<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 15 June 2009 - Volume 08<br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)</span><br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
<span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">Language Codes: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/codes.php">lowlands-l.net/codes.php</a></span><br>===========================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: Kreimer-de Fries Joachim <<a href="mailto:soz-red@jpberlin.de">soz-red@jpberlin.de</a>></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: LL-L "Language construction" 2009.06.15 (07) [DE-EN]</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;">Salve, Lowlanders,</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;">
in addition to Marlou's thoughts on the modernization of Low Saxon
under "LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.06.14 (03) [DE-NDS]" and my consenting
reaction("LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.06.15 (06) [DE-NDS]" I'm going to tell
you, that also my Westphalian friend Olaf Bordasch has posted
remarkable thoughts on that matter on his website. He comes also to the
result (that he tould me already some time ago), that, for the survival
of Low Saxon, we need a kind of written (high) language, a</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;">
»written Saxon language«, tying up to the written Low German language
of the 16th and 17th century. "It should not be written phonetically
but cover up and tide over the dialectical differences, instead of
underlining them."</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;">
At the end of his webpage </span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" href="http://www.plattdeutsch-niederdeutsch.net/" target="_blank">http://www.plattdeutsch-niederdeutsch.net/</a><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">sprachgeschi</span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" id=":yt" class="ii gt">
chte.htm<br>
- under the heading "Die Zukunft des Niederdeutschen" he writes inter alia:<br>
<br>
"Die gute Nachricht ist, dass der Anteil derer, die in Umfragen mäßige
aktive Kenntnisse des Niederdeutschen angeben, viel langsamer sinkt. Im
Allgemeinen wird es sich dabei um Leute handeln, die das Niederdeutsche
erst später gelernt haben. Die Verbreitung von Wörterbüchern,
Grammatiken, niederdeutscher Literatur u.s.w. ist offensichtlich nicht
ohne Wirkung geblieben. Ãœbrigens lehrt das Beispiel Irlands auch, dass
es durchaus möglich ist ein gesellschaftliches Klima herbeizuführen, in
der die Menschen sich wieder der Minderheitensprache zuwenden und diese
auch aktiv gebrauchen. (In Irland sind dies etwa 15% der Bevölkerung.)<br>
Dazu bedarf es allerdings einer geschriebenen Hochsprache, in der sich
z.B. auch wissenschaftliche Literatur verfassen lässt. Nun gibt es in
Norddeutschland tatsächlich Ansätze, einige der bestehenden
Kulturdialekte zu Hochsprachen auszubauen. Das wird aber nicht
funktionieren, denn Sprecher aus anderen Regionen werden niemals eine
fremde Mundart akzeptieren. Ein Dialekt bleibt ein Dialekt. Die
regelmäßig zu beobachtenden Meinungsverschiedenheiten zwischen
Sprechern aus verschiedenen Regionen hinsichtlich der anzuwendenden
Schreibweise sind letztlich Folge der inadäquaten am Hochdeutschen
orientierten Schreibung.<br>
<br>
Eine Erfolg versprechende Möglichkeit könnte die Entwicklung einer
Schreibsprache Sassisch nach dem Vorbild der frühneuniederdeutschen
Schriftsprache des 16. und 17. Jhs. sein. Solch eine Schriftsprache
dürfte nicht phonetisch geschrieben werden, sie müsste die
Dialektunterschiede zudecken und überbrücken, anstelle sie zu betonen."<br>
<br>
Goutgaun!<br>
<br>
joachim<br>
--<br>
Kreimer-de Fries<br>
Osnabrüg => Berlin-Pankow</div><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>><br>
Subject: Lexicon<br><br>Thanks for sharing your interesting thoughts and findings, Joachim.<br><br>Fundamental to this issue, I think, are the attitudes people have to Low Saxon. Let me try a basic classification pertaining to the situation in Northern Germany:<br>
</span><ul style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><li>Those that despite regional language status see Low Saxon as a dialect group (<i>Mundartgruppe</i>) of German, thus as subordinate to German:<br>"Dialects are essentially irrelevant. Let people talk properly (in Standard German) if they want to be able to talk about anything needed nowadays!"<br>
(Klaus Groth summarizing this attitude: "De Kinner lehrt al in de Schol: | Dat weer so grof, so rog, | Paß höchstens in’e Kæk bi’n Kohl | Un achter Putt un Plog.")<br><br></li><li>Those that may recognize Low Saxon as a language in its own right but one which is on its way out, should be left alone to die or maybe mummified and displayed in a museum:<br>
"You simply can not talk about just anything in this language. Enjoy it with its limitations while it's still hear. Don't try to make it what it is not!"<br><br></li><li>Those that believe that Low Saxon might survive as a jumple of dialects only, promoted by local organizations that do or do not collabirate, without any sort or standardization being promoted or attempted:<br>
