LL-L "Language varieties" 2003.11.28 [E]

Fri Nov 28 10:10:09 UTC 2003

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L O W L A N D S - L * 28.NOvember.2003 * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: "Thomas byro" <thbyro at earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: LL-L "Language varieties" 2003.11.27 (02) [E]

Marco

It is good to see your appearance again.  I wonder if you could provide me
with the e-mail address of your contact "Horowitz" again, as I would like
to contact my old  "Jackson White" friend Ronnie Whiteurs.

Tom Byro

> Ron wrote (answering a posting by Jenny Kool about "Low Dutch" of the former colony
> of New Holland):
>
> > I find the use of the name "Low Dutch" very intriguing, too.  Perhaps it
> > comes from a time when "German" and "Dutch" were considered synonymous in
> > North America and "Low Dutch" was therefore the same as "Low German," a term
> > then frequently applied to Dutch also.  Alternatively, "Low" might be the
> > same as "non-standard"here, much as Dutch _plat ..._ and German _Platt..._
> > are used in such contexts, German _Platt..._ (often connoting
> > "sub-standard," versus _Hoch..._ for "standard" and "good") being used not
> > only for varieties of the Lowlands but of other areas as well
> > (_Plattdänisch_, _Hochchinesisch_, etc.).
>
> In the answer lies in this beautiful quote from the early 1900s from an
> 'old-stock' New-Yorker of colonial-Dutch descent who still spoke what
> speakers of English generally refer to as 'Jersey Dutch'. He explains that
> his language ('lex däuts' or 'leeg duits') is different from the Dutch
> (dialects) of newcomers from the Netherlands:
> "Onze tal äz lex däuts en hoelliz äs Holläns; kwait dääfrent"
> So he refers to his archaic creolized and anglified Dutch as 'Leeg Duits'.
> In modern Standard Dutch that would be 'Laag Duits', literally Low German in
> English. 'Laag Duits' or 'Nederduits' were quite normal names for Dutch
> before the 18th century. In 'New Holland' (roughly the northern half of New
> Jersey and a large part of the state of New York) the name for the language
> never changed to Nederlands or Hollands (Dutch).
>
> Ron again:
>
> > What I find particularly fascinating is the language sample at the site (...)
> > This seems to me to be non-standard Dutch (perhaps Zeelandic?).  I wonder if
> > <oo> is an English device denoting [u] here, thus the same as Dutch <oe>,
> > and <aw> appears to stand for [ɔ] or [ɒ] for which <oa> or <ao> are
> > used in
> > today's non-standard variety writing in the Netherlands.  Interesting also
> > is the use of <aui> for what in Standard Dutch is written <ui>.  All of this
> > seems to point toward someone (a certain Walter Hill) without formal Dutch
> > education having recorded a Dutch language sample by writing it mostly on
> > the basis of English spelling, "mostly" because use of devices such as <y>
> > seem to indicate some familiarity with Dutch orthography of the time (i.e.,
> > mid-19th century).
>
> They got you, Ron! I suggest you read the article again
> (http://taalschrift.org/reportage/000303.html). The language sample is from
> a notebook by Walter Hill is actually written by Lawrence van Loon and is
> fake:
> "Als Van Marle ontdekt dat het Notebook aan het museum geschonken is door
> Lawrence G. van Loon, weet de taalkundige genoeg. Dezelfde Van Loon, een
> arts met belangstelling voor lokale geschiedenis, is eerder al door een
> historicus ontmaskerd als vervalser van de zogenaamde Dela Croix Letter en
> van een historisch contract met indianen op hertenhuid. Ook zijn publicaties over
> het Hudson Valley Dutch Dialect, zoals een boek uitgegeven bij Martinus Nijhoff in
> 1938 en een artikel in Onze Taaltuin in 1939, zijn handig geschreven, maar
> uiteindelijk ongeloofwaardig. "Het is grotendeels duimzuigerij", aldus Van Marle.
> "Van Loon speelde handig in op sentimenten van Amerikanen, die elk tastbaar bewijs
> van hun eigen geschiedenis koesteren."
>
> Nevertheless, Jersey Dutch is mostly written on the basis of English
> spelling since about 1900, because Jersey Dutch lost its written tradition
> somewhere in the 19th century. As with all varieties of Dutch overseas,
> there is a significant Zeelandic influence.
>
> The article Jenny Kool told us about (again: see
> http://taalschrift.org/reportage/000303.html) is nice, but superficial in my
> opinion. The mentioned professor Van Marle accuses Walter Hill alias
> Lawrence van Loon of making things up and faking documents. But one can
> blame Van Marle about the same thing: he comes up with the Ramapo Mountain
> People (or Jackson Whites) and there are some nice pictures of these people
> on the site, said to be made by a Ben Salemans. But those same pictures
> appear on a (http://www.netstrider.com/documents/whites/index.html) and
> appear to be taken as early as 1974. There from a book by David S. Cohen
> called The Ramapo Maountain People (NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1974).
>
> The Ramapo Mountain People seem to have lost their 'Black Dutch' language
> (called ''nêxer däuts" or 'negerduits' or Negro Dutch locally - which seems
> to have been more creolized and more influenced by indian languages -Minsi,
> Lenape, Mohawk- than 'white' Jersey Dutch) about two or three generations
> ago. But upto this day there are said to be (white) descendants of the first
> Dutch colonists in upstate New York, who still can speak (a bit of) Jersey
> Dutch or Low Dutch as you like. A lot of people sent me e-mails stating that
> they knew people who spoke colonial Dutch as late as the 1970s and 1980s. I
> suspect that their children at least know some general household words or
> phrases.
>
>
> regards,
>
>
> Marco Evenhuis

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