LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.03.29 (01) [E]

Mon Mar 29 19:18:10 UTC 2004

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L O W L A N D S - L * 29.MAR.2004 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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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: Margaret Tarbet <oneko at att.net>
Subject: An experiment that will probably interest many lowlanders

I received this mailing this morning about an experiment in which
Lowlanders might like to participate:

>From: W.J. Heeringa (w.j.heeringaATlet.rug.nl)
>Subject: perception of Germanic languages
>
>As part of a course at the University of Groningen
>(The Netherlands) we developed a website intended
>for investigation of language perception. On the
>website 11 recordings of different languages and
>dialects can be heard, and the visitor is asked to
>rate the distance of the varieties with respect to
>his of her mother tongue.
>
>To complete our project we need many different
>people with different native languages to visit our
>website and do the experiment. We would like to
>ask you to participate in this experiment or to send
>this mail to students at your university so that these
>students can participate.  The experiment is for
>scientific use only and will not be used for other purposes.
>
>The experiment and more information about the
>experiment, can be found on our website:
>
>http://www.let.rug.nl/perception
>
>We thank you for your participation.

I suspect we'll skew the results :-)

Margaret

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From: Frédéric Baert <baert_frederic at CARAMAIL.COM>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.03.26 (03) [E]

On Fri, 26 Mar 2004 09:48:22 -0800, Lowlands-L <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
David wrote:

>Another thing that i noticed in tis discussion about Low-German is that
>Linguist trie to devide
>the dialects in smooth borders. That is not so easy to do.
>As I look to the resemblance of "Westvlams" with Low-Saxon, or even with
>modern German,
>and against that I see the differences between "Westvlams" and  modern
>Dutch, then I can
>hardly see "Westvlams" as a dutch dialect. Also I would say
that "Westvlams"
>is a dialect with
>at least saxon roots, so it would do not much right to call "Westvlams" a
>Low-Franconian dialiect.
>Another thing is that West-, Middle- and East-Germany since the Middle Ages
>was settled down
>with People from Holand and Flanders. And that even til 1945 in Prussia,
>KÃ¶nigsberg, a dialect
>was spoken that was verry simelar to Flemish.
>
>Kind regards,
>David
>

Hello

I agree with this. But I think I heard that one of the most important
feature of low franconian dialects is the disappearance of the l between a
vowel and a consonnant like in dutch "oud" vs english, frisian, low saxon
and german "old" or "alt". In this way, west flemish is a low franconian
dialect. My french west flemish is even "more franconian" than dutch since
the disappearance is often more complete.
The problem I see is that linguist want a language to be low franconian or
low saxon or english or frisian. In this way what could be the position of
west flemish with its low franconian features i mentionned above but also
its saxon features and its frisian features ?
I think you cannot  put a language into one box and not another. I see west
flemish like one of the transitional languages between the low-franconian
languages and the low saxon languages and also between the low
franconian/low saxon languages and the ingwaeonic languages.

In France, one of the definitions of a dialect is that a language is a
dialect of another if the two are mutually intelligible. In this way it's
worse for west flemish and dutch because a french west flemish speaker can
very hardly (if he can!)understand a dutch speaker. In fact my grandmother
told me an interesting story : Her mother didn't speak at all english but
when she rescued an english soldier during the second world war, they could
communicate a little bit, him in english and her in west flemish ! I don't
say west flemish and english are mutually intelligible. It's clear it's not
the case. But I ask if, in regard to the difficulty for a french flemish to
understand dutch, you can really say west flemish is a dutch dialect?

The main problem is that the term of dialect comes from the period when
linguists wanted the languages to be classified like naturalists did with
animals and vegetals. But (especially for germanic languages which form a
continuum) this classification is possible for clearly distinct language
like standard english vs standard german but becomes problematic when used
for transitional languages like west flemish, low saxon dialects I think,
but also limburgish or middle franconian dialects etc...

I also think the problem often becomes politic. i.e. I think it's better to
say in France that french flemish is a dutch dialect. You can even read on
certain internet pages that flemish people in north of France speak dutch !
So governments don't have to do something to save french flemish since the
same language is spoken in Belgium and in the Netherlands! I'm sure it's
what lots of French people think (when they know that in some part of north
of France people speak a flemish dialect. Despite of this, I'm very proud
to be a french flemish : french and flemish. I'm just so sad about the
disappearance of my language.)

Best regards
Frédéric Baert

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