LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.09.06 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 06 September 2008 - Volume 05
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From: "Arthur Jules Roonacker" <arthurjules at rogers.com>
Subject: Language Varieties - Flemish

Dear Lowlanders,



Recently, a friend of mine strongly recommended reading "Het Verdriet van
Belgie" by Hugo Claus.

Not surprisingly, though our local public Kitchener & Waterloo libraries
in Canada have a section "Foreign Languages - Dutch", they do not carry Hugo
Claus. Most books in Dutch in that section are translations of the original
English ones. However, I did find and took out the English
translation called "The Sorrow of Belgium".



I found the Translator's Note quite interesting. By way of introduction, the
translator Arnold J. Pomerans describes the historical and political
setting and shows he understood he had his work cut out eventually stating
about Flemish:

"The strands of these linguistic differences, together with those of the
various religious, cultural, and political differences, are woven into Hugo
Claus's long novel. The speech of his Flemish characters is sprinkled with
old-fashioned, sometimes archaic, words (which makes it High Flemish), with
dialect (Low Flemish), and with great many gallicisms." ... etc.

Flemish being my mother tongue and having learned Dutch, French and German
in school, I do understand the translator's challenge. (I wish I could read
the book in its original language and see how well he did.)



What brings me to you is the expressions "High Flemish" and "Low Flemish"

As expressions, they are new to me. I had heard of High German and Low
German, High Anglican and Low (?) Anglican, the latter more related to
substrates of a Christian denomination.



I know they had gone from calling it ABN, Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands
(Civilized Dutch) to AN, Algemeen Nederlands (Common Dutch) and
somewhere "Standard Dutch" covers both but I had not read of this "High &
Low Flemish" before. Is this something that had passed me by in the distant
fatherland?  I also have not come across it in our Lowlanders messages.

I would like to hear from our Flemish and Dutch friends as well as from our
cousins in South Africa  if they, by analogy are comfortable with 'High
Afrikaans' and 'Low Afrikaans'.

By the way, I wouldn't mind adopting these new (?) expressions when
explaining the degrees of variations going from "plat"  to "cleaned-up"
(gekuist) to "civilized" (beschaafd) to "standard" (standardized) Flemish
(or Dutch?) as long as I am on the same page with my fellow Flemings and
Dutchmen.

Please straiten me out or bring me up to date.

Thanks,



Jules.



arthurjules at rogers.com



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

Hi, Jules!

It was nice hearing from you again.



I have long been aware that some German-speaking linguists have expanded the
qualifiers *Hoch...* versus *Nieder...* or *Platt...* to other languages,
including examples like *Hochchinesisch* (for Standard Mandarin and its
written equivalent), also *Hochd**änisch* versus *Plattdänisch* (or
"non-scientific" *Kartoffeldänisch* "Potato Danish") ... all of which irks
me no end. I had hoped that this could be contained, but recently I noticed
that several English writers follow this tradition with "High" and "Low".

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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