LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 25.NOV.1999 (01) [E]

Thu Nov 25 22:34:19 UTC 1999

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From: Henno Brandsma [Henno.Brandsma at phil.uu.nl]
Subject: LL-L: "Language contacts" LOWLANDS-L, 22.NOV.1999 (02) [E]

> From: Jorge Potter [jorgepot at caribe.net]
> Subject: LL-L: "Low Saxon" LOWLANDS-L, 21.NOV.1999 (01) [E/German]
>
> Dear Ron,
>
>  Engaged in writing my memoirs and sorting through my mind all the stuff my
> father taught me, a couple of linguistic items came up:
>
> Dad said,
>
>  "Good butter and good cheese
> make good English and good Fries."
>
>  Is that true? How close to the same would it be said in Fries?
>
> Jorge Potter

Dear Jorge,

This question often pops up in news groups as well, but for the
list I'll try to answer it as well.

First of all, "Fries" or "Frisian" is somewhat ambiguous. Most of
the time, English mean "Standard Westerlauwer Frisian" by it, as
spoken in the Netherlands, in the province "Frysla^n" [as usual,
diacritics are put behind the vowel they apply to], or "Friesland", as
it called in Dutch (although the official name is now Frisian only).
In Frysla^n there are also some small rather deviant dialects, like
Hylpers (the dialect of Hindeloopen) and the island dialects of
Skylge/Terschelling and Skiermuontseach/Schiermonnikoog.
But also in Germany several varieties of Frisian are spoken, which are
only to a degree mutually comprehensible with Westerlauwer Frisian. I
myself speak Saterlandic and some Fering and Halunder (when I have
practiced it a bit), and I try to regularly visit Saterland and North
Frisia. Most "naive" speakers of Westerlauwer Frisian (those who have
not studied other types of Frisian, or know some historical
linguistics) find North Frisian very hard to follow, and when they try
hard they can follow a bit more of Saterlandic. These "German"
varieties are all quite small (all around a 1000 speakers or less), so
most of the time they are ignored when people ask for Frisian words
and phrases. This has to do with the fact that Westerlauwer Frisian is
by far the best studied of them all, has by far the most speakers
(around half a million now, I think), and has the strongest legal
position, although the varieties in Germany have been awarded minority
language status as well.

So I will try to answer for Westerlauwer Frisian:

Good butter and good cheese =
Goede bu^ter en goede tsiis [gu. at de but at r En gu. at de tsi:s]

To compare: Dutch: goede boter en goede kaas =
                   [xud@ bo:t at r En xud@ ka:s]

So Frisian has the same [g] sound, and the most striking coincidence
is of course the _tsiis_, which has two similar features as English
has: palatalisation of old [a:] ([a:] still present in Dutch), and
following this the palatalisation of [k]. Both Frisian and Dutch
underwent a form of the Great Vowel Shift, and changed old [o:] to
[u]-like sounds, as did German BTW. Also, the continental languages,
including German and LOw Saxon, still have inflexional endings on the
adjective. I think that bu^ter (sounding similar to the German Butter)
also occurs in English dialects (northern ones, I suppose) and I would
think in Scots as well. Also, Frisian "syllabificates": bu^ter is
(most of the time) pronounced as [butr] with a syllabic [r] (a tongue
point r, not a guttural one, as most Dutch speakers have). And [En] is
more like [I(ng)] etc., but I give the underlying forms in the
transcription above.

I think the German would be (someone please correct me if I'm wrong):

Gute Butter und gute Ka"se

Just curious: what would the Afrikaans, Scots and Low Saxon
equivalents be? For Groningen Low Saxon I would say:

Goude boter en goude kees. (yes, what a stay in hospital there doesn't
do for you..) I expect Ron's Low Saxon the be similar.
Afrikaans should be close to Dutch, obviously.

I hope this answers your question...

Groetnis,

Henno Brandsma

----------

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Language varieties

Henno wrote:

> I think the German would be (someone please correct me if I'm wrong):
>
> Gute Butter und gute Ka"se

_Gute Butter und guter Käse_
(_Butter_ is feminine, _Käse_ masculine.)

> For Groningen Low Saxon I would say:
>
> Goude boter en goude kees. (yes, what a stay in hospital there doesn't
> do for you..) I expect Ron's Low Saxon the be similar.
> Afrikaans should be close to Dutch, obviously.

Indeed.

Gode Butter un goden Kees'  (German-type spelling)
Goude butter un gouden keis'  (Lowlands spelling)
['goUde 'bUtV ?Un 'goUdn 'khE.Iz]

Dialectal Variants:
Butter ~ Botter ~ Budder ~ Botter
un ~ en
good ~ goot ~ gaud ~ gaut

As for the first item, bear in mind the following:

(1) Aspiration of voiceless stops applies only word-initially (not generally as
in Standard German; cf. SG _Butter_  ['bUth at V] with weak aspiration indicated
here by [h]).

(2) Intervocalic /t/ and /d/ tend to be phonetically similar, if not identical:
a type of "flap" much like the "American flap" as in 'butter', and this sounds
very similar and in some dialects intentical to intervocalic /r/.  This explains
orthographic variants such as _Butter_ ~ _Budder_ ~ _Botter_ ~ _Bodder_ and
perhaps even _Burrer_ or _Borrer_.

(3) There are variants with mid-level vowels and those with high equivalents in
certain words, such as _Botter_ ~ _Butter_ 'butter', _ons_ ~ _os_ ~ _uns_ ~ _us_
'us', _denken_ ~ _dinken_ 'to think', _e(c)k_ ~ _i(c)k_ 'I'.  (English, the
part-Saxon cousin language, is of the high vowel type, Dutch of the mid-level
vowel type.)

(4) Many, mostly North Saxon, dialects have dropped (or are still actively
dropping) final, unstressed _-e_ ([e] ~ [@]).  In such cases, an underlyingly
voiced consonant does not undergo the usual final devoicing, i.e., remains
voiced, and the preceding vowel is lengthened. (in other words, the final
devoicing rule applies before the -e deletion rule.)  This results in a long
monophthong becoming extra long (e.g., _Huus_ [hu:s] 'house' > umlauted _Hüse_ >
_Hüüs'_ [hy:.z] 'houses') and the first segment of a diphthong becoming somewhat
lengthened (e.g., _Keese_ > _Kees'_ [khE.Iz] 'cheese') , all resulting in 2.5
length.  This feature is known as _Schleifton_ ('drawl tone') or _Überlänge_
('superlength') among German linguists.

Oh, and, of course, _Kees'_ comes from _kâsi_ or _kâse_ which ultimately goes
back to Latin _câseus_.

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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