LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.11.17 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 17 November 2008 - Volume 01
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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.11.15 (05) [E]

From: Ed Alexander <edsells at cogeco.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.11.15 (03) [E]Even though the "two"
languages (Serbian and Croatian) are (I am told) about as far apart as the
two dialects (based on religion) spoken in Ulster, they are written in two
different alphabets!

Ed Alexander, Hamilton, Canada

Before Yugoslavia broke up, they were often officially colectively called
"Serbo-Croat". In the Sixties, I knew a couple of kids of Yugoslav parents
who did "O" Level GCSE Serbo-Croat (it was an easy way to get an extra "O"
Level if you spoke it anyway). I think they wrote with the Latin alphabet,
so it was probably more Croatian than Serbian.

In Wollongong, Australia, there are large populations of both communities.
They arrived as immigrants from Yugoslavia, but very much split themselves
into Serb or Croat communities, and there remains little love lost between
them, even amongst the younger ones, some of whom probably couldn't find
Serbia on a map.

Paul Finlow-Bates

----------

From: Wesley Parish <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.11.15 (03) [E]

On Monday 17 November 2008 08:27, Lowlands-L List wrote:
<snip>
>
> From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.11.15 (02) [E]
>
> Hi Elsie,
>
> "Deliberate refusal" was perhaps a poor choice of words! "Subconcious
> resistance" might be a better explanation, altough I accept that your
> purely linguistic reason probably has more significance.
>
> However I have encountered similar "understanding refusals"; I once
> suggested to some Cook Islanders that they might find Tahitian fairly easy
> to follow and the idea was dismissed with comments suggesting that they
> disliked the very idea.  Yet Cook's Tahitian cabin boy could apparently
> converse with New Zealand Maori, and Rarotongans readily admit similarity
> with that.  I only know a little of any of them, but I don't see too much
> difference.

I know some Te Reo Maori (New Zealand) and can understand some Cook Islands
Maori.  I find some Hawai'ian understandable, as long as I remember that
some
sounds in Te Reo are represented differently in Hawai'ian.  I haven't tried
learning Tahitian, but I can pick up certain similarities and understand a
limited amount.

It is definitely a political, rather than a linguistic, matter - when they
are
concentrating on being Polynesians, it's a different matter.
>
> Whether or not Afrikaans/Dutch is a good example, I still believe that
such
> nationalistic emphasis of difference over similarity is a real phenomenon.

FWIW, a former landlord of mine, from the Netherlands, told me he found he
could understand Afrikaans.  He also complained about Frisians' habits of
talking in Frisian ;) and locking him out, but he said that on a trip he
made
once to Köln he had found himself able to make himself understood, and could
understand Kölners.  Looking back, I think he was from the North, and had
heard, if not spoken, one of the Netherlands Saxon dialects, at an early
age.

Of course, it's one of the habits of former colonial communities to
emphasize
differences as well as similarities - New Zealand being a good example,
Australia being another.

Just my 0.02c worth - don't spend it all at once!  We have a recession going
on!  ;)

Wesley Parish
>
> Paul
>
--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Gaul is quartered into three halves.  Things which are
impossible are equal to each other.  Guerrilla
warfare means up to their monkey tricks.
Extracts from "Schoolboy Howlers" - the collective wisdom
of the foolish.
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.

----------

From: Wesley Parish <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.11.15 (05) [E]

On Monday 17 November 2008 09:01, Lowlands-L List wrote:
> From: Ed Alexander <edsells at cogeco.ca>
> Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.11.15 (03) [E]
>
<snip>
> I have told this story here before.  My wife teaches in a Catholic high
> school.  As the only Protestant there, they once put her in charge of
> getting various students to say the Hail Mary over the P.A. at the
> beginning of the school day.  She ramped this up by having students from
> different language groups do it in their native language.  One day, she
had
> a Serbian student do it.  Later in the day, she encountered a small group
> of Croation students who asked her who was that speaking Croatian with
that
> funny accent?  When she told them that it was a Serb, they were absolutely
> incredulous, because, "as everyone knows, there are no Serbian Catholics."
> Even though the "two" languages are (I am told) about as far apart as the
> two dialects (based on religion) spoken in Ulster, they are written in two
> different alphabets!

I can verify that.  I have in my hot little hands, a couple of books:
"Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat" by Vera Javarek and Miroslava Sudjić,
and:
"Serbo-Croatian: Practical Grammar and Reader" by Monica Partridge.  Both
are
from the Yugoslav era, before the nation split into conflicting tribes.

TY Serbo-Croat, Introduction, xi-xii:
"Serbo-Croat has three dialects, named after the word for 'what' in each of
them.  Two of them, the kaj and ča dialects, are spoken over relatively
small
areas; the kaj-dialect (which somewhat resembles Slovene) in an area to the
west of Zagreb, and the ča-dialect in parts of southern Dalmatia and the
Islands.  Elsewhere the što-dialect is spoken, and is nearly always used in
literature.  [...]
"The Cyrillic alphabet was adopted by Yugoslavs belonging to the Orthodox
church; and the Latin alphabet - suplemented by 'diacritic signs' placed
over
certain letters - by the Roman Catholics.  Hence the Serbs of Belgrade use
the e-dialect and the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Croats of Zagreb use the
ije-dialect and the Latin alphabet, [...]"

