From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  1 17:46:29 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 10:46:29 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Administrativia" 2004.06.01 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.1.JUN.2004.104629.0700.>

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L O W L A N D S - L * 01.JUN.2004 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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=======================================================================

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Administrativia


Dear Lowlanders,

Happy June! I hope you are well and have been enjoying your various
holidays. As we approach the vacation (holiday) season in the Northern
Hemisphere, there are a few things you need to know about your
subscriptions.  You will find the information farther below.  Some of it is
relevant to "older" subscribers as well.

Many thanks again to Mathieu van Woerkom for standing in for me while I was
out recovering from surgery.

New Lowlanders
Before I get to the administrative stuff (yes, please, everyone should read
on), please let me send a very cordial welcome to all those who have joined
us since my administrative message of May 13. At the end of this message you
will find a list of their places of residence. (Please bear in mind that, as
almost always, this includes people that were not born in the cities and
countries from which they joined us.) I would like to let our New Lowlanders
know and remind our not-so-new Lowlanders that you are more than welcome
(but by no means obligated) to send us a message of introduction. If you do,
this is your opportunity to let us know what your interests are,
specifically your Lowlands-related interests. At any rate, it's wonderful
that you joined us. I hope that, like so many of us who have been here for a
while, you will come to consider yourselves members of a family rather than
just subscribers to a list. We consider each List member an individual and a
friend, not a representative of his or her country, ethnicity, language,
religion, etc. This has been working really well for us, because it has
lifted us above the conflicts, partisanships, disparities, prejudices and
hatred that unfortunately prevail throughout the world. This is not to say
that divisive matters are taboo topics. All it means is that we need to
avoid alienating and hurting other List members, given that it is safe to
assume that someone from the officially opposing side is on the List, that
we have members from countries and areas that are hostile or even at war
with each other. Let's take this opportunity to rise above it by regarding
Lowlands-L neutral ground!

TOPICS
You are quite welcome to mention interests that are not directly
Lowlands-related. Since hardly anything in this world of ours is completely
irrelevant and unrelated to other things, we often strike out beyond our
garden fence. However, we always want to keep an eye on our main area and
want to explore in what ways those "external" matters apply to or impact our
Lowlands area and what we can learn from them. Please also bear in mind that
you need not limit yourselves to language matters. Anything about culture,
history, geography, belief systems and especially interethnic, interregional
and international relations is welcome, as long as the Lowlands remain our
main focus. (We have members with specific interests, such as architecture,
music, genealogy or poetry, and their contributions are just as well
received as any.) If you have any questions, please let us know. Don't wait
and get all frustrated! As far as I know, there are no mind readers among
us. If you fear that your questions or comments would be too basic, and that
the "experts" on the List would laugh at you, please rest assured that any
relevant question is perfectly permitted, while derisive behavior is not,
would not slip by me (unless I'm on automatic pilot, in which case I would
shoulder the blame). We have been an exceptionally well-behaved group with a
familial and friendly atmosphere for over nine years now. It is very
important to us that everyone feels welcome and valued, irrespective of
knowledge, education, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual
orientation and any other background facets.  We are all here to learn,
learn together and from each other.

USE OF LANGUAGE
Preferably, you should submit postings in any one of the Lowlands language
varieties (including English). No language variety is considered better or
worse than others on this list. However, you need not limit yourselves to
Lowlands varieties, because *any* language or language variety is
permissible and welcome. Just bear in mind that the more "exotic" your
language choice the fewer members will understand you. If you use a language
that is foreign to you (including English, of course), please do not worry
about making mistakes. Once in a while I dabble in Afrikaans, Dutch,
Frisian, Scots and other languages, knowing full well that my proficiency is
wanting. One of the reasons I do this is to signal an invitation for you to
pluck up the courage to use the languages you are learning. Those of you who
use language varieties that are less commonly encountered and are of
interest to folks on this list may want to consider writing a translation
into one of the more common languages. Learners and researchers will thank
you. If you wonder what languages we are being used, please look for clues
in the subject line ([ ]).

RULES AND GUIDELINES
Everyone is expected to be familiar with our rules and guidelines:
Dutch: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regels
English: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules
German: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regeln-de
Limburgish: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regele
Low Saxon (Low German): http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regeln
Russian: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules-ru

TEMPORARY ABSENCE
Before you take a trip or for some other reason need to stop LL-L mail
arriving for a given length of time, please write to us
(lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net) to let us know the date you want mail to be
stopped and the date you want mail to be resumed. As some of our members can
attest, this has been working really well, certainly beats the old, crude
method of signing off and on again.
   Once in a while people find themselves unsubscribed without notice. Some
of them immediately suspect the worst: that I have "booted them out" for
some infraction or other. (I know this for sure only about those that
contact me.) Please do not jump to this conclusion unless you have received
prior reprimands and warnings (which has occurred very rarely, not at all
for well over one year). If you find yourself disconnected from Lowlands-L,
the reason is most likely that the automated server has unsubscribed your
address because of repeated "bouncing," i.e., because your mail servers keep
informing the listserver that you cannot be reached or is filled above
quota. Most of the time this is due to temporary disconnection. Sometimes
the reason is that a subscriber's junk mail filter (or "spam" filter) has
not been "told" to exempt Lowlands-L mail, which is why our mailings do not
arrive in your inboxes. So, if Lowlands-L mail stops coming, please first
check your "spam" filters and adjust them if necessary, and only contact me
about the problem if all of the above fails. Should you indeed be
disconnected, please write to me or resubmit an application
(http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=subscription). I'll be more than
happy to bring you swiftly back to the fold.

PROBLEMS WITH POSTING
A few of our subscribers have occasional trouble getting their posting
submissions to arrive via the listserver. Apparently this is caused by a
combination of the "reply-to" message setup of the listserver and individual
subscribers' email program setups. So far we have not been able to identify
the exact cause and thus find out why problems occur apparently randomly.
However, our setup has been tweaked to lessen the frequency rate of such
problems. If you do not see your submissions displayed or have not heard
from me after about two days, please contact me. Alternatively, please
resend the submissions to <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net> (instead of the usual
<lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>). If you turn out to be among the
minority with this recurring problem, please use lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
from then on. Please do not send the same submissions simultaneously to both
addresses, since sorting out duplicates would be too labor-intensive for me.
     Please do not send attachments with your posting submissions, and do
not use special formatting (e.g., bold, italic, font changes), since all or
most of these will be lost by the list processor.  You can use the following
marrkings: _italic_ and *bold*. Please do not use ALL-CAPITALS mode
throughout your writings, since it is hard to read, is perceived as
"obnoxious" and as "shouting" and is a no-no in email etiquette.
     If you have difficulties reading the postings, bear in mind that we use
Unicode UTF-8 encoding. You should set your encoding mode (under "View" and
"Encoding" or something to this effect) to (Unicode) UTF-8. The so far best
font to use for this is Arial Unicode. It comes with many of the latest
Microsoft software programs.

Lowlands-L is now well into its tenth year. Let's keep it going strong!
Thanks for your support!

Regards,
Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

***

Places of Residence of New Lowlanders since April 13, 2004:

     Australia:
          New South Wales:
               Sydney [1]
     Belgium:
          Flemish Brabant (Vlaams-Brabant):
               Bertem [1]
     Brazil:
          São Paulo:
               São Paulo [1]
     Canada:
          Ontario:
               Hamilton [1]
     Chile:
          Santiago:
               Santiago de Chile [1]
     Greece:
          Attica:
               Athens [1]
     Iran:
          Tehran:
               Tehran [1]
     Spain:
          Rioja:
               Logroño [1]
     United Kingdom:
          England:
               Essex:
                    Harlow [1]
               Stafford:
                    Staffordshire [1]
     United States of America:
          California:
               Los Angeles [1]
          Michigan:
               Wyandotte [1]
          New York:
               Sayville [1]
          Ohio:
               The Plains [1]
          Washington:
               Seattle [1]

==============================END===================================
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun  3 19:12:48 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 12:12:48 -0700
Subject: LL-L "History" 2004.06.03 (01) [E/German]
Message-ID: <THU.3.JUN.2004.121248.0700.>

======================================================================
L O W L A N D S - L * 03.JUN.2004 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
http://www.lowlands-l.net * lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
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L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
=======================================================================

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

Dear Lowlanders,

I hope you are all still there and there is nothing wrong with the list
server.  I am wondering because I haven't heard anything from anyone in a
few days.  Well, I guess the travel season has begun and it's nicer to be
outside now that the weather is improving, at least in the Northern
Hemisphere.

Some of you may remember our discussion about the Hamburg flood of 1962.
Well, an English gentleman (Sapper M. Yarnold), who is not one of our
subscribers, found this discussion in our archives
(http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html) and was nice
enough to send us a summary of his experiences during the event.

Thanks a lot, Mike!  We who lived through the flood, especially those of us
hardest hit in (Harburg-)Wilhelmsburg like myself, fondly remember all the
incredible help we received from the neighboring countries as well as from
the United States and Canada.  Once again, a disaster proved to be an
opportunity for nations to come together for reasons other than conflict and
material gain.  So, to you, Mike, and to all the others who at that time
rushed to our aid, I send very sincere expressions of gratitude on behalf of
my family and the people in our then neighborhood.

Folks, please find a copy of Mike's letter below.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***

From: mike.yarnold at tiscali.co.uk
Date: Thursday, June 03, 2004 11:24 AM
To: lowlands-l at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Hamburg floods 17 February 1962


I was just looking for archive material referencing this event when I cam
across your listings from Friedrich-Wilhelm Neumann and Reinhart (R. F.
Hahn ).

I was there too. Reinhard was a little boy and I was only 22. I was an
English soldier with the Royal Engineers stationed in Germany. We were sent
to Hamburg Harburg to help as best we could. It was not only flooding, but
also very cold -20grad C.

I always remember with happiness, the way the German people treated us. They
gave us so much respect and we did not need to pay for anything. We could
walk into a bier keller after duty and all our drinks and food would be paid
for by the local people who came and shook our hands.

We were later presented with a medal, certificate and book by the president
of the Praesidium.

My certificate reads:

DER SENAT DER FREIEN UND HANSESTADT HAMBURG
VERLEIHT
Sapper M. Yarnold
IN DANKBARER ANERKENNUNG DER TAETIGEN HILFELEISTUNG AUF HAMBURGISCHEM
STAATSGEBEIT WAEHREND DER STURMFLUTKATASTROPHE 1962 DIE DANKMEDAILLE
HAMBURG, IM JULI 1962.

In the book, there are the statistics of the casualties, the cost in lives
and money, and the names of those who died.

There were 315 people killed of which 5 were helpers.
It cost a total of 64,791,110 DM.

Regards,
Mike

==============================END===================================
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun  3 20:22:30 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 13:22:30 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.03 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.3.JUN.2004.132230.0700.>

======================================================================
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=======================================================================

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

Dear Lowlanders,

Below please find a copy of a newspaper article (_Seattle Times_, June 3,
2004, p. A11) about a topic we have discussed and revisited many times: the
rather controversial and polarizing issue of orthographic reform for
English.

Mentioned are two types of attitudes: (1) total dismissal and ridicule, and
(2) calls for reform backed by the claim that the irregular English spelling
"method" (by and large based on certain English dialects of 15th and 16th
century England) is a serious obstacle for education and functional
literacy.  Not mentioned is that this problem (if recognized as such) is
magnified by virtue of the fact that English now is or soon will be *the*
universal auxiliary language, a worldwide lingua franca that in the future
will be used by pretty much everyone on Earth as a first language or as a
foreign language.  So, the claim can be made that English spelling is a
serious obstacle in this regard as well, that "Reform? Yes or No?" is no
longer just an internal matter for native English speakers to handle, or, to
put it differently, English speakers ought to feel obligated to consider
non-native speakers when discussing the spelling of their language.

For those of you who do not already know this, let me explain that a
"spelling bee" is a spelling competition, usually held among primary and
secondary school students in English-speaking countries.  Contestants are
orally given words (and clues, if requested) and must spell them out
correctly.  This may sound somewhat funny to many of you whose languages use
fairly regular, predictable spelling, in which case "spelling bees" would be
rather unexciting events, especially if you take languages with near
exemplary, phonemically-based spelling systems, such as Finnish, Estonian,
Hungarian or Basque.  Well, you can probably imagine that a "spelling bee"
is a lot more interesting if you remember that in the case of English (as
also in the cases of Tibetan and Mongolian) spelling is more historically
and etymologically based than phonemically based, and that therefore the
spelling of every single word in the language (rather than just a set of
rules) must be memorized, that the contestants thus can show off just how
many "weird" and unusual words they can spell.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***

SPELLING-BEE PROTESTERS 'THRU WITH THROUGH'

English's lack of logic spells trouble/or many, demonstrators say

Gannett News Service and The Associated Pres

WASHINGTON — Protesters delivered a message yesterday to the national
spelling bee: Enuf is enuf!

Members of the American Literacy Society picketed the 77th annual spelling
bee, which is sponsored every year by Cincinnati-based Scripps Howard.

The protesters' complaints: English spelling is illogical, and the national
spelling bee only reinforces the crazy spellings that they say contribute to
dyslexia, high illiteracy and harder lives for immigrants.

"We advocate the modernization of English spelling,' said Pete Boardman, 58,
of Groton, N.Y. The Cornell University bus driver admitted to being a
terrible speller.

Protester Elizabeth Kuizenga, 56, is such a good speller that she teaches
English as a second language in San Francisco. She said she got involved in
the protest after seeing how much time was wasted teaching spelling in her
class.

Bee spokesman Mark Kroeger said good spelling comes from knowing the story
behind a word — what language it comes from, what it means.

"For these kids who understand the root words, who understand the etymology,
ifs totally logical," he said.

The protesters contend that the illogical spelling of English words makes
dyslexia more difficult to overcome and helps explain studies that suggest
one in five Americans are functionally illiterate.

"If these people were able to read and write with a simplified spelling
system, they would be able to fill out a job application, stay employed and
stay out of prison,' said Sanford Silverman, 86. The retired accountant was
handing out copies of his book, "Spelling for the 21st Century: The Case for
Spelling Reform."

Carrying signs reading "I'm thru with through," "Spelling shuud be lojical,"
and "Spell different difrent," the protesters drew chuckles from bee
contestants.

