LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.06.27 (06) [E]

Fri Jun 27 21:25:00 UTC 2008

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From: Joachim Kreimer-de Fries <Kreimer at jpberlin.de>
Subject: LL-L "Culture" 2008.06.27 (03) [E]

¡ Save Berlin dialect as cultural heritage !

Hello LL-world & Marcus,

Am 26.06.2008 um 16:08 schrieb Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
Subject: LL-L "Culture" 2008.06.25 (02) [E/LS]:

My original point was the people of Brandenburg not keeping up their Low
Saxon heritage, cause they got told (not explicitly told, but implicitly
they adopted the message) they were "Ossis", people from Eastern Germany.
This, together with additional influence from the 3.5 million people city
Berlin, made them change their Mark-Brandenburgian language and identity to
a mixture of "outskirts of Berlin" and "German Democratic Republic" language
and identity. This is a mixture of "country thinking" and "cultural erosion
through media" (national media of the former GDR, actually).

A rather adventurous theory!

1.) 500 years ago, Berlin began to change step by step to the then Meissnian
dialect for practical reasons: the commercial connections to Meissen and
Lipsia (and later to the whole Middle and South German world) were important
for it's own commercial and industrial devolopment, more important than the
connections to the - at the beginning - still Low Saxon speaking North.

2.) Berlin did not change to Standard German (which at the beginning did not
exist
but to the Middle German dialect of that of the margraveship (county) of
Meissen at that time, i. e. to a dialect which still had been half been
Middle High German, with incomplete consonant's shift and the New/Modern
High German vocal shift only partly accomplished.

There is a interesting build-up of examples in Agathe Laasch's "Berlinisch"
{mhd.=Middle High German, obs.=Meissnian [for "obersächsisch"],
berl.=Berlinian, nd.= Low Saxon [niederdeutsch]}:

a) [engl. my/mine wine his stone to mean]

mhd. mîn wîn sîn stein meinen
obs.[M] mein wein sein stên mênen
berl. mein wein sein stên mênen
nd. mîn wîn sîn stên mênen

b) [engl. house mouse tree also, too]

mhd. hûs mûs boum ouch
obs.[M] haus maus bôm ôch
berl. haus maus bôm ôch
nd. hûs mûs bôm ôk

3.) Berlin adopted the Meissnian vocal phonology and orthography (later
Standard German) but applied the Low Saxon articulation.

Further there was a lot of concordance - mainly in the vocalisation -
between Meissnian/Berlinian and LS words.

Berlinian maintained some wording and phrasing of Mark-Brandenburgian LS.

Indeed one can mix LS and Berlinian elements, as this is possible with LS
and Middle High German, too. - What is rather impossible between LS and
Standard German, not so much because of the consonant shift but the Modern
High German vocal shift. (There is e. g. also more sound similarity between
LS and Swiss German - a Middle High German dialect - than between LS and
Standard German.)

4.) Already long before the existence of the GDR even the farther parts of
Brandenburg and all the younger Generations had adopted the Berlinian
dialect because of similar reasons as Berlin erstwhile did with Meissnian:
the necessity of easier communication and participation in economic and
cultural life of the center of Brandenburg and Germany, i. e. Berlin.

5.) Because of similar reasons the communication on this list is mainly in
Modern English and not in the various Low Saxon varieties - despite that
English is at least so faraway from any LS dialect as Standard German is.
That seems to be the easier way of mutuel understanding and explaining one's
arguments - because it is a modern, urban, civilized - standardized! -
language, usable even in humanities... ;-)

5.) Berlinian has never been the "brand label" or marker of state and
politics of GDR (despite some highlights in culture, theatre etc.), the
language varieties in which the official state of GDR presented itself was
rather ugly Modern Meissnian ("Sächsisch" - hear Ulbricht), Mosel-Frankonian
(Honnecker) and stilted efforts of a burocratic Standard German. - In any
case nothing for the youth of Land/state Brandenburg to identify with, even
in case of "Ostalgie" (social GDR-nostalgia).

6.) Nowadays the Berlinian dialect itself is in danger because of the
consequences of the economic take-over of East Germany, of the West/South
(!) German repopulation of Berlin (formerly restricted to West Berlin) and
because nobody in the Berlin government and political culture is aware of
the cultural virtue of this local (and now regional) dialect and nothing is
done to save this delightful and witty language of the broad people and the
literature.

Conclusio:

Instead of deploring the almost completed and unarrestable die-off of the
Brandenburg LS we'd better care about the survival of the Berlinian
dialect!

Met echt-westfälsken Gröiten!
Joachim
--
Kreimer-de Fries

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

Moin, Joachim! Great to hear from you. Thanks for the above.

Not that I would want to detract from the essence, but I feel obligated to
tweak something in your data.

a) [engl. my/mine wine his stone to mean]

mhd. mîn wîn sîn stein meinen
obs.[M] mein wein sein stên mênen
berl. mein wein sein stên mênen
nd. mîn wîn sîn *stên mênen*

b) [engl. house mouse tree also, too]

mhd. hûs mûs boum ouch
obs.[M] haus maus bôm ôch
berl. haus maus bôm ôch
nd. hûs mûs *bôm ôk*

The marked Low Saxon items have diphthongs:

steyn [stɛˑɪn] ~ [staˑɪn] (stone)
meynen [ˈmɛˑɪnn̩] ~ [ˈmaˑɪnn̩] (to mean)
boum [bɔˑʊm] ~ [baˑʊm] (tree)

but in the following item a monophthong, at least originally, or in many
dialects:
ook [ʔoːk] (also, too)

In Middle Saxon, these tended to be written the way you wrote them above. We
can't be totally sure if they where monophthongs or diphthongs. But, going
by spelling variation, it looks like they were diphthongs at least in some
dialects:

stên ~ steyn ~ stein (stone)
mênen ~ meynen ~ meinen (to mean)
also:
êk(e) ~ eyk(e) ~ eik(e) (oak)

bôm ~ boum ~ baum (tree)

but:
ôk (also, too)

Do you think that in the Brandenburg dialects of Berlin /ee/ and /ey/ were
leveled to /ee/, and /oo/ and /ou/ to /oo/?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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