LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.27 (04) [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 * 27 March 2006 * Volume 04
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From: Marcel Bas <marcelbas at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.27 (02) [E]
Ingmar wrote:
"I can imagine that a lot of this Dunglish could be heard in South Africa
too, especially from Afrikaanders..."
Sure there is! There are quite some persistent africanderisms in Afrikaans
people's language when they speak English. I will look it up for you.
But very interesting are the africanderisms in the English language of
native English speakers in South Africa. There are quite a few:
"I live by the station" (< ek woon by die stasie)
"I'm busy relaxing" (< ek is besig om uit te rus)
"Will you come with"? (< Sal jy saamkom?)
Not to mention many loanwords.
Also the use of the word 'already' is far more frequent in SA English than
in British English, due to Afrikaans (and Dutch) 'al'.
Best regards,
Marcel.
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From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.27 (02) [E]
Hi, Ingmar,
you wrote:
> In fact that would be an interesting question: do the Low Germans learn
> the related foreign language English out of their mother tongue, or
> through High German. And is there any Low German influence on their
> English, rather than High German? And is this similar to the Dutch
> influence on English?
According to my experiences it's much easier for Germans from the North
(close to LS-regions) to learn English than for people who grew up in the
Southern parts.
This really doesn't depend on how much knowledge about LS the learners have,
but could be a result of *sleeping* influence.
A sometimes funny sounding result can be watched when (non-native) people
from Northern G. first try to learn LS- they like to pronounce it the
English way, mixed with English grammar.
Greutens/Regards
Johannes "Jonny" Meibohm
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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.27 (02) [E]
Ingmar says: <In fact that would be an interesting question: do the Low
<Germans learn the related foreign language English out of their mother
<tongue, or through High German. And is there any Low German influence on
<their English, rather than High German? And is this similar to the Dutch
<influence on English?>
What a nifty question Ingmar! I can only give you an answer about how I
negotiate foreign languages. Firstly, English has become an honorary mother
language; that is, I dream in it. The most interesting dreams are in Dutch
and English both and usually it is about something that is happening
(English) and how I feel about it (Dutch). So it is very difficult to say if
I still go through Dutch all the time, but sometimes I find myself literally
without words because there is this Dutch idiom that "wants to be
translated". It also happens when I am speaking Dutch and there is this
wonderful English idiom which is quite to the point and I cannot use it.
When I first came to the US, I apparently translated Dutch idioms into
English all the time and acquired, unjustly, the reputation of being a wit,
By now I know as many idioms in English as in Dutch, but I have not found a
solution for this problem.
I also know that if I must translate English into French or German or vice
versa I go through Dutch. In other words, I seem to have stored F and G at a
time that I spoke Dutch most of the time. I have not tried to learn another
foreign language after I immigrated. It would be interesting to hear from
somebody who has had that experience. Jacqueline
PS. If you have some time send me some examples from the book. J.
----------
From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties
Ingmar,
I agree with our Jacqueline that this is an interesting topic you started
there. Furthermore, my experiences and impressions are similar to hers. I
wonder if this has anything to do with our common experiences as
multilingual emigrants. Perhaps living away from your native linguistic
environment forces you to deal with these things more intensively and thus
to heighten your awareness. I wonder if others like us can relate to this,
such as Gustaaf, Tom, Hugo, Peter and Andrys. (I know there are others, but
most of them are lurkers.)
As I said, my experience is similar to that of Jacqueline, though I would
like to add the following observations,
When as a youngster in Germany I studied English and Scandinavian languages,
unofficially also some Dutch and Afrikaans, I definitely did so through Low
Saxon in my mind, "privately," because to my mind it had more in common with
those languages. I did so even if the official medium was German. It was
simply an easier step "to get the feel" if I approached these languages from
LS. When I studied Malay/Indonesian, Japanese and Chinese, I initially did
so through English in Australia. It would have been too convoluted had I
tried to do so through LS or German, besides useless, because these
languages have no features that would have been advantageous. When I
formally studied Russian, I did so in an English-speaking environment (US),
initially though English media (though English came to be banned at a later
stage). Yet, I "chose" to do so by way of German, because German
morphologically distinguishes most of the cases Russian and other Slavonic
languages distinguish. I could tell that this gave me an advantage over
fellow students. When I studied Hebrew, I did so mostly through Hebrew and
within a Hebrew-speaking environment. If you'd ask me what medium language
predominated in my mind, I'd say that I don't know -- possibly none, though
I had previously known many Hebrew words as loanwords in Yiddish. My fellow
students came from all over the world, and there were something like ten
native languages among ca. 15-20 students in my classes. Besides, our
instructors would watch us even in our free time and would remind us to
speak Hebrew even then. So when I was later asked to explain Hebrew grammar
to beginners I realized that I had never even consciously thought about many
of the rules, that I had not previously tried to relate them to features in
other languages. I suppose that this is an advantage of immersion study in
which theoretical study is rare and almost all rules are learned "in real
life." However, when I now deal with Arabic I tend to use Hebrew as a link,
for the two are related and share a lot.
So I would say that much of this has to do with context and perceived
relations or similarities. This may very well apply in dreams as well. My
language "choice" in dreams depends on what and whom I dream about.
Jonny, I find it interesting that you feel that North Germans have an easier
time learning English even if they don't know LS. Definitely, in the
"olden" days, when there was little exposure to English in everyday life,
those kids who had some command of LS, even if only passive, seemed to do
better with school English, and at that time you could definitely say that,
on the whole, North Germans did better than did South Germans, Austrians,
etc., also had very different "accents." However, I'm not so sure if this
is so cut and dry these days, as English teaching methods have improved
vastly, all of Germany is constantly barraged by English language media, and
most young North Germans wouldn't know LS if it hit them in the head,
certainly don't rely on it as a medium, but much rather use English as a
bridge to learn LS, as you said. Everytime I revisit Northern Germany it
hits me that Germanization has made more inroads, that LS influences are
disappearing fast. I wonder if those younger people who do better than the
everage Southerner don't in fact have at least considerable passive command
of Low Saxon since early childhood.
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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