LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.09.13 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 13.SEP.2004 (02) * 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: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.09.12 (05) [E]

Dear Henry,

Subject: LL-L "Language varieties"

> > I am only annoyed that Bede did not mention Fries, & I am certain they
> >  were there somewhere. Did they come from Angeln?

> Pardon my ignorance, and ignore this message if it makes no sense, but
> isn't it so that Fries grew out of a similar mixture of dialects as
> English, being Saxon, Anglian and Jutish? Seems only logical then that
> Bede didn't mention Fries.

Well, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Fries were recruited to man King
Alfred's Navy, since they were, unlike the English of that time, seamen.
They were warriors of note & they spoke a dialect mutually intelligable to
the English. Their only problem was unfamiliarity with keels...

They are identified as a people of an established ethnic & linguistic unity,
Not too different from the English. I adduce that if this were the case,
then their melding into one linguistic community took place some centuries
before the similar melding of Insular Angles, Saxons, & Jutes.

I would rather believe that the aforementioned nations were all related
Yngwerra that underwent a degree of dialectic divergence before some came to
Britain, but still remembered & honoured a their relationship.

Regards,
Mark

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From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.09.12 (13) [A/E]

Ingmar wrote:
>
> However, speaking of mutual intelligibility between Lower Saxon of
> Holland and Germany: that is decreasing more and more because of the
> massive influence of the Standard languages. My 85-years old
> grandmother -who lives in the Netherlands- still can speak in her own
> dialect with someone from across the German border of the same age
> without too much trouble, but for younger generations I'm afraid this
> is certainly much less obvious.
>
I, being 31 years old, still consider myself to be be of a younger
generation. Recently I've been into contact with a number of Saxon
speakers of varying ages from across the border (because I want to move
to Germany, somewhere across the border with Twente), and I've had no
trouble  at all speaking with them. This included persons of 25 and of
60 years old.

A couple of years ago I had a colleague from the area around Rostok for
a couple months, who was a Saxon speaker too. I invited him over to my
parents' house a couple of times, and we all spoke Saxon and had no
trouble at all. I showed him a couple stories I wrote (using my own
orthography, which is similar to Ron and Kennth's ANS), and he could
read those too, without much trouble.

regards,
Henry

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.09.12 (12) [E]

Glenn Simpson wrote:
>
> I think you'll find that it is mentioned by some early
> English writers that the Fries were one of the
> distinctive groups that came over to England (although
> I haven't got time at the moment to get you the
> details).
>
But when was that? Here's my view on (Frisian) history (please correct
me if I'm wrong):

At some point in history, say 5th century, the Frisian homeland was more
or less vacated, the original Frisians (about whom the Romans wrote)
having left God knows where. After a number of decades, or as I believe,
more than a century, the area got settled again by (mainly) Saxons,
Jutes, and most probably also Angles (after all, to get to England, you
have to go along the Dutch North Sea coast first, don't you?). The area
may have still been known as Frisia, or there may have been a small
number of original Frisians left, so the new mixture of people took up
that name and started calling themselves Frisians. This during the same
period that people went over to England, and started calling themselves
(after a while of course) English. Of course after enough time has
passed, the name Frisian will have been fixed, and it's nothing less
than highly probable that some of those "new" Frisians also went over to
England.

regards,
Henry

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