LL-L: "Language planning" (was "Logic") [E] LOWLANDS-L, 23.SEP.1999 (02)

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From: Henno Brandsma [Henno.Brandsma at phil.uu.nl]
Subject: LL-L: "Logic" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 22.SEP.1999 (04)

> From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
> Subject: Logic
>
> Dear John,
>
>
> What I regard as being "unnecessary prescriptivism" are situations
> in which an
> individual's usage is perceived as somewhat unusual but does not impede
> communication, and where this usage is considered "weird and therefore
> wrong."  A good example I can think of right now is the prescriptive purism
> dictated by what I facetiously call the "Mundart-Polizei" in Low Saxon (Low
> German).  As you well know, Low Saxon, like Scots, has as yet no standard
> variety.  Lately some speakers (et ego) have begun to mix dialects, either
> because of prolonged exposure to different dialects or because they try to
> create something inter-dialectal, or both.  For example, some people,
pursuing
> their own types of purism, replace German loanwords with Low Saxon words
from
> other dialects where their own dialects have lost the indigenous
equivalents.
> (Much of this is done in modern writing and in broadcasting.)  Many frown on

> this, claiming that only those people use "good Low German" who stick to
> certain dialects in their purest forms.  It tends to be the same people that

> are opposed to the idea of creating a standard, supra-regional variety.
What
> it means to me is that they continue to see Low Saxon as a type of dialect
> group of German that shares with German dialects Standard German as a type
of
> umbrella "supreme language," and I find it interesting that the same people
> then go on talking about language preservation, even those that belong to
> small handfuls of speakers of certain moribund dialects.

Hi Ron,

A similar thing has happened in the history of (Westerlauwer) Frisian:
to achieve a standard language, people used as the basis the dialect
of the Clay area (the west of the province: Klaaifrysk), as most
writers in the previous century came from that area, but they started
to mix dialects on paper. E.g. _hy_ (he) is written as if it were
pronounced [hi], which is in fact the Eastern ("Forest" Frisian=
Wa^ldfrysk) form. This was of course mostly inspired by a tendency to
remove oneself from the Dutch standard: the language had to look less
Dutch. In fact one could mix dialects in another way to obtain a more
Dutch looking type of Frisian, which would be almost as defensible as
the other "distanced" type. E.g. _heel_ instead of _hiel_ for "whole".
Again: _heel_ is perfectly good Klaaifrysk, but the standard chooses
the Wa^ldfrysk _hiel_ instead. This mixture is in fact spoken by a
small minority of "fanatic" Frisians. I can speak it if I please, and
nowadays I also try to write it on this list, as some of you might
have noticed. The differences are slight, as to vocalism, but much
larger in vocabulary: in writing a lot of words are used that died out
in most dialects, but are still preserved in writing, and in speech by
this group of "fanatic" Frisians (bewegingsfriezen). Examples include
basic words as _nea_ instead of _noait_, which is a very common
Dutchism (Dutch _nooit_) for "never", _neat_ for _niks_ (nothing),
etc. Moreover, irregular paradigms are preserved, when most dialects
have regularised it.. Most dialects are sort of mixed in this way,
e.g. my own dialect has naturally _neat_, and irregular _sliepe_ (past
tense _slepte_ etc.) and _skiede_ (past:_skate_), but for _nea_ (which
I do write) I say _noait_ or more often _noait net_ (yes , a double
negative, for emphasis, quite common in Frisian). I say _heel_ and
_seze_ instead of Wa^ldfrysk _hiel_ and _sizze_, and so on. I use
quite a lot of "learned" purisms, because I read relatively a lot of
Frisian literature. And so on. Most people will consider dialectical
variation of the phonological type to be ok, just a mark of your
origens, but will admit that they speak "bad Frisian" as regards to
grammatical features and lexical purisms: they know there is some
other paradigm/word order/construction/word but they do not use it
themselves; they are aware of a norm, but don't use it very much. Some
of it does trickle through to the "normal" speaker, and I cannot
change back to a more "impure" type of Frisian, now that I have
acquired a more "pure" type (relative to my family's speech anyway). I
now try to set an example, so to say. In that way my speech is
somewhat marked..
This dialect mixing was one of the formative processes in establishing
a standard Frisian, but it also excluded some dialects: e.g. South
Western forms are now considered "bad" by many, because none of their
characteristic traits made it into the standard. But historically,
most of these forms are just as Frisian. So, it can sometimes make the
support for a language bigger, but can also create new "out groups".
Most people do not object any more that this mixed dialect is not
"real", most would even say it's more "real", nowadays, mostly due to
its conservative nature...

Just some thoughts..

Regards,

Henno Brandsma

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