LL-L "Language politics" 2007.10.10 (03) [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  -  10 October 2007 - Volume 03
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics"

Beste Ron,

You wrote:
> What still gets in the way in the case of Low Saxon and which has been
> of decreasing importance in the case of Nynorsk is that people are
> hung up on purism: they insist that a dialect must not change and that
> dialects must not be mixed, that "older and purer is better."  (As
> Sandy explained, language change is inevitable, and I should add that
> language contacts are inevitable unless you build a wall around a
> speaker community.)  Get off it already!  The Nynorsk crowd in Norway
> used to grapple with the same "problems" in the beginning. It's much
> better these days as people have learned that changes and mixing did
> not cause the world as they knew it to explode or implode. And because
> they pulled their heads out of their tight, purist backsides and
> learned to relax they are actually getting things done and literature
> written, and they get to enjoy themselves.

Regarding "mixing".

Personally, I don't mind anybody mixing vocabularies, syntaxis and even
semantics. If enough people are doing it, it will stick, and eventually
enrich the language. That's precisely how language has always evolved in
the past. True, the rate of change is higher than ever before, and the
scale on which processes are taking place is much bigger. Yet, one major
principle remains valid: usability. If certain linguistic features no
longer serve a purpose, they will become extinct. No use reanimating
them, either they relate profoundly to their environment, or they don't.
For example: I don't consider it sheer coincidence that "case endings"
are still around in Germany (and considerably less or not at all in the
rest of the Germanic world). Probably shows that "case endings" relate
slightly better to a German environment (than to an English one).

On the other hand, there's spelling. I'm all for a single method of
spelling a language. Here however, I'm _not_ in favor of mixing up two
(or more) spelling systems.
If, for instance, a certain language would use both "o(o)" (like in
English), "oe" (like in Dutch) and "u(u)" (like in German) for a
[u:]-sound; reading becomes a drag. Moreover, it would obscure many
relationships that exist in Germanic languages. Just look at the word
"house"; the actual pronunciation differs less than the spelling in all
the different languages may suggest.

Quite often, speakers want to set their language apart from a
neighboring one, so called "taalparticularisme" in Dutch. One of the
ways to stress difference is to use spelling as a visual aid. Consider
Scots, which has "mither" for English "mother". Sure, in some words
(e.g. "thing", "wis"), this rounded "i" is pronounced pretty much (or
even exactly) like the sound they wish to portray in "mother". In other
words like "smile" or "happiness", "i" has different phonetic value.
Whether this improves readability in general, I dare not say, but
personally I would use such an effect sparsely.

Writing phonetically can be entertaining for a while, I guess it's part
of the infancy of every language, but eventually one has to come up with
some sort of "greatest common divisor". Once you have that: keep it.
Never change a winning horse :-D .
Just look at the English spelling system for that matter. Ultra
conservative for centuries, and yet the language itself flourishes as
never before.

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

PS: Why not take the spelling system of Middle Low German for Low Saxon?
Reflects the heyday of the Hanseatic League and enjoyed wide acclaim.

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

Thanks, Luc.

I don't disagree with any of your basic premises. Just please bear in mind
the following:

   - Loss of case endings comes with loss of syntactic flexibility.
   - The English, Scots and Dutch writing systems are in fact mixtures of
   Germanic and French orthographic devices. (They are the "aberrant" ones.)
   - My experimental ANS spelling for Low Saxon is in fact a regularized
   version of Middle Saxon spelling and does potentially cross borders (also to
   Dutch etc.), but it makes the Suppenkaspers cry because the herbs in
   the soup are a bit different from those Mom used to use.

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

•

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