LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.12.11 (03) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 11 December 2010 - Volume 03
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>

Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.12.11 (02) [EN]



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

That’s a great map, by the way.

Thanks. But I want to say, that the regions in the map were made up by
myself for the sake of splitting up the Low Saxon language territory into a
limited number of regions roughly similar in size. There's a fair amount of
arbitrariness in the map. There are some regions I would put my hand in fire
for (e.g. my own dialect of the Stader Geest really is a meaningful
subdivision of Low Saxon and exists in the region as depicted in the map
aligned by isoglosses) while other regions just constitute the leftovers
that remained after I had inserted the more meaningful regions ("115" is an
example for a region that has no defining isoglosses, but is just a
leftover). "59" is on the more meaningful end of the spectrum. There are
real isoglosses aligning the area of Eastern Pomeranian (e.g. "over" vs.
"över").

That just as a warning not to take it as a serious dialect map ;-) It's just
a tool. The cooler stuff happens when the map is colored in my word
distribution maps, e.g. for the word "up" (as opposed to "op"):
<http://plattmakers.de/?show=map&id=286><http://plattmakers.de/?show=map&id=286>.
"up" is an example where I could use Wenker maps to color the whole map.
Most maps are based on single literature references and are therefore
predominantly white, e.g. the map for "Peerd":
<http://plattmakers.de/?show=map&id=180><http://plattmakers.de/?show=map&id=180>.
Each green area here means that I went through a book documenting the
dialect and found a reference that proofs that the word is used in the
dialect. You can click the "show sources" button (or equivalent in the
chosen interface language) to view the references (usually with page numbers
and if possible URLs). For "Peerd" the link is
<http://plattmakers.de/index.php?show=map&sources=1&id=180><http://plattmakers.de/index.php?show=map&sources=1&id=180>.
So far I have collected about 75,000 literature references for about 15,000
words. Of course the references for "Peerd" are kinda boring because we
already know that's a word common to all dialects (or almost all dialects,
some prefer "Guul"). It becomes more interesting with words that are not
common West Germanic.

Marcus Buck



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

Subject: Language varieties



Thanks again, Marcus.

Despite your disclaimer, I think it’s a great, indeed *valuable* effort, as
is your dictionary project. I appreciate your engagement and laud you for
daring to attempt it. You have done a tremendous amount of valuable
research, and I for one am quite impressed by it.

I acknowledge the fact that the Low Saxon isoglosses in that particular
eastern area are especially complex, since we are dealing with “Colonial Low
Saxon” anywhere east of Hamburg, and it has what I consider a “disrupted
continuum.” It is not only a matter of the omnipresent Slavic (and farther
east also Baltic) substrata (which appear to become stronger the farther
east you go), but there are also such criteria as contact (or the lack
thereof) with the western dialects and “sporadic” colonization of eastern
regions by particular immigrant groups from the Dutch- and
Limburgish-speaking world as well as from Germany (proper) and from
Scotland. Teasing all of these influences apart would make for a great
number of doctoral dissertation topics.

Nevertheless, I put it to you (for the sake of academic banter) that below
the seemingly haphazard isoglottic (?) “mess” there seems to be a
deep-seated continuum of characteristics, especially phonological ones
(increasing frontal unrounding toward the east being one of them), aside
from Slavic and Baltic lexical substrata and some morphological remnants.
This can be seen not only in Low Saxon dialects but in Eastern German and
Yiddish ones as well.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA



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