LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.06.01 (02) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 01 June 2009 - Volume 02
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
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From: Diederik Masure <didimasure at hotmail.com>
Subject: Anniversary

Hey Lowlanders!

I've been busy trying to not make my schoolwork the whole day so I finally
recorded a sound file for my Wren translation
http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/brabants-antwerpen.php
 and put up a draft for a Standard Brabantish one
http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/brabants-standard.php

About that last one I wanted the opinions of our other members from Brabant
here, especially Luc and Roger since they come from southern Brabant.
A short summary on the intentions of this project, which I wanted to post a
while ago already - but now this is a better occasion to bring it out on
LLL:
I am working on a standard written language for the Brabantish dialects,
i.e. the ones in Belgian Brabant. Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands was
originally in the plan too, but there the deviation is too big in sounds,
grammar, vocabulary etc, while the Belgian part of the old Duchy is a lo
more homogenous - thus allowing to make a writing system without too many
sideforms, without having to set up 5 different allowed forms for each word
etc.
The intention is not to give a phonetic representation of a particular Brab.
dialect. That's what the Brabantse Referentiespelling guys did, and I think
their spelling sucks. It is not because I come from Antwerp and I pronounce
all my short /i/'s 'sharper' and more closed that I should replace every /i/
by an /ie/ when I write dialect, making it look ridiculous. And there's no
reason to write the ei and ij, and ui as aaj and oaj or something similar,
when you as well can make a standard with ei, ij, ui which looks more
respectable, people are more used to it and you can just set up
pronunciationrule: ui is prounounced oaj. And up north in the province of
Antwerp, they pronounce it èù and èè, but they have no reason to write it
that way either. The only spelling to unify Brabantish is by using what we
have from the Dutch tradition and form it into something that represents our
phonology (but not phonetics) and grammar.

For this reason one writes /h/ as well, except in words like et/het
(optional h, as even in h-retaining dialects one pronounces it 'et', and
there is no etymological reason to write the /h/ either), 'm (hem).
This does not mean that one would have to pronounce this h, and if you come
from a h-less area it is not less 'your' Brabantish just because h's are
written. If this standard language wants to have equal prestige as any other
written language and not just be "funny written Dutch" certain rules like
ui, ei and the h have to be followed in my opinion.

But where the SYSTEM goes against Dutch, we write differently. As vowel
shortening for example, almost obligatory in Br.
Long vowels ar eshortened to their short counterpart, and
ui > ö
ei/ij > e (/a/ in a smaller area, but not representative enough, and in
younger dialect in for example Antw. rapidly being replaced by /e/ anyway)
aa > o or ö. Here it's hard to make one single choice, as o vs. ö depends
from word to word, in some o being almost the only option in the whole area,
in others ö being spread over 1/2 of the area. Therefor it's easiest to
accept both variants, so the writer can decide in which words he uses o and
in which ö. The north-east of province antwerp has shortening to /a/, but
this area is not extensive enough to consider a third variety - the two most
used are already complicated enough.
ië to i
oë to oe or ö, except in "oëk" ('ook') where it is oek or ok (as the usual
ö-area has o in this word without excceptions)
uë to u

Umlaut occurs without exception in those words which have it all over both
provinces, loke Germanic ô and â: zuke, kèès, vule, etc. Umlaut of au is
optional, so geloëve next to geluëve. The South-West corner of Vl.Brabant
has uë for all Germanic au's, with and without umlaut, so they will have to
stick to the dominating oë everywhere.

Short Dutch o in front of nk, ng, m and  few other words is still a problem,
as joenk, loemp, etc dominate, but oep and loecht (lucht) for example have a
much less wide range. So far I have put short oe and o next to eachother,
but I still want to solve this problem, following the Standard language
chosing /o/ would be most logical, but chosing /oe/ would maybe make it more
brabantish and create more clear distantiation.

Deletion of final -d in verb endings after long vowel so far has been left
optional, as it seems most of Vlaams Brabant retains this? in words as
gezee[d], ge zij[d] or ge zè[d], hij hee[d], etc.

So here is a sample of the proposed spelling system:
http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/brabants-standard.php
 Where variation is allowed, hold your mouse pointer over the underlined
word to see what other variants are allowed so far.

ANY feedback, comments etc. are more than welcome. If there are things you
feel make it too distant and too little usable for you as a Brabantish
speaker, please tell me what points I still need to work out better. Well I
suppose you know what to do:)
Cheers!

Diederik

PS: nou for 'normal' nu and ou for 'u', 'jou' usually evoke a lot of
reaction/resistance and seem very 'hollandic' to most. However they are the
only acceptable standard written forms. They are usually pronounced naa or
nei, aa or ei or similar, but then again most other ou's are as well, as
"haave" 'houden > houwen', and a similar u > ou we have in douwen,
houwelijk, spouwen pronounced as daave/deive, speive and so on.

•

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