"No language engineering and planning please! We like the diversity and fragmentation in which local kahunas have their say. We want promoters of unification excluded, because we don't trust them, believe they want to do away with dialect diversity and instead create a single standard variety. <i>Our</i> dialect is so special, so different, so illusive that no one can really understand it, let alone make any sort of standard writing system apply to it."<br>
<br></li><li>Those that want the language to survive and believe this can only be accomplished by unification and standardization:<br>"Centuries of exclusion and neglect have been confining the language to limited contexts. It needs to catch up to remain viable, although the means of doing so are still being debated. Dialect diversity needs not suffer because of creating a unified, cross-dialect writing system, even though opponents claim it will kill diversity. Most speakers can understand one another across dialect boundaries when they speak. Diverse "phonetic" spelling emphasizes the boundaries."</li>
</ul><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Incentives to update the lexicon thus depend on one's basic attitude. Some believe it should not be done at all, and ways and means are still debatable among those that do approve of it. There is no need to discuss tthe ways and means with folks that are opposed to it to begin with.<br>
<br>Lexical development takes numerous forms, and it tends to occur naturally if allowed to occur. <br><br>Neologisms (new words and expressions) fall into two categories:<br></span><ol style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<li>loanwords</li><ol><li>phonologically adapted importations</li><li>calques (i.e. translated loanwords)<br></li></ol><li>language-internal creations<br></li></ol><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Most languages have a mixture of all these. Most of them enter the language gradually. Once they are considered established and generally accepted they become official. That's when they are included in dictionaries, for instance, also when they are used in official education if the language is used in that capacity.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">New words and expressions tend to stand a chance of making it by way of usage within large communities. Very often this happens through literature. Go back to older literature in most languages and you'll find implicitly proposed neologisms that never made to to the stage of general acceptance. Some of them did make it.</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;">Again, please look at the case of Neo-Norwegian (</span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">nynorsk</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">). There is only a loose standard that is being constantly fed by relevant dialects and is also not immune to influences of the majority Dano-Norwegian (</span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">bokmål</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">) language. The dialect provenance of spoken and written Neo-Norwegian is in most cases obvious to listeners and speakers. But this is only possible because there is a single writing system that accommodates all relevant dialects. In this interdialectal communication, words and expressions may be borrowed across dialect boundaries and may attain some sort of inter-dialectical status.</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;">As for Low Saxon neologisms such as </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Huulbessen</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> ("howl broom" = 'vacuum cleaner'), </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Puuschenkino</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> ("slipper cinema" = 'television') and </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Klœnkassen</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> ("chat box" = 'telephone'), they seem to have started as what you might want to call "nicknames" (much like "boob tube" for "television" in English). Low Saxon speakers love this sort of thing. Personally I am not opposed to such words becoming "official". I find it no less acceptable than the possible German calque *</span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Stuuvsuger</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> (< </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Staubsauger</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> "dust sucker") 'vacuum cleaner'.</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;">That's my 1.34 Euro's worth.</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;">Reinhard/Ron</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Seattle, USA</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;">P.S.: The web servers are on which all LL-L pages are crashed due to a power outage and have been down for hours now. Grrrrrr ...</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
•
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