"I can't believe people are picketing against something this ridiculous,"
said contestant Steven Maheshwary, 14, of Houston.

By day's end yesterday, 46 of the original 265 spellers remained for today's
championship. The participants are competing for a top package of $17,000 in
cash and other prizes.

==============================END===================================
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun  3 23:22:43 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 16:22:43 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.03 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.3.JUN.2004.162243.0700.>

======================================================================
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=======================================================================

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language contacts" [E]

As most people know, sign languages often incorporate a fingerspelling
alphabet for spelling out words and abbreviations from oral languages.
Fingerspelling may be very heavily used (as in American Sign Language) or
hardly used at all (as in Danish Sign Language). Some sign languages are
spoken in countries where the hearing languages don't use an alphabet, so
fingerspelling is irrelevant: for example in Chinese sign languages the
Chinese character is just written with a finger on the palm of the hand or
in the air when a Chinese word needs to be indicated.

In nearly all sign languages which have a fingerspelling alphabet, the
letters are spelled using one hand, including those which use written
alphabets other than the Roman: Cyrillic and Greek alphabets are also
fingerspelled on one hand (this isn't to say that fingerspelling is always
the same for any given alphabet, however: Swedish, French, British and
American fingerspelling are all very different, for example - though
American and French fingerspelling are closely related - even though they
all use the Roman alphabet).

British Sign Language (BSL) is one of the exceptions, being fingerspelled on
two hands. Although Australian, New Zealand and Martha's Vineyard
(Massachussetts) sign languages also use two-handed fingerspelling systems,
these are descended from the British alphabet. The British two-handed
alphabet is in turn derived from Dalgrano's Glove, a fingerspelling system
devised by the Aberdonian George Dalgranoch around the year 1680.
Statistical analysis suggests that Dalgranoch based his system on Ogham
script, such as might be seen on standing stones in some parts of Britain.

I've heard from a Norwegian signer that although in Norway they don't use
fingerpelling much, they actually have two fingerspelling systems - one is
one-handed and the other two-handed. She said that they two-handed system
was very much like the British system except for the vowels. In the British
system there are five vowels, and a different finger is used for each one,
so it makes sense that in Norway they would have to alter the vowel system
to fit the Norwegian vowels.

But the question is, what's the historical connection between the UK and
Norway in this respect? Unfortunately the history of the Deaf isn't always
recorded and I don't think it's enough to just consider "mainstream" history
to establish sign language connections - there has to be some connection
between the Deaf in the UK and the Deaf in Norway. Any ideas?

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Thanks a lot, Sandy.  This is really interesting.  (And nice to know that
I'm not suddenly alone on this list.)

For the benefit of everyone (including myself), below are a few
finger-spelling-related links:

British:
http://www.learntosign.org.uk/fingerspelling.php
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fagb.htm

Scottish (?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/schottisch.htm

Irish (?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/irland.htm

Australian:
http://www.wadeaf.org.au/auslan.shtml#fingerspelling
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faaustral.htm

New Zealand:
http://www.deaf.co.nz/fingerspelling.html
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/neuseeland.htm

American (including Anglo-Canadian?):
http://where.com/scott.net/asl/abc.html
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fausa.htm

German:
http://www.kidsweb.de/schule/zeichen/fingerz.htm
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/deutschland.htm
Alternative, after Hironymus Lorm ("Lormenalfabet"),
apparently with similarities to the British and Scandinavian systems:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/lorm.htm

Dutch (Netherlands):
http://www.dovenschap.nl/main.php?sid=27&cat=vingerspelling
hand-on-hand method:
http://www.dovenschap.nl/main.php?sid=27&cat=vingerspelling%20op%20hand
http://www.xs4all.nl/~hverdonk/vingerspellen.html

Belgian (Non-Romance?):
http://gebaren.ugent.be/
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fabelgien.htm

Danish:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fadanemark.htm

Norwegian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fanorwe.htm

Swedish:
http://student.educ.umu.se/~anaflk00/udt16h02/handalfabetet.htm

Icelandic:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/island.htm

French (including Belgian and French-Canadian?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fafrankr.htm

Tanzanian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/tansania.htm

Italian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/italien.htm

Spanish (Spain, including Catalan and Galician?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faspanien.htm

Mexican:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/famexik.htm

Costa-Rican:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/facostaric.htm

Paraguayan:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faparagu.htm

Uruguayan:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faurug.htm

Venezuelan:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/venezuela.htm

Chilean:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fachile.htm

Argentinian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faarbetin.htm

Portuguese (Portugal):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/portugal.htm

Portuguese (Brazil):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fabrasil.htm

Romanian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/romanisch.htm

Serbo-Croatian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/yugoslawien.htm

Polish:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/polen.htm

Russian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/russisch.htm

Greek:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fagreece.htm

Finnish:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fafinland.htm

Arabic (Egypt):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faagypten.htm

Hebrew:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/israel.htm

Ethiopian (only Amharic? Also for Tigrinya?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faatiop.htm

Indian (all languages?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faindien.htm

Indonesian (only Bahasa Indonesia?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/indonesien.htm

Filipino (only for Tagalog, or others as well?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/philipinen.htm

Thai:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fathai.htm

Korean:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fakorea.htm

Japanese:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/japan.htm

Chinese:
Mainland: http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fachina.htm
Elsewhere: http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fahongkong.htm

Phonemic System:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/PMS.htm

International Sign Lingua Franca:
http://www.innerspace.be/vingerspelling/index_off_line_en.htm

This seems like a nice selection for some comparison and research.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 14:41:59 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 07:41:59 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.074159.0700.>

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From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.03 (02) [E]

Hello,

Correct spelling is basically a question of reading. The less you read
the more difficult it will be for you to spell 'correctly'.  Reading is
of course out of fashion in this audiovisual age.

Proposals to change traditional speling are based on replacing it with
phonetic spelling. But who's phonetics? Will we all have to spell with
an LA or NY accent for the convenience of economically powerful non-readers?

Whatever new spelling code, to learn it you will probably have to read it.

Regards,

Tom

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 16:55:34 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 09:55:34 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.095534.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (01) [E]

Tom Maguire wrote:

> Correct spelling is basically a question of reading. The less you read
> the more difficult it will be for you to spell 'correctly'.

That's true, in principle... but unfortunately, most of what many people
read today isn't spelled correctly in the first place - I'm talking of
Internet forums, personal websites and chat rooms. If you encounter the
spellings "recieved", "dalmation" and "priviledge" at least twenty times a
month, how long will it take until your brain classifies them as "correct"?

Gabriele Kahn

----------

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

Tom Maguire wrote:

> Correct spelling is basically a question of reading. The less you read
> the more difficult it will be for you to spell 'correctly'.

No one in their right mind would argue with that, Tom.  However, it does not
really address the core issue, which is that, in comparison with the vast
majority of the world's languages, way too much time and effort goes into
learning to spell and read English (and to learn to correctly pronounce each
word newly encountered while reading, which in the case of non-native
speakers is a very large number).  This level of deficient orthographic
predictability (which is similar in other extremely historical systems such
as Tibetan and vertically written Mongolian, as I had mentioned) is
surpassed only by wholly or partly non-sound-based systems such as those of
Chinese, Japanese and precontemporary (mixed-script) Korean.  It is similar
in Arabic and Hebrew (and to a lesser degree also in Farsi) in which vowels
(at least short vowels) are usually not represented.

> Proposals to change traditional speling are based on replacing it with
> phonetic spelling. But who's phonetics? Will we all have to spell with
> an LA or NY accent for the convenience of economically powerful
non-readers?

This is one of the most commonly made false assumptions.  No writing system
is "phonetic" other than the International Phonetic Alphabet and similar
systems for scientific use (in linguistics as well as speech and hearing
science).  Yes, the types of system we are talking about (i.e., alphabets
and syllabaries) are sound-based.  However, they are not phonetically based
but *phonemically* based.  In other words, ideally only phonemes (i.e.,
basic, "underlying" phonic segments) are represented.  In an ideal case
(namely where a system is truly phonemic) all you have to do is learn the
*system* (once, perhaps even in just a few hours, reinforced by reading and
writing practice) rather than the spelling of individual words (which goes
on for the rest of your life).  Furthermore, this type of system is by its
very nature interdialectal, because phonological differences (in the
phonetic output) between dialects do not even enter the equasion in reading
and writing.

However, as an American friend of mine said about this issue yesterday, the
attitude of the majority of English speakers (namely Americans) is such that
even otherwise universally applying metric standards will not be accepted by
the general public and their representatives, leave alone a "scary" thing
like spelling reform, no matter how compelling arguments in favor of it may
be.  And who cares about all those poor people and foreigners anyway?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 20:05:04 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 13:05:04 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.04 (03) [D/E/V]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.130504.0700.>

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From: Kris Denhaerynck <krisdenhaerynck at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Language varieties

Beste liëglanders,

Vloms (Kaster):
Een antal moanden gelin was 't er nogal wa te doen ip dees mailing lijste
over 't in Nature gedrukt artikel van R. Gray, da mee Bayseianse Markov
Monte Carlo-methoden nen evolutiebuam van de Indo-Europese tolfamilie oo
gereconstrueerd. Nui ee 't er blijkboar ne groep geliërde van de Groningse
universiteit eenzelfde oefeninge gedoan veur 't Nederlands tolgebied. Da
stoa ten minste te lezen in 't NRC handelsblad van den 29sten meie en in de
Standoard van de vierden juni. Z' en wa gemakklijker statistische methoden
gebezigd, lijk multidimensionele scaleringe veur de relatieve afstanden
tussen de verschillige manieren van uitsproke van verschillige streken 't
onderzouken, en hiërarchische clusteranalyse in 't ipstellen van nen
ontstoansbuam. Angezien al de nief verschijnende artikels in den online
wetenschapskatern van de Standoard moar een endeke toegankelijk zin veur 't
gruat publiek, ee 'k 't ekik mijzelven toegestoan ilder reportoage in dezen
email te plakk! en. De prentsjies (die van eigens 't interssantste zin) een
kost ik nie meesturen. Oa de Standoard mij ippakt veur 't schenden ilder
auteursrecht, zal ik zeggen da je gilder al te goare de gazette gekocht eet
veur de figuurkies te kunnen bekijken. :-)

Algemeen Nederlands:
Een aantal maand geleden was er nogal wat ophef op deze mailinglijst over
het in Nature verschenen artikel van R. Gray, dat met Bayesiaanse Markov
Monte Carlo-simulaties een evolutieboom van de Indo-Europese taalfamilie
reconstrueerde. Blijkbaar heeft een groep 'vorsers' aan de Groningse
universiteit een gelijkaardige oefening gedaan voor het Nederlandstalig
taalgebied, zo staat zowel in het NRC handelsblad van 29 mei als de
Standaard van 4 juni te lezen, zij het met toegankelijker statistische
methoden als multidimensionele scalering (om de relatieve afstanden tussen
de uitspraak van verschillende streken te verkennen) en hiërarchische
clusteranalyses (in het opstellen van een ontstaansboom). Aangezien elk
nieuw verschenen artikel in de online wetenschapskatern van de standaard
maar tijdelijk publiek toegankelijk is, heb ik mij de vrijheid veroorloofd
hun rapportage in deze email te plakken. De bijhorende prentjes (die het
interessantst van al zijn natuurl! ijk) kon ik niet toevoegen. Als de
standaard mij aanklaagt wegens schending van het auteursrecht, zal ik zeggen
dat jullie massaal de krant hebben gekocht om de figuurkes te kunnen zien
:-)

English:
Some months ago, there was a lively discussion on this mailing list about
the article of R. Gray (appeared in Nature) which reconstructed the
Indo-European language family using Bayesian Markov Monte Carlo statistical
simulations. Apparently, a group of researchers from the university of
Groningen did a similar excercise for the Dutch speaking region, as can be
read in the NRC handelsblad of May, 29 and in de Standaard of June, 4. Using
somewhat easier statistical methods, they explored the relative distances
between the languages spoken in different area's (multidimensional scaling
techniques ) and reconstructed an evolution tree of the different regional
language groups using hierarchical cluster analysis as well. Because all
newly appeared articles in the online scientific part of de Standaard are
only temporarily accessible for non-subscribers, I took the permission to
paste their (dutch) text into this email body. I couldn't add the
accompanying images! , which are of course the most interesting part of the
whole story. If de Standaard accuses me of violating copyright, I 'll tell
them that all of you bought the newspaper to look at their figures. :-)
Groeten,

Kris Denhaerynck

***

Geleidelijke veranderingen streektalen in kaart gebracht
door berthold van maris  04/06/2004



In Vlaanderen klinkt wijn als 'wèn', maar een Groninger zegt 'wien'. In het
tussenliggende gebied is de uitspraak telkens iets verschoven. De
Nederlander Wilbert Heeringa maakte dialectkaarten van de verschuivingen.



EEN WANDELAAR die van West-Vlaanderen naar Oost-Groningen loopt en onderweg
praat met dialectsprekers, hoort het Nederlands veranderen. Het woord voor
'wijn' bijvoorbeeld verschuift langzaam van wèn naar wijn naar wain tot
wien. De wandelaar zal ook merken dat de veranderingen in sommige gebieden
subtiel zijn, terwijl ze elkaar in andere gebieden snel opvolgen. Als hij
door Oost-Vlaanderen loopt, verandert ergens tussen Nazareth en Lochristi
'deur' (deur) opeens in 'deure'. Om voorbij Moerbeke weer in 'deur' te
veranderen. Ongeveer bij de Nederlandse grens verandert 'pot-n' (potten) in
'potte': daar verschijnt de voor het Hollands zo kenmerkende meervoudsvorm
op -e. Een eindje voorbij de grens, in de buurt van Roosendaal, verandert
'wèn' in 'wijn'. Deze veranderingen vallen niet samen, het breekpunt ligt
voor ieder woord op een andere plek. Het gebied rond de Belgisch-Nederlandse
grens is een overgangsgebied, wa! arin de veranderingen elkaar sneller
opvolgen.



Op dialectkaarten van Vlaanderen en Nederland werden dialectgroepen tot nu
toe altijd met scherp getrokken grenzen ingetekend. Wilbert Heeringa,
taalkundige aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, heeft nu voor het eerst
kaarten gemaakt waarop de geleidelijke veranderingen goed in beeld worden
gebracht.



