<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===============================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 30 December 2009 - Volume 06<br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com">lowlands.list@gmail.com</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></span><br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
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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="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">M.-L. Lessing</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:marless@gmx.de">marless@gmx.de</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span class="gI"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">LL-L "Language promotion" 2009.12.30 (05) [EN]</span><br><br style="font-family: times new roman,serif;">
</span><div style="font-family: times new roman,serif;"><font size="4">Hello Reinhard, </font></div>
<div style="font-family: times new roman,serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: times new roman,serif;"><font size="4">upps, an empty answer just slipped out,
sorry! Yes, that was what the smiley was about. "Perfectly understandable"
means: I got what the people talked about, and I mostly got what they wanted to
say on the matter. I could have paraphrased it in German (or Platt :-)), if no
great detail would be required. For a foreign language that is quite good,
isn't it? I feel proud and satisfied :-)</font></div>
<div style="font-family: times new roman,serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: times new roman,serif;"><font size="4">Hartlich!</font></div>
<div style="font-family: times new roman,serif;">Â </div>
<div><font style="font-family: times new roman,serif;" face="Times New Roman" size="4">Marlou</font><br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><div style="margin-left: 40px;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" size="4">From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>></font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" size="4">Subject: Language promotion</font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" size="4"></font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" size="4">You're welcome, Marlou.</font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" size="4"></font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" size="4">"Perfectly understandable"?! Are you sure?</font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" size="4"></font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" size="4">... Was that what the smiley was about?</font><br>
</div><br>----------<br><br><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" size="4">From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>></font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" size="4">Subject: Language promotion<br><br>Yep, Marlou. I'm insanely proud of you.<br><br>Reinhard/Ron<br>Seattle, USA<br><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;"></font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span></span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);"><span class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Marcus Buck</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:list@marcusbuck.org">list@marcusbuck.org</a>></span></span></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI">LL-L "Language promotion" 2009.12.30 (05) [EN]<br><br>From: M.-L. Lessing <<a href="mailto:marless@gmx.de" target="_blank">marless@gmx.de</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:marless@gmx.de" target="_blank">marless@gmx.de</a>>></span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="im">
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Marcus, you write: "So we won't get a TV station anytime soon. That's
not realistic without major changes. But it's still _necessary_ if we
want Low Saxon to prosper." This sounds desolate. Do you mean to say
that Low Saxon has done, since there won't be a TV station? Let us not
give in so easily! I am confident Platt can be kept up without a TV
station.<br>
</blockquote></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
I try to look at it in a positivist way most of the time, but if we are
realistic, Low Saxon is in very bad shape. My own home area (the only
area I have first hand experiences) is a very rural area, that has
maintained Low Saxon as a daily mean of communication in several
settings. I don't think there are any areas, that have maintained Low
Saxon much better than my home area (together with rural areas along
all the Northern Sea coast), except perhaps for Eastern Frisia.
Westfalia, Eastfalia, Mark Brandenburg have almost completely lost Low
Saxon as a daily mean of communication.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
In my area the generation 70+ has Low Saxon as mother tongue and they
tend to speak Low Saxon whenever applicable, cause they feel
uncomfortable with German (they can still speak it perfectly fluent,
but it's still not the same as their native language). In the
generation 50-70 most people speak Low Saxon very well and have learned
it natively, but they are so accustomed to German, that the nativity
bonus doesn't play out. They often feel better with German. People
30-50 years old may speak a reasonable Low Saxon, but they generally
feel more comfortable with German. Even among the youth there are some
rare native speakers. The more you pay attention, the more you will
spot I realized. Sometimes it happens that by pure chance you notice
that a person you have conversed with in German since a decade happens
to speak Low Saxon at home and you never knew. That's cause German is
the total dominant _default_ between younger people. I don't know
anybody under the age of 40 who is more comfortable in Low Saxon than
in German. When working at my </span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" href="http://plattmakers.de/" target="_blank">plattmakers.de</a><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
dictionary I realied that at least 70% of the vocabulary that can be
found in older dictionaries ('older' meaning like a 1930s dictionary)
is "asleep" today. Not completely forgotten, but not used anymore,
cause you cannot rely, that your conversation partner knows the word.</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;">
Competent speakers are much too old. Nobody young enough to have young
children is competent enough to transmit the language to a new
generation. If the generation in the child-bearing age of 25-40 would
teach Low Saxon to their children, it would be the ugliest Low Saxon
imaginable. We cannot rely on in-family transmission of the language.