Partridge's "Serbo-Croatian" says the same thing, in different words.

Wesley Parish
>
> Ed Alexander, Hamilton, Canada
>
<snip>

--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Gaul is quartered into three halves.  Things which are
impossible are equal to each other.  Guerrilla
warfare means up to their monkey tricks.
Extracts from "Schoolboy Howlers" - the collective wisdom
of the foolish.
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.

----------

From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.11.15 (06) [E]

Elsie wrote: People have language mental blocks. They think you are
"English" and hence don't register your  Afrikaans. They see you are 'White'
and don't register your Zulu greeting.

Hi Elsie:

I would like to confirm what you say, not with respect to Afrikaans or other
South African languages, but with respect to Spanish and English.  Whenever
I've traveled in Mexico, most people see me as "American" (USA) and seem not
to even hear that I have asked them a question in Spanish.  They seemingly
automatically answer me in English.  Now, if they don't know any English,
they don't seem to have that "problem."

Likewise, when I traveled in the Netherlands many, many years ago (1970), I
could merely walk into a store and they would speak to me in English.  Some
credit that to "Americans" acting like we own the world, but really, how
could I have given myself away that easily?  Clothes?  I don't think so,
everyone back then went around with dirty hair and dirty jeans ;-).  Even
when I tried to talk my halting Dutch, they stuck with English.  My halting
Dutch may have given them even more reason to stick with English, huh?

BTW, this weekend I checked the Internet at home to find sources of the news
in Afrikaans that I could practice reading.  I read Dutch pretty well and I
find the posts here on the list in Afrikaans fairly easy to read as well.  I
found several online newspapers, but they all seem to have the same owner.
Every one had the same URL www.news24.com with the individual paper after
the slash.  Does just one media company own all of the Afrikaans language
newspapers?

Regards,

Mark Brooks


----------

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

Folks,

All of what's written above pretty much tallies with my own experiences,
which has led me to the conclusion that attitude is extremely important but
is usually underestimated and is therefore rarely mentioned in connection
with cross-language communication and foreign language learning.

In "attitude" I include all sorts of things, such as views (incl.
prejudices) and expectations.

The mentioned examples about inter-Polynesian communication are very much *à
propos*. Speakers usually point out differences and "weirdnesses" that make
it impossible to understand each other, and no doubt they have the immense
geographical distances in mind as well, asside from cultural differences.
But -- lo and behold! -- people will make real efforts and will marvel at
the remaining close linguistic connections at inter-Polynesian meetings that
celebrate their common heritage.

Probably along the same lines as the Balkan example is my encounter in Upper
Austria where in my northern-colored Standard German I asked a lady for
directions and she answered in Bavarian saying that she didn't know German.

Many Westerners report strange reactions in Eastern Asia, especially in
Japan where some people seem to not understand you when you speak their
language. Most of the time this is because they think they should be talking
English with you but can't manage to do so. The reason is that there are
many ways of speaking to people in Japanese, depending on their social
states in relation to your own. Westerners do not fit in, or rather, their
relative social states (positions) cannot be determined if they are
strangers. Use of English or another foreign language is a way out of the
tricky situation. If a Japanese has little or no verbal command of English
(and this is most of them) he or she will have "panicky" reactions, because
anything is better than insulting you when addressing you in Japanese. This
is not so much true in Chinese environments. In Taiwan and in Southeast
Asia, no matter how good your Mandarin may be, well-educated people will
usually answer in English. Why? Oftentimes because of their prejudices that
lead them to assume that a Westerner can't possibly master Chinese while
their own mastery of English is not in question. However, Chinese people *
without* command of English will understand you just fine and will often
heave a sigh of relief when the approaching foreigner turns out to speak
their language. In Mainland China between Mao's death and the beginning of
the economic boom, pretty much everyone *expected* me to know Chinese when
they saw me traipse around by myself, certainly outside metropolitan
centers. This was their assumption because I was running around without
"watchdogs" (i.e. guides/interpreters), especially if I wore a Mao uniform
(which many foreign students still did at the time). (Some people took me
for a member of China's small Russian minority, especially when I traveled
in the far-western parts of the country.)

As mentioned, attitude is also extremely important in language learning. The
expectation that one *can* learn a foreign language, no matter which one,
makes all the difference. This is what so many people lack, especially when
it comes to "exotic" languages (which in many people's minds includes any
language they don't half understand to begin with and any language that uses
a different script). Some adults have the unrealistic expectation that they
will learn a foreign language "perfectly" and "accent-free". When they
realize that this is not going to happen they tend to give up altogether.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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