Heeringa ontleende zijn data-materiaal aan de Reeks Nederlandse
Dialectatlassen (RND), die werd samengesteld in de periode 1925 tot 1975.
Hieruit selecteerde hij 360 Vlaamse en Nederlandse dialecten. Vervolgens
bekeek hij de uitspraak van 125 alledaagse woorden, die voor al deze
dialecten zijn opgetekend.



Voor elk van de dialecten liet hij de computer de linguïstische afstand tot
de andere 359 dialecten berekenen. Hiervoor gebruikte hij de techniek van de
Levenshtein-afstand, die eerder werd toepast bij het vergelijken van
DNA-structuren en vogelzangpatronen. De computer vergeleek woorden met
elkaar en berekende het verschil. Bijvoorbeeld: in het Oost-Vlaamse
Geraardsbergen wordt een paard een 'pèrt' genoemd, terwijl men in Geel in de
provincie Antwerpen spreekt van een 'pjeet'. De computer legt deze woorden
naast elkaar en bekijkt hoeveel veranderingen er nodig zijn om 'pèrt' in
'pjeet' om te zetten (of omgekeerd). Dat zijn er drie: van pèrt naar peert
naar pjeert tot pjeet. Dit getal wordt vervolgens gedeeld door de lengte van
het woord (waarbij de twee varianten eerst in elkaar worden geschoven, dus:
p, (j), è/ee, (r), t = 5 klanken) en daar rolt dan het cijfer uit dat het
verschil weergeeft: 3 gedeeld door 5 ! is 0,6 (oftewel 60 procent). Zo werd
het verschil voor alle 125 woordparen berekend. En dat weer voor 360
dialecten, waarbij voor ieder dialect de afstand tot de overige 359
dialecten berekend werd. In totaal ging het om acht miljoen berekeningen.



Het cijfermateriaal dat hieruit rolde, werd vervolgens op verschillende
manieren gevisualiseerd. Allereerst werden op een gewone kaart van
Vlaanderen en Nederland de 360 dialecten met punten aangegeven, waarna ieder
punt door middel van lijntjes met de andere 359 punten verbonden werd. De
grijswaarde van het lijntje geeft de linguïstische afstand aan. Een groot
verschil resulteert in een wit lijntje (dat wegvalt op de witte ondergrond),
kleinere verschillen leveren grijze lijntjes op. Hoe donkerder het lijntje,
hoe kleiner de linguïstische afstand. Zo ontstond een kaart met donkere en
lichte gebieden. In de donkere gebieden veranderen de dialecten minder snel
dan in de lichte gebieden.



Deze kaart (kaart 1) laat mooi zien dat er in Noordoost-Nederland duidelijk
drie groepen dialecten te onderscheiden zijn: het Fries, het
Gronings-Neder-Saksisch en het Overijssels-Neder-Saksisch. (Met de ogen
halfdicht geknepen is het algemene beeld beter te zien.)



Voor de rest van Nederland, het domein van de Neder-Frankische dialecten, is
het beeld minder duidelijk. Limburg is nagenoeg wit, wat erop duidt dat de
verschillen tussen dat dialect en aangrenzende dialecten er veel groter zijn
dan elders in Nederland. Vlaanderen maakt een zeer verbrokkelde indruk, het
is een bonte verzameling van lichte en donkere gebieden.



Een andere manier om de linguïstische afstand tussen de dialecten te
visualiseren heet multidimensional scaling: de dialecten worden in een
abstracte ruimte geplaatst, op zo'n manier, dat de ruimtelijke afstand
tussen de dialecten zo goed mogelijk correspondeert met de linguïstische
afstand. Er is eigenlijk een ruimte van 359 dimensies voor nodig om die
afstanden precies weer te geven. Maar als je de dialecten in een
driedimensionale ruimte plaatst, wordt de werkelijke situatie al voor 88
procent benaderd. Bij 4, 5 en 6 dimensies is dat respectievelijk 92, 95 en
96 procent. Heeringa koos voor een driedimensionaal model, omdat de
meerwaarde van meer dimensies volgens hem gering is.



Bovendien is het aardige van drie dimensies, dat ze als kleuren op een
gewone landkaart kunnen worden geprojecteerd. Aan iedere dimensie wordt een
kleur toegekend (rood, blauw en groen) en die kleuren worden, als bij een
televisietoestel, met elkaar vermengd. Elk dialect krijgt zo zijn eigen
unieke kleur. Verwante dialecten krijgen kleurschakeringen die dicht bij
elkaar in de buurt liggen.



Op de kaart die zo ontstaat (kaart 2), is opnieuw goed te zien dat het Fries
(blauw) een geheel eigen positie inneemt. En opnieuw vormen de
Nedersaksische dialecten van Noordoost-Nederland (donkergroen) een duidelijk
geheel. De overgang naar de Neder-Frankische dialecten is ook goed te zien,
het overgangsgebied ligt boven de as Amersfoort-Groesbeek. Ook het Limburgs
(lichtgroen) tekent zich duidelijk af als een afzonderlijke groep. De
overgangen tussen de overige dialecten - Hollands, Utrechts, Brabants,
Zeeuws, Oost- en West-Vlaams - zijn geleidelijker; samen vormen deze
dialecten een continuüm van grijs naar donkerrood. Deze kaart maakt trouwens
ook korte metten met het idee dat er een duidelijk verband zou zijn tussen
de Friese en de Noord-Hollandse ('West-Friese') dialecten - iets wat vroeger
nog wel eens werd aangenomen op grond van de historische banden die er
tussen deze gebieden zijn.



Heeringa onderwierp zijn cijfermateriaal ook aan een 'clusteranalyse'
(afbeelding hierboven). De computer maakte een boomdiagram met binaire
vertakkingen, waarin zich eerst het Fries en daarna het Limburgs aftakt.
Vervolgens vertakt de boom zich verder: de Neder-Saksische en de
Neder-Frankische dialecten (minus het Limburgs) splitsen zich van elkaar. In
de traditionele indeling wordt het Limburgs vaak tot het Neder-Frankisch
gerekend, maar dit boomdiagram laat zien dat daar weinig reden voor is.



Een derde kaart (kaart 3), die Heeringa door de computer liet inkleuren,
laat zien hoe groot de afstand is tussen de dialecten en het ABN. Het
dialect van Haarlem ligt het dichtst in de buurt van het Standaardnederlands
(maar verschilt nog altijd voor 14,7 procent). Het (Friese) dialect van
Schiermonnikoog is er het verst van verwijderd: 44.9 procent. Dat wil zeggen
dat een tekst in ABN en de vertaling daarvan in het Schiermonnikoogs maar de
helft van de klanken met elkaar gemeen hebben.



Het Nederlandse dialectcontinuum eindigt abrupt in het Zuiden. Daar botst
het tegen het Romaanse dialectcontinuum. Maar in het Oosten, voorbij de
Nederlands-Duitse grens, gaat het continuüm gewoon door, het maakt deel uit
van het grotere Germaanse continuüm, dat pas bij Polen opbotst tegen een
ander groot continuüm, dat van de Noord-Slavische talen. Hoe de overgang bij
de Nederlands-Duitse grens is, en of daar nog gekke dingen gebeuren, heeft
Heeringa al eerder onderzocht, samen met collega's van de Groningse
universiteit. In 1999 bekeken zij zeventien dialecten aan weerszijden van de
grens bij Bentheim (de inham boven Twente). Materiaal uit 1975 werd
vergeleken met materiaal uit 1999. Daaruit bleek dat de Duitse dialecten in
die twintig jaar tijd een beetje verschoven waren richting Standaardduits,
terwijl de dialecten aan de Nederlandse zijde een beetje in de richting van
het ABN waren gekropen.


----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Language varieties

Beste Kris,

Welkom, en bedankt voor de bovenstaande bijdrage, je debuut op Lowlands-L,
voorbeeldig in elk detail!  Het is fantastisch om een gelegenheid te hebben
om je Vlaams dialect te lezen. Ook bedankt voor de vertalingen. Je krijgt de
verdiensteprijs van deze week: de Goudster van Lowlands-L.  :)

Welcome, and thanks for the contribution above, your debut on Lowlands-L,
exemplary in every detail! It's great to have a chance to read your Flemish
dialect.  Thanks also for the translations.  Please consider yourself in
receipt of this week's merit award: the Lowlands-L Gold Star.  :)

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 20:10:16 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 13:10:16 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.04 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.131016.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.03 (03) [E]

Dear Sandy Fleming & all,

This is a fascinating subject.

    Referring to Dalgrano's glove, Robert Graves thoroughly discusses the
covert ogham spelling system used in the druidical colleges. I particularly
enjoy the notion of 'Nose Ogham' but in the end I have to say it means you
use the bridge of the nose as the stave, & lay one to five fingers past,
against, over straight or over diagonally to spell. It's surely slicker than
the imitations of the script alphabet I have been shown. A related system is
the shin ogham, but truth to tell you can use anything straight for a stave.

    Another thing tickling me is the newness of sign languages of today. In
the monastries of the Middle Ages there were regular & frequent austerities
of silence, & the less than dedicated Brothers would sign like stormswept
windmills, such is the tale they tell. According to extant records, it
wasn't so crude a medium as served to ask your fellow to pass this or that,
for they were accustomed in the same way to argue the most abstruse points
of Philosophy & Canon Law by the same means.

   I spent some time among the Vasiquela bushman in Namibia, & there was a
ten-year-old-boy who had contracted measles as an infant, which destroyed
his hearing. People 'spoke' to him in 'Hunter's Sign' which among the
Bushmen is very highly developed & which everybody knows. The kid certainly
wasn't at a loss for company or conversation.They even planned to send the
boy to school, but were first teaching the teacher to sign ---.

Yrs sincerely,
Mark

> The British two-handed
> alphabet is in turn derived from Dalgrano's Glove, a fingerspelling system
> devised by the Aberdonian George Dalgranoch around the year 1680.
> Statistical analysis suggests that Dalgranoch based his system on Ogham
> script, such as might be seen on standing stones in some parts of Britain.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 20:43:15 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 13:43:15 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.134315.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.03 (02) [E]

Dear All,

 Referring to English spelling, the torment of my school-days - Eina!

   Speaking from the perspective of another language, there is nothing quite
so horrific to contemplate, until you slam up against French orthography.

I have a point to add, though, not original, alas. I have just looked up
from an old book, 'The Loom of Language' by F. Bodmer (Ed. L Hogben), George
Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1955.

    One of the great merits of English, as with every other language, is the
vast treasury of it's Literature, composed, alak-a-day! in obedience to the
traditional & cripplingly idiosyncratic spelling system (I will not say
rule). Now institute spelling reform - feel free - & at a stroke you will
cut off the common reader's access to all the Literature that has gone
before. Do that, see, & you will have destroyed one of the major merits of
English as an international language. The loss will affect not merely the
works of Shakespeare, for example, or Dickens, or Kipling or even Tolkien,
but the scientific texts in Journals, of Gumow, Darwin, Hawkins, to name a
few.

    I will believe that the Chinese & the Japanese will entertain exactly
the same reluctant reservations about the reform of their highly
idiosyncratic scripts, for example. The cost of reform is just too high.

    Thanks, Ron, for breaking the logjam. I was afraid it was my computer.
How're you feeling?

Yrs Sincerely,
    Mark

----------

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

Mark (above):

>    Thanks, Ron, for breaking the logjam. I was afraid it was my computer.
> How're you feeling?

Thanks for asking.  I'm on a fast track to recovery.  If my correspondence
still seems weird by any chance, I can not blame any mind-altering pain
medication.

>    Speaking from the perspective of another language, there is nothing
quite
> so horrific to contemplate, until you slam up against French orthography.

Ugh, that's nothing in comparison with Tibetan, Mongolian and ... English.
At least there's *some* sort of an envisaged system.

>     One of the great merits of English, as with every other language, is
the
>  vast treasury of it's Literature, composed, alak-a-day! in obedience to
the
>  traditional & cripplingly idiosyncratic spelling system (I will not say
>  rule). Now institute spelling reform - feel free - & at a stroke you will
>  cut off the common reader's access to all the Literature that has gone
>  before. Do that, see, & you will have destroyed one of the major merits
of
>  English as an international language. The loss will affect not merely the
>  works of Shakespeare, for example, or Dickens, or Kipling or even
Tolkien,
>  but the scientific texts in Journals, of Gumow, Darwin, Hawkins, to name
a
>  few.

OK, so I'll continue in the role of the devil's advocate ...

What you say is, strictly speaking correct, and it is *the* excuse given to
cover for the real reason: the fear factor ("fear of change, one of the most
powerful fears there is").  However, especially in this day and age,
literature of yesteryear can be computer-transliterated in a split second
and then reprinted (or viewed online).  Those who want to see the original
versions -- which would be mostly academics and specialist enthusiasts --
would be trained to read the old "system."  This is exactly what has been
done in other languages for a long time, in the West and elsewhere.  For
example, Mongolian writings in the old vertical (Uyghur) script (which is
now being resurrected in Mongolia and has always been used in China) were
republished transliterated in the Cyrillic-based script for the general
population of Mongolia and Mongolic-speaking parts of the Soviet Union.  Not
even works by Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, in early Modern German, are
published orthographically exactly as they had been originally written and
published; they are somewhat "cleaned up" for today's readers, as are
Shakespeare's Early Modern English works, and as are vast numbers of Danish
and Norwegian works that had been published prior to the spelling reforms of
the early 20th century.

> The cost of reform is just too high.

Higher than the cost of maintaining an outmoded system that requires
lifelong learning and enormous educational resources, and which (allegedly)
exacerbates the types of economic and educational problems and missed
opportunities that result from functional illiteracy, even among native
speakers of the language?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 06:35:24 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 23:35:24 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.233524.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography

Greetings, LOwlanders!

Ron said:

"It is similar in Arabic and Hebrew (and to a lesser degree also in Farsi)
in which vowels (at least short vowels) are usually not represented.

