<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">=========================================================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 23 May 2008 - Volume 05<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">-------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Please set the encoding mode to Unicode (UTF-8).</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">If viewing this in a web browser, please click on</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">the html toggle at the bottom of the archived page </span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">and switch your browser's character encoding to Unicode.</span><br>=========================================================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: R. F. Hahn <</span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a><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;">Subject: Language contacts<br><br>Hello, Íveson!<br><br>Yesterday you asked:<br><br></span><div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Can anyone tell me what the origin of the Jutlandic definite article</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
æ/å is? It's strange if compared to Norwegian, Swedish or Danish but very</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
beautiful.</span><br></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br>As you seem to know, in Scandinavian language varieties the definite article follows the noun as an enclitic or suffix. For instance, in Danish <i>en mand</i> means 'a man' while <i>manden</i> means 'the man', and <i>et hus</i> means 'a house' while <i>huset</i> means 'the house'. The general Scandinavian principle seems to be that a preposed article is indefinite and a postposed article is definite.<br>
<br>This does not apply in Jutish, at least not in most dialects, and non-application of the Scandinavian pattern is stronger the farther south you go, namely all the way down across the Danish-German border into Schleswig-Holstein. The pattern is that of West Germanic languages. This suggests that it is due to many centuries of intensive contacts and overlap with Low Saxon. Still in the recent past, if not to some degree even nowadays, many people in Southern Jutland (including today's German region of Schleswig) were bilingual in Jutish and Low Saxon, and they would have varying degrees of German and Danish proficiency as well, some of them in the southwest North Frisian as well. Furthermore, Southern Jutish has even more Low Saxon loanwords than have other Scandinavian varieties, and the northernmost Low Saxon varieties have Jutish and Danish loans and features. Also, Jutish, particularly the southern varieties, have Low Saxon phonological features, including fricativization and devoicing of syllable-final /g/ as [X], also the tendency toward dropping final <i>-e</i>. Please also bear in mind that most of what is now the German state of Schleswig-Holstein was part of Denmark and some time or other, at times as far south as to the borders of Hamburg (which made Altona, now a part of Hamburg, part of Denmark at one time). So we are talking about an inextricable overlap in one of Europe's most multilingual regions.<br>
<br>To find more about Jutish and its features as well as examples of the use of the article, please take a look at my introduction to Jutish for the Anniversary presentation: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/jysk-info.php">http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/jysk-info.php</a><br>
<br>The general "rule" is that many Western Jutish dialects distinguish two "genders" as does Danish, while Southern Jutish does not:<br><br> "the wren" - "the house"<br>
Danish: gærdesmutt<u>en</u> - hus<u>et</u><br>W. Jut.: <u>æ</u> gærresmutte - <u>å</u> hus<br>S. Jut.: <u>æ</u> gærresmut' - <u>æ</u> hus<br>L. Sax.: de tuunkruyper - dat/et/it huus<br><br>On the other hand, Southern Jutish seems to have preserved two tones, as have Norwegian and Swedish, while in Danish one of these tones has developed into a glottal interruption (<i>stød</i>).<br>
<br>When I hear old-timers speak Southern Jutish, I can clearly hear a "Low Saxon sound," a little bit in Eastern Jutish as well - as opposed to Western Jutish and Insular Danish.<br><br>You listen to samples here: <a href="http://www.elkan.dk/dialekter/">http://www.elkan.dk/dialekter/</a><br>
<br>"High" Copenhagen: Københavnsk høj københavnsk</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Western Jutland: Vestjysk<br>Eastern Jutland: Østjysk<br>
Southern Jutland: Sønderjysk<br><br>Of all the speakers I understand the South-Jutish-speaking lady the best, whereas I had to listen to the other dialects several times to understand the stories or at least get the gist.<br>
<br>I've always had a particularly soft spot for our northern neighbors.<br><br>Regards,<br>Reinhard/Ron<br></span>