LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.08.14 (04) [E]

Sun Aug 15 04:54:28 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
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Pat Reynolds <pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.08.14 (02) [E]

In message <007901c4821c$d3640860$15b78e8c at D5SYLB51>, Lowlands-L
<lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net> writes
>Slavers sometimes did bring Africans captured far in
>the anterior, but it is unlikely that the captives (or
>very many) would have been from so far from the slave
>ports of the western coast as Somalia.  I am not aware
>of any suggestion of this kind on the historical
>literature on the subject that I have read, which is a
>good deal.

Rather appropriately for a lowlands-l list, I think the answer to this
one might lie in the activities of the Dutch companies.  Angolan slaves
were used by the Portuguese (Angola was a Portuguese colony).  The link
between the Portuguese and Angolans in Brazil and the English in North
America is Curaçao.  The slave trade in Curaçao accounted for a
staggering proportion of the North American trade: at the beginning of
the 18th century, 8,000 of the 20,000 slaves imported across the
Atlantic yearly passed through Curaçao (Roos 1979, 6).  The trade was
carried on by people who had connections both with mainland North
America, other Caribbean islands, and notably, Dutch and Portuguese
Brazil - this last group notably included large numbers of Jewish people
(hey-can I get any more ethnicities and nationalities into one
paragraph???)

I have done a quick search through my notes, and found the following
which track the trade:

"While Palmares [Brazil] appears isolated, in fact it is part of
networks with Europeans, natives, and even Angola" (Orser 1996a, 46-53).

"The WIC came rather late to the trade, only getting a foothold on the
African coast with the taking of Elmina in 1637, but in response to the
deans of the Brazilian plantations and with a further base in Angola,
slaving rapidly became a major part of the company's activities" (Price
2000, 78).

'The Dutch needed Elmina in order to keep up the supply of slaves to
Brazil, which they had invaded in 1624; they now had forced the
Portuguese troops out of many of the settlements, and to all appearances
had an excellent chance of conquering the remainder if only they could
expand the Brazilian economy. That they failed was partly due to their
seizure of the Gold Coast rather than Angola, from which they could have
obtained slaves more suitable for work on plantations. However, as the
trade with Angola continued to be a Portuguese monopoly, and the Dutch
could not secular a like position for themselves in West Africa, other
nations soon established forts and lesser posts there.' (Lawrence 1963,
37).

'the first shipload of 228 slaves arrived from the Guinea coast in 1658,
and shortly afterwards the chance capture of a Portuguese slaver brought
174 Angolans, mainly children, to the Cape.. About half the slaves were
sent on to Batavia, a quarter distributed to the free burghers, and the
rest kept by the company and housed in the fort' (Worden et al 1998,
27).

If anyone needs full bibliographic references for any of the above,
please let me know.

Best wishes to all,

Pat

--
Pat Reynolds
pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk
   "It might look a bit messy now,
                    but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Pratchett)

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From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.08.13 (09) [E]

> From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> Bill Bryson writes in 'Mother Tongue':
>
> "In .. a small corner of northern Germany, in the spur of land connecting
> Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark, you can sometimes hear .. what sounds
eerily
> like a lost dialect of English. Occasional snatches of it even make sense,
> as when they say that the 'veather ist cold' or inquire of the time by
> asking, 'What ist de clock?' According to Prof Hubertus Menke, head of the
> German Department at Kiel University, the language is 'very close to the
way
> people spoke in Britain more than 1,000 years ago'."
>
> The examples are not very persuasive. Something like "vether" is common to
> most languages in the region (Du has the standard reduction of 'ede' to
> 'ee'), and "is(t)" and "kold" are also quite usual. "Clock" only goes back
> to the 14th century so someone seems to be stretching things a bit. The
idea
> that there was "a" way in which people in Britain spoke before 1000 CE
also
> seems odd. I don't think we know very much about their speech anyway.
>
> Can anyone suggest what this language/dialect is? It would appear from its
> geography to be a variety of either West or North Frisian or Southern
> Jutish, with 'clock' suggesting the latter. Does any variety of Frisian
ask
> about the
> time in this way?
>
> John Feather
> johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

To come to that last point: in Mooring North Frisian one would translate it
roughly as follows:
Wat as e klook? (or: Hü foole as e klook ?) And the first could be: dåt
wääder as kölj.
The "kold" is more Low German, but I think other dialects of Mainland North
Frisian could have
a word more like "kold". The location suggest maybe Jutish (but this is
spoken in Denmark too), or otherwise Frisian or Danish influenced Low German
(the variety spoken there has a Frisian and Danish substrate).

Henno

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

Lowlands Saxon (North Saxon):

"What time is it?" =
Wat is dey klok? (<Wat is de Klock?>)
Wou veel is dey klok (<Woveel is de Klock?)

weather = wedder ['vEd3`] ~ ['vEr3`]

cold = kold [ko.l(t)]

I would expect a <th> sound as in "weather" only in Insular North Frisian,
and only in precontemporary Sylt Frisian (where this sound has in the
meantime evolved into [l], I believe).  There could be such a sound as <th>
for /d/ in some of those northernmost Lowlands Saxon dialects that have had
contacts with Jutish/Danish (where intervocalic <d> is pronounced that way),
but I am not sure.  Does anyone know?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Michael Keach <mike at keach.net>
Subject: Thisen

I'd like to suggest, with a caveat to all that I am NOT a professional
linguist and do NOT play one on TV, that the efforts to translate 'Thisen'
to mean "this son", etc., is perhaps misguided. Before the 2nd sound shift,
the letter D was in fact pronounced "Th". After the 2nd sound shift, the
"Th" dissapeared and a 'D' was pronounced. Hence, "Diese Artikel von
Kleidung sind Ihr." (These articles of clothing are yours.) We get "These",
"Those", etc. from a long-gone Diesen or Diese.

One hears in, what we call here in the US, 'Pennsyduutsch': "Use thesin
dishes for Sunday dinner." "Outen the licht in thesin rooms."

As I said, not an expert here but I think that the D with the line through
it was the first spelling of the word and that we picked it up in English as
it's original meaning: These, those.

But then, I'm a blond with a bathtub degree in language. I also still make
Martinis on a 3 to 1 ratio which goes a long way toward explaining my
not-so-repressed Ludditian view of Language and modern culture. Viz: when
did we decide that it was perfectly fine to drop the hyphen and diacresis in
"Coordinate"?

-Mike in Tampa (who should p'rolly just stay in "Lurkdom" and observe . . .)

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