LL-L: "Phonology" (was "Frisian")" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 27.AUG.1999 (02)

[Sandy Fleming]

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From: Muhammed Suleiman [suleiman at lineone.net]
Subject: "Phonology"

Henno said :
      "  I can
post a summary of the phonology later, if you like..."

Yes, that would be very interesting. You describe the word  _boi_ as being
'bookish', is there any evidence that it was formerly more common? _jonge_,
seems likely to be a more recent introduction, as in Dutch and High German.

While speaking of -boys_, might I venture to make an enquiry about their
feminine counterpart?

Apparently, there is a Low Saxon word _go"r_, meaning 'a young boy', or 'a
young girl'. The androgynous character of the word is interesting, because
the word _girl_, which seems to be attested comparatively late, used to
refer to a child of either sex in English too.

I would like to know if anyone (perhaps one for Ron?) could confirm the
existence and significance of the word in Low Saxon, and I would be
especially interested to know if any possible cognates exist in Frisian
speech varieties.

Regards to all,

Muhammad


From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: "Phonology"

Henno Brandsma wrote:

> I have several books on
> Heligolandic (Halunder, they call it themselves), and the phonolgy is
quite
> like other Island North Frisian dialects, with some more deletion ate
the
> end of words (not written), plus the typical feature of pronouncing
old
> Germanic j as dj-, a feature that other Frisian varieties don't have.

Henno, when you say "typical feature," do you mean to say it is a
particularly well-known characteristic of Halunder, or do you mean to
say it is typical as an areal feature found in Halunder but not other
varieties of Frisian?

Many of you may be aware of the fact that this feature is found in Low
Saxon (Low German) as well.  I am not totally sure about its geographic
spread, but I believe it is fairly extensive and is predominant in
coastal North Saxon dialects, including those of the Lower Elbe,
apparently also in many northeastern dialects.  (It is usually not
indicated in written samples.)

This feature may be seen as being confined to initial /j/.  At least,
this is one way of looking at it.  Perhaps a better way of looking at it
is that /j/ can only appear word-initially, at least in native words.
Thus, you can find the feature in words like _ja_ 'yes', _jung_ 'young'
and _jie_ 'you' (fam. pl.) but not in words like _neje_ 'new' (before a
noun) or _moje_ 'pleasant' (before a noun).  This may be because,
despite the spelling, the latter two words do not have a /-j-/ in them
but are really /nei+e/ and /moi+e/ respectively and, in an ideal world,
would be spelled something like _neie_ and _moie_ respectively, or, in a
somewhat less ideal world, as _neeë_ and _moië_ respectively.  If we
choose the second way of looking at this realization of /j/, we might be
able to simplify the rule and say that the feature is found in *all*
instances of /j/.  (Incidentally, I pronounce the originally non-native
words _miljoon_ 'million' and _miljöö_ 'milieu', 'environment' with this
type of j-realization, which seems to prove the point.  However, this
may not be true to say of other dialects.)

As for the exact phonetic realization, there is some dialectal
variation.  As far as I can tell, there are these two main variants (and
I use SAMPA symbols <http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/x-sampa>):

Fricative: [J/] (IPA turned f, or dotless barred j) or [z\] ~ [z'] (IPA
curly-tailed z) (any difference?): much like Polish _zi..._ or _{z'}_ --
the dentoalveolar (more frontal) equivalent of [Z] as in French _jour_
and English _azure_.

Affricate: [dJ/] or [dz\] ~ [dz']: as above but (crudely put) with a d
before it, much like Polish _d{z'}..._.

I understand that there is also the variant [dj], but I am not sure
about that.  It could be only a less sophisticated way of
orthographically representing the affricate variant described above.

There is also an emphatic variant of this affricate in Low Saxon: it
comes to be devoiced and aspirated, often spelled _tj..._ (or even
_tsch..._); e.g., _Tjung!_ 'Boy!', 'Son!' (instead of _Jung!_), also
found in the ubiquitous _Tja ..._ '(Well,) yes ...', 'Well, then ...'
(instead of _Ja ..._).

The question that remains is this:

Did Halunder "borrow" this from Low Saxon, or was it the other way
around?  I tend to assume the former, given that it is unique within
Frisian but very wide-spread in Low Saxon, also given close contacts
between Halunder and Low Saxon, with many Heligolanders speaking both of
them (at least in the past).

Well, I guess there is one more question after all.  What is the origin
of this feature?

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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