I would agree with what you say in the case of Farsi, but not in the case of
Arabic. There are a number of Arabic letters used in (the large number) of
Arabic loanwords in Farsi, that are only there for historical reasons. The
Arabic letters Tha, Sin and Sad, for instance are pronounced identically in
Farsi; Zay, Dhal, Dad, Za' are also all pronounced as a simple /z/ sound.
Urdu too is very somilar to Farsi in this respect, and preserves both Arabic
and Farsi spellings for historical reasons.

The fact that Arabic does not normally represent short vowels is not
actually a problem, since in the vast majority of words native speakers know
which vowels to pronounce (and in fact often have a choice of two or three),
and foreign learners need only know a few rules of grammar to know which
vowel comes where. The Arabic orthography is actually very regular.

Hebrew vowels are perhaps somewhat more problematic than Arabic, but I think
perhaps a greater difficulty with Hebrew orthography is that the majority of
modern speakers do not distinguish between certain pairs of letters in their
pronunciation. The so-called 'Oriental' dialect does, but this seems to be
in the minority. (I bow my head before Ron's greater knowledge in Hebrew.)
Surely modern Israelis must have difficulty knowing whether to write a word
with a simple or an emphatic consonant, for instance.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK.

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (02) [E]

Ron stated some views which seemed to favour a spelling reformation of the
English language...

...which would probably be a great idea if I thought about it rationally
(just like I think Americans should finally drop their greenbacks and get
decent bills in different sizes and colours where you can see at first
glimpse how much money you have left and don't accidentally give out a
hundred instead of a ten)...

...but then, as I have outed myself before and have no reputation left to
lose...

... here goes: to me, a language is a living, breathing, SENSUAL thing, and
such a reform would kill its very soul. It would be like an "improved"
cybernetic horse which is perfect, calm and obedient in every respect, but
it would never grin when it quite accidentally stands on your foot, or take
a big step to the side when it feels you're already off-balance, and then
look down on you with an inquisitive smile... or nudge you when it feels
you're not up to snuff... if the English language were tamed and
"streamlined" to become a perfect tool for international communication - a
Stepford wife, for those who are familiar with the story - then I would kiss
it goodbye with the greatest regret and go look for a new lover with a sense
of humour who isn't ashamed of his own imperfections.

I'm quite a visual person (used to have a photographic memory, but my brain
gets more cluttered as I get older...), and seeing a word misspelled makes
me cringe in pain and sympathy... it was bad enough when we had to go
through the German spelling "reform" and "rauh", the word for "rough", which
looked plenty rough to me, suddenly became "rau" and completely lost its
character - like a woman in her sixties with one facelift too many. Picking
up an injured word and making it right is a bit like picking up an injured
bird and nursing it back to health (that's why I enjoy working as a
linguistic reviewer). There's a kind of music in those spellings that I have
known and enjoyed for decades that would just die and go away - maybe some
of you remember that old Star Trek episode where Data the cyborg who has no
emotions tries to learn to play the violin and gets the technique down to a
T and delivers a perfect performance - but even he notices that something is
missing, that his music is just not beautiful...

I am actually so visual that I can barely remember a word that I've heard
and don't know how to spell - as a matter of fact, every word anyone says to
me appears in writing in my brain, and then I read it from there (is there
anyone here who does the same)? This doesn't mean that I don't register the
quality of the voice, and I'm actually quite good at playing music by ear,
or remembering tunes - but even the words I say myself appear in writing on
my mental screen, and I therefore have a problem with words I've never seen
written.

Every word I know is an old acquaintance, a friendly face, and I would feel
a great sense of loss (as in the case of "rauh") if I didn't get to see it
again. Each word has its own character (that goes for numbers, too - my
favourites are twelve and twenty-four, they're honest, friendly and good
fun), and to me, that character has little to do with pronunciation (you'll
never hear me discuss glottal stops and fricatives, I couldn't care less -
that, to me, is music and ought to be left alone and just enjoyed as one of
the pleasures of life).

Now, if the spelling of the English language were to be severely reformed, I
would feel a terrible sense of loss. Of course it might make things easier
for some people - but why deprive anyone of the pleasure to get to know
those words in all their natural beauty, written the way they were meant to
be? And, just to prove that I haven't lost my marbles and can still see the
rational aspects: why would anyone think it's a good idea to "dumb things
down in general"? The human brain has been quite able to grasp the fine
details of English (French, German, you name it) spelling for centuries -
why expect less of those who live today? Let's face it - those who can't
spell now wouldn't be able to spell much better then.

Of course, I'm probably a bit of a hypocrite, because I find the Dutch
reformed spelling very handy, what with all those rules when to double
vowels and consonants and when to leave them alone... but if I had known the
old spelling first, I'd probably be just as sentimental about it. That's
because, to me, languages are basically love affairs...

Call me the Mae West of the Lowlands Forum... ;-)
Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (01) [E]

Nat biing a lingwist, aid sei thaet wi shoed yuz a speling sistem beist an
ai pi ei, but wiDaut aekcuali raiting it. (T)at iz, rait laetin aelfabet in
a fonetik wei beist an a staendoerd speling.

----------

From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (05) [E]

What do the Tibetans and Mongolians do with their spelling? Theirs come from
the Indian languages, so one would think that they'd be somewhat phonemic
due to the syllabaries.

----------

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

John wrote above:

> Surely modern Israelis must have difficulty knowing whether to
> write a word with a simple or an emphatic consonant, for instance.

Well, yes, several letters are nowadays pronounced alike, so the problem is
similar to that of Latin American Spanish (Castilian) who pronounce <s>, <c>
and <z> all alike as [s].

Ben asked above:

> What do the Tibetans and Mongolians do with their spelling? Theirs come
from
> the Indian languages, so one would think that they'd be somewhat phonemic
> due to the syllabaries.

They were fairly phonemic when they were first devised.  The problem is that
the spelling was fixed about 700-1000 years ago while the modern dialects
have changed considerably (thus similar to the case of English).  For
example, the Mongolian word for 'son' is pronounced something like [xu:] in
most modern central dialects, but in the vertical script it is still spelled
the equivalent of <köbegün>, the way it assumedly was pronounced around the
time of Gengis Khan. The capital of Southern ("Inner") Mongolia (a part of
China) is still spelled <kökekota> ("Blue City") but is now pronounced
something like [huh'hOt].  The Kokonor (a lake and a province in Western
China, Chinese Qinghai 青海 "Blue Sea") is written <köke nagur> but pronounced
[xoxe'nur] in Mongolian, and it is written <mtsho sngon po> but pronounced
[tSo:NOmpo:] in Tibetan.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 06:37:36 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 23:37:36 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.233736.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends

Dear Lowlanders,

I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them, like
'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
'poison' -a totally false friend, while others are partially false - thus,
French 'voyage' is any journey, while the English 'voyage' is only a journey
by sea.

Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this carefully:
do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What I
mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and Low
Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples, and
I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 06:51:45 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 23:51:45 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Introductions" 2004.06.04 (08) [E/S]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.235145.0700.>

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From: Maggie Scott maggie.scott at expresswords.plus.com
Subject: New Member

Hello All,

I'd like to say 'thank you' to Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn for welcoming recent
newcomers to the list, and to introduce myself.

I am an editor for Scotland's national lexicographical body, Scottish
Language Dictionaries www.sldl.org.uk and formerly worked as an etymology
editor for the Oxford English Dictionary.  I recently completed a PhD on
Scottish place-names. My main interests are Scots and Germanic historical
linguistics, and I am keen to learn more about minority languages.

One quick advert, which may be of interest: as some of you may know, there
is now an online version of the Dictionary of the Older Scots Tongue and the
Scottish National Dictionary - the two have been electronically amalgamated
into one resource, the Dictionary of the Scots Language, available free at
www.dsl.ac.uk

I look forward to future conversations.

Maggie Scott

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Introductions

Walcome tae the Leet, Maggie!  A'm gey blithe that ye've jined wir faimlie o
fower hunder.

Guidwill!

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 15:15:37 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:15:37 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.081537.0700.>

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From: Pat Reynolds <pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]

In message <007001c44ac7$98526320$abb78e8c at dental.washington.edu>,
Lowlands-L <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net> writes
>do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
>mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and Low
>Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
>person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
>thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples, and
>I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.
I wonder if the West Midlands / Standard English pronunciation of the
'does not' contraction counts?  E.g. in West Midlands,
'I do see' means 'I don't see' - the pronunciation of 'do' (meaning
'don't') is with a very short o - very different from 'do' meaning
'do').

Some English dialects use 'fester' or 'fester up', where standard
English has 'gather' or 'gather up' (fester in standard English means
something quite different).

In some parts of the North and West an 'urchin' is a flea-infested
animal (a hedgehog) not a flea-infested child.

And then there is the widespread use of 'learn' meaning 'to teach'.  I
would say this is more of a working class usage than a particular
dialect (it has a nice history, too).

Hoping that some of this will learn you what you wanted to learn,

Pat
--
Pat Reynolds
pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk
   "It might look a bit messy now,
                    but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Pratchett)

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this
carefully:
> do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
> thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples,
and
> I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.

There's one problem to start with here - while long-standing "official"
languages like English and German may be good for word games, this sort of
thing is rather awkward in languages where neither spelling nor
pronunciation has ay official backing.

Also, sometimes a word is not only the false friend of a word in another
language, but because of the closeness and historical contacts between the
languages, the words falsely befriended also exist with the same meanings in
the other language. For example Scots "fit" (foot) is a false friend to the
English "fit" (eg "the shoe fit" or even in the sense of "seizure"), but the
English meanings of the word exist in Scots too. Whether this disqualifies a
word as a false friend I'm not sure - I don't really think it should,
though, since the language-learning problem of false friends still exists
for these.

Anyway, some false friends between Scots and English (choosing the Scots
spelling variant which best aids the effect, and using only words that are
generally pronounced the same throughout the dialects of Scots):

grape (in Scots this means "garden fork").
greet (in Scots this means "weep").
fit (in Scots this means "foot").
gate (in Scots this means "road, way").
soup (in Scots this means "sweep").
girdle (in Scots this means "griddle").
shiver (in Scots this means "cold sore" - Scots for "shiver" would be
"chitter").
law (in Scots this means an isolated or dominant conical hill).
steer (in Scots this means "stir").
clap (in Scots this means "to pet").
canny (in Scots this means "calm, easy, laid back" - different from
Northumbrian).
braid (in Scots this means "broad").
lie (in Scots this means "a pool of stagnant water in a field").

And so on!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]

To expand your "gift" example, in Danish, "gift" means
both "poison" and "married".  (Caution: don't chuckle
too much over that one in front of your spouse...)
:0)

Regards,

John Nelson
Rocky Mountains, USA

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 15:18:44 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:18:44 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.081844.0700.>

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From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: English Spelling Reform

on 04.06.2004 6.00 AM, R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Mentioned are two types of attitudes: (1) total dismissal and ridicule

There are many reasons for this. The biggest problem, among many, is whose
pronunciation becomes standard? Received Pronunciation (now routinely
disparaged as being "too posh")? General American? General New Zealand? And
what of the pronunciations used in the Deep South of the USA or New Dehli?
Don't they count? What about those UK dialects whose speakers don't
pronounce L ("aaw the peepoew")? Personally I would like to see the ensuing
USA/Canada/Ireland/Scotland vs Southern England arguments over R -- should
it be written or not?

Reform also has the problem of losing historical distinctions between what
are now homonyms. Is "niyt uv the niyt" "night of the knight" or "knight of
the night"?

On a more practical level, these reforms are dismissed and ridiculed because
they are frequently extreme to the point of incomprehensibility to a native
speaker. Sample <http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/ess.html>

A simplifid speling sistem for the Inglish languaj shood be cler and
consistent, and yet retain sum degre uv familiarity, espesialy in regardz tu
tha ruts uv wurdz and cognaits in uther languajez, tu alow us tu red books
and maneuscripts euzing tradisional speling with relativ ez.

An even more extreme example <http://www.ship.edu/%7Ecgboeree/epa.html> :

Tu be, or not tu be, dhat iz dh' kwesch'n:
wedh'r tiz nobl'r in dh' mind tu suf'r
Dh' slingz and aroz uv outraij's forchun,
Or tu taik armz 'genst ' se uv trub'lz,
and bi 'pozing, end dhem. Tu di, tu slep --
No mor, and bi ' slep tu sai we end
Dh' hart-aik and dh' dhouz'nd nach'r'l shoks
Dhat flesh iz air tu; tiz ' kansumaish'n
D'voutle tu be wisht.

Now as a native Anglophone I can read both of these with effort (frankly, I
have  an easier time with Scots), but they looks absolutely ridiculous and,
worse, they only barely reflect my own pronunciation. I have no doubt that
if someone from southern England were to re-write these, they would be
considerably different.

> (2) calls for reform backed by the claim that the irregular English
spelling
> "method" (by and large based on certain English dialects of 15th and 16th
> century England) is a serious obstacle for education and functional
> literacy.

I think the major problem now is poor educational practices, not the
orthography. Past generations of Anglophones from all over the world
managed, regardless of dialect, to learn to read and write though the
spelling system was substantially the same as now. What has changed since
the 1960s is the educational system. In the USA at least, children are no
longer generally taught to read via phonics but via the "whole word/look and
say" method (there are exceptions). This is a very highly political and
contentious issue in the US among educators and parents (less so than in
previous years). See

http://www.americanreadingforum.org/98_yearbook/html/01_monaghan_98.htm

> or, to put it differently, English speakers ought to feel obligated to
> consider non-native speakers when discussing the spelling of their
language.

With all due respect, what language has ever been "obligated to consider
non-native speakers" for any reason whatsoever? As a non-native learner of
Dutch, I personally find the latest AN spelling reform confusing and
inconsistent (will someone please suggest to the Taalunie that the terminal
"-sch" be changed to "-s"? Bedankt! And it would sure help me as a
non-native speaker to just read and write long vowels as doubled letters
*all the time* so there is no doubt in my mind. And while I am at it, if you
are going to have phonetic-based spelling in Dutch, could you kindly use "p"
and "t" at the end of words instead of "b" and "d"?). Unfortunately the
Taalunie didn't see fit to consult me about my needs as a non-native learner
of Dutch <grin>

In the case of English, I don't think there is any need to accommodate
non-native learners by completely overturning the language to the point of
incomprehensibility to natives. If this was a serious argument, every
language in the world should drop their traditional orthography and writing
system (esp. for those not using the Latin alphabet) and adopt the IPA
alphabet for the dominate/official dialect. (I am not sure what that would
be for English.)

Realistically English spelling will never be actively reformed. The language
and its speakers are too disparate and the traditional system is too
ingrained. More importantly, there is no government control over the
language in any country beyond basic education (i.e., there is no English
version of the Taalunie dictating anything at all, let alone orthography).
Such an organisation will never be set up because of the international
arguments that would ensue (not to mention the cost and legitimacy of such
an organisation). This is a situation that is often of great surprise to
those coming from countries with official language control. I can't imagine
even just the USA and the UK agreeing to a common orthography, never mind
Ireland, Australia, NZ, India, South Africa, and all the others. We don't
even agree on the changes suggested by Noah Webster 200+ years ago.

This isn't to say there will not be small changes here and there (and no
doubt differing by country), as has always been the case in the "evolution"
of English spelling. I have little doubt that in less than 100 years "thru"
will be a perfectly correct spelling of "through", at least in the USA and
Canada, just as "plow" (vs. "plough") is now. "Lite" and "miniscule" are
becoming more common in print (miniscule is even in my spell checker), while
"shew" (for "show") and "gaol" (for "jail"), common just over a century ago,
have all but disappeared.

This is of course a far cry from what these protesters are advocating. BTW,
here is the website of the picketers:

http://www.spellingsociety.org/

With respect,

Troy

----------

From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: Dutch Spelling Reform

Hello all,

With regard to spelling reform in English, I am curious to know if native
speakers of Dutch find reading 19th century literature written in Dutch
difficult given the number of spelling reforms that have taken place since
then. Being a foreigner (I live in Flanders), I really have no idea.

I think it safe to say that native Anglophones can read 19th literature in
English with little problem since the orthography is almost identical today;
changes in word meanings are the major problem. 18th century English is
perhaps not as easy, but still manageable by most native speakers.
Conversely, Shakespeare is usually a challenge.

Cheers,

Troy

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Orthography

Welcome to the List, Troy, and thanks for sharing your views!

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 15:21:47 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:21:47 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.05 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.082147.0700.>

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From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Low Saxon & Lombard

Newbie here.  Do any studies exist on similarities,
etc. between low saxon & lombard?

Much appreciated...

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Language varieties

Hi, John!

Although you have posted once before, I bid you welcome.

I'm not aware of any such studies, by the way.

Regards,

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 15:23:34 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:23:34 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Names" 2004.06.05 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.082334.0700.>

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From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Germanic placename studies

Greetings again.

Do any placename studies exist for medieval/ancient
towns/settlements in the Elbe-Weser region?

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Much appreciated!!

John Nelson

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 19:20:19 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 12:20:19 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.122019.0700.>

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From: jkrause <jkrause at old-sod-shanty.com>
Subject: Orthography

Regarding Englisch othografie, Ai think wie ott tuh yuhs sum sort ov Low
Sachsen  beyst spelling sistem.  After all, Englisch is a Loh German
dereiv'd languidge, not?  Abolisch the X, Q, and in mohst keyses, the C,
eksept for the ck kombineyschon, and Ai think wie wudd hav a verie gudd
orthografick sistem.

Yers with mei tung firmlie in mei tschieck,
Jim Krause

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Orthography" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> Higher than the cost of maintaining an outmoded system that requires
> lifelong learning and enormous educational resources, and which
(allegedly)
> exacerbates the types of economic and educational problems and missed
> opportunities that result from functional illiteracy, even among native
> speakers of the language?

It's interesting that you need to prefix "allegedly" to this statement. So
far you have these allegations and you've quoted a newspaper article. It's
not really a scientific debate is it?

I feel that a lot of the debate in English spelling reform is based on what
amounts to no more than language myths. Some myths are:

"English speakers resist spelling reform."

It's true, but on the other hand radical reformists often take this to mean
that English spelling reform doesn't happen. English spelling isn't
standardised and reform is a gradual but continuing process. Ultimately it's
the people who use English who decide whether a particular innovation (by
the Chicago Tribune and other reforming publications) is accepted. It's hard
to see why the preferences of people who use it every day should be
overridden by those who use it only when international communication is
necessary.

"English literacy takes at least an extra year to learn in schools."

This myth arises because people forget that English is a two-tiered (or
three-tiered) language: there's the "perceived-Saxon" lexicon (I say
"perceived" because many Latin words in English are perceived by speakers to
be "Saxon" because they're short, everyday words lacking in Latin affixes)
and the "perceived-Latin" - and also a third tier of borrowings whose
original spellings or transcriptions are preserved. In English-speaking
countries a child learns to read before they have much in the way of
"perceived-Latin" vocabulary. Then the "latinate" spellings are absorbed in
later years as the child's vocabulary increases to embrace them. I suspect
that perpetrators of the myth are adding on years when a child is already
competent at reading and writing his own vocabulry because they haven't yet
learned spelling rules for a layer of vocabulary they're only beginning to
acquire.

"English belongs to everybody."

I'd be prepared to accept that English belongs to the Lowland Scots because
we're only taught in English in spite of going to school speaking a
different   language. I'm less prepared to accept that countries where
English is taught as a second language can lay equal claim to it.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 19:38:25 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 12:38:25 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.05 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.123825.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language contacts" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language contacts
>
> Thanks a lot, Sandy.  This is really interesting.  (And nice to know that
> I'm not suddenly alone on this list.)
>
> For the benefit of everyone (including myself), below are a few
> finger-spelling-related links:

Some comments on these:

By far the best British fingerspelling site I've seen is at:

http://www.jimcromwell.mcmail.com/BSL/spell.htm

Click on "Expressive Fingerspelling" or "Receptive Fingerspelling" to see
two viewpoints.

> Scottish (?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/schottisch.htm

This is just British fingerspelling - perhaps a little archaic. The "C" is
spelled with the wrong hand - a common beginners' mistake! It may be that it
once was done like that, though. Certainly the "D" used to be spelled the
other way round.

> Irish (?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/irland.htm

No need for the question mark, Ron! It is indeed Irish fingerspelling, used
all over Catholic Ireland to sign English words within Irish Sign Language.

> Australian:
> http://www.wadeaf.org.au/auslan.shtml#fingerspelling
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faaustral.htm
>
> New Zealand:
> http://www.deaf.co.nz/fingerspelling.html
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/neuseeland.htm

Both the same as the British system, then.

> American (including Anglo-Canadian?):
> http://where.com/scott.net/asl/abc.html
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fausa.htm

Yes, the "American" in "American Sign Language" refers to all of the
English-speaking areas of North America.

> German:
> http://www.kidsweb.de/schule/zeichen/fingerz.htm
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/deutschland.htm

I believe fingerspelling isn't very popular in Germany - German signers are
much more likely to sign a German word by making a lip pattern and
supporting sign, (such as a classifier, I imagine) to indicate it.

> Alternative, after Hironymus Lorm ("Lormenalfabet"),
> apparently with similarities to the British and Scandinavian systems:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/lorm.htm

Interesting! This looks like it may have been developed from the original
Dalgrano's Glove. It might be a clue to my question about Norwegian
"alternative" fingerspelling.

> Dutch (Netherlands):
> http://www.dovenschap.nl/main.php?sid=27&cat=vingerspelling

This, and French, Savoyarde and American fignerspelling I've seen, are
clearly variations of the same alphabet, probably originating in the school
for the deaf in Paris.

> hand-on-hand method:
> http://www.dovenschap.nl/main.php?sid=27&cat=vingerspelling%20op%20hand
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~hverdonk/vingerspellen.html

This looks rather like the one-handed system but using the other hand as a
base. What puzzles me is that the left hand is the active hand in these
diagrams. Are they based on a diagram drawn by a left-hander??

> Belgian (Non-Romance?):
> http://gebaren.ugent.be/
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fabelgien.htm

Again, very much like the French alphabet.

> Danish:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fadanemark.htm

Also modelled on the French.

> Norwegian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fanorwe.htm

This one is also basically the French - indeed, I've seen wider variation
within France! Neither the Norwegians nor the Danes fingerspell much - they
make up new signs as soon as possible, to avoid it. This may be because the
French system fails to cater for their vowels properly.

> Swedish:
> http://student.educ.umu.se/~anaflk00/udt16h02/handalfabetet.htm

The Swedish is very different - and indeed looks very different from the
other systems in it's general execution. It's much smoother and prettier to
watch (whereas American fingerspelling is just a blur to the uninitiated!).

> Icelandic:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/island.htm

A much-altered version of the French?

> French (including Belgian and French-Canadian?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fafrankr.htm

I don't know whether American or French fignerspelling is used in Quebecois
Sign Language but the French and American alphabets are similar anyway.

> Tanzanian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/tansania.htm

French again!

> Italian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/italien.htm

Slightly modified French.

> Spanish (Spain, including Catalan and Galician?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faspanien.htm

Again, modified French - strange because the Portuguese fingerpelling I've
seen gave French signers a lot of difficulty.

> Mexican:
> Costa-Rican:
> Paraguayan:
> Uruguayan:
> Venezuelan:
> Chilean:
> Argentinian:

Modified French again!

> Portuguese (Portugal):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/portugal.htm

Yes, I knew Portugeuse was somewhat different, though still based on the
French (unless the letters of the Roman alphabet suggest identical
handshapes sometimes?).

> Portuguese (Brazil):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fabrasil.htm

But this is again much closer to the French, so perhaps the South American
systems came from North America?

> Romanian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/romanisch.htm

Modified French.

> Serbo-Croatian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/yugoslawien.htm

Even their Cyrillic seems based on the French!

> Polish:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/polen.htm

Very heavily modified French.

> Russian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/russisch.htm
> Greek:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fagreece.htm

Well, the basic idea seems to be French!

> Finnish:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fafinland.htm

French!

> Arabic (Egypt):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faagypten.htm

Not much French left there!

> Hebrew:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/israel.htm

Seems like modified French again - Roman alphabet shapes for the Hebrew
letters.

> Ethiopian (only Amharic? Also for Tigrinya?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faatiop.htm

Something completely different at last! Has Israeli fingerpelling borrowed
from this alphabet as well as the French?

> Indian (all languages?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faindien.htm

Indians, like Portuguese, seem to have very flexible hands!

> Indonesian (only Bahasa Indonesia?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/indonesien.htm

This looks like very old British fingerspelling, since modified in random
ways and also by the influence of the French (say, Dutch?) alphabet. It's a
mixture of old two-handed and one handed alphabets!

> Filipino (only for Tagalog, or others as well?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/philipinen.htm

French!

> Thai:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fathai.htm

That's an alphabet and a half!

> Korean:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fakorea.htm

Not French at all!

> Japanese:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/japan.htm

I bet they don't use that much!

> Chinese:
> Mainland: http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fachina.htm

French with many additions.

> Elsewhere: http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fahongkong.htm

French.

> Phonemic System:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/PMS.htm

Cued speech?

> International Sign Lingua Franca:
> http://www.innerspace.be/vingerspelling/index_off_line_en.htm

So you're OK there, if you know the French!  :)

> This seems like a nice selection for some comparison and research.

Indeed!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Sandy,

> > This seems like a nice selection for some comparison and research.
>
> Indeed!

> > Alternative, after Hironymus Lorm ("Lormenalfabet"),
> > apparently with similarities to the British and Scandinavian systems:
> > http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/lorm.htm
>
> Interesting! This looks like it may have been developed from the original
> Dalgrano's Glove. It might be a clue to my question about Norwegian
> "alternative" fingerspelling.

Great! I'm pleased to have been of service.  BTW, the correct spelling is
"Hieronymus."

> > Icelandic:
> > http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/island.htm
>
> A much-altered version of the French?

Probably an adaptation (to the larger number of letters) of the Danish
system, which, as you said, is based on the French system.  This would make
sense given that Iceland (like Norway) used to be a Danish colony and used
to use Danish (and Danish education) as its link with the rest of the world.

> By far the best British fingerspelling site I've seen is at:
>
> http://www.jimcromwell.mcmail.com/BSL/spell.htm
>
> Click on "Expressive Fingerspelling" or "Receptive Fingerspelling" to see
> two viewpoints.

Granted: the two viewpoints are nice.  But isn't the somewhat gothic-looking
design another reason why you particularly like this site?  ;-)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 20:37:21 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 13:37:21 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.133721.0700.>

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From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]

"And then there is the widespread use of 'learn'
meaning 'to teach'.  I would say this is more of a
working class usage than a particular dialect (it has
a nice history, too)."

Would venture a guess this is more prominent in the
former Danelaw region.  The root "lære" in Danish
means "to teach."

----------

From: Gaidheal <gaidheal at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]

Latha math, a Lowlanders;

Pat said:
"And then there is the widespread use of 'learn' meaning 'to teach'.  I
would say this is more of a working class usage than a particular
dialect (it has a nice history, too)."

Is it possible that this difference comes from French "apprendre" and
"apprendre �  quelqu'un"? That is, "to learn" and literally, "to learn to
someone", "to teach". Or is this just a coincidence?

Beannachdan,
Uilleam Òg mhic Sheumais

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]

John Duckworth wanted to know whether there are "false friends" between
Lower Saxon and German... I can think of one, namely "Schiet", which is the
equivalent for "Scheiße" in High German. While the latter (unless used as a
curse word, in which case it can mean anything) strictly means "excrement",
"Schiet" is often nothing worse than mud or dirt.

As for "gift": my two older daughters, then four and six, first met their
American step-grandmother shortly after Christmas. They knew very little
English at that time. She gave them nice wrapped presents; my oldest asked,
"What is that?", and she was told "It's a gift". She promptly replied, "No,
thank you" and handed it back - thoroughly shocked at the notion that this
nice lady was trying to poison here and her sister.

Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

John Duckworth wrote:

> I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
> between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them,
like
> 'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
> 'poison'

You can imagine the bemusement of people who know German when on Seattle's
1st Avenue by Pike Place Market they see the sign "Gift House" above a
souvenir shop with "German" decor ...

By the way, the word _gift_ (<Gift>) for 'poison' is now taking over in
Lowlands Saxon (Low German) of Germany, probably due to German influence.
However, _gift_ (<Gift>) also has the same meaning as English "gift."  I
suspect there used to be a case of false friends there originally.  Well, in
both meanings, the word is related to the verb "to give;" thus, poison is
something you give, administer ... unwelcome a gift though it may be.
Another word for 'poison' in LS is _venyn_ (<Venien> [fe'ni:n]), a Romance
loan related to English "venom."  It is also used to denote 'rage' (~
_raas(ch)_ [<Raas(ch)>]), 'fury', 'spite' (~ _spyt_ [<Spiet>]), etc.
Likewise, the derivation _venynsch_ (<veniensch> [fe'ni:nS]) means
'poisonous' or 'venomous' and also 'in a rage', 'furious', 'spiteful' (~
_spytsch_ [<spietsch>]), etc., depending on the context.

Our John further wrote:

> What I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts?

Good question, John.  I have to admit that I rarely think about it, don't
usually look out for false friends between the two languages.  However, I
will now and will share them with you if I find any.

My feeling is that, generally speaking, the number of false friends may not
be all that great.  I suspect it is greater in writing than in speaking,
because LS of Germany has been forced into a German-based orthographic mold,
but the pronunciation tends to be pretty different, such as differentiation
between monophthong [o:] and [ou] ~ [au] ~ [eu] for what in writing looks
like a long "o", differentiation between monophthong [e:] and [eI] ~ [aI]
for what in writing looks like a long "e", etc.  Furthermore, LS has
extensive lengthening of short vowels before nasals and liquids, also
nasalization before nasals, all of which acts in a "distorting" fashion,
though the LS pronunciation predominates in the Missingsch dialects of
German as well (e.g., Standard German [vEn] vs LS/Missingsch [vE~.n] for
what is written <wenn> 'when', 'if').

A glaring false friend is LS _vik_ (<Fick> [fIk]) 'pocket' (especially
'trouser pocket'), raising "High" German eyebrows even higher.  (Just change
the vowel for the English equivalent, and you'll know the German meaning
...).  Another one of this ilk is _vikker_ (<Ficker> ['fIk3]) 'piglet',
often used as a term of endearment, e.g., _lüt(ten) vikker_ (<lütt(en)
Ficker>), for a child, especially a dirty, little child, the equivalent of
German _kleiner Dreckspatz_ or _kleiner Dreckfink_ (i.e., English 'mucky
pup', 'filthy little beggar', etc., depending on dialect and context).  And
then there is the somewhat uncomfortable-sounding "semi-friend" _vikvakken_
(<fickfacken>) 'to talk silly', 'to perform flim-flam'.  (I think this and
the preceding are related to English "to fidget," because _vikkerig_
[<fickerig> ['fIkerIC])] means 'fidgety', 'clumsy', besides 'dirty'.)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 20:41:34 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 13:41:34 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.05 (08) [D/F]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.134134.0700.>

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From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.04 (03) [D/E/V]

> From: Kris Denhaerynck <krisdenhaerynck at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> Heeringa ontleende zijn data-materiaal aan de Reeks Nederlandse
> Dialectatlassen (RND), die werd samengesteld in de periode 1925 tot 1975.
> Hieruit selecteerde hij 360 Vlaamse en Nederlandse dialecten. Vervolgens
> bekeek hij de uitspraak van 125 alledaagse woorden, die voor al deze
> dialecten zijn opgetekend.

. Deze kaart maakt trouwens
> ook korte metten met het idee dat er een duidelijk verband zou zijn tussen
> de Friese en de Noord-Hollandse ('West-Friese') dialecten - iets wat
vroeger
> nog wel eens werd aangenomen op grond van de historische banden die er
> tussen deze gebieden zijn.

Tsja, dat is wol tige maklik om jin der sa fan ôf te meitsjen! At dizze
ûndersiker ris de muoite dien hie om de literatuer oer dit ûnderwerp nei te
lêzen, hied er sjen kind dat dizze oerienkomsten krekt op it mêd fan 'e
syntaksis, morfology en wurdskat lizze, en mar tige deels op it mêd fan 'e
lûding: wat dat oangiet is it dialekt "Frankisearre", mar de "djippere" ,
mear grammatikale oerienkomsten binne bewarre bleaun. Der binne noch wol in
pear lûdoerienkomsten ("bien" foar "been" en in sterke tindins ta twjilûden
foar tosklûden (dintalen), bewarjen fan "sk-" en in rôljende tosk-r, mar de
syntaktyske oerienkomsten binne opfallender, neffens my. It is wat te
ienfâldich it dialekt allinnich as in samling lûden te sjen....

Foar it oare is it in nijsgjirrich ûndersyk, en ik haw syn proefskrift ek
mar fan syn webside ophelle, en in pear fan syn artikels. Mar in stúdzje
dy't wurdskat en soks meinimt soe wer wat oare ferbannen oan it ljocht
bringe kinne..

Mei freonlike groetnis,

Henno Brandsma

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 22:09:52 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 15:09:52 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (09) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.150952.0700.>

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From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
> between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them,
like
> 'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
> 'poison' -a totally false friend, while others are partially false - thus,
> French 'voyage' is any journey, while the English 'voyage' is only a
journey
> by sea.
>
> Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this
carefully:
> do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
> thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples,
and
> I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.
>
> John Duckworth
> Preston, UK

(Westerlauwer) Frisian and Dutch have quite a few, among which:
slim (F) (bad, serious) vs slim (D) (clever) vs slim (Eng).
BTW this "slim" in the Frisian meaning alos occurs in Low Saxon dialects
(both in Dutch and German parts) and correspond to German "schlimm" of
course.

lucht in Dutch means both sky and smell, while in Frisian "lucht" only means
smell.
faaks in Frisian means "maybe" while in Dutch "vaak" (not quite identical
but almost) means "often".
One that occurred with an ex-girlfriend visiting my grandmother, who
remarked "wat moast no mei sokken?" (=what is one to do with such (people),
when someone had an opinion she disagreed with) on which the ex said
"aantrekken" (put them on) (in Dutch), because she confused it with Dutch
"sokken" (socks). In fact sokken [sOk at n] (socks) and sokken [sok at n] (such
people) form a minimal pair in Frisian for the phonemes [o] and [O], but
this distinction is not heard by most Dutch (there these too do not
constitute separate phonemes).
Similarly we have bolle [bol@] which means "bull" which sounds to Dutch as
bolle (round, inflected form), which in Frisian would be bolle [bOl@] with
the other phoneme...
A classic is "net" which in Frisian means "not" and in Dutch "just about",
giving rise to jokes about Dutch people trying to sail under a bridge with a
Frisian saying "it kin net" (it is impossible, literally "it cannot"), which
the Dutch interpreting wrongly ...

Henno Brandsma

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Henno (above):

> A classic is "net" which in Frisian means "not" and in Dutch "just about",
> giving rise to jokes about Dutch people trying to sail under a bridge with
a
> Frisian saying "it kin net" (it is impossible, literally "it cannot"),
which
> the Dutch interpreting wrongly ...

These are false friends within Lowlands Saxon (Low German), between
dialects.  _Net_ (<nett>) is 'just about' in Eastern Friesland dialects,
'nice', 'friendly', etc., in other dialects (as in German, related to
"neat," French _net_, Italian _netto_, etc., 'pure').  (It is also a
homophone in German dialects in which _net_ means 'not'.)

Talking about "false friends" ...  This reminds me of an Australian friend
trying to learn Hebrew, her first (and unsuccessful) non-Indo-European
language learning attempt, feeling very frustrated and exclaiming, "What a
silly language in which 'me' is 'who', 'who' is 'he', and 'he' is 'she'!"

NB: Hebrew _mi_ (< _miy_) מִי 'who?', _hu_ (< _huw’_) הוּא 'he', _hi_ (< hiy
’_) הִיא 'she'
(cf. respectively: Arabic _mâ_ مَا ~ _man_ مَنْ, _huwa_ هُوَ, _hiya_ هِ� َ;
Maltese _min_, _huwa_ [u'wa], _hiya_ [i'ja])

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun  6 01:42:37 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 18:42:37 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (10) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.184237.0700.>

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From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (02) [E]

Hello All,

Ron wrote:

  ....
> the core issue, which is that, in comparison with the vast
> majority of the world's languages, way too much time and effort goes into
> learning to spell and read English (and to learn to correctly pronounce
each
> word newly encountered while reading, which in the case of non-native
> speakers is a very large number).  This level of deficient orthographic
> predictability (which is similar in other extremely historical systems
such
> as Tibetan and vertically written Mongolian, as I had mentioned) is
> surpassed only by wholly or partly non-sound-based systems such as those
of
> Chinese, Japanese and precontemporary (mixed-script) Korean.  It is
similar
> in Arabic and Hebrew (and to a lesser degree also in Farsi) in which
vowels
> (at least short vowels) are usually not represented.

My experience is with English as a second language learners. They mostly
pick up the language by exposure to reading texts and spelling is not a
big problem for them. In fact they spell English better than their
native Spanish or Catalan which have a much more sound based
orthography. This is probably true because they read very little in
their native languages and trust their ear when spelling.

...
> In an ideal case (namely where a system is truly phonemic) all you have to
do is learn the
> *system* (once, perhaps even in just a few hours, reinforced by reading
and
> writing practice) rather than the spelling of individual words (which goes
> on for the rest of your life).  Furthermore, this type of system is by its
> very nature interdialectal, because phonological differences (in the
> phonetic output) between dialects do not even enter the equasion in
reading
> and writing.

This is fine when talking of consonants but surely vowel sounds are
extraordinarily different. In a western culture I doubt that you could
rely on the consonants for spelling and leave vowels to the speaker to
fill in at will. Who would finally choose the written form of the
vowels? The economically powerful?

> However, as an American friend of mine said about this issue yesterday,
the
> attitude of the majority of English speakers (namely Americans) is such
that
> even otherwise universally applying metric standards will not be accepted
by
> the general public and their representatives, leave alone a "scary" thing
> like spelling reform, no matter how compelling arguments in favor of it
may
> be.  And who cares about all those poor people and foreigners anyway?

I agree that uniformity has not been seen as a virtue in English
speaking countries. However I don't see that as an argument for asking
foreigners how to speak or write your native language. (The next thing
they might set up an "Académie Royale" in Paris or Brussels to decide
what English spelling is acceptable and what not.) This kind of
prescriptive uniformity, accepted as the norm in many countries, is
decidedly unscientific.

Regards,

Tom

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (06) [E]

Dear Gabrielle Kahn.

    Would you say, with Mae West (was it Mae West) "A hard Language is good
to find?"

Yrs,

Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun  6 16:38:40 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 09:38:40 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E/German]
Message-ID: <SUN.6.JUN.2004.093840.0700.>

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From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]

Hi,
Isn´t this a quite common thing? E.g. "buck" can mean two different things
depending on the socio-linguistic context. Or is this not what you mean,
John?
Greetings to all, Mike Wintzer

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
> between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them,
like
> 'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
> 'poison' -a totally false friend, while others are partially false - thus,
> French 'voyage' is any journey, while the English 'voyage' is only a
journey
> by sea.
>
> Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this
carefully:
> do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
> thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples,
and
> I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.
>
> John Duckworth
> Preston, UK

----------

From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (07) [E]

Hi,
I have noticed in a number of  languages that have different words for teach
and learn (some don´t) that the word for learn is used for teach. My
impression is that it tends to be a question of social stratum. Maybe you
haven´t heard this one yet:
Teacher in note to parents of little-Erna: Sie müssen Klein-Erna besser
waschen, sie riecht.
Answer note from Mother: Sie sollen ihr nicht riechen, sie sollen ihr
lernen.
Nichts für ungut, tschüß,
Mike Wintzer

----------

From: yasuji <yasuji at amber.plala.or.jp>
Subject: False friend

Hallo friends,

English wors "learn" is in German "lernen". But, when I started to learn
Plattdeutsch (Low Saxon), I found that High German words "lernen" and
"lehren" can be translated into only one Low Saxon word "lehren". Maybe I
must check
the situation of the sentence to know if it means "lernen"(to learn) or
"lehren" (to teach).
Regards,

Yasuji Waki

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Dear Lowlanders,

Indeed, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _leyren_ (<lehr(e)n> ~ <liehr(e)n>,
which to German ears sounds like 'to teach') can be used for both 'to teach'
and 'to learn'.  In most cases the meaning is clear within a given context.
If it is not, you can alternatively use _by-bringen_ (<bibringen>, cf.
German _beibringen_), _by-böygen_ (<bibögen> ~ <bibeugen>) or _an-leyren_
(<anlehr(e)n> ~ <an-liehr(e)n>, cf. German _anlernen_ 'to train') for 'to
teach' and _af-leyren_ (<aflehr(e)n> ~ <afliehr(e)n>) for 'to learn'.   You
can also use _studeyren_ (<studeern> ~ <studiern>) for 'to learn', as well
as for 'to try', 'to have a go at' (while in German _studieren_ only means
'to study (at a tertiary institution)').

Again, _tou-leyren_ (<tolehr(e)n> ~ <toliehr(e)n>), which carries the
connotation of 'to add knowledge', can be either 'to teach', 'to educate'
(for instance as performed by a governess or a trade master) or 'to learn
(in addition)', depending on the context.

Interestingly, in Missingsch (German dialects on Lowlands Saxon substrates)
it is _lernen_ (cf. German _lernen_ 'to learn') that tends to be used for
both 'to teach' and 'to learn' ...

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun  6 16:39:56 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 09:39:56 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.05 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.6.JUN.2004.093956.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language contacts" [E]

Ron wrote:

> Granted: the two viewpoints are nice.  But isn't the somewhat
gothic-looking
> design another reason why you particularly like this site?  ;-)

It takes more than a black background to make something gothic - it has to
be a bit batty, too  :)

No, it's really that the illustration is clear and there's animation - this
is much better than simply having an arrow to show movement, as in most
diagrams. Moreover, it's photographic - most hand-drawn diagrams tend to
miss subtle but important points.

This brings me (in a way which will become clear!) to another aspect of Deaf
culture (it's the done thing to write "Deaf" for cultural deafness and
"deaf" for audiological deafness) - the use of "sign names".

(Incidentally, I'll say "BSL" rather than "signed languages" and "English"
rather than "oral languages", especially since what I'm talking about here
won't necessarily apply in other deaf/hearing cultures).

