<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">=========================================================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 08 February 2008 - Volume 01<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
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=========================================================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Maria Elsie Zinsser</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:ezinsser@icon.co.za">ezinsser@icon.co.za</a>><br>
</span>Subject: LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2008.02.07 (06) [E]<br><br></span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Hi all,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Jacqueline, I find this topic extremely interesting! I know that women use </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">different
words than men. I've often sat through mining engineering
presentations listening to female seismologists using different words
than male seismologists to explain the same concept. </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Research
confirms that women speak in a higher pitched voice to lovers and
children alike. Nowadays women can empower themselves by going on
courses to learn which words to use within a male dominated
industry. </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Edith Raidt postulates (_Afrikaans en sy Europese
verlede_) that women and children were pivotal in the development of
Afrikaans. Perhaps that is why Afrikaans is so comfy
with diminutives? </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">I am highly amused that my niece who
married an American five years ago and lives in RI actually does the
typical American end pitch in Afrikaans! (Nee, Willem is 'n wonderlike
soet baba en slaap </span><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2">SNAGS DEUR</font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="1">?</font><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">) </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Regards,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Elsie Zinsser </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
</p>
<div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: <span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong</span> <span><<a href="mailto:Dutchmatters@comcast.net" target="_blank">Dutchmatters@comcast.net</a>></span><br>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2008.02.07 (01) [E]<br></div>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;"><font color="navy" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">Maybe this does not belong on this forumat all. Or maybe it should go under linguistics or History of Language Ron????</span></font></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;"><font color="navy" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">A
Dutch friend and I were talking aboutdifferent ways in which women and
men express themselves. What boils down to apreference for different
words like "leuk" and "heus",may have existed already long ago. It
could even have gone to the extreme thatmen and women spoke a different
language all together. That of course is alsopart of our society, but
at least we use the same language.</span></font></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;"><font color="navy" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">It
seemed to me that that would have beenmore prevalent when the tasks of
men and women in their society were far moredifferent than they are
today. It could also be a subject for a Science Fictionnovel.</span></font></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;"><font color="navy" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">Are there any indications that this istrue, or just another figment of my imagination?.</span></font></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;"><font color="navy" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">On the other hand there are people in thegroup with wide interests and a vast and arcane knowledge. Maybe you can helpme.</span></font></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;"><font color="navy" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">Jacqueline</span></font></p><div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
----------<br><br>From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>><br>Subject: Sociolinguistics<br><br>Hi, Jacqueline!<br><br>The topic you brought up does fit very well, as long as we pursue it with a Lowlands focus.<br>
<br>Gender
differences (just like differences between other social groups) can be
observed in all languages. In the West they may have been stronger in
the past, but only one or two generations ago.<br><br>There are or at
least used to be extremes, such as societies (especially in Oceania),
in which men and women speak different languages among themselves and
have a lingua franca between them. What this means in most cases is
that boys start being raised with the neutral language but having
rudimentary exposure to women's language before they move into the
men's huts and acquire the men's language.<br><br>In most cases, as
among the Lowlands languages, there tend to be gender differences in
terms of lexical and idiomatic choices, syntactic structure prevalence
and intonation pattern differences. In studies about English varieties,
for instance, it has been observed that women tend to use interrogative
tags more than men (e.g., "It's cold today" v "It's cold today, <u>isn't it</u>?")
Men tend to use such construction more often when they are being
particularly polite, actually submissive. In other words, the theory is
that women's speech habits contain vestiges of submissive expressions,
as opposed to declarative or authoritative expressions. Put in yet
simpler terms, women tend to more often use expressions that ask for
confirmation.<br><br>Some time ago I read that in some European
languages certain expressions, especially equivalents of "Yes," "True"
or "All right," are sometimes said while <u>in</u>haling rather than
exhaling. In English I only once in a while hear it from non-native
speakers. One study I remember reading focused on Finnish and claimed
that this speech habit was far more prevalent among women than among
men. Ever since then I've been listening for it. Most recently I've
heard it from women speaking Russian and Farsi for instance. I've never
heard it in Mandarin Chinese. I also realize that the same occurs in
Low Saxon and in German, at least in the north. The other day I heard
it in the speech of one of my sisters on the phone, and it occurred
twice: once when she was confirming a not-so-happy fact, and the other
time when she acknowledged something I said about something worrisome.
