LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.27 (01) [EN]

Lowlands-L List lowlands.list at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jul 27 18:43:48 UTC 2009 

===========================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 27 July 2009 - Volume 01
lowlands at lowlands-l.net - http://lowlands-l.net/
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
===========================================

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.25 (02) [EN]

From: Dan Prohaska <daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language history" [EN]

Sandy,

You asked: “*Was the 'reet, neet, nowt' imported from Scandinavia or is it
merely phonetic shift?*”

These are English words, and they rather missed out on a phonetic shift than
took part in one.
 .....

Thanks, Dan, that makes sense. I asked because there seems to be a strong
thread in popular Northumbrian dialect literature that these words go right
back to some Scandinavian dialect but no evidemce seems to be presented and
without that it's hard to see why it can't just be phonetic shift.

By the way, Ron, thanks for the wecloming. I may err on the side of brevity
for a while as I learn to use a mobile phone for large texts, but on the
other hand I can get on line almost anywhere, any time!

Sandy Fleming
Http://scotstext.org/ <http://scotstext.org/>

----------

From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
 Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.24 (03) [EN]

 Glancing quickly at a few maps, those pronunciations seem to be roughly
coincident with Scandinavian, especially Danish, place names, so it could
be.

Curious though, that the medial "ch" vanished in Southern English as well;
you'd expect it to survive either side of Danish N.  England, in for example
Scotland and Somerset.

By "Southern English" I mean traditional varieties, not the standard
Southern and Estuary types dominant today.  They are derivatives
of Mediaeval East Midland dialect, which was a Danish-influenced N-S hybrid,
hence its popularity and influence.

Paul
Derby
Danelaw,
England

----------

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

Paul, Sandy, Dan,

I am not sure when the development started, but perhaps it is relevant to
note that under certain conditions Modern Danish varieties do "funny things"
with intervocalic and final /g/. For instance, depending on the variety it
becomes a glide or "disappears" in words like *meget* ([ˈmɑːɪd̥] ~ [mɑːð̞̩])
'very' and *dag* ([d̥æː] ~ [d̥̥̥aʊ̯]) 'day'. Note also alternation here: *
tag* [ˈtˢæːˀ] 'roof' -> *tagterrasse* [ˈtˢɑʊ̯tˢaˌʁɑsə] 'roof terrace'.  Note
also the words for "law" in both languages:

Old Norse *lǫg* > Modern Danish *lov* [loʊ̯]
Old English *lagu* > Modern English "law" [ɫɒː] ~ [ɫɔː] ~ [ɫoː]

If this was at least at an early stage of development it would have very
well stimulated, influenced or reinforced the development in English.

And again we need to bear in mind that written language usually does not
reflect such developments in the spoken language or it does so at a later
time (though neither in English nor in Danish).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

----------

From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
 Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.26 (01) [EN]

1 - * > From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
> Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.25 (03) [EN-NL]
> The *first word on the line has sleeptoon (falling tone)* the
*second stoottoon (pushing tone)
*> bal         bal          (soccer)ball     dancing event
> kal         kal          twaddle          wedge
> bal (soccer) becomes *bel* in plural
 > bal (dancing event) becomes *bals* in plural.
> kal (twaddle) has no plural to my feeling
> kal (wedge) can have both *kals* as *kalle* to my feeling (cf. French
"cale")
** > From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language history
> Outside of plural forms, ... just speculating here ...
> Is *bal* 'ball (=dance)' masculine?

Definitely masculine, cf. French "le bal masqué".
Gender in South Limburgish is very much the same as the gender in French.
The disturbing exception is "boter " (fem.) butter, masc. in French: le
beurre.
As kids we always thought the French were *very very wrong*.

> *Kal* 'wedge' must be related to German *Keil *and Dutch *keil*, may well
be a contraction of **kail*.

With *"cale"* in French, this explains why I would accept both plural forms.

