LL-L "Orthography" 2004.01.24 (03) [E]

Tue Feb 24 19:27:11 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: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Orthography

Beste Ron, Rick, Peter en andere geïnteresseerden,

Ron Hahn wrote:
First of all, you need to bear in mind that the letters <q> and <x> are
really alien graphemes in the Germanic languages, fundamentally speaking
also in Latin (Romance) from which they borrowed them.  As far as I
know,
they go back to Semitic and Greek.

Peter wrote:
Hello Ron and also Rick,
Ron that answer was concise and explains it nicely in its historical
context. On thinking about it a little more it really does seem silly to
me
to retain x. It does make more sense to use English z. Thanks again.
Thanks
also to Rick for explaining where quatsch is geographically typically
used.
Dank je wel.
Peter Snepvangers

I think even <z> is also a "recently"-coined grapheme in Dutch. Middle
Dutch only has <s>. Sure, I know that <z> vs. <s> reflects voicing vs.
devoicing, but older Dutch surely made do without it. At the same time,
Middle Dutch had its redundancies as well it seems, certainly if you
look at my family name Hellinckx, where you can see that what we would
now represent with one final <x> was then written <c> + <k> + <x>.
This makes me think that the quality of medieval <s> might have been
different from what it is now. Maybe somewhere along the lines of how an
<s> is realised in Texas these days??? Aspirated <s> vs. non-aspirated
<s>, instead of <s> vs. <z>???

Anyway, I can't tell you where <z> originated, but the sound makes me
think of Slavic languages for some reason.

On a sidenote Peter, I can testify that "quatsch" is also used in my
native town of Merchtem, where it means "ridiculous talk", "onzin" (D).
However, I'm not sure whether this word is old, as there are some other
words in my Brabantish like "hups" and "erzats" (respectively meaning
"beautiful" and "fake"), that might only go back to WW 1 or 2 when they
were probably used by German soldiers (~ "hübsch" (G) for "cute" and
"ersatz" (G) relating to rationed food). Goes to show which words linger
on after occupation...*s*...500 years from now, people may wonder where
on earth this weird Dutch word "BS" came from? *s*...since Chinese won't
provide a clue...*s*

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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

Hey, Luc, Lowlanders!

Luc, you brought up an interesting and "hairy" issue by mentioning the use
of <z> in Dutch, the issue of "phoneme inventory augmentation due to foreign
influence."

As far as we can tell, Germanic languages inherently do not have a
word-initial /s/ - /z/ opposition but some of them, like Dutch, acquired it
by way of foreign influence.  I guess that in the case of Dutch it is due to
French influence, which also caused it in English and Scots.  Graphemic
representation then came to be considered necessary.

In German it did not happen.  Initial /s/ is always pronounced [z] before a
vowel and [s] before a consonant; [z-] and [s-] are thus allophones of /s-/.
Certain foreign terms were imported and are supposed to be pronounced with
an initial [s].  These are marked "foreign" in the lexicon, i.e., are
treated differently from native or nativized words.

It is similar in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) of Germany and used among
Mennonites.

 Theoretically then, Dutch, too, could have retained consistent <s->
spelling with some foreign lexemes as exception, as it did in Middle Dutch.
It chose not to, thus, along with English and Scots, it alienated itself
from its sister languages, so to speak.  German helped the alienation by
haven chosen the graph <z> to represent native /c/ [ts], which was derived
from old /t/.  This spilled over to the spelling of Lowlands Saxon of
Germany, though there are only few words in which it is used (e.g., _Zippel_
= _cippel_ [tsIpl] (< Italian _cipolla_?) 'onion').

As far as I am concerned, a genuine weakness in Dutch spelling (followed in
W. Frisian spelling) is inconsistent representation of certain final voiced
consonants: fricatives; e.g.,:

hof (court) - hoven (courts)
huis (house) - huizen (houses)
roos (rose) - rozen (roses)

Should be:
hov (court) - hoven (courts)
huiz (house) - huizen (houses)
rooz (rose) - rozen (roses)

Most Dutch speakers react with dismay when I point this out.  This is
because they have become conditioned to the inconsistency and consistent
spelling looks absurd to them.

Similar things happen in German-based orthography of Lowlands Saxon:

Hoff (court) - Höven, Hööv' (courts)

And worse:
Brüch (bridge) - Brüggen (bridges)
Rüch (back) - Rüggen (backs)
Tiet (time) - Tieden (times) (because of German _Zeit - Zeiten_)
but:
Kleed (dress) - Kleder (dresses) (because of German _Kleid - Kleider_)

in ANS:
hov - höven, hööv'
brüg - brüggen
rüg - rüggen
tyd - tyden
kleyd - kleyder

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

P.S.: Let's keep the loanword issue separate from "Orthography".

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