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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">===========================================<br>
L O W L A N D S - L - 06 September 2008 - Volume 05<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
From: "Arthur Jules Roonacker" <<a href="mailto:arthurjules@rogers.com">arthurjules@rogers.com</a>><br>
Subject: Language Varieties - Flemish</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Dear
Lowlanders,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Recently, a
friend of mine strongly recommended reading "Het Verdriet van
Belgie" by Hugo Claus.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Not
surprisingly, though our local public Kitchener & Waterloo libraries in Canada
have a section "Foreign Languages - Dutch", they do not
carry Hugo Claus. Most books in Dutch in that section are
translations of the original English ones. However, I did find and took out the
English translation called "The Sorrow of Belgium".</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">I found the
Translator's Note quite interesting. By way of introduction, the
translator Arnold J. Pomerans describes the historical and political
setting and shows he understood he had his work
cut out eventually stating about Flemish:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">"The
strands of these linguistic differences, together with those of the various
religious, cultural, and political differences, are woven into Hugo Claus's
long novel. The speech of his Flemish characters is sprinkled with
old-fashioned, sometimes archaic, words (which makes it High Flemish), with
dialect (Low Flemish), and with great many gallicisms." ... etc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Flemish
being my mother tongue and having learned Dutch, French and German in school,
I do understand the translator's challenge. (I wish I could read the book in
its original language and see how well he did.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">What brings
me to you is the expressions "High Flemish" and "Low
Flemish" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">As
expressions, they are new to me. I had heard of High German and Low German,
High Anglican and Low (?) Anglican, the latter more related to substrates of a
Christian denomination. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">I know they
had gone from calling it ABN, Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (Civilized
Dutch) to AN, Algemeen Nederlands (Common Dutch) and
somewhere "Standard Dutch" covers both but I had not read
of this "High & Low Flemish" before. Is this something that had
passed me by in the distant fatherland? I also have not come across
it in our Lowlanders messages.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">I would
like to hear from our Flemish and Dutch friends as well as from our cousins in South Africa if
they, by analogy are comfortable with 'High Afrikaans' and 'Low Afrikaans'.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">By the way,
I wouldn't mind adopting these new (?) expressions when explaining
the degrees of variations going from "plat" to
"cleaned-up" (gekuist) to "civilized" (beschaafd) to
"standard" (standardized) Flemish (or Dutch?) as long as I am on the
same page with my fellow Flemings and Dutchmen. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Please
straiten me out or bring me up to date.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Thanks,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Jules.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><a href="mailto:arthurjules@rogers.com" target="_blank">arthurjules@rogers.com</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">----------<br>
<br>
<span style="color: black;"></span>From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>> <br>
Subject: Language varieties<br>
<br>
Hi, Jules!<br>
<br>
It was nice hearing from you again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: black;">I
have long been aware that some German-speaking linguists have expanded the
qualifiers <i>Hoch...</i> versus <i>Nieder...</i> or <i>Platt...</i> to other
languages, including examples like <i>Hochchinesisch</i> (for Standard Mandarin
and its written equivalent), also <i>Hochd</i></span><i><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">änisch</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> versus <i>Plattdänisch</i> (or "non-scientific" <i>Kartoffeldänisch</i> "Potato Danish")
... all of which irks me no end. I had hoped that this could be contained, but recently
I noticed that several English writers follow this tradition with "High" and "Low".<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Reinhard/Ron</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
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