2 > From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
> Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.25 (01) [EN]
> Stevens studied for the South of Belgian Limburg what language elements of
Cologne penetrated in that area (Limburgish Haspengouw) at what time.
> He concludes that the *linguistic influence of Cologne* starts *dying out
in the 13th century,* mainly through the increased power > ... Some examples
of *Ripuarian elements* that penetrated in Limburgsh Haspengouw in those
early times:
> - *bitonality*
> - elongation of short vowels before s, ch, f
> - vocalisation of ch before t
> - the deletion of t/d at the end of words after other consonnants than r
and l
> - the elongation of short vowels before rs.

Supposing Stevens is right, then we know when it stopped.
However *we do not know when it started.*
We cannot estimate the influence of:
- The Germanic presence before Caesar: cf. the "different language" the *
Belgians* spoke
- The (peaceful) Germanic migrations during the Roman empire:   *Saxons,
Frisians* in the West, *Salian Francs* in the center
- These were later a bit more violently pushed to the West by the *Ripuaran
Francs* coming from the Cologne area
- The separation during about 200 years (500-700) with:
   - *Neustria* in the West (including Flanders) (Salian?)
   - *Austrasia* in the East (including Brabant and Loon-Limburg)
(Ripuarian?)
   http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Neustrie752.jpg
   http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Austrasie752.jpg
   (The borders between the two states changed from time to time)

Political lines do not explain all though (How to explain the
Romance-Germanic language border? It does not coincide with any political
border. "*National languages*" were created much later as *unifying concept*,
or in the French Jacobine philosophy, giving all citizens *equal chances* -
after elimination of language differences)

What I find back in literature on evolution of dialects (before 1950) is:
- spread of language elements *from market towns to surrounding villages*
- stepwise spread *along the commercial position of the towns*:
  before 12th c:    Cologne --> Maastricht --> towns in the land of Loon -->
rural villages
  18th c.   Brussels/Leuven --> Hasselt --> towns in the land of Loon -->
rural villages
  Grootaers illustrated the phenomenon with the loss of initial h in
Lonerland towns, under influence of Brabantish.

For my municipalty, Vliermaal, once the judicial capital of the county of
Loon:
- the *vowel system* is still Lonerlands, *West-Limburgish*
- the *vocabulary* is often more inspired by the nearby market town of
Tongeren
- the *consonants *follow Tongeren, East of the Panninger line sch--> sj,
making us (uncorrectly I think) classified as *Central-Limburgish*
- as for *tonality* we do not follow the stronly elongated version of Wellen
in the West (well known from the jokes by the guy from Vrolingen on the
radio)
- and we did *not *follow *Hasselt:* e.g. we kept our initial H (as a matter
of fact we were oriented to the South; 10 miles to Tongeren e.g. for
shopping of standard clothes, and a further 15 miles to Liège e.g. for
clothes for special occasions)

3. However in West-Limburgish villages, *every parish* has its *own dialect*,
and these may vary very significantly over short distances.
I'm participating in a DNA-anchestry project, and I have been checking for
my ancestors (till about 1650).
Basically they find their spouse *in the very same village*. This looks like
*inbreeding*.
Economically it is easy to explain. Most of my ancestors were (small)
farmers.
They inherited *land from both sides*. This could only work if the land of
both families was at decent distances.
Mariages often toke place at an age around 30, when the "future" of the
household was carefully studied.
This has been leading to "quite *close communities*", developping their own
language versions.

This *band with land* was competely *broken *after WWII. Immigration
started. Industrialization progressed. Small farms were no longer
economically feasable. Dutch (or some form of Dutch) became the
communication langage among kids. If this process happened 100 years
earlier, French may have become the language of communication.

4. As for the DNA project, they started for the former *Duchy of
Brabant*(with male-line ancestors of the participants living in
Brabant around
*1700),* and they got sofar for the male haplogroups:
R1b       59,01%
I1         12,08%
I2         8,51%
E1         4,95%
J2          4,75%
R1a     3,96%
G2       3,37%
J1         1,39%
L         0,79%
Q         0,59%
T         0,59%
Belgian Limburg will be done in 2010.
I'm in R1b myself. Most West-Europeans belong to R1b,
So I think the frequency of other groups is much more interesting.

Regards,
Roger

•

==============================END===================================

 * Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.

 * Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.

 * Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.

 * Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l")

   are to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at

   http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.

*********************************************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20090727/4b360521/attachment.htm>

More information about the LOWLANDS-L mailing list