Sign names are signs used to indicate a person when speaking about them, but
their derivation and usage is quite different from that of names in oral
languages.

Of course, Deaf people can just fingerspell a name if required, but this is
annoying, except sometimes when the name is only three letters and can be
fingerspelled almost like a single sign. On the other hand, a sign name
might be derived partly using fingerspelling and partly using a sign
language pun. For example, the well-known Deaf TV presenter Clive Mason's
sign name is fignerspelled "C" plus the BSL sign for "live".

On the other hand, sign names might just be a personal characteristic - for
example, Prince Charles has a sign name which means "Big Ears", and I've
seen Clive Mason using this on the BBC TV programme "See Hear". However, it
would be inappropriate (even if you're Deaf) to call anyone "Big Ears" in
English - sign names just aren't translated, except possibly when explaining
their origins.

Another aspect of this is that a person's sign name isn't used when signing
to them, the way their English name might be used periodically when speaking
to them in English. Nor is a sign name used to attract a person's attention,
the way you say a person's name in English to get their attention - deaf
people attract each other's attention by various methods (which I explained
in a mailing on Lowlands-L some time ago:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0212B&L=lowlands-l&P=R538 ),
but signing a name isn't going to get the attention of someone who's not
looking! And again, when talking about a person who's actually present, a
BSL user normally indicates them by pointing, so sign names are used when a
person is absent rather than present, and although nobody is expected to
have a sign name they don't like, a sign name like "Big Ears" or "Half-Pint"
doesn't continually grate on a person until they get sick of it, the way it
might in English.

Often Deaf people only know each other by their sign name and it can come as
a surprise when after some years they see them referred as "Brian" or
"Charlotte".  And there's a running joke in the BSL community which goes,
"Yes, I know them really well, in fact I'm on last-name terms with them."
But in the past (at least, I hope it's in the past) teachers used to give
children in Deaf schools numbers, so that you sometimes see an older person
reminiscing about his schooldays and referring to a particular classmate by
a sign name which is really a number - this being the only name they know
them by.

One of the fun things about going to a sign language class is keeping an eye
out for possible sign names for the other students. Sometimes there's a
period over which several are suggested before one finally becomes common
usage - ie the person accepts it, and it's easy and clear to sign.

Signs are often personal characteristics, and since these can change, sign
names can change too. The shaving of long-standing beards or cutting of long
hair can herald a change of name, too!

Sometimes sign names are quite general in nature. Someone from another
country might be given a sign name meaning "French" or "American" if these
are unusual enough in the community. So when I lived in Wales I used to be
called "Scottish", but now that I'm here in this very rural part of England
I stand out in a different way and signers call me "Goth"  :)

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun  6 16:50:20 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 09:50:20 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.6.JUN.2004.095020.0700.>

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From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (05) [E]

It would really be nice to see us mark stress in a new spelling system. I
want to learn the Slavic languages, but they're bears as to how to pronounce
things if you don't have pronunciation to back you up. Who would refuse
refuse?

---------

From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (10) [E]

Tom Maguire wrote:
>
> My experience is with English as a second language learners. They mostly
> pick up the language by exposure to reading texts and spelling is not a
> big problem for them. In fact they spell English better than their
> native Spanish or Catalan which have a much more sound based
> orthography.
 >
That's what I've always said too. I'm a native Dutch speaker, yet I
spell English better than Dutch. I don't know why, all I know is I just
do. Same goes for a number of other Dutch people.

Henry Pijffers

PS: For those of you who don't know me; I've been subscribed to this
list before, but decided to leave due to circumstances. However, things
have changed now, and I decided to return. I'm a native Saxon and Dutch
speaker, and a strong supporter of a common Saxon spelling system.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Orthography

Welcome back, Henry!  Great to have you back.  You are one among several
that have rejoined us during the past week or so.  Apparently, hardcore
Lowlanders cannot stay away forever.

Also nice to have some orthographic support for a change.  Just watch them
lashing out at poor little me, just for playing the devil's advocate and
challenging them to make them think ...  ;-)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Orthography" [E]

> From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (02) [E]
>
> My experience is with English as a second language learners. They mostly
> pick up the language by exposure to reading texts and spelling is not a
> big problem for them. In fact they spell English better than their
> native Spanish or Catalan which have a much more sound based
> orthography. This is probably true because they read very little in
> their native languages and trust their ear when spelling.

I think this accords with my experience of communicating with Welsh
speakers. Being deaf, I often (many times a day) have to ask someone to
write down what they're saying for me. In spite of the fact that Welsh
orthography is almost as phonemic as the structure of the language will
allow, and in spite of the fact that many of the younger people boasted of
having been educated in Welsh as much as in English, their level of
illiteracy was clearly much higher in Welsh than in English. Typists in
English and people who wrote technical documents in English as part of their
everyday work spelled Welsh words wrongly as a rule and were sometimes
completely stuck for how to write a word.

A few years ago I wrote a short poem in Welsh and asked a new graduate from
Aberystwyth university to help me to make the Welsh good. This involved him
editing it to correct grammar and locate the mots justes, after which I had
to edit it again to correct his numerous misspellings. He has no such
problems with English!

I think it's as Tom says - these people are educated in Welsh but they don't
read much in Welsh. Most of what they needed for their studies is in English
(in spite of some lectures Welsh and exams optionally Welsh or English if
the tutor can read Welsh), all the best novels are in English, and they'd
rather read The Mirror than Y Cymro!

But it does give the lie to Ron's idea that, "In an ideal case (namely where
a system is truly phonemic) all you have to do is learn the *system* (once,
perhaps even in just a few hours, reinforced by reading and writing
practice) rather than the spelling of individual words (which goes on for
the rest of your life)." I think what we have here is a professional
linguist speaking. Ron may be able to learn a writing system in a few hours,
but most people can't!

I also question the value of being able to learn a system in a few hours. As
Tom's and my own experience seems to show, there's not much point in
learning a writing system unless you're going to do plenty reading in it. So
a gradually absorbed system isn't necessarily worse than a logically compact
system, especially when many people aren't trained to think logically or
mathematically in the first place. I think the idea of a pure phonemic
system is a fantasy that's only occasionally played out (with some
approximations) when a language happens to have a sufficiently logical
phonemic structure, and is either restricted to a unified (probably also
small) area so that dialectical differences are restricted, or (as in the
case of Italian) an official form of the language is created and minority
dialects are just trampled over.

Ron also wrote:

"Furthermore, this type of system is by its very nature interdialectal,
because phonological differences (in the phonetic output) between dialects
do not even enter the equasion in reading and writing."

This statement puzzles me - surely dialects are the bane of a phonemic
system? I don't think it can be done without diaphonemics, and even that's
just a compromise.

Tom again:

> This is fine when talking of consonants but surely vowel sounds are
> extraordinarily different. In a western culture I doubt that you could
> rely on the consonants for spelling and leave vowels to the speaker to
> fill in at will. Who would finally choose the written form of the
> vowels? The economically powerful?

This is particularly true of English and Scots, where most unstressed vowels
are simply a schwa. I've tried devising (dia)phonemic systems for both
languages but it tends to fill up with the letter "i". When I first joined
Lowlands-L one of the Lowlanders here directed me to his web pages for a
reformed English spelling system but, apart from the fact that I could see
it was American pronunciation (he had thought it was universal), it suffered
from what I call "The Solicitor Effect" in English, ie, that different
people have different ideas about the vowels in words like "solicitor".
Where I would write "solisitir" or possibly "solisiter", others would write
"slistr" or "slicty" (where I've used "y" at random to represent the vowel
the English use for "-er" endings - I, of course, pronounce the "r"). IN
other words, he often dropped vowels were I felt they were necessary.

I've also tried to learn the prize-winning "Shavian" script for English, and
failed. My conclusion is that you simply can't write Scottish English in
Shavian script. Even ignoring the difference between "w" and "wh", there's
no letter for "r" and the whole vowel system simply doesn't map - even if
people could determine which vowel is appropriate. Yet Shavian script
(perhaps sensibly re-mapped back onto the Roman alphabet rather than written
in its current "symmetrical" form) is more or less exactly what's required
for a phonemic representation of certain kinds of English.

Shavian has also been designed to be particularly easy to learn - in its
symmetric form it actually reflects some phonemes at the feature level
(voicings), so theoretically helps the learner to remember the shape of "b"
from the shape of related sounds like "p". But my dialect of English
prevented me from learning it - I would have actually have to have learned a
whole new way of pronouncing English (say, BBC English) to be able to write.

So much for Ron's assertion that a phonemic script can be learned in a few
hours, or that it solves interdialectical problems.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (05) [E]

> From: jkrause <jkrause at old-sod-shanty.com>

> Regarding Englisch othografie, Ai think wie ott tuh yuhs sum sort ov Low
> Sachsen  beyst spelling sistem.  After all, Englisch is a Loh German
> dereiv'd languidge, not?  Abolisch the X, Q, and in mohst keyses, the C,
> eksept for the ck kombineyschon, and Ai think wie wudd hav a verie gudd
> orthografick sistem.
>
> Yers with mei tung firmlie in mei tschieck,
> Jim Krause

Flolgwoni Jim I wuold jsut say taht slpelnig ralely in'ts an isuse
bceasue, as eyervnoe kwnos, ayonen can raed waht you witre if you are
caerluf to srart and end wrdos wtih the crorect lterter.

Regards,

Tom

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (10) [E]

Mark wrote:

> Would you say, with Mae West (was it Mae West) "A hard Language is good
> to find?"

Hey, finally someone who takes me seriously! :-))

I knew that Troy could and would state the same much more scientifically, so
I decided to go for the surreal approach, just for the heck of it...

Is that a diphthong you're carrying, or are you just happy to see me?
Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 16:20:17 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:20:17 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.092017.0700.>

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From: Kevin Caldwell <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (03) [E]

> From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
> Subject: "Orthography" [E]
> Ron also wrote:
>
> "Furthermore, this type of system is by its very nature interdialectal,
> because phonological differences (in the phonetic output) between dialects
> do not even enter the equasion in reading and writing."
>
> This statement puzzles me - surely dialects are the bane of a phonemic
> system? I don't think it can be done without diaphonemics, and even that's
> just a compromise.
>
> Tom again:
>
> > This is fine when talking of consonants but surely vowel sounds are
> > extraordinarily different. In a western culture I doubt that you could
> > rely on the consonants for spelling and leave vowels to the speaker to
> > fill in at will. Who would finally choose the written form of the
> > vowels? The economically powerful?
>
> This is particularly true of English and Scots, where most unstressed
> vowels
> are simply a schwa. I've tried devising (dia)phonemic systems for both
> languages but it tends to fill up with the letter "i". When I first joined
> Lowlands-L one of the Lowlanders here directed me to his web pages for a
> reformed English spelling system but, apart from the fact that I could see
> it was American pronunciation (he had thought it was universal), it
> suffered
> from what I call "The Solicitor Effect" in English, ie, that different
> people have different ideas about the vowels in words like "solicitor".
> Where I would write "solisitir" or possibly "solisiter", others would
> write
> "slistr" or "slicty" (where I've used "y" at random to represent the vowel
> the English use for "-er" endings - I, of course, pronounce the "r"). IN
> other words, he often dropped vowels were I felt they were necessary.

I too do not understand how a phonemic spelling system for English could be
devised without regard to dialectal differences.  I remember how surprised I
was when I ran across a list of words with "silent letters" - it was a list
of the English alphabet and words for each letter in which that letter is
silent.  For the letter "L", they listed words like "walk" and "talk."  I
thought, "The 'L' in 'walk' and 'talk' isn't silent!"  Then I started to
listen carefully to other people's pronunciation of those words and began to
notice for the first time in my life that most people do _not_ pronounce the
'L' in those words!  As though the words were actually "wock" and "tock"!
It was a revelation to me, as I have always pronounced the "L" in those
words (or at least it "colors" the preceding vowel to some extent).  But I
would expect that a phonemic spelling system would drop the "L" from those
words, and where would that leave me and others who pronounce the "L"?  The
same might go for the "h" in "wh-" words (I pronounce "wh" differently from
"w", as do a lot of US Southerners).

Kevin Caldwell
Kcaldwell31 at comcast.net

---------

From: Peter Snepvangers <snepvangers at optushome.com.au>
Subject: Orthography

Tom Maguire jmaguire at pie.xtec. wrote....
I agree that uniformity has not been seen as a virtue in English
speaking countries. However I don't see that as an argument for asking
foreigners how to speak or write your native language. (The next thing
they might set up an "Académie Royale" in Paris or Brussels to decide
what English spelling is acceptable and what not.) This kind of
prescriptive uniformity, accepted as the norm in many countries, is
decidedly unscientific.

Hello Tom,
you might end up with something like this
If GH   can stand for P  as in  Hiccough
If OUGH stands for    O  as in  Dough
If PHTH stands for    T  as in  Phthisis
If EIGH stands for    A  as in  Neighbour
If TTE  stands for    T  as in  Gazette
If EAU  stands for    O  as in  Plateau
 The right way to spell POTATO should be: GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU
Cheers
Peter Snepvangers
snepvangers at optushome.com.au

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 16:21:43 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:21:43 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Levity" 2004.06.07 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.092143.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (03) [E]

Hi, Gabriele,

> Is that a diphthong you're carrying, or are you just happy to see me?

I can't cap that or match it, but I rather think you'll enjoy this:

Do you know that a Scottish man has a pibroch; & he is supposed to keep it
in his oxter?

Yrs,
Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 17:19:28 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 10:19:28 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.101928.0700.>

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From: Holger Weigelt <platt at holger-weigelt.de>
Subject: "False friends"

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
> between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them,
like
> 'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
> 'poison' -a totally false friend, while others are partially false - thus,
> French 'voyage' is any journey, while the English 'voyage' is only a
journey
> by sea.
>
> Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this
carefully:
> do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
> thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples,
and
> I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.
>
> John Duckworth
> Preston, UK
>
Hello John !
Yes, there are some between German and Low Saxon. One of them is the same as
is between English and German: gift (gift)/ Gift (poison). An other that
comes into mind at once is fleddern (eldertree which would be Holunder in
G.) / Flieder (bot. Syringa which would be flöören in LS).
There will be other more striking examples, too.
Recently I read a report in LS about a journey where in one passage the
writer wanted to explain that he entered a hotel and wrote: "wi betrukken 'n
hotel". In German this would sound: Wir bezogen ein Hotel. "bezogen" is past
tense of "beziehen" (to move into, to enter into a house) - G. "beziehen" is
derived from "ziehen" which in LS is "trekken" to which past tense is
"trukken". What the writer obviously didn't know is that LS "betrekken" or
"bītrekken"  means "to beat, to knock, to hit, to belabour.
Greetings
Holger

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends

Greetings to one and all!

