LL-L: "Mutual comprehension" 21.JUN.2000 (02) [E/LS]
Lowlands-L
sassisch at yahoo.com
Wed Jun 21 18:33:26 UTC 2000
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L O W L A N D S - L * 21.JUN.2000 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans, Ap=Appalachean, D=Dutch, E=English, F=Frisian, L=Limburgish
LS=Low Saxon (Low German), S=Scots, Sh=Shetlandic
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From: Floor van Lamoen [f.v.lamoen at wxs.nl]
Subject: LL-L: "Mutual comprehension" 20.JUN.2000 (01) [E/LS]
> From: R. F. Hahn [sasssisch at yahoo.com]
> Subject: Mutual comprehension
>
> [The following is in Low Saxon/Low German and English.]
>
> Leve Leeglanners,
>
> Ick sammel Biespelen, in de twee Spraken snackt wardt un de Lüüd' enanner
> falsch verstaat, besünners waar tominnst een vun de Spraken 'n
> ,,leeglandsche'' is. Up de 57. Sied vun düt Book heff ick so'n Biespeel
> funnen: Fritz Specht, _Niederdeutsche Scherze_, Hamburg: Quickborn (40),
> 1931.
<...>
Dear Ron,
There is this famous tiny conversation on the ferry from the Netherlands
to England. A man from a village in Groningen and a man from England
talk to each other. Groningers don't talk much.
"Quiet night"
"'k Waait 't oek naait" (I don't know either).
Kind regards,
Floor van Lamoen.
----------
From: Ted Harding [Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk]
Subject: LL-L: "Mutual comprehension" 20.JUN.2000 (02) [E]
> From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
> Subject: "Mutual comprehension"
>
> Sorry if none of this is as academic as you'd hoped!
>
> Sandy
On the non-academic theme -- My first encounter (as a raw
Sassenach) with Scots-English incomprehension occurred
a few weeks after I first arrived in Aberdeen.
I wanted to buy a pulley, to fix in my garage to raise and
lower things with. [Scots will already see where I'm heading]
So I went to a hardware shop and told the girl serving that I
wanted a pulley.
She opened a drawer and took out two pulley-wheels, and was about
to turn to the back of the shop. I said: "Sorry, I only want one".
She said "No, ye want two."
I said "No, I only want one."
She said "No, ye want two!"
I asked "Why two?"
She turned again to the back of the shop, and came back with two
metal frames, some wooden slats, and a coil of clothes-rope. Then,
pointing to the metal frames, she said (slowly and carefully):
"Ye want two for your pulley: one for this end [pointing to one
frame]
and one for this end [pointing to the other]."
[At this point I realised that what I had asked for was a
clothes-dryer, consisting of several wooden slats supported
between two metal frames, suspended (usually from the
kitchen ceiling) each by one end of the rope passing over its
respective pulley-wheel so as to raise and lower it. Also known as a pulley
...]
Ted.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 284 7749
Date: 21-Jun-00 Time: 02:14:58
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
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From: gdeutsch at estec.esa.nl
Subject: LL-L: "Mutual comprehension" 20.JUN.2000 (01) [E/LS]
Georg Deutsch at ESA
06/21/2000 12:08
Reinhard wrote:
>Ick sammel Biespelen, in de twee Spraken snackt wardt un de Lüüd' enanner
>falsch verstaat
I have not read but heard something comparable to Ron's example:
A German from Hamburg comes to a shop in Vienna and asks at the entrance:
"Kan ick hier Rumm kriechen?"
The shop keeper looks surprised, shrugs his shoulders and says:
"von mir aus kraeuln'S umanand was woin!"
Explanation:
Q:Can I get here rum?
A: From my part you may crawl around as you want
rum (German: Rum):
in Low Saxon (influenced northern German) pronounced: RUMM
In Austria pronounced: RU:M. In Vienna RUMM is understood as short form of
standard German >herum< (around), which is in strong Viennese dialect
>umanand<.
to get:
German: >kriegen<
LS: >kriechen<.
In German >kriechen< means >crawl<. The Viennese slang from of >kriechen<
is
>kräuln<.
With this topic you come into the area of 'false friends'.
A German/Dutch false friend often used in jokes is >bellen<.
Dutch meaning : to ring; German meaning: to bark.
Cf. caricatures showing a barking German tourist in front of a Dutch house
with the displayed message "3 x bellen".
A Dutch speaker probably would have misunderstood (or otherwise smiled)
when
he would have seen the headline I once saw in a Swiss paper, referring to
the
airport of Zurich named Kloten, where Swissair is headquartered. The word
>kloten< in today's Dutch became a vulgar expression for: >annoying<
(though
the traditional Dutch sport of >Klotjes schieten< cannot be regarded as
vulgar. The word is related to the North German >Kloesse<
[dumplings/balls]).
Anyhow, the headline was:
>Kloten: miserables Halbjahresergebnis der Swissair.<
Groeten,
Georg D.
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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Mutual comprehension
Georg wrotes:
> A German from Hamburg comes to a shop in Vienna and asks at the
entrance:
> "Kan ick hier Rumm kriechen?"
> The shop keeper looks surprised, shrugs his shoulders and says:
> "von mir aus kraeuln'S umanand was woin!"
Great one, Georg! Except, the guy was most likely not from Hamborg/Hamburg
but was more likely speaking either a farwestern dialect or a fareastern
one in which intervocalic /g/ is fricativized to [C] after front vowels and
to [x] after back vowels, often written as <ch>. In Hamborg/Hamburg and
most other North-Saxon-speaking areas, this fricativization occurs not
intervocalically but only syllable-finally; e.g., _kriegen_ ['kri:g=N] 'to
get', _Weg_ [vEC] 'way', _waggen_ ['vag=N] 'to surge', _dat waggt_ [dat
vaxt] 'it (= the wave) surges'.
Northern (Low) Saxon:
kriegen ['kri:g=N] 'to get'
krieg' [kri:.G] ~ krieg (~ kriech) [kri:C] '(I) get'
kriggst (~ krichst) [krICs(t)] '(thou) getst'
kriggt (~ kricht) [krICt] '(he/she/it) gets'
kriegt (~ kriecht) [kri:Ct] ~ kriegen ['kri:g=N] '(we/you/they) get'
kreeg' [krE.IG] ~ kreeg [krEIC] (~ kreech) '(I/he/she/it) got'
kreegst (~ kreechst) [krEICs(t)] '(thou) got'
kregen [krEIg=N] '(we/you/they) got'
kregen ['kre:g=N] ~ ['krE:g=N] '(have/has) got(ten)'
Thanks for the other contributions also.
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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