LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.25 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.24 (06) [E]

Mark, if your old friend and his daughter didn't have all those  g/ch [x]
sounds in their Dutch, they must have come from the South, probably from
Brabant. In the Dutch of the Southern provinces (Netherlands) Noord-
Brabant and Limburg, half of Gelderland and of Belgium, g and ch are
pronounced very palatal, ch like the German ich-laut and g as a voiced
variety of that sound; I don't know the SAMPA spellings for that.
Not only in the dialects of these areas, but also when people speak
Standard Dutch. That makes them sound a lot softer.
In the other Southern (South Western) varieties of Zeeland (NL) and
Flanders (Belgium), the g/ch have become h: hoed [hut] = D. goed
[xut]  'good', heven ["he:v=n] = D. geven ["xe:iv@] 'give' etc.
That sounds quite soft too.
But in Amsterdam, and the rest of Western Holland, these reibelauts are
very present.

Interesting fact: Frisian (spoken in the Netherlands) does pronounce
g just like in German or English (hard g), or most other languages.
It has ch [x] as well in most cases where Dutch and German do, but
ch isn't used half as often as g in our languages.

The Low Saxon dialects in the Netherlands mostly distinguish g [G] and
ch [x], where g [G] is pronounced really voiced, which sounds a lot softer
too. In Standard or Western Dutch, g and ch are both devoiced to [x].

By the way, I think that Modern Israeli Hebrew (Ivrit) has even more of
these ch's than Dutch. When I hear Sharon speaking it sounds very
disgusting to me, but maybe that has to do a lot with the person too...

Ingmar Roerdinkholder

Mark Brooks schreef [sxre:if] :
>Gary wrote: "I (sorry really don't want to offend huge swathes of
>Lowlanders) personally don't find Dutch too attractive - too many g/ch
>sounds which automatically to my ears sound ugly."
> When they spoke to each other in Dutch, it seemed all I
>heard was the g/ch sound.  That was my experience for all of my visit in
>Amsterdam.  I just remember the difficulty I had saying something
>like "Ik heeft hem geen geld gegeven."
>>he had turned out to be a film director.  I emailed him and we carry on a
>correspondence even now.  He came thru Texas a little over a year ago and
>stopped by our house.  He was doing a cross-country driving tour with his
>daughter who is now about 27 years old.  When I listened to the two of
them
>talking to each other in Dutch, I hardly heard any of those g/ch sounds.
>But, when I watch those news videoclips on De Telegraaf's website, I heard
>those g/ch sounds very often.  What gives?  Were they  speaking a two-
person
>dialect?
>
>Mark Brooks

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

Hi, Ingmar!

You wrote above:

> Interesting fact: Frisian (spoken in the Netherlands) does pronounce
> g just like in German or English (hard g), or most other languages.
> It has ch [x] as well in most cases where Dutch and German do, but
> ch isn't used half as often as g in our languages.

As far as I can tell, in this regard Westerlauwer Frisian is very similar to
most Low Saxon dialects of Germany (with some exception in LS of the extreme
north and west).

Low Saxon:

(1) Word-initial /g/ is pronounced [g]; e.g., _goud_ [goUt] 'good', _geel_
[ge:l] 'yellow'.

(2) Intervocalic /g/ may also be pronounced [g] or may be a voiced fricative
([G] ~ [G']/[j]); e.g., _wagen_ ["vQ:g=N] ~ ["vQ:G=N]  'waggon', _wegen_
["ve:g=N] ~ ["ve:G'=N] ~ ["ve:j=N] 'because', _vragen_ ["frQ:g=N] ~
["frQ:G=N] 'questions'.

(3) Syllable-final /g/ is a voiceless fricative ([x] ~ [C]); e.g., _dag_
[dax] 'day', _weg_ [vEC] 'way', _slag_ [slax] 'hit', 'blow'.

(4) Where final /-e/ has been deleted, final devoicing (3) does not apply;
e.g., (_dage_ >) _daag'_ [dQ:.G] 'days', (_wege_ >) _weeg'_ [ve:.G'] ~
[ve:.j] 'ways', (_slege_ >) _sleeg'_ [sle:.G'] ~ [sle:.j] 'hits', 'blows',
(_vrage_ >) _vraag'_ [frQ:.G] 'question'.

Final devoicing of /g/ is (reduntantly and inconsistently) represented in W.
Frisian; e.g., <fraach> (should be <fraag>) 'question' vs. <fragen>
'questions'.