Mike Winzer said: "Hi,Isn´t this a quite common thing? E.g. "buck" can mean
two different things depending on the socio-linguistic context. Or is this
not what you mean,John?"

No, Mike it isn't what I mean. The example of 'buck' or 'jack' or 'spring'
is one of homonyms (and homophones) in the same language. By 'False Friends'
I mean words in one language (or dialect - though for politically correct
reasons I was trying to avoid the use of this word) which sound / are spelt
the same (or very similarly) in another language (or dialect), but which
mean something different. Thus the word _Erik_ in German is a man's name,
but in Turkish _erik_ is the word for 'a plum'; the word _book_ in English
does mean the same as the word _boek_ (pronounced almost th same) in Dutch,
but does not mean the same as the Russian 'False Friend' _buk_ , which means
'beech tree'. Similarly, the Danish _bog_ is not synonymous with the English
word _bog_, meaning 'marsh', but rather means 'book'.

There are many instances of False Friends between one language and another,
but what suddenly began to interest me was whether they existed between
literary languages and the forms of speech that are often considered to be
dialects of those languages; in other words between two forms of speech
spoken in different social contexts by the same person. What I think is that
the literary language will exert such a powerful influence that False
Friends would disappear after a time, but that is just a theory and it may
be different in practice.

Sandy said: "Also, sometimes a word is not only the false friend of a word
in another language, but because of the closeness and historical contacts
between the languages, the words falsely befriended also exist with the same
meanings in the other language. For example Scots "fit" (foot) is a false
friend to the English "fit" (eg "the shoe fit" or even in the sense of
"seizure"), but the English meanings of the word exist in Scots too. "

This is a very good point, and it seems that we must split false friends
into a number of categories. Am I not right in saying though, Sandy, that
there is a slight difference of pronunciation between Scots _fit_ in the
sense of 'foot', and _fit_ in the other senses? Whatever the case though, we
have a homonym here, and the sense could be misunderstood if taken out of
context.

The other words that Sandy gives, do however seem to be true False Friends,
as do the others given by Ron and Gabriele and others. This gives food for
thought as it appears to show that False Friends can be tolerated between
Scots and English, or between Low Saxon and Standard German, and are not
eradicated by the strength of the more dominant speech-form.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Of course, I agree with your observations and conclusions, John

I wonder if we could go a step farther by perhaps saying that false friends
can be seen as some sort of test of language familiarity or proficiency.
Surely, false friends are striking only to those who are not or are only
superficially acquainted with one or both of the languages involved, while
those who are very familiar with and proficient in both do not normally
think about false friends, not even about the "gems" among them.

Incidentally, all this is reminiscent of the fine art and science of
"shoecabbaging" a friend of mine has developed:
http://www.ucomics.com/shoecabbage/
http://www.ucomics.com/shoecabbage/bio.phtml
http://home.epix.net/~hce/shoecabbage.html
http://thewvsr.com/shoecabbage.htm
http://www.amuniversal.com/ups/newsrelease/?view=82

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Peter Snepvangers <snepvangers at optushome.com.au>
Subject: False friends

Mike <botas at club-internet.fr> wrote:
Hi,
Isn´t this a quite common thing? E.g. "buck" can mean two different things
depending on the socio-linguistic context. Or is this not what you mean,
John?
Greetings to all, Mike Wintzer

Hello Mike,
I was reading your posting and was reminded of a joke so I thought I would
share it with you.
SMOKE RINGS

A Dutch immigrant travelling through the prairies of the USA stopped at a
small town and went to a bar. He stood at the end of the bar, ordered a
drink, and lit up a cigar. As he sipped his drink, he stood there quietly
blowing smoke rings.

After he blew nine or ten smoke rings into the air, an angry American Indian
stomped up to him and said,

"One more remark like that and I'll smash your face in!"
The meaning of words (or in this case actions) is not always clear. I am not
a linguist and have made many fox paws when I have tried to write in Dutch
and Limburgs because I have assumed the correct meanings of words. What
annoys me most is when people do not correct you and let you continue with
the poor grammatical useage.
Cheers
Peter Snepvangers
snepvangers at optushome.com.au

----------

From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (07) [E]

> From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]
>
> "And then there is the widespread use of 'learn'
> meaning 'to teach'.  I would say this is more of a
> working class usage than a particular dialect (it has
> a nice history, too)."
>
> Would venture a guess this is more prominent in the
> former Danelaw region.  The root "lære" in Danish
> means "to teach."

or 'to teach' = 'at lære (fra sig)'

> By the way, the word _gift_ (<Gift>) for 'poison' is now taking over in
> Lowlands Saxon (Low German) of Germany, probably due to German influence.
> However, _gift_ (<Gift>) also has the same meaning as English "gift."

It is more funny in Danish:

gift = poison
gift = being married :)

Kenneth

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 18:53:06 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 11:53:06 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.115306.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (01) [E]

Kevin wrote:

> I too do not understand how a phonemic spelling system for English could
be
> devised without regard to dialectal differences.  I remember how surprised
I
> was when I ran across a list of words with "silent letters" - it was a
list
> of the English alphabet and words for each letter in which that letter is
> silent.  For the letter "L", they listed words like "walk" and "talk."  I
> thought, "The 'L' in 'walk' and 'talk' isn't silent!"  Then I started to
> listen carefully to other people's pronunciation of those words and began
to
> notice for the first time in my life that most people do _not_ pronounce
the
> 'L' in those words!

That reminds me of an argument I sometimes have with my (US-American)
husband; he thinks it's hilarious that I put a little "r" sound at the end
of the word "idea". Well, that's how I learned it in school (British
English, in a German school), and that's how I remember people pronouncing
it in England and Scotland. So,do they or don't they?

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 19:12:42 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 12:12:42 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.121242.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: ***SPAM*** Re:      LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (03) [E]

Ron wrote:

> Surely, false friends are striking only to those who are not or are only
> superficially acquainted with one or both of the languages involved, while
> those who are very familiar with and proficient in both do not normally
> think about false friends, not even about the "gems" among them.

My daughter came home with such a gem today... one of her German college
friends had gone to Holland and saw a purse there which she would have liked
to buy, but it had a big sticker on it saying, "Bijzonder nuttig", which
means "Especially useful". Well, she figured out the "bijzonder" part
(German "besonders"), but then she took "nuttig" to be the same as the
German word "nuttig", which means "prostitute-like". The real German
equivalent would have been "nützlich"; I suppose that German "Nutte",
"whore", has the same root - someone who is used. So she didn't buy the
purse because she thought it was a favourite among Dutch prostitutes and she
didn't want to give the wrong impression.

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 19:29:36 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 12:29:36 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.122936.0700.>

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From: Szelog, Mike <Mike.Szelog at citizensbank.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (04) [E]

Up here in New England, that's the ONLY way to pronounce it - got in trouble
way back in grammar school for actually writing "idear" - the 'r' on the end
is that pronounced/noticeable here in New England!!

'Course, we get rid of it in "othah" (other) places!

Mike S
Manchester, NH - USA

----------

From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (04) [E]

Gabrielle asked:  "So,do they or don't they?"
Yes, they do.  When I was in college taking my linguistics courses, I was
told that the added "r" on idea was an example of overcorrection.  So many
words ending in "r" orthographically are pronounced schwa by New Englanders
and the British.  So, on words that really end in schwa, there's a tendency
to add an "r".  Go figure.

Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 19:45:30 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 12:45:30 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.07 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.124530.0700.>

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

Gabriele (under "False friends" today):

> The real German
> equivalent would have been "nützlich"; I suppose that German "Nutte",
> "whore", has the same root - someone who is used.

I'm afraid that, according to etymological sources, the origin appears to be
even more demeaning: it is a variant of Middle German _nuot_ > Modern German
_Nut_ ~ _Nute_ 'joint', 'chase', 'gap', 'groove', 'crack' ... 'nough said
...

Lowlands Saxon (Low German) has _nuut_ (<Nuut> < _nute_, f.) for the above
(i.e., the technical term), but apparently it has the demeaning variant only
as a probably recent loan from German, though German may have originally
borrowed it from LS (or else I would expect *_Nutze_).  The traditional LS
words for both the professional and "hobby" varieties are (_houre_ >) _hour_
(<Hoor> ~ <Huur> [hoU3] ~ [hu:3]) and the neuter gender derivation
_houren-minsch_ (<Horenminsch> ~ <Hoornminsch> ~ <Hurenminsch> ~
<Huurnminsch> ['hoU3nmInS] ~ ['hu:3nmInS]),* related to English (_hôre_ >)
_whore_, German (_huora_ >) _Hure_, Dutch/Afrikaans _hoer_, Danish _hore_,
Swedish _hora_, Icelandic _hóra_, etc. (< Germanic *_hôrôn_ < Indo-European
*_karo-s_ 'beloved', 'desired' < _ka-_ 'to desire', cf. Latvian _kãrs_
'lusting').

* _Minsch_ in the sense of 'human being' or 'person' (of either sex) has
masculine gender (thus takes the article _dey_ (<de> and the pronoun _hey_
(<he>)), while _minsch_ with neuter gender (taking the article _dat_ and the
pronoun _it_ ~ _et_ ~ _dat_) expresses 'woman' with contempt; e.g., _Dat
minsch dayt d'n heylen dag niks as ekstern_ 'That (dreadful) woman does
nothing all day but nag and yell' (literally "magpie-ing”).

Another word for "whore" or "prostitute" is _vouse_ ~ _vous'_ (_vose_ ~
_voos'_? <Fose> ~ <Foos>).  I do not use it, and I do not know its origin,
but I have the sneaking suspicion it's something nasty.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 23:05:58 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 16:05:58 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.160558.0700.>

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From: Kevin Caldwell <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (04) [E]

> That reminds me of an argument I sometimes have with my (US-American)
> husband; he thinks it's hilarious that I put a little "r" sound at the end
> of the word "idea". Well, that's how I learned it in school (British
> English, in a German school), and that's how I remember people pronouncing
> it in England and Scotland. So,do they or don't they?
>
> Gabriele Kahn

In the US, that would make you sound like you were from New England or, if
spoken with a drawl, from the South.

Reminds me of a joke I heard the other day (told with a heavy Southern
accent):

What do you call a deer with no eyes?  I have no idear.

Kevin Caldwell (kcaldwell31 at comcast.net)

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Orthography" [E]

> From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (01) [E]
>
> That reminds me of an argument I sometimes have with my (US-American)
> husband; he thinks it's hilarious that I put a little "r" sound at the end
> of the word "idea". Well, that's how I learned it in school (British
> English, in a German school), and that's how I remember people pronouncing
> it in England and Scotland. So,do they or don't they?

I'll let Englanders speak for themselves on this, but in Scotland,
absolutely not. In Scots and Scottish English the "r" is pronounced (as a
single flap or sometimes a few more) wherver it's written, and never
anywhere else.

If we're talking about pronunciation (rather than writing) then there's
really no such thing as British English - the Scottish varieties are
pronounced in a way completely foreign to any of the English varieties.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 23:07:19 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 16:07:19 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (09) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.160719.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> This is a very good point, and it seems that we must split false friends
> into a number of categories. Am I not right in saying though, Sandy, that
> there is a slight difference of pronunciation between Scots _fit_ in the
> sense of 'foot', and _fit_ in the other senses?

No, they're pronounced the same.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 14:36:38 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 07:36:38 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.08 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.073638.0700.>

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From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (03) [E]

One can never pass by the word bless. In English, it is what God does. In
French, Satan blesse les gens. Blesser in French means to wound. Que Dieu
vous blesse!
Ben

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Ben, Lowlanders,

And then there is Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _bless_ (<Bless> [blEs], f.,
pl. _-en_) 'blaze' (as e.g. on a horse's forehead).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 14:38:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 07:38:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.08 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.073833.0700.>

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From: sam s claire <gamlhs at juno.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.03 (02) [E]

LLs: Spelling reform will never happen as long as Spelling Bees go on.
It's a conspiracy!

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 15:14:00 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 08:14:00 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2004.06.08 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.081400.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography

Dear Lowlanders,

I have been listening to some recordings of famous Britons to see if they
are using the extra -r (as in _idea-r_ ) in their speech.

Winston Churchill in 1941 does not seem to use it; he refers to _Africa_,
and does not seem to pronunce the word _Africa-r_.This is the URL for the
so-called 'Chicken Speech' :
http://archives.cbc.ca/400d.asp?id=1-71-149-778-21

I have listened to a number of other speeches by Churchill, and son't seem
to have come across any examples.

The famous early BBC newsreader Alvar Lidell, giving the news in 1945,
clearly adds an extra -r to the word _area_. THe URL is:
http://www.islandfarm.fsnet.co.uk/BBC%20News%20Recording%20Read%20By%20Alvar%20Lidell.htm

Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, while still a queen in her own right adressing
the women of the Empire in 1939, does not seem to add an extra -r in
_Canada_ and _America_. The speech may be found under the URL:
http://www.soundsofhistory.com/main.html

John Duckworth
Preston, Lancashire

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography


Gabriele, and other Lowlanders,

I just came across a short article on the internet that states that "Some
people blanch at intrusive r,but most RP speakers now use it."

I am not sure that this is correct, and genuinely think that the usage is
waning, but this is the URL of the article:
http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ/mifrhtcvsnnrhtcntr.shtml

I will have to listen to the pronunciation of a few RP (Received
Pronunciation) speakers to determine if it really is as common as the writer
of the article maintains!

John Duckworth
Preston, Lancashire

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography


Hello, Lowlanders one and all!

Gabriele asked: "Well, that's how I learned it in school (British English,
in a German school), and that's how I remember people pronouncing it in
England and Scotland. So,do they or don't they?"

As an Englishman I would regard this intrusive final -r as an affectation,
and it probably did originate as