Lowland Scots

[Peter A. McGraw]

--On Friday, March 7, 2003 10:20 AM -0500 "James A. Landau"
<JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> wrote:

> In a message dated 3/6/2003 7:25:21 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU writes:
>
>
> Do the members of Lowlands-l collectively subscribe to a hypothesis that
> there are certain features, forces, group solidarities, etc. common to
> speakers of Germanic languages in the lowland areas around the Baltic and
> North Seas?  If so, could you please identify the most obvious of these
> features etc?
>
> Why isn't the Queen's English considered to be lowland?  Oxford and
> Cambridge may be inland, but the city of London is on or very close to
> tidewater.
>

All of the languages discussed on Lowlands-l are living Germanic languages
(and their earlier forms) that did not undergo the second, or High German,
consonant shift.  The list more or less arbitrarily excludes the
Scandinavian languages and "mainstream" English (which for the purposes of
this sentence means "any English except Scots and Appalachian"), even
though these meet the criterion.

> Does the boundary between Low German and High German match the boundary
> between Protestant Germany and Catholic Germany?
>

Well, more or less.  The Low German areas are predominantly Protestant and
the High German areas are predominantly Catholic, with the notable
exception of Switzerland, which to my knowledge is predominantly Calvinist
(though Peter Richardson will probably tell us that that, too, is an
oversimplification).

Peter Mc.

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                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu