LL-L "Language politics" 2005.05.17 (09) [E]

Tue May 17 22:36:53 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: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2005.05.17 (06) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language politics
(2) Survival depends in large part on unification.
(3) Be it artificially or "naturally" over time, some sort of "common range"
will be created when speakers of different dialects communicate with each
other, if for no other reason then to avoid or replace words that are not
understood by everyone.
(4) Proponents of these languages resist any attempt to create a general
dialect, one of their arguments being that such a supposed standard variety
would then threaten the dialects.
(5) Are non-standard dialects of languages with standard varieties more
threatened than dialects of languages without standard varieties?  If so,
why is it that English, for example, still has a plethora of dialects?

Some reflexions.

I live in a country where till 70 years ago French was the upperclass
language all over the country. I was born a small country village, where the
family of the castle had most of the ground and dominated people. After all,
the French revolution was not a communist revolution. Mighty landlords
turned their feodal ownership into civil ownership, and for the farmers most
stayed the same. Strong industrialization and regression of the role of
agriculture fundamentally changed the social structure recently.

Practically the people in the villages formed a relatively closed community,
speaking a proper municipal dialect (now classified as belonging to the
West-Limburgish group). Although officially laws were enacted in French
only, till the end of the 19th century, semi-official translations into
Dutch were at first published in the provincial gazetteers ("memorialen")
later in a federal gazetteer, till, at the end of the 19th century, the
Dutch version became equivalent to the French, and was published together
with the French version in the federal gazetteer ("Moniteur - Belgisch
Staatsblad")
I guess rulers realized people had to understand the law, and even during
French occupation, a translation was provided, cf:
http://home-13.tiscali-business.nl/~tpm09245/dutch/bullois/bullois.htm
Even while the landlords spoke French, they kept distance from the local
population and didn't particularely try to francisise them. Real
francisation was promoted by the bourgeoisie, mostly in major towns, as a
mean for social upgrading.

Translations were not made for each village separatedly, but for the whole
North in a kind of chancellery Brabantish (erroneously called "Flemish"; in
my dialect "op te letter", = the written language, and also "gowd Vlams" =
"good" Flemish). This kind of chancellery Brabantisch was quite close to
written Dutch, but it was hardly a spoken language in the area. It was just
spoken by parish priests, since those were raised in an other municipality
and didn't speak the local dialect. The local schoolmaster, generally spoke
the local dialect with the parents, and "op te letter" with the kids,
generally in a very ridiculous way. It was felt as a fake language.

At the end of the 19th century the "Flemish movement" developped around
language issues (practically against "upperclass and bourgeoisie French").
Attempts to standardize some form of standard Flemish (1844 spelling war,
end of the 19th century Gezelle, Steuvels) failed. Attempts to come to a
form of common Low German (Hanssen, Groth) failed. Standard Dutch was
choosen as the standard, and penetrated slowly in intellectual live. In the
1960's it was strongly promoted as ABN in schools in the North of Belgium.

So many of use are still tired of that standardization (which is still not
complete, since intermediate forms "Verkavelingsvlaams" "TV-soap Flemish"
persist, and even gain some popularity). There may be a movement in the
Netherlands for promoting a standard Limburgish, I don't feel any movement
for promoting an intermediate Limburgish standard in Belgian Limburg.

So we moved from a situation of:

Upperclass French
Written Dutch (not really a "spoken" language locally)
Municipal (Limburgish) dialects

into:

Dutch (with less or more regional coloration)
Municipal dialects in recession.

Even when in recession, local dialects (Limburgish, Brabantish, Flemish) are
still more alive (with speakers mainly over 30) than in France (with mainly
speakers over 60-70 only)

Questions are:

1. Should we somehow create a Limburgish language and promote it?
Should it be one common Limburgish language for both provinces (B + Nl) or
several artificially standardized languages: Lonerlands, Tongerlands,
Getelands etc. as to the regional sub-groups?
I do not think there is sufficient Limburgish, nor Lonerlands, nor
Tongerlands, nor Getelands identity for coming to that. Dialect promotion is
further not a romantic issue youngsters tend to die for.
Further, as a result of massive migration from towns to villages, immigrants
do not tend anymore to learn the local dialect, but speak Dutch.

2. When Limburgish is slowly dying, are we better of with Dutch as umbrella
language than with French?
I guess yes, since our dialects tend to survive longer for a couple of
generations than in Northern France.

3. Is importing a standard a solution?
Would it be helpful for Sorbish people to immerge them in Polish, and let
their Sorbish culture survive as Polish or a form of Polish?
Polish is closer to Sorbish than German. Is turning Sorbish people into
standard Polish speakers equivalent to a survival of the Sorbish language?