Now that I've become aware of it, I've noticed that I do it myself once
in a while, even in English ("Yeah ..." or "Sure ..."). I am not quite
sure if women do it more often than men, though, and I wonder if any of
you have made any relevant observations. Once a native English speaker
told me that he finds this habit not only foreign but also anywhere
between weird and annoying, depending on his mood. I've heard other
people, especially North Americans, making similar remarks about
frequently used tag constructions.<br><br>Regards,<br>Reinhard/Ron<br></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br>----------<br><br>From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <<a href="mailto:ingmar.roerdinkholder@WORLDONLINE.NL">ingmar.roerdinkholder@WORLDONLINE.NL</a>></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2008.02.07 (06) [E]</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">I remember a case of male versus female speech that I found very</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">interesting: in Tunesian Arabic, men have a different pronunciation of the</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Arabic diphthongs aw and ay than women: if I'm right, the men have the</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">pronunciation with monophthongs ê and ô (or î and û?) as in Algeria and</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Morocco, whereas the women have retained the diphthongs as in f.i.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Lebanese. Something that intrigued me too is that the Jewish Tunesians</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">have the female pronunciation with diphthongs, and so does the Christian</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Maltese.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">About Ron's "inhaling Ja": in the Netherlands, I only know that from</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Frisians and from Low Saxon speakers in the Northern provinces, Drenthe,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Stellingwerven and Groningen. To be true, I've always found it a bit weird</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">and annoying too, it sounds like kind of a sigh, something like: I'm</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">pitiful, insecure, I can't help it that I'm here... But that's maybe just</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">what I hear in it.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">I think women use it a lot more than men, but I also know it from gays.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">And older, low-educated women use it more then younger ones.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Ingmar</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br>
From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Diederik Masure</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:didimasure@hotmail.com">didimasure@hotmail.com</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Subject: LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2008.02.07 (06) [E]</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><blockquote style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Ron wrote: <br><br>Some
time ago I read that in some European languages certain expressions,
especially equivalents of "Yes," "True" or "All right," are sometimes
said while <u>in</u>haling rather than exhaling. In English I only
once in a while hear it from non-native speakers. One study I remember
reading focused on Finnish and claimed that this speech habit was far
more prevalent among women than among men. Ever since then I've been
listening for it. Most recently I've heard it from women speaking
Russian and Farsi for instance. I've never heard it in Mandarin
Chinese. I also realize that the same occurs in Low Saxon and in
German, at least in the north. The other day I heard it in the speech
of one of my sisters on the phone, and it occurred twice: once when she
was confirming a not-so-happy fact, and the other time when she
acknowledged something I said about something worrisome. Now that I've
become aware of it, I've noticed that I do it myself once in a while,
even in English ("Yeah ..." or "Sure ..."). I am not quite sure if
women do it more often than men, though, and I wonder if any of you
have made any relevant observations. Once a native English speaker told
me that he finds this habit not only foreign but also anywhere between
weird and annoying, depending on his mood. I've heard other people,
especially North Americans, making similar remarks about frequently
used tag constructions.<br><br>Regards,<br>Reinhard/Ron<br></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Diederik: <br>I
share this observation, in Scandinavian (Norwegian and Swedish at
least) the "ja på innpust" (ingressive 'ja'; puste = breathe) is quite
common. I am not sure if I can recall a man doing this here in Norway
(maybe once or twice?) but generally it are women. I don't have any
numbers or statistical proof but it is quite obvious:)<br><br><a href="http://paraplyen.nhh.no/paraplyen/akiv/2001/juni/ja_pa_innp" target="_blank">http://paraplyen.nhh.no/paraplyen/akiv/2001/juni/ja_pa_innp</a><br>Apparently
it means to express the listener is following concentratedly on what
the other is saying, rather than really confirming facts. <br><br>Diederik. <br><br>----------<br><br>From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:Dutchmatters@comcast.net">Dutchmatters@comcast.net</a>><br>
Subject: </span>LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2008.02.07 (06) [E]<br><br></span><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" face="Arial" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><font color="navy"><span style="color: navy;">Thanks Ron that is quite an answer.
It brings up more questions than I started out with and it will take me a while
to digest it all. However here is one response to start with:</span></font></span></font>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font color="navy" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;"> Ron
says: </span></font>Some time
ago I read that in some European languages certain expressions, especially
equivalents of "Yes," "True" or "All right," are
sometimes said while <u>in</u>haling rather than exhaling.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Yes, I have noticed it too. I always
equated it with a "thoughtful" answer as opposed to an unquestioned
answer. Yes of course, one might take this hesitancy for feminine and the
directness for masculine, but I have noticed that many of my "intellectual"
male English speaking friends do it too. Their Dutch equivalent would say Mmm…and
then continue with a more direct answer.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">How neat that you had the example
that I hoped for in the example of the Oceanic tribes. Does that makes the
girls into bi-lingual and the boys into tri-lingual? Unless of course, the
tribe accepts warrior princesses.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There will be more questions forecoming.
