LL-L "Language promotion" 2009.12.30 (06) [EN]

Thu Dec 31 01:58:29 UTC 2009

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L O W L A N D S - L - 30 December 2009 - Volume 06
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From: M.-L. Lessing <marless at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language promotion" 2009.12.30 (05) [EN]

Hello Reinhard,

upps, an empty answer just slipped out, sorry! Yes, that was what the smiley
was about. "Perfectly understandable" means: I got what the people talked
about, and I mostly got what they wanted to say on the matter. I could have
paraphrased it in German (or Platt :-)), if no great detail would be
required. For a foreign language that is quite good, isn't it? I feel proud
and satisfied :-)

Hartlich!

Marlou

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

You're welcome, Marlou.

"Perfectly understandable"?! Are you sure?

... Was that what the smiley was about?

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

Yep, Marlou. I'm insanely proud of you.

Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language promotion" 2009.12.30 (05) [EN]

From: M.-L. Lessing <marless at gmx.de <mailto:marless at gmx.de>>

 Marcus, you write: "So we won't get a TV station anytime soon. That's not
> realistic without major changes. But it's still _necessary_ if we want Low
> Saxon to prosper." This sounds desolate. Do you mean to say that Low Saxon
> has done, since there won't be a TV station? Let us not give in so easily! I
> am confident Platt can be kept up without a TV station.
>
I try to look at it in a positivist way most of the time, but if we are
realistic, Low Saxon is in very bad shape. My own home area (the only area I
have first hand experiences) is a very rural area, that has maintained Low
Saxon as a daily mean of communication in several settings. I don't think
there are any areas, that have maintained Low Saxon much better than my home
area (together with rural areas along all the Northern Sea coast), except
perhaps for Eastern Frisia. Westfalia, Eastfalia, Mark Brandenburg have
almost completely lost Low Saxon as a daily mean of communication.
In my area the generation 70+ has Low Saxon as mother tongue and they tend
to speak Low Saxon whenever applicable, cause they feel uncomfortable with
German (they can still speak it perfectly fluent, but it's still not the
same as their native language). In the generation 50-70 most people speak
Low Saxon very well and have learned it natively, but they are so accustomed
to German, that the nativity bonus doesn't play out. They often feel better
with German. People 30-50 years old may speak a reasonable Low Saxon, but
they generally feel more comfortable with German. Even among the youth there
are some rare native speakers. The more you pay attention, the more you will
spot I realized. Sometimes it happens that by pure chance you notice that a
person you have conversed with in German since a decade happens to speak Low
Saxon at home and you never knew. That's cause German is the total dominant
_default_ between younger people. I don't know anybody under the age of 40
who is more comfortable in Low Saxon than in German. When working at my
plattmakers.de dictionary I realied that at least 70% of the vocabulary that
can be found in older dictionaries ('older' meaning like a 1930s dictionary)
is "asleep" today. Not completely forgotten, but not used anymore, cause you
cannot rely, that your conversation partner knows the word.

Competent speakers are much too old. Nobody young enough to have young
children is competent enough to transmit the language to a new generation.
If the generation in the child-bearing age of 25-40 would teach Low Saxon to
their children, it would be the ugliest Low Saxon imaginable. We cannot rely
on in-family transmission of the language. It's much too late. So we need
some way of spreading the language outside families.
TV is no good solution for this. Cause language aquisition from TV would
lead to an ugly lowest common denominator Low Saxon. No, language aquistion
must be done in kindergarten and school by competent speakers. TV can only
tune in when the foundation is already lead. TV can support interest in the
language and awareness and positively influence identity. But it is no good
replacement for face to face language aquisition from competent speakers.

We need support from schools and kindergartens. Not only some model projects
like in Simonswoold, but all over the country. This cannot be done with
voluntary helpers. We need financial commitment from the states in this area
too. That will be even more expensive than the TV station, I guess.

Only a TV station without school support would be a great start. Only school
support for Low Saxon without a TV station would be great too. But only a
combination of both would generate the most effect.

 Hanne, before she left the thread, was very positive it could; I think she
> may be right, although a TV station would be a fine thing to have. Let us
> not demand the moon and otherwise resign.
>
I do not resign, I try to do my part. But if Earth is inhabitable anything
but demanding the moon (or Mars) is actually the same as resigning. We
cannot stay where we are, we have to make leaps or we will vanish.

 Let us find small steps that really can be taken. What can be done with the
> energies and money that now /are /in the pd. issue?
>
We can arrange a humane death for Low Saxon. Really, I see exactly _no_
chance that Low Saxon keeps to be a living language without massive
additional engagement. It will take many decades until all the living
speakers are dead, but there is no chance that Low Saxon will be anything
else than some kind of retro language like Cornish in a century or a century
and a half.

 Forgive me if this has been discussed many times before in this forum; but
> it looks to me we are up to something concrete, something that can be
> /done/, and I would love to know what it is.
>  Your remarks about the centrifugal development sound quite plausible.
> Suppose we had settled what the "center" of Platt should be, what could be
> done about this?
>
If Earth would be hollow you would be able to hover in some spheric area
around the center. A gravitational body doesn't need to have a "center" like
a point. All of the matter produces gravity. And every dialect emits gravity
too. There doesn't need to be a definite "center" and the body can still
hold together. Low Saxon's problem at the moment is, that it is torn apart
by gravitational shear forces from several massive objects that came too
close to our planet. Thr only option for the planet to solve this problem,
is to gain distance from the mass objects so that the gravity outweighs the
shear forces again.

 It sounds like an organizing and communicating issue to me. Now I am a
> member of the pd. Raad fÃ¶r Sleswig-Holsteen
> http://www.heimatbund.de/niederdeutsch/ndrat.php. This board has done some
> very good work in school politics lately; in some other respects they are
> more conventional and rather slow. But I learned that the Raad in
> Sleswig-Holsteen is the most active of all BundeslÃ¤nder; most other northern
> german BundeslÃ¤nder have only crippled versions or no pd. Raad at all. In
> Hamborg however things seem to be changing. Maybe there are other pd. "lobby
> groups" in other regions, in or outside Germany, that might "represent" the
> pd. community of their region. Could anything be done by a common movement
> of such organizations? I admit I am quite a failure at penetrating
> administrative structures & bureaucracies. But at best such a movement might
> even exert pressure as to (the money needed for) better media presence of
> Platt...
>

I'm not a good networker and I'm not a good leader. I'm just a good
theoreticist and I'm okay at working on my own little things. Whenever I try
to do little steps I start to say "This is piecemeal." and I start to hate
that little-steppism and I fantasize about how it would be done _right_. And
so I always end up with plans how to rescue the world, that are completely
unrealistic on a pragmatic level.

Marcus Buck

•

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