But, we have been going over this already a couple of times.

Reagards,
Roger

----------

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

Hi again, Roger, and thanks for the explanations.

My experiences have taught me to keep my fingers away from Belgian language
politics.  I must be from a different planet when it comes to that.  It's an
emotionally far too explosive hot potato.  So I won't even touch the
Limburgish issue any more than I already have.  Just one piece of advice
that holds true of all threatened languages: "Beware of divide-and-conquer!"

> 3. Is importing a standard a solution?
> Would it be helpful for Sorbish people to immerge them in Polish, and let
> their Sorbish culture survive as Polish or a form of Polish?
> Polish is closer to Sorbish than German. Is turning Sorbish people into
> standard Polish speakers equivalent to a survival of the Sorbish language?

I don't see the analogy -- well, not quite.  Sorbian (Lusatian) and Polish
are two very different languages, and so are Sorbian and Czech, these being
the two fellow-Slavonic languages with which the two Sorbian languages are
in fairly close contacts.  (Many people falsely assume they are very closely
related because of common orthographic devices.)  Mutual comprehension is
somewhere between difficult and impossible, certainly in spoken
communication.  Although they are all Western Slavonic, they belong to three
different groups: Polish is Lechitic, Czech is Czecho-Slovak, and Sorbian is
its own group (a.k.a. Sorabian).  Sorbian used to be used in parts of Lower
Silesia that are now under Polish administration.  I believe that it had two
strikes against it there: (1) the same German smothering factor as west of
the Nisa/Neiße, plus (2) close contacts with Polish facilitating transition
to Polish, partly because it was considered not legitimate by both Germans
and Poles, similar to the case of Kashubian.  The case is thus similar to
that of Low Saxon having been considered a dialect group of both German and
Dutch, depending on which side ofthe border you stood.

Most Sorbian dialects are now defunct.  They survive only in what is now
considered Lusatia (Łužica/Lausitz), a tiny portion of former Lusatia,
preserved only because it has poor farm land (too boggy in the north and too
sandy in the south, in most areas too poor for wheat and oats, hence a
preponderance of millet in Sorbian cuisine), so only the most desperate,
dirt-poor ethnic Germans nded up settling there, and their number was so
small in the past that even in the beginning of the 20th century many
Germans in the region spoke Sorbian as a second language and many of them
intermarried with Sorbs and chose Sorbian as their primary household
language.

Sorbian-speaking Sorbs have long had a strong sense of their own language,
most especially since the 19th century.  While they turned away from
Germanization and instead turned toward their fellow-Slavs for orthographic
inspiration as well as for instilling a shot of Slavonic pride, they have
never considered themselves an addendum to either Poles or Czechs, not even
when they lived under Czech administration.  Sorbian language and culture is
quite unique, even if you consider the wide range of linguistic and cultural
variety in Polish (proper) and Czech.  I think that most of today's Poles
and Czechs recognize and appreciate that (though there are some
pan-Slavicists that may think otherwise and want to go back to the way
things were before Germanic colonization one thousand years ago).

Now, in the literature I have not come across any opposition when Sorbian
unification measures were taken, in part by the creation of standardized
Sorbian.  People realized that this would solidify their cohesion and thus
would strengthen their survival chances.  The only problem they ran into was
that the dialects in the extreme south and in the extreme north were too
different to place them under a single standard.  One proposal was to base
the standard variety on the transitional Central Heath dialects (an area
connecting the northern swamps with the southern high heath).  However,
apparently this would have created a standard dialect that would have been
difficult to master for most speakers of the language.  The solution was the
creation of two standard languages: Lower Sobian and Upper Sorbian.
Apparently, this has been working rather well.  Roughly speaking, I would
compare the difference between the two with the difference between English
and Scots, or between Dutch and Low Saxon.  (Coming from Upper Sorbian, I
find Lower Sorbian rather difficult, but once I get used to the main sound
shifts it gets easier, but there are considerable lexical and idiomatic
differences.)  Also, there are two linguistic and cultural centers:
Budyšin/Bautzen for Upper Sorbian and Chósebuz/Cottbus for Lower Sorbian.
All-Sorbian communication tends to be bilingual: Upper and Lower, often with
German added for ethnic Sorbs that are primarily German-speaking.

Even though this took us a little way outside the Lowlands (just by a few
kilometers, actually), it may have been worth elaborating on it, since you,
Roger, brought it up, and there may be some relevance to Limburgish (being
used in three countries) and other Lowlands languages that are supposed to
survive without unification (which would be a historical first, I believe).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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