LL-L 'Names' 2006.12.28 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 28 December 2006 - Volume 02
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From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L 'Names' 2006.12.28 (01) [E]

Beste John,

as a comment to a previous mail from Ron (dealing with Low Saxon location
names) you asked:
> And do you consider the other forms, influenced by Hochdeutsch, to be
> incorrect in Low Saxon, or are they emcroaching so much that they might
> represent a new form of the language?

As a native speaker of LS with daily contact to natives around me I must say
that we don't like it very much to use LS-names for locations.
There are two reasons for it:

1.: Many of us even don't know the correct German names for locations far
outside of our region! If you try to translate them into LS you often start
to confuse people, and every talk, in special at the phone, becomes
unnecessary complicated. It's somewhat different as far as locations next
door are concerned, but here we have problem No.

2.: A lot of the really old LS-names got distortet during the times by wrong
translations first into G and back then into LS.

Some examples:
G: 'Krautsand' (E: 'an island of weed/herb') => LS: 'Kruutsand', though its
old name was MiddleLowSaxon: 'De groute (=kroute) Sand' (E: 'the big
sand/island');
G: 'Achthöfen' (E: 'Eight yards/farms') => LS 'Achthööf', though its name
was in Middle Low Saxon 'Nackt-/Nachthöfen', meaning 'next farms/yards';
G: 'Eulenkamp' (E: 'field of the owls') => LS: 'Ulenkamp', MLS/Older Modern
LS 'Oulenkamp' ('old field')
G: 'Kuhdamm' (E: 'dam of the cows') => LS: 'Kauhdamm', though Older Modern
 LS it was 'Koj'damm' (which we still know as 'Kajedeich'), meaning
something like 'a dike at the [farest] edge'.

So- it's not so big a pitty that the so-called LS-names which aren't really
LS are no longer in everybody's use. In the area of Northern Germany are
still a lot of names which are really of LS descent without any translations
and bad re-translations. I think it to be better not to touch and spoil them
by people not being aware of their correct ancient background.

Greutens/Regards

Johannes "Jonny" Meibohm

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

Hi, John!  Great to hear from you again on the List.

Well ... Do I consider the use of German versions of names wrong or do I
accept them as part and parcel of Germanization?  I suppose the brief and
evasive-sounding answer is "Both."  I feel torn about it, so to speak,
depending on which hat I don.

Our Jonny added a really interesting angle to it, and it somewhat
facilitates answering.

Let's face it: many people in Northern Germany can still use Low Saxon (Low
German), but most of them do so through a veil of German, as ethnically,
culturally and politically assimilated Germans, where by "Germans" I mean a
close to perfectly homogenized nation within which cultural and linguistic
diversity is in a rapid state of decline. (I believe that this exemplifies a
worldwide trend.)

Germans all over the country get their world news in German (Hochdeutsch).
Unless they make a point of acquiring and maintaining traditional names for
foreign place names they are going to use Standard German ones. The
information is there (even in the most popular dictionaries and also, kudos,
at Wikiplatt), but the fact is that most people don't look for it and really
don't care. Donning a linguist's hat, I'd say, "It's a case of wholesale
borrowing, and that's how the cookie crumbles."

Wearing my private Lowlander's hat, I see it with some regret, because I
consider it another sign of rapid language decline as well as (or in
conjunction with it) as another sign of alienation from related languages
and cultures next-door. People don't even know the native names of
neighboring countries and of ethnic groups in their midst anymore, for
crying out loud! Truly competent speakers are dying off fast, and by "truly
competent" I mean those that acquired the language natively before the
inundation of electronic media reached their living-rooms. The rest of us
that are aware of what are German loans and do care sometimes have to fish
around to find more traditional equivalents. And then the question is if
it's wise using them, because what you come up with may be so archaic and
arcane that one person in twenty understands what you're talking about.  I
tell myself, "Get over it!", that this is merely part and parcel of language
change.  However, given the dire survival chances of the language, I tend
more toward noticing the ominous thing at the horizon that is best described
by one of the very apt but now rarely used words: swulk (a large, dark bank
of storm clouds).

Thanks for the question, John.

Thanks also for your input, Jonny.  But let's not forget that the majority
of local Low Saxon place names do not fall into the described category but
are remembered rather than retranslated.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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