It's much too late. So we need some way of spreading the language
outside families.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
TV is no good solution for this. Cause language aquisition from TV
would lead to an ugly lowest common denominator Low Saxon. No, language
aquistion must be done in kindergarten and school by competent
speakers. TV can only tune in when the foundation is already lead. TV
can support interest in the language and awareness and positively
influence identity. But it is no good replacement for face to face
language aquisition from competent speakers.</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;">
We need support from schools and kindergartens. Not only some model
projects like in Simonswoold, but all over the country. This cannot be
done with voluntary helpers. We need financial commitment from the
states in this area too. That will be even more expensive than the TV
station, I guess.</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;">
Only a TV station without school support would be a great start. Only
school support for Low Saxon without a TV station would be great too.
But only a combination of both would generate the most effect.</span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="im"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hanne, before she left the thread, was very positive it could; I think
she may be right, although a TV station would be a fine thing to have.
Let us not demand the moon and otherwise resign.<br>
</blockquote></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
I do not resign, I try to do my part. But if Earth is inhabitable
anything but demanding the moon (or Mars) is actually the same as
resigning. We cannot stay where we are, we have to make leaps or we
will vanish.</span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="im"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Let us find small steps that really can be taken. What can be done with the energies and money that now /are /in the pd. issue?<br>
</blockquote></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
We can arrange a humane death for Low Saxon. Really, I see exactly _no_
chance that Low Saxon keeps to be a living language without massive
additional engagement. It will take many decades until all the living
speakers are dead, but there is no chance that Low Saxon will be
anything else than some kind of retro language like Cornish in a
century or a century and a half.</span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="im"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Forgive me if this has been discussed many times before in this forum;
but it looks to me we are up to something concrete, something that can
be /done/, and I would love to know what it is.<br>
 Your remarks about the centrifugal development sound quite plausible.
Suppose we had settled what the "center" of Platt should be, what could
be done about this?<br>
</blockquote></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
If Earth would be hollow you would be able to hover in some spheric
area around the center. A gravitational body doesn't need to have a
"center" like a point. All of the matter produces gravity. And every
dialect emits gravity too. There doesn't need to be a definite "center"
and the body can still hold together. Low Saxon's problem at the moment
is, that it is torn apart by gravitational shear forces from several
massive objects that came too close to our planet. Thr only option for
the planet to solve this problem, is to gain distance from the mass
objects so that the gravity outweighs the shear forces again.</span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="im"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
It sounds like an organizing and communicating issue to me. Now I am a member of the pd. Raad för Sleswig-Holsteen <a href="http://www.heimatbund.de/niederdeutsch/ndrat.php" target="_blank">http://www.heimatbund.de/niederdeutsch/ndrat.php</a>.
This board has done some very good work in school politics lately; in
some other respects they are more conventional and rather slow. But I
learned that the Raad in Sleswig-Holsteen is the most active of all
Bundesländer; most other northern german Bundesländer have only
crippled versions or no pd. Raad at all. In Hamborg however things seem
to be changing. Maybe there are other pd. "lobby groups" in other
regions, in or outside Germany, that might "represent" the pd.
community of their region. Could anything be done by a common movement
of such organizations? I admit I am quite a failure at penetrating
administrative structures & bureaucracies. But at best such a
movement might even exert pressure as to (the money needed for) better
media presence of Platt...<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
I'm not a good networker and I'm not a good leader. I'm just a good
theoreticist and I'm okay at working on my own little things. Whenever
I try to do little steps I start to say "This is piecemeal." and I
start to hate that little-steppism and I fantasize about how it would
be done _right_. And so I always end up with plans how to rescue the
world, that are completely unrealistic on a pragmatic level.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#888888">
<br>
Marcus Buck</font><span class="gI"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br></span></span>
•
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