LL-L: "Help needed" LOWLANDS-L, 06.OCT.2000 (06) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 06.OCT.2000 (06) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Nigel Smith [lists at intexta.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Help needed" LOWLANDS-L, 06.OCT.2000 (01) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
> Subject: Help needed
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> A friend is looking for the equivalents of "(Please) do not disturb"
> (as on
> > signs on hotel room doors) in the following language varieties:

It strikes me that this question is quite far-reaching in its implications.

Is it the case that those Lowlands languages which have a predominantly oral
tradition do not have a highly-developed separate register for public
notices and instructions of the kind found in languages with a more
established written standard? Such a register may be marked by features of
vocabulary, e.g. English "Remove pump from holster... Serve fuel" (at a
petrol/gas station); of syntax, e.g. High German "Bitte Abstand halten" (in
a bank/at an ATM); or of morphology, e.g. French "Ouvrir ici" (on a packet
or envelope).

In each of these cases (and many others) the 'public notice' does not
correspond to what people would actually _say_. In thinking up translations
of public notices and instructions into lesser-used languages, is there not
the danger that we produce something close to what someone would actually
say (e.g. "laat mi man tofreeden"), whereas the public are not used to this
level of informality/familiarity on notices?

Why should this be a problem? I remember being surprised at the informality
of the Welsh translation of "Serve fuel" at our local petrol station: it is
the equivalent of "Put petrol in car". At least Welsh is different enough
from English for non-Welsh speakers not to notice the difference in
register. But with the Lowlands languages it's different. If we ever get to
the (in my view desirable) position of having fully multilingual
signposting/notices in Lowlands communities of the sort we have (more or
less) in Wales, I think it's important that monoglot speakers of the
language of power should not be given any more ammunition to throw at the
'minority' language. If a purely oral form is used on such notices, there is
a danger that they will merely attract ridicule. On the other hand, they
have to be close enough to the actual speech forms of the community to be
quickly comprehensible -- I am reminded of the story (possibly apocryphal)
of the sign at the level crossing in Yorkshire that said "Do not cross while
lights flash". ['while' is used in the sense of 'until' in some parts of
Yorkshire and Lancashire...]

My feeling is that the development of a not-too-colloquial register suitable
for public notices is a more important project for lesser-used languages
than, say, the development of a whole scientific vocabulary (I remember some
time ago reading about someone who had put together a wordlist of Scots
words for technical terms in biology).

I'm not suggesting that some artificial high-falutin' bureaucratese should
be put together, just a form of words that captures the fact that a serious
instruction is being given. The responses to some of the suggestions for
"Please do not disturb" seem to bear this out -- it seems to be difficult to
achieve a translation that
(a) is acceptable to speakers of the language
(b) is not too informal
(c) is not too close to the related "language of power" (English for Scots,
High German for Low Saxon). This makes a nonsense of bilingual signing -- my
most memorable example was the road sign in Wales that said " RAMP ", and
then, underneath, in the same typeface and colour, " RAMP ".

Of the contributions to this topic so far on the list, I thought Ian James
Parsley's Ulster Scots "No fur a-steeran" fitted the criteria best.

What do others think?

Nigel Smith
nigel at intexta.com

----------

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

Nigel,

Thanks for sharing your very interesting thoughts above.  Personally, I feel
that they are pretty much to the point, and your warning regarding
vulnerability (i.e., fuel for ridicule) is very well taken also.

I think you are quite right in saying that the languages that are not or until
recently were not officially recognized used to be, probably largely still
are, pretty much confined to oral communication, including oral literature.
Certainly, some of them are written languages, and some of these (e.g., Low
Saxon) have long written literary traditions and large bodies of
publications.  However, at least until recently all of these writings were
extensions of oral literature; they consisted of recorded oral literature and
of written creations in oral literature modes.  For this reason and because
they were excluded from formal education and from "genteel" society, their use
remained in the area of folksy and parochial entertainment.  They did not
develop certain "formal" registers because they were not and are not languages
of "power" (i.e., of administration, education, science, etc.) and were not
permitted to be like the power languages that overshadowed them (unlike, say,
Catalan overshadowed by Spanish and French).  Even now that some of them have
been officially recognized it would be difficult if not impossible to add on
other registers overnight.  Most people probably do not even see any incentive
to do so in the first place, because the speakers are all educated in their
respective power languages that have these kinds of registers.

On the other hand, these non-power languages have the potential to develop
such registers, given the right circumstances -- full language rights,
respect, opportunities, etc.  In Low Saxon (Low German), for example, you can
now read modern poetry, and much of it is very good, not forced.  Only two or
three decades ago people tended to say that this was impossible for the
language to accomplish.  I believe it is in part a result of a fast rising
level of respect for the language (beginning in earnest in the 1970s).  Thus,
I would say that the languages in question could very well develop these
missing registers given favorable attitudes and circumstances.  At the very
least, I would not discount this possibility and would like people to keep an
open mind.  Yet I believe that this cannot happen overnight, cannot be forced,
but must develop gradually.

As for Low Saxon (Low German), please bear in mind that in its original area
it is used not only in Northern Germany but also in the Eastern Netherlands
(even though certain people and organizations in Germany still like to pretend
*their* language does not go beyond the western border).  As such, it is not
only overshadowed by "High" German but also by Standard Dutch.  Forcing the
language into a German-like formal register somehow goes against the grain (at
least *my* grain), mostly because it seems like _Patentplatt_ (i.e., Low Saxon
literally translated from German, often poorly so), not natural.  However, the
closest relative of Low Saxon is Dutch, a language which does have all these
registers.  Sometimes I see signs in Dutch and translate them pretty much
verbatim into Low Saxon.  Most of the results, at least approximations, seem
more natural to me than _Patentplatt_, and I get a utopian mental picture of
similar announcements, signs, etc., in Low Saxon.  However, this may be only
so because I approach it from my own angle: a North German with at least
passive Dutch proficiency and a clear sense of the close relationship between
the two languages.  Henry Pfijffers and other Low-Saxon-speaking LL-Lers may
see it quite differently because they may aspire to distancing their language
from Dutch, the language that overshadows *their* dialects.

Should our language gradually acquire formal registers, I personally would
have no problem with basing these in part on corresponding registers in German
and Dutch.  I would not favor basing it on German only.  Predominance of Dutch
influences would be my personal preference because of the close relationship
between Dutch and Low Saxon.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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