<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">===========================================
<div></div></font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">L O W L A N D S - L - 19 August 2009 - Volume 01</font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#999999"><a href="mailto:lowlands@lowlands-l.net">lowlands@lowlands-l.net</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></font></div>
<font color="#999999">
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)</font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Language Codes: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/codes.php">lowlands-l.net/codes.php</a></font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"></div></font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">===========================================</font>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">From: Hellinckx Luc <</font><a href="mailto:luc.hellinckx@gmail.com"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</font></a><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </font>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Subject: LL-L "Names"</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Beste Ron,</font></div></div>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">Please bear with me going on some more about the status of my surname in the USA, or rather about my constant wonderment about such.</font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">I've started working with a new crowd of people. Again, without needing any coaching, everyone that grew up or at least spent a lot of years in this country pronounces my surname perfectly: [hɑːn] ([hA:n]).</font></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">There's an awful lot of people with a German surname in America, so some exposure to German sounds is not that strange in the U.S.</font></div>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">Other native English speakers do not, with the exception of an Englishman who studied some German and a South African who knows Afrikaans as a second language and has also come across this name before. The two (East Coast) Australians, one New Zealander and one Irish person (Belfast of non-Scottish background) asked me how to pronounce it and still say either [hæːn] ([h{:n])</font></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Maybe they compare it to their native dialects in which [ɑː] may not feature. Some coastal Dutch dialects do this as well, so called "knijpen" of [ɑː] > [æː], the Hague for example and Katwijk if I remember well.</font></div>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">or (in the case of the Irish person) [haÃùÀên] ([ha_r:n]).</font></div></blockquote>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">The guy/girl may have wondered: "What on earth can be the phonetic value of something inserted between an "a" and an "n"? Not merely something mute to lengthen the sound, the person may have thought, otherwise it would have been "Hawn" or "Haun"...mmm, that "h" resembles a long "r", so let's give it some voice: "r".</font></div>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">The Irish person (with whom I work together most closely) did not even have a clue which country of origin my name and accent signal ...</font></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Viewed from a distance, what is striking in German? Maybe the length of words...the use of "k", where English uses "c". A short surname with half of the letters being "h", does not readily qualify as German for a layman.</font></div>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">As mentioned earlier, Americans seem very familiar with my surname and tend to find it less remarkable than people in Germany do.</font></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> People in Germany? Really??? </font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left">
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Or people in Europe?</font></div></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">In order to get a better pronunciation among the "Islanders", it may be a good idea to change your surname into either "Mr. Haun" or "Mr. Hawn". However, diminutive would be "Mr. Hawny" then...mmm, maybe an unwanted side-effect *s*. Is it "überhaupt" legally possible to change a surname in the U.S.? Here in Belgium it is, but it does cost you some money.</font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Kind greetings,</font></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">---------- </font>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">From: R. F. Hahn <</font><a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">sassisch@yahoo.com</font></a><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">></font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Subject: Names</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Thanks a lot for your response, Luc.</font></div>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#000099">The guy/girl may have wondered: "What on earth can be the phonetic value of something inserted between an "a" and an "n"? Not merely something mute to lengthen the sound, the person may have thought, otherwise it would have been "Hawn" or "Haun"...mmm, that "h" resembles a long "r", so let's give it some voice: "r".</font> </font></div>
</blockquote>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">A woman in her 40s that came here from Northern Ireland five years ago.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">We are not talking about an /r/ here (and her dialect is rhotic, BTW) but about the SAMPA substitution for an IPA diacritic indicating that a vowel is raised. So it's a vowel that is slightly higher than [a:]. I noticed that she says "f<strong>a</strong>ther" and "Belf<strong>a</strong>st" with this phonetic value, so it is indeed her equivalent of [A:].</font></div>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#000099">People in Germany? Really???</font> </font></div></blockquote>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Well, I might have to take this back when I consider German speakers' assumption that the name means "rooster" (though this is not its etymology) and you get the occasional "joke" about it.</font></div>
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></font></div>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<p><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">Is it "überhaupt" legally possible to change a surname in the U.S.? Here in Belgium it is, but it does cost you some money.</font></p></blockquote>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Yes, it is, and it's pretty easy. Also, you can change it to pretty much anything. Yes, there's a process, and it involves a fee. However, I could have done it for "free" when I became a US citizen (which I didn't consider because my original name is registered in two other countries).</font></div>
<div>
<div> </div>
<div>Regards,</div>
<div>Reinhard/Ron</div>
<div>Seattle, </div></div>
<p>
==============================END===================================
<p>
* Please submit postings to lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org.
<p>
* Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
<p>
* Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
<p>
* Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l")
<p>
are to be sent to listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org or at
<p>
http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
<p>
*********************************************************************