By and large, the treatment of /g/ in Low Saxon as explained above also
applies in older Northern German dialects, assumedly due to LS substrates.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From: Theo Homan <theohoman at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.24 (06) [E]

> From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong
> <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
> Subject: Accents
>
> Gary claims not to like the sound of Dutch. He is
> not the only one. Way long
> ago my Austrian friend Nicky Pfusterschmidt coined
> the following â?"
> unforgettable â?" judgment: â?oDutch is not a
> language; it is a disease of the
> throat�.
>[...]
------------------------------
Those were the times that again and again when being abroad in 'academic
surroundings' always a funny character -they are everywhere- started
laughing about 'the dutch disease of the throat'.
And when there was enough public around, they always asked me to give a
representation of the Dutch gggg.

So once I made up the following demonstration-sentence-  and don't ask for a
translation:

"de giecheme goocheme goochelaars gaven de gammele geiten gort, grut and
kuch."

And I pronounced it with all the horribleness I had in me. Then they looked
at me as hit by thunder, and for the rest of the stay they forgot this
subject.

Several times I had to use this elucidating demonstration, and every time
this first example was
enough for the rest of the stay.

Theo Homan

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From: Helge Tietz <helgetietz at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.24 (07) [E]


Dear Lowlanders,

I was always wondering how the Polder-Dutch G-sound was developed because
originally the areas of Noord- and Zuid-Holland, Utrecht and Zeeland were
Frisian speaking and nowadays Dutch is an adoption from further south,
namely Brabant. To my knowledge, modern Frisian does not have a ch-sound at
all and sounds fairly soft, a surname such as "Algra" is pronounced "Algra"
while in Holland it is "Alchra". I can only assume that when adopting Dutch
the Frisians tried to imitate the alien Brabantish g-pronunciation and it
came out as what we hear today in Amsterdam, Rotterdam etc. Since this seems
to be a not very popular accent to foreigners one may wonder whether they
shouldn't have kept and developed Frisian in Holland instead of adopting
Dutch.

In Angeln in Slesvig-Holsten the local Low Saxon dialect is well known for
its pre-vocalic ch-pronunciation for g and sometimes even k (Ik chaam ut de
chute chechend waa de cheelen cheochinen wassen), possibly due to some of
the local-population's origin in the Gothenburg area or an archaic form of
Low Saxon taken over by the original Soenderjysk population, however, it
sounded to me almost Dutch the way the Angeliter speak and when learning
Dutch I simply imitated the way some of my relatives speak but that usually
sounded to Dutch people as Flemish. I always found that quite amusing but I
have to admit that imitating Flemish seems much easier than Hollands to me,
when doing it a lot of Dutch cannot even detect me being non-native
Dutch-speaking.

Groeten

Helge


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From: Heinrich <heinrich.becker at gmx.net>
Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.24 (07) [E]

>From: Ben Bloomgren <ben.bloomgren at asu.edu>
>Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.24 (06) [E]
>
>I'm not sure about Pakistanis and North Indians, but the South Indians'
>accent is one of my personal favorites. I vish ddatt I kood represent
>pahlatahl konsonants in English?! They do the upward inflection, and it
>makes me almost laugh. I'm noticing that most of our outsourced jobs are
>going ddaun ttoo Banglawr.
>
Ben,
this sounds very sympathic to me too.
A former friend of ours - from Ethiopia - hardly could stop laughing about
an anecdote, she once experienced while flying home to Addis Abeba, which
she often quoted:
A guy from Southern India was introducing a person next seat about his
family:
my wife is dirrtty ant I am dirrtty two !

Sincerely
Heinrich Becker

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.24 (07) [E]

Gary was wondering why he doesn't find the Dutch language beautiful... and
there seem to be many people who think (or rather, feel) alike.

Befroe I go one, let me assure you that I am extremely fond of the Dutch
language, having spoken, translated and even taught it for well over 20
years now. I like it because of its proximity to Lower Saxon which is "home"
to me, but also because of fond memories about the country and the people
(despite my rather awful Dutch ex-husband, but then many other people made
up for that), and because, frankly, I find it rather cute and "gezellig" in
many respects.

Still, I could never claim that it sounds beautiful... and I am wondering
whether there might be biological reasons for that... it's not only the hard
"g" and "ch" (by the way, the bit about the "disease of the throat" is a
very old standard joke), but also the pronunciation of some diphthongs such
as "ui", "eu" and "ij" that, frankly, do sound a bit like the speaker is
about to be sick! Certainly no offense meant, but I can imagine that our
inherent impulse to stay away from anything our subconscious rates as
"unhealthy".

Well, it's a theory...

Gabriele Kahn

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.24 (07) [E]

Sorry, I was in a hurry and did not finish my last sentence:

Certainly no offense meant, but I can imagine that our inherent impulse to
stay away from anything our subconscious rates as "unhealthy" may classify
the Dutch language as "not-so-pleasant-sounding" for some people.

Gabriele Kahn

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