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L O W L A N D S - L - 06 January 2007 - Volume 02<br>======================================================================<br><p class="MsoNormal">From: <span style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);"><span id="_user_Karl-Heinz.Lorenz@gmx.net">
R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>></span></span><br>
Subject: Etymology<br><br>The following page has been mentioned a couple of times now:<br><br><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/MoinMoinEtymology" target="_blank">
http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/MoinMoinEtymology</a><br>
<br>
Incidentally what gets me on that page is the following:<br>
<br>
<quote><br>
Someone from Hamburg
said: Hamburgers don't talk platt, they talk "Missingsch" (I suppose
that means something like Falschgold).<br>
</quote><br>
<br>
This shows you what some people know ... or don't know. <br><br>Well, it
shouldn't be too surprising considering that at least in the city itself Low Saxon has been leading the life of a closet language for quite some time. As I have mentioned
before, some people that I knew in Hamburg most of my life only recently "came out" to me as private users of Low Saxon (Low German, "Platt"). <br><br>However, even outside my own circle of relatives I've always known some people that were not secretive in using it and were not shy of using it in public, some of them even in an "in your face" way (which has always impressed and inspired me). Well, I suppose they were a dying breed, and these days younger people even in the city itself are under the false impression that there are no more speakers left, probably especially those that have "superior" formal education and rarely or never stray into the "inferior" (working-class and "rag-tag") parts of town and have no social interactions with people in or from such parts.
<br><br>Also please bear in mind that Hamburg's industrial areas and their adjacent working-class neighborhoods were pretty much decimated by Allied carpet bombing raids with the result that many LS-speaking "local yokels" (including my maternal grandfather) were killed, and among those that survived but had become homeless many eventually moved away. This was a major blow to Hamburg city Low Saxon. The "better" areas of town, however, were hardly touched by the bombing or got away totally unscathed, and very few LS speakers lived there.
<br><br>Another blow to the language came with the so-called post-war "economic miracle." It drove the language into the underground and caused many parents and grandparents to address young people only in German, albeit in Missingsch German in most cases. The assumption then was that use of the language would be detrimental to young people's economic success in the light of all those wonderful new opportunities, that at very least it would tarnish their social standing. Many people refer to this as the "dark era" regarding the language. I know that it was, for I have lived through it and witnessed the results, the only difference being that I myself did not buy the "crap" and instead soaked up whatever I could.
<br><br>We mustn't forget that Hamburg is not only a city but is also a German state (<span style="font-style: italic;">Bundesland</span>) that contains rural areas in which the language has faired far better and is still fairly widely spoken. Many city people had and have relatives in those areas, if they didn't even grow up in them themselves. The same goes for numerous towns and villages not far away across the borders in Schleswig and in Lower Saxony. We have relatives there, and this is where I heard Low Saxon spoken and was spoken to in it on a regular basis, aside from in-city gatherings of family and friends at which there were no "yellow" pretences and a bit of booze brought out the old lingo full-force. It is true, though, that many of those outlying areas within commutable distance have now become bedroom communities for people that work in Hamburg, and the LS-speaking locals have become minorities there.
<br><br>In a word, please don't go by pronouncements some people spout off for lack of better knowledge.<br><br>Kumpelmenten,<br>Reinhard/Ron</p>
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