LL-L 'History' 2006.08.07 (08) [E]

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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 (Zeeuws)
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L O W L A N D S - L * 07 August 2006 * Volume 08
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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.08.06 (02) [E]

    From: Sandy Fleming
    Subject: LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.08.05 (02) [E/German]

    >Oh, no, Karl-Heinz! It's barely even Scottish English! Most of it is English
    >with fake "Scottization," as far as I am concerned. There was definitely no
Scots
    >there that I could discern.
    >
    At the very beginning there's a little boy running around shouting "Da!
    Da! Da!".

    This was the only Scots I noticed in the whole film.

Debatable whether any of the Scottish nobility - Balliol, Comyn, Bruce, and
indeed Wallace, spoke anything but basic Scots anyway.  They were all of Norman
background, and like Edward I probably had little knowledge and less interest in
whatever the lower orders spoke.
The 13th - 14th Century so-called "Anglo-Scottish" wars were basically fought by
a French speaking aristocracy, backed by arrow-fodder speaking some sort of Lowlands.
 
Paul

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.08.07 (02) [E]

    From: R. F. Hahn
    Subject: Language proficiency

    Speakers of English have a particular problem in that English proficiency is
    increasing very fast around the world, which makes it easy for them to be "lazy"
    (i.e., assume a "why bother?" attitude). ...

    Regards,
    Reinhard/Ron

Not just "why bother?"; often "what do I learn?".  If somebody's native language
is Dutch, Finnish, Mandarin or Thai, and they take it into their head to learn
another one, you don't need to be a mind reader to guess what they are going to pick.
So, to reciprocate, English speakers just have to learn Dutch, Finnish, Mandarin,
Thai, Urdu....
 
As somebody who dabbled in many languages with varying degrees of proficiency, I
decided to pick on German as one to concentrate on because a) it's Germanic
(duh!)and I'm interested in the language family as a whole, and b) around 110
million people speak it.  I probably would have picked a Lowlands or Scandinavian
language for purely interest's sake, but then I would reach a smaller audience!
 
I suspect some people never take the plunge, as unless you are specifically going
to live somewhere with a different language it's not an easy decision.
 
Paul Finlow-Bates

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