LL-L "Language varieties" 2013.12.09 (01) [EN]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L -  09 December 2013 - Volume 01

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From: Roger Thijs <rogerthijs at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL Language varieties

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language varieties>
> Ingmar, thanks for the intro to "Belgian" sent earlier today. Are you
sure it isn't a hoax? (I for one would not be very amused if it were one.)
What is the source of your information? I found no reference to the variety
anywhere.

This is clearly a hoax.
The Germanic - Romance border is very sharply delimiting both language
groups, there is nothing between.

A couple of anomalies:
- José Cajot reported about 10 years ago that the village of
"Zichen-Zussen-Bolder" misses the Limburgish bitonality. ZZB forms a pocket
at the very South of the Limburgish language area
- The village of Recht at the East of Belgium, in the transition area
between the Ripuarian and Moselle Franconean area, has a very recognizable
sound. The village was part of Prussian Rhenania from 1815 tit 1919, and
some explain the sound as due to the presence of workers from Tyrol
imported by the Prussians, with an intend to homogenize their territory
linguistically. (There are also similarely "Pfalzer" villages in the
Kleve-Goch area)
- I think the area of Tongeren, at the extreme South of the Panninger Line
has a very specific sound inside the Limburgish area (vowel shifts, French
R). Historically it remained part of the Liege territory, where the area
around became the County of Loon. Further it was a Roman town, head of a
civitas that reached far inside the actual Netherlands. Some think the town
remained a bit longer linguistically Romance than the villages around. But
when we started to get records on paper in the 11th century, it was all
Germanic, except where "Latin" remained being used as church and
chancellery language.

Further:
- South Limburgish dialects clearly got some contamination with technical
terms borrowed from French and/or Walloon. However mixed languages are only
really popular in literature more to the West in Brussels, for theatre
plays, jokes, comics etc.
- Limburgish is in the area of smooth transition between Low German and
Middle German, so almost every village has its variant in that transition.

All language areas over here have been thoroughly screened several times by
university guys composing a lot of atlases mapping an area for each word or
phenomenon. What was never mapped, to my knowledge, were language
differences within a village between social groups, within families, within
generations, between sexes etc., but whatever these difference are or were,
people continued to communicate easily in their direct environments.
Since there have been somme territorial claims for the land along the
language border, based on languages spoken, during past two centuries (cf.
the Belgian split-up along the border, the occupations of Luxemburg, the
Lorraine-Alsatian moves, the split of the canton of Bern in Switserland,
the troubles in the South of Tyrol etc.), potentially exceptional languages
situations cannot have missed claims of land by one or another country.

Finally there are some slang variants of closed groups, often called
"bargoens" in Dutch, and "Rottwelsch" in Germany. I think they just have a
"secret" vocabulary. Anyhow they are studied in linguistic literature and
relatively well documented.
Some people also started to compose languages for joke, as modifying words
by inverting the order of the characters. Some decades ago such a case was
reported for a dozen of speakers in the village of Kortessem. I don't think
it is still used by anybody there.

When Caesar conquered Gaul he noticed that in Belgium (extending from just
North of Paris till the river Rhine) a distinct language was spoken. Btw
those Belgian tribes were also very present in the South of England. Some
think some early germanic penetrations had an influence on the language,
though the roots in names of landmarks and people were quite Celtic/Gallic.

Unfortunately we do not have undiscovered tribes deep in our very small
forests.
Anyhow we are in the period candidates for Prince Carnaval are preparing
their speaches.

Regards,
Roger
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