the plural
pronoun "they") are unknown in American English.  Many of the pronunciations
cited are either Americanisms (e.g. "hard" and "far" for "hired" and "fire")
that are not documented, so far as I am aware, in the British Isles, or are
so general in the U.S. (e.g. "critter" for "creature" and "rassel" for
"wrestle") that there is little point in calling them features of the
"Highland English" of the U.S.

Some forms represent valid connections between Scotland/Ireland and the
Highlands of the U.S., but not very many of them.  Fischer draws very few
good sources to provide or check his evidence.  So I'd advise readers of
this list to be careful in using his material.

Michael Montgomery
Univ. of South Carolina
President, american Dialect Society

> From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Origins of southern highland speech in USA
>
> Ron,
>
> Lowlanders may be interested in this article, altho
> may be some have already seen it. It states that
> northumbrian & ulster-scots/scots have influenced
> the
> dialect in USA.
>
> gan canny,
>
> Glenn
>
> Backcountry Speech Ways:
> Border Origins of Southern Highland Speech
>
> In the United States, a distinctive family of
> regional dialects can still be
> heard throughout the Appalachian and Ozark
> mountains, the lower Mississippi
> Valley, Texas and the Southern Plains. It is
> commonly called southern
> highland or southern midland speech.34
>
> This American speech way is at least two centuries
> old. It was recognized in
> the colonies even before the War of Independence,
> and identified at first in
> ethnic rather than regional terms, as "Scotch-Irish
> speech." In the
> backcountry, it rapidly became so dominant that
> other ethnic stocks in this
> region adopted it as their own. As early as 1772, a
> newspaper advertisement
> reported a runaway African slave named Jack who was
> said to "speak the
> Scotch-Irish dialect."35
>
> The earliest recorded examples of this
> "Scotch-Irish" speech were strikingly
> similar to the language that is spoken today in the
> southern highlands, and
> has become familiar throughout the western world as
> the English of country
> western singers, transcontinental truckdrivers,
> cinematic cowboys, and
> backcountry politicians.
>
> This southern highland speech has long been very
> distinctive for its
> patterns of pronunciation. It says whar for where,
> thar for there, hard for
> hired, critter for creature, sartin for certain,
> a-goin for going, hit for
> it, he-it for hit, far for fire, deef for deaf,
> pizen for poison, nekkid for
> naked, eetch for itch, boosh for bush, wrassle for
> wrestle, chancy for
> china, chaw for chew, poosh for push, shet for shut,
> tea-it for bat, be-it
> for be, narrer for narrow, winder for window, widder
> for widow, and
> young-uns for young ones.36 When they would say
> presence, they say
> lettinon....Its grammar also differs in many details
> from other English
> dialects. Verb forms include constructions such as
> he come in, she done
> finished, they "rowed up, the plural they is judged,
> the interrogative you
> wasn't there, was you, the emphatic he done did it,
> and the use of hoove as
> a past participle of heave. The indefinite article
> as she had a one
> frequently occurred in the southern highlands, as
> did the emphatic double
> negative, he don't have none.37 It also used
> prepositions in a curious ways.
>
> In the early nineteenth century, James Parton
> recorded examples such as "He
> went till Charleston" and "there never was seen the
> like of him for
> mischief." Parton wrote, ". . . these are specimens
> of their talk."38
>
> Southern highland speech also has its own
> distinctive vocabulary in words
> such as fornenst (next to), skiff (dusting of snow),
> fixin (getting ready to
> do something), brickle (brittle), swan (swear), hant
> (ghost), hate (it ain't
> worth a hate), nigh (near), man (husband), cute
> (attractive), scawmy
> (misty), lowp (jump), lettinton (pretend), sparkin
> (courtin), hippin (a
> baby's diaper), bumfuzzled (confused), scoot (slide)
> and honey as a term of
> endearment.39
>
> Scholars generally agree that this language
> developed from the "northern" or
> "Northumbrian" English that was spoken in the
> lowlands of Scotland, in the
> North of Ireland, and in the border` counties of
> England during the
> seventeenth and early eighteenth century.9 Every
> vocabulary word which we
> have noted as typical of American backcountry speech
> also appears in word
> lists colpected in the English border counties of
> Cumberland and Westmorland
> during the nineteenth century. W. Dickson observed,
> for example, that man
> was "the term by which a Cumbrian wife refers to her
> husband," as in "stand
> by your man." He noted that honey was "a term. of
> endearment expressive of
> great regard" in the English border counties,
> northern Ireland and the
> southern lowlands. Dickson and others recorded in
> Cumbria usages such as let
> on for tell, scawmy for thick or misty, cute for
> attractive, nigh for near,
> fixin for getting ready, and lowp for jump, hoove as
> a past participle for
> heave, and fang sen or langseyne for long since.
> This emphatic double
> negative had long been common in border speech. One
> Northumbrian gentleman
> wrote to another, "I assure your honour I never sold
> none."40
>
> In North Britain, this speech way tended to be
> broadly similar on both sides
> of the border. One early nineteenth century student
> of speech in Cumberland
> and Westmorland observed that "in the Border and all
> along the verge of the
> old Marches or debateable lands the speech of the
> people is completely
> Scotch, in everything, excepting that there is but
> little tone."41 North of
> the border, another speech-scholar described the
> accent of the Scottish
> lowlands as "nothing more than a corruption of that
> which is now spoke . . .
> in all the northern counties ofEngland."42
>
> This border dialect became the ancester of a
> distinctive variety of American
> speech which still flourishes in the southern
> highlands of the United
> States. The process of transmission was complex.
> Southern highland speech
> was not merely an archaic North British form this
> was not a simple story of
> stasis and replication. New words were required to
> describe the American
> environment, and many were coined in the
> backcountry. Other expressions were
> borrowed from Indians, Spanish, French and Germans.
> But the strongest
> ingredients were the speech ways of North Britain in
> the seventeenth
>
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