LL-L "Resources" 2012.10.28 (04) [EN]

Sun Oct 28 23:38:06 UTC 2012

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 L O W L A N D S - L - 28 October 2012 - Volume 04
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Resources

 ----- Forwarded Message -----
*From:* Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com>
*To:* info at alice-in-wonderland-books.com
*Sent:* Saturday, October 27, 2012 9:36 PM
*Subject:* [Info] "Alice’s Adventures in an Appalachian Wonderland"
published by Evertype

Evertype would like to announce the publication of Byron W. Sewell and
Victoria J. Sewell’s translation—or perhaps transposition—"Alice's
Adventures in an Appalachian Wonderland" which is written in the rich
Appalachian dialect of West Virginia. The book is fully illustrated by
Byron in the style of John Tenniel's classic illustrations. A page with
links to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk is available at
http://www.evertype.com/books/alice-en-appal.html . Bookstores can order
copies at a discount from the publisher.

>From the front matter:

On Dialect Orthography

Publishing text in an unstandardized orthography is a challenge. A balance
must be found between faithfulness to the sounds of the dialect and
legibility to an audience who reads the standard language. Engish dialect
spellings are nothing new, of course: from Robert Louis Stevenson’s
representation of Scots in Kidnapped to Mark Twain’s representation of
Missouri dialect in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn various approaches have
been taken. Often these approaches make use of what is known as “the
apologetic apostrophe” to mark letters from the standard language which
have been “dropped”.

Such spellings tend to create a distracting visual clutter; this was
recognized in the 1947 Scots Style Sheet and the 1985 Recommendations for
Writers in Scots, both of which discourage the apologetic apostrophe while
retaining it for ordinary purposes. Many of these recommendations apply
easily to the linguistic features of Appalachian English, and have been
followed in the text used in this book.

Since the reader may appreciate a summary of the orthographic conventions
used here for the Appalachian dialect, a list is given below.

• Words ending in -ing have been spelled as -in; participles in -en have
been retained: writin ‘writing’, written ‘written’; nothin ‘nothing’.

• The final apostrophe is not used: an ‘and’ is used instead of an’; em
‘them’ is used instead of ’em; o ‘of’ is used instead of o’; wi ‘with’ is
used instead of wi’.

• Before a vowel o is written of: one of em ‘one of them’.

• The reduced vowel in to is written as te rather than as t’; when stressed
the word is written to, as in I don’t have te wear shoes in the summer
iffen I don’t want to.

• Both hit and it ‘it’ are found, with the latter being more common, and
used in unstressed positions.

• Initial syllables of other kinds when dropped are simply dropped: member
‘remember’, spectin ‘expecting’.

• Medial letters when dropped are not indicated with the “apologetic
apostrophe”: lil ‘little’ (not li’l); agin ‘again; against’ (not ag’in).

• Final clusters in -l- are reduced: sef ‘self’, hep ‘help’.

• Final clusters in -t are treated variously: -pt is normally kept, while
-ct is usually reduced to -ck: cept ‘except’, fack ‘fact’. Although -st is
often pronounced -ss, orthographic -st is still written for clarity: most
[moʊs].

• Final clusters in -nd are treated in a number of ways. In most words
where the -d is dropped entirely, it is written -nn: lann ‘land’, lannin
‘landing’, stann ‘stand’, stannin ‘standing’, but under ‘under’. In words
where the -d is elided in final position but returns when a suffix is
added, it is written -nd: find [fɑːn], findin [ˈfɑːndin].

• Contractions of the negative particle are treated in two ways. In
monosyllables which end in a glottal stop, n’t is written: ain’t [eɪnʔ],
cain’t [keɪnʔ], don’t [doʊnʔ], won’t [woʊnʔ]; in polysyllables the syllabic
nasal is written ’n: did’n [dɪdn]~[dɪtn], had’n [hædn]~[hætn], would’n
[wʊdn]~[wʊtn].

• The participial a- is prefixed with a hyphen to gerunds: a-readin
‘reading’, a-wearin ‘wearing’.

• Reduced unstressed “have” is written ’a: had’n’a ‘hadn’t’ve’, I’d’a
‘I’d’ve’, would’a ‘would’ve’, you’d’a ‘you’d’ve’.

• The word “Indian” has been respelt using the traditional form Injun (also
used in Twain) because this reflects a normal phonetic development of
[ˈɪndiən] to [ˈɪndʒən]; compare Arcadian [ɑɹˈkeɪdiən] and Cajun [ˈkeɪdʒən].

The intent here was to normalize towards a literary orthography, rather
than towards a phonemic respelling of the language entirely; such a
respelling would doubtless be filled with unnecessary “eye-dialect”
(funkshun instead of function, and so forth). I would be interested to
receive comment from readers regarding the suitability of this orthography
for representing Appalachian dialect. Inevitably in such a venture there
will be inconsistencies, of course. I trust these will not distract readers
from their enjoyment of Byron and Victoria’s splendid re-telling.

Michael Everson
Westport, October 2012

==========
Michael Everson
Evertype, http://alice-in-wonderland-books.com
_______________________________________________
Info mailing list
Info at alice-in-wonderland-books.com
http://alice-in-wonderland-books.com/mailman/listinfo/info_alice-in-wonderland-books.com

----------

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

Translations of *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland* into other Lowlands
language varieties by Evertype <http://alice-in-wonderland-books.com/>:

Low German (Low Saxon):
*Alice ehr Eventüürn in't Wunnerland*
Translated by Reinhard F. Hahn (2010)

Mainland Scots:
Ailice's Àventurs in Wunnerland
Translated by Sandy Fleemin (Sandy Fleming) (2011)

Ulster Scots:
*Alice's Carrànts in Wunnerlan *
Translated by Anne Morrison-Smyth (2011)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

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