LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.04.19 (11) [E]

Sat Apr 20 03:29:54 UTC 2002

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 15.APR.2002 (11) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian L=Limburgish
 LS=Low Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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From: Sylvain Lavoie <elisabeth-sylvain at sympatico.ca>
Subject: A very ideological subject

The last message from Reinhard is very informative on the very strong
ideological weight of spoken languages.

In this field, most big guys try to crush others, small independant
ones.
It is true of my own language, French (ask a Breton or a Corse),
English
(ask an Amerindian or an Irish),  Han Chinese (ask a Mongol or a
Tibetan),
Castillan spanish (ask a Catalan or a Galician),  Turkish (ask a Kurde
or an
Armenian),  Russian (ask an Ukrainian or a Moldave),  Italian (ask a
Piémontais or a Sarde), Arabic (ask a Touareg or a Copte), etc.

It's not easy to be the one who just wants his spoken language to stay
alive.
What's about those who live in the Lowlands of the Rhine ?   I know very
little about them but I subscribed to this list to learn about them.

Sylvain Lavoie

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Dear Sylvain,

I appreciate your interest in the Lowlands languages (not only of the
Rhine).

I am sure that several of our members have more and better things to
share with you, but let me just get the ball rolling.

In our arena we are fortunate to gather together both minority languages
and majority (power) languages.

In fact, English is among them, and, as you well know, it is *the* most
powerful, overshadowing language in the world.  Its closest relative,
Scots, with which it shares the same immediate ancestor, is pretty much
the opposite: although it is the native language of the majority of
Scots, even many Scots pretend it is not a real language, and for this
and other reasons it was omitted from the latest Scottish census.

Dutch, the language commonly associated with the Low Countries,
overshadows Low Saxon, Frisian, Zeelandic and Limburgish in the
Netherlands, and Zeelandic, Western Flemish and Limburgish in Belgium.
Yet, at the same time it is so weakened in France that it is now on the
verge of extinction in that country, and France rarely even mentions it
as one of its minority languages (which it does very reluctantly anyway,
and only under recent pressure from the European Union).  Dutch speakers
are often said to make their own language weaker.  They are used to
learning foreign languages (usually English, German and French) and tend
to believe that foreigners cannot possibly be interested in it.  They
make it difficult for a foreigner to learn it, because, instead of
helping the learner, they will switch to the learner's language if they
can.

Limburgish is spoken in a few communities in Germany also, near the
Netherlands and Begian border.  Many in Germany continue to pretend it
does not exist, and they lump it together with Low Saxon under "Low
German."

Low Saxon is my ancestral language (and Sorbian, a Slavic language
unique to Germany, is my ancestral language on the side of my maternal
grandmother).  Low Saxon, known as "Low German" in Germany (to force the
perception that it is a German dialect group), and now finally
officially recognized, was pronounced nearly extinct already already two
hundred years ago, but it has managed to stay alive (spoken still by
millions), mostly as a closet language, despite continued Germanization
pressures.  When Northern Germany was occupied by France during the
Napoleonic Wars, Low Saxon was in diect contact with the then supreme
French language, and it picked up many French words and expressions and
twisted them around.  It also picked up a lot of English through
international trading and seafaring.  However, there was a time when it,
too, was a power language: the international _lingua franca_ of the
Hanseatic Trading League (ca. 11th-17th cent.), a language that strongly
influenced the Scandinavian, Baltic and Balto-Finnic languages, also
Kashubian, Polish and Russian.  It overpowered Frisian in many areas,
and the majority of Frisian speakers in Germany, and many in the
Netherlands (e.g., the province of Groningen), became Low Saxon
speakers, developing Low Saxon dialects with Frisian substrates.  In
what is now Northeastern Germany, Polabian (Pomeranian) Slavic speakers
became Low Saxon speakers and gave the local dialects distinct Slavic
flavors.  So here you have a language that has been both powerful and
powerless, both overshadowing and overshadowed.  Also, Plautdietsch, the
Low Saxon of Mennonites, survived for centuries as a minority language
in Ukraine, Russia, Central Asia and the Americas.

And then you have Afrikaans, which is a descendant of basically
Zeelandic and Dutch, with Low Saxon, Malay, Bantu, Khoi-San, Portuguese,
French and English admixtures.  It started off overshadowed by then
official Dutch, then by English, and then it asserted itself in Southern
Africa.  Unfortunately, many people naively consider it *the* symbol of
Apartheid, partly because Afrikaans was shoved down everyone's throats
during the Apartheid era.  However, Afrikaans is a lot more than that,
besides being the native language of many, many non-white South Africans
(almost all "coloureds").  Now it is being suppressed again.

So, Sylvain, as you can see, we have quite a mixture here.  And who said
Lowlandic fare is bland and boring?

With friendly regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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