Thanks again. Jacqueline</span></font></p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="lDACoc">----------<br><br>From: </span><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Luc Hellinckx</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:luc.hellinckx@gmail.com">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</a>></span><span class="lDACoc"><br>
Subject: </span>LL-L "Sociolinguistics"<br><br></span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Beste Jacqueline,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
You wrote:</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<blockquote style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" type="cite">
<p><font color="navy" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">A Dutch friend
and I were talking about
different ways in which women and men express themselves. What boils
down to a
preference for different words like "leuk" and "heus",
may have existed already long ago. It could even have gone to the
extreme that
men and women spoke a different language all together. That of course
is also
part of our society, but at least we use the same language.</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: navy;">It seemed to me
that that would have been
more prevalent when the tasks of men and women in their society were
far more
different than they are today. It could also be a subject for a Science
Fiction
novel.</span></font></p>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Just a few general observations I've been making myself:</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<ul style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><li>Men tend to use more subordinating (and coordinating)
conjunctions than women (both in speech and written). This results in
men making longer sentences than women. From a structural/logical point
of view these male sentences are more tightly knit, women's are more
loose. Maybe, this is just a wild guess, that men speak less than
women, but when they do speak, they seem more keen on getting their act
together (grossly exaggerated three registers: silence, command or
speech <span><span> :-D </span></span>...less
thinking AS we speak)</li><li>Women have bigger vocabularies and are more precise in choosing
the right word for the right circumstances.</li><li>Women use more fillers than men do ("does silence spoil the
atmosphere"? <span><span> ;-) </span></span>).
Just notice, how often some American girls/women use "like". "Like" is
sort of a prelude to a description that tries to drag the listener in,
enhancing his/her empathy through a more personal approach. Belgian
Dutch girls are already copying this style. Guys don't. Which brings me
to my next point:</li><li>Women are more innovative. Maybe this is the result of women
viewing language more as a tool, as a mouldable medium, something they
can also use to their benefit. Here in Belgium, the number of female
students majoring in communication sciences far outweighs the male one.
Not sure though about the male/female ratio of translators and
journalists.</li></ul><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Again, these are just my own personal thoughts, I have no statistical
evidence to back this up (except for point number 4). </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Would written language resemble spoken language more among women than
among men?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Kind greetings,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Luc Hellinckx</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: Sociolinguistics<br><br>Well, well, folks, this certainly has struck some chords, and all your responses so far have been fascinating.<br><br>So far it seems as though this is a Continental Northern European thing. I was interested to hear Ingmar say that he knows it only from Frisian and Low Saxon in the Netherlands. (I suspect that native speakers of these will carry it over to Dutch as a second language.) <br>
<br>For now I can include: Scandinavian (and I've heard it in Danish also), Finnish, Estonian (two colleagues of mine), Russian (Finnic or Scandinavian substratum?), Latvian (a doctor of mine), Low Saxon, Frisian, and Northern German. For reasons of history and spread (areal feature) I would like to know in this connection about Northumbrian, Scots, Shetlandic, Faeroese, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Livonian, Kashubian and Polish.<br>
<br>Since this phenomenon appears not to be limited to equivalents of "yes," and I quite agree with Jacqueline and Diederik that we are dealing with some sort of "hmm ... well ... yeah ..." mode, I propose the technical term "pensive ingressive" (not to be confused with "passive aggressive").<br>
<br>As you may have known already or at least gathered from Diederik's posting, an inhaled sound or sound sequence is called "ingressive" in phonology and phonetics. In many languages, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia, certain consonants are ingressive. This sort of ingression appears to be unknown in Europe with the exception of the phenomenon we are talking about here.<br>
<br>On another note, if it is true that this phenomenon is more common among women than among men, I wonder if a related, albeit contextually not identical, phenomenon in English (at least in American English) is "I don't know (about that/this) ..." I notice that this is also used more frequently by women, especially by women responding to a man's statement. I consider it an expression of polite disagreement and evasion, usually as another way of saying "I don't agree with you but don't want to get into a discussion about it."<br>
<br>Regard,<br>Reinhard/Ron<br><br></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"></span>