LL-L "Intelligibility" 2005.03.02 (05) [E]

Wed Mar 2 16:53:43 UTC 2005

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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: Reuben Epp <reuben at silk.net>
Subject: LL-L "Intelligibility" 2005.03.01 (10) [E]

Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 5:31 PM
Subject: LL-L "Intelligibility" 2005.03.01 (10) [E]
>
> Ben Bloomgren <ben.bloomgren at asu.edu> asks:
> Subject: Intelligibility
>
> Which dialect did the Hanseatic
> League use at its trade language?
> Ben
>
Reuben Epp reuben at silk.net replies:

It is my understanding from reading writings about the
Hanseatic League that the trade language of the League
was the Low German (Low Saxon) dialect of Lübeck
orientation. This would probably be confirmed by
historical accounts of the Hanseatic League on the
Internet

Reuben Epp.

----------

From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Intelligibility" 2005.03.01 (10) [E]

I think only closely related languages are intelligible, but not per se
mutual.
E.g. Spanish (Castillian) is perfectly intelligible for Portuguese
speakers, but Spanish speakers have a lot more trouble understanding
Portuguese.
For Dutch speakers, German is quite easy to understand (without any study)
but the other way around I don't know so sure.

It's also a question of being used to hear a certain accent or dialect, a
kind of setting you ears to it.
I remember that when I moved back to my town of birth Winterswijk after 25
years, I couldn't understand even some people there who spoke Dutch with a
strong regional accent, but after some hours/days, my reception was
acustomed to that and translated the accent automatically to something I
understood. The strange thing was, in this case, that I had exactlty the
same accent as a child...

But speaking about the Lowlands languages:
Dutch and Low Saxon, and Dutch and Frisian are more or less mutual
intelligible, under the right conditions. An important one is if
people want it to be, or not.
But English is probably only with Scots.

The same question, Ben, was one of the reasons for me to create
Middelsprake, an Intergermanic Common Language, based not only on the
Western Germanic Lowlands languages, but on Northern Germanic as well.
I looked for the common features of English, German, Dutch, Low Saxon,
Frisian  and Danish, Swedish and New-Norwegian, and that became
Middelsprake. I'll send you a file about it, Ben, and other interested
members can ask me for it too, of course.

Ingmar Roerdinkholder

Ben Bloomgren asked:
>
>Hallo, list, I was wondering. Has anyone done intelligibility studies on
the
>Lowlands languages? Ron, the way in which people talk on those pages that
>you provide in the links section say that there is one main language with
>many dialects. How mutual is intelligibility between speakers? Does it
need
>to be separated into the major groups? Which dialect did the Hanseatic
>League use at its trade language?
>Ben
>
 R. F. Hahn answered
>
>Hi, Ben!
>
>Thanks for sharing all your interesting comments and questions, which
surely
>tickle many a fancy on the List.
>
>Let me be brief, partly because I need to be for time reasons, partly
>because I don't want to steal folks' thunder, and partly because I'm
>"abnormal" and "shouldn't take things for granted," as someone close to me
>recently pointed out.  In fact, this person may have a point or two.
Levels
>of intelligibility (mutual or otherwise) vary between individuals.
>
>For example, my father had the hardest time understanding folks if they
came
>from anywhere south of Hanover (but he did have an easier time in the
>Netherlands), while my mother had an easy time with "accents" in general
and
>also picked up foreign language bits without studying the languages.
>
>I also feel very strongly -- and this ties in with what some else, perhaps
>you, said the other day -- that etymological knowledge is extremely
>important when it comes to intelligibility of a language that is closely
>related to one you already know.  In fact, this person close to me went on
>to say it was my awareness of etymological connections that allows me to
>"figure things out."
>
>So there are my points:
>
>(1) Intelligibility differs from person to person.
>(2) Etymological awareness and skills are useful in cross-language
>intelligibility.
>
>It seems to me that, if (2) comes to be widely accepted as true,
linguistic
>topics such as "history of words" might actually come to be introduced in
>high schools.  It's not so much the journeys of individual words than the
>recognition tools that would be very useful to foreign language learners.
>
>You take it from here, boys and girls!
>
>Thanks again, Ben!

----------

From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Intelligibility" 2005.03.01 (10) [E]

Ben Bloomgren wrote:
"Ron, the way in which people talk on those pages that you provide in the
links section say that there is one main language with many dialects. How
mutual is intelligibility between speakers?"

I would agree strongly with Ron's assessment of intelligibility varying
between speakers. I understand a lot of what is written in Lowlandic
languages on this list for orthographic reasons - if I were to actually hear
Limburgish or Plautdietsch (to give two examples) spoken, I doubt I would be
so successful.

To give an anecdotal instance of interesting intelligibility, I often find
spoken Dutch (I am most familiar with the sort spoken around Amersfoort and
Utrecht) easier to understand than spoken Scots. I think is because when I
hear Dutch, my mind flips over into foreign language mode and does its job,
whereas when I hear Scots my mind attempts - a bad habit - to analyse it as
a form of English, and fails badly.

(I also find Scots harder to read and understand than I do Dutch, although
that is because of words like _ettles_ and _quhilk_ and so on, which neither
look nor sound like anything I am used to in any Lowlandic variety. I am
much more experienced in Dutch than I am in Scots.)

Go raibh maith agat,

Criostóir.

----------

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

Reuben wrote above:

> It is my understanding from reading writings about the
> Hanseatic League that the trade language of the League
> was the Low German (Low Saxon) dialect of Lübeck
> orientation. This would probably be confirmed by
> historical accounts of the Hanseatic League on the
> Internet

This is accurate.  It is for this reason that the Scandinavian, Baltic,
Finnic and Slavonic language varieties used along the Baltic Sea coasts have
imported so much Middle Saxon (Middle Low German) vocabulary, in some cases
very much vocabulary indeed (as in Coastal Scandinavian, in Kashubian and in
Estonian).  This practically transformed the Scandinavian language to such a
degree that in many ways they are now mutually better intelligible with Mode
rn Low Saxon than with Icelandic and Faeroese, these being Nordic languages
that did not have as many and mostly indirect Saxon contacts.  This is also
why until this day the word for "Germany" in Finnish and Estonian is
_Saksa_.  Incidentally, it is also from the days of the Hanseatic Trading
League that Middle Saxon Words reached English, e.g., "freight" < _vracht_
or _vrecht_, "mate" < _mât_.

Ingmar (above):

> E.g. Spanish (Castillian) is perfectly intelligible for Portuguese
> speakers, but Spanish speakers have a lot more trouble understanding
> Portuguese.

I found this to be true, at least on the spoken level.  I've never taken a
formal Spanish class but did take Portuguese.  Now it is easier for me to
understand Spanish than Portuguese, as though Spanish were "easy Portuguese"
...  (I can easily follow Hispano-American TV talk shows, not Brazilian
ones.)  It's similar with Danish and Jutish versus other Scandinavian
languages.  Danes seem to have a much easier time understanding other
Scandinavians that they understand Danish.  I think what this means is that
varieties that undergo "unusual" sound shifts and develop "noise," such as
nasalization (Portuguese) or glottal interruptions (Danish), become less
available to speakers of related varieties, while their speakers still find
it easy to understand the "conservative" varieties.

However, I maintain that an awareness of prevalent sound shifts greatly
facilitates mutual intelligibility.  This is what I meant by "etymological
knowledge."

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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