LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.10 (05) [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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10 March 2006 * Volume 06
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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.10 (01) [E]

This reminds me of what a Hungarian friend in Budapest told me:
when he went to a restaurant in Vienna (Austria) he could here a couple of
people who sat behind him speaking Hungarian, but he didn't understand
what they were saying. When he left the restaurant, he saw they were
Turks. Hungarian and Turkish sound alike, but they are not or only
remotely related, their phonology is quite similar however...

On for sprekendes af Engelisch, Tiudisch oller ênig ander Germanisch
sprâk, wê ha dat ig-schalde-motte-forstâ-dis-doch-ig-forstâ-nig erfâring,
dâr is ên losing: Middelsprâk (MS). Middelsprâk is de Germanisch sprâk dat
al kan forstâ direkt.

Ingmar

>From: Karl Schulte <kschulte01 at alamosapcs.com>
>Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.09 (12) [E]
>
>It is strange you say that, as I have same feeling with German (which I
>understand somewhat) and related tongues; it is as though if were only
>to listen a bit harder, I'd understand all (but don't).
>Karl Schulte
>
>----------
>
>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Language varieties
>
>Paul Finlow-Bates:
>
>> I can't explain why, but the effect of Jutish on me is the same as
>> Danish -
>> whenever I hear it I feel like I should understand it, but don't quite.
>> Sort of like overhearing a Geordie conversation with too much background
>> noise to make out the words.
>>
>> I like to imagine it's some sort of call from my ancient roots, but
then I
>> wake up.
>
>Paul, I experience that, and I assume all of us have it to varying degrees
>when we hear language varieties that have a similar sound to those of
>languages we know, especially where you recognize a word here and there.
>
>I have it particularly with South Jutish dialects, especially when spoken
by
>older people who still have the old-time sound down, in which case the
sound
>is rather close to that of Low Saxon  (while younger people have a more
>Danicized sound, much like younger Low Saxon speakers in Germany and the
>Netherlands have more German- and Dutch-influenced sounds).  Also, I
>understand Danish (spoken at a "reasonable" speed), and this makes it
appear
>to me as though I should understand Southern Jutish far better than I
do.  I
>can only understand about 75-85% of written SJ texts, and I'm quite lost
>when people speak at normal speed.  I suppose this means that I would
learn
>it quickly if I were exposed to it on an everyday basis.
>
>On the other hand, when I occasionally hear people speak Upper and
Uppermost
>Allemannic (which is on a continuum with "mainstream" German) at normal or
>fast speed, I have a hard time and tend to "zone out," probably because
the
>phonology is too "strange," and I have not been exposed to it enough.

----------

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

Hi, Ingmar!

I suggest not putting a lot of money on stories about Hungarian and Turkish 
sounding alike.  I have heard this one umpteen times, also stories about 
Hungarian, Turkish, Estonian and Finnish sounding alike and being "closely 
related."  Listen to them, and you'll find that they sound vastly different, 
even from a distance -- only Estonian and Finnish (which are closely 
related) sharing a certain common sound.

My theory is that these stories come primarily from people's (half-baked) 
knowledge based on the 19th-century "discovery" that these languages are of 
non-European origin and share much in terms of (agglutinating) structure. 
It is also based on the old assumption that these languages must be related 
because of their structural and orthographic similarities and because "they 
have those long words" (i.e., agglutinative constructions) very much unlike 
most "European" (i.e., Indo-European) languages.  Furthermore, they have 
pretty much consistently fixed stress, while most European languages have 
phonemic stress (exceptions being e.g. French, Polish, Czech, Slovak and 
Sorbian).  (However, while Uralic languages tend to have first-syllable 
stress, Turkic tends to have final-syllable stress -- but Mongolic has 
first-syllable stress again -- and this alone makes for a very different 
rhythm.)  Also, in the Uralic languages vowel length differentiation is very 
strictly observed (which, together with initial stress, makes Hungarian 
sound somewhat similar to Czech and Slovak from a distance), while in Uralic 
they are not (or only in certain vowels in Irano-Arabic loans).

I believe that, at least in theory, all languages are ultimately related but 
that it is impossible to prove this because we have no means of tracing them 
back that far.  The old assumption that Uralic (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian 
...) and Altaic (Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic) are related (in today's limited 
terms) has been debunked in the meantime, though some people still try to 
prove that they are related.  So far, no reasonable systematic vowel shift 
scheme has been presented.  Most common words are likely to be loans, due to 
Uralic and Altaic having a long history of contacts.

It's too bad we don't have a Hungarian translation and sound file of the 
wren story (http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/).

Cheerio!
Reinhard/Ron 

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