LL-L 'Language varieties' 2006.07.29 (06) [E]

Sun Jul 30 03:44:32 UTC 2006

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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L O W L A N D S - L * 29 July 2006 * Volume 06
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From: Henry Pijffers <henry at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L 'Language varieties' 2006.07.29 (02) [E]

Luc Hellinckx wrote:
>
> This reminds me of Brabantish, where you can either say:
>
> "ZÃ¨r op de mÃ¨t iet wÃ©ste koeÃ«pe?"
>
> or
>
> "ZÃ¨r op de mÃ¨t iet gÃ Ã  koeÃ«pe?"
>
First, ny reaction has no connection whatsoever to the
original discussion up to the above point. Also, this is not
an attack on the quoted poster (in case anyone interprets my
message as such).

I wonder why people often limited their view to just their
own specific dialect, instead of their language or even
language group in general.

For example, in Dutch one could say the very same as the
above in 2 identical ways:

"Ben je op de markt iets wezen kopen?"

Or

"Ben je op de markt iets gaan kopen?"

If you're from Brabant and speak Brabantish, then you must
from from the Netherlands and speak Dutch. Hence, you must
have been aware of the identicallity.

> PS: Ron, Western Encoding (ISO-8859-1) works better than Unicode (UTF-8)
> now on my system.
>
It doesn't concern the current discussion, but that's
because one of the headers of each message reads
[Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"], so your
email client (correctly) assumes the encoding is ISO-8859-1.
However, the actual encoding is UTF-8 (so I presume), hence
the problems with the displayed text.

Henry

----------

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

Moyen, Henry!

> I wonder why people often limited their view to just their
> own specific dialect, instead of their language or even
> language group in general.

I suspect that this has something to do with indoctrination, with having been
taught to think of "major," official languages in terms of their standard
varieties.  Even though most or all people on this list are more than average
willing and able to think beyond the obvious, all of us are to various degrees
influenced by the ways of thinking to which we were supposed to conform early in
our lives.  In the case of national or regional languages with general standard
varieties, we tend to focus on those standard varieties.  In the case of
languages without general standard varieties we have a hard time to conceived of
them as "real" languages, especially if they are not "national," and, forced to
accept their validity, we tend to concentrate on a certain variety, usually our
own or one with wich we are most familiar, and we tend to generalize from that
vantage point.

The other day I met an American who was a born and raised Netherlands Limburger.
He didn't know about the latest European language policies and the fact that
Frisian, Low Saxon and Limburgish are now official regional languages in the
Netherlands.  He said he was surprised, and his face expressed a mixture of
confusion, disbelief and disapproval.  Then he said, as if in a last attempt to
stand his ground, "Yeah, we speak dialect there ..."  "No, Gil, *language"," I
said, "Limburgish is an official regional language.  It isn't a Dutch dialect." 
He shook his head and said, protesting meakly, "But it doesn't have a real
grammar ...," and then he quickly changed the topic, obviously because the mental
challenge of the news had made him uncomfortable.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

P.S.:

> > PS: Ron, Western Encoding (ISO-8859-1) works better than Unicode (UTF-8)
> > now on my system.
> >
> It doesn't concern the current discussion, but that's
> because one of the headers of each message reads
> [Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"], so your
> email client (correctly) assumes the encoding is ISO-8859-1.
> However, the actual encoding is UTF-8 (so I presume), hence
> the problems with the displayed text.

Since we have switched providers I've been having to use a less than satisfactory
program, in part because, unrelated to the new provider, the usual programs can't
cope with the firewall that's supposed to protect our network.  So there are two
simultaneous changes.  I do switch encoding to Unicode, but it could well be that
somewhere along the line it gets overridden by ISO-8859-1 mode.  I sure wish I
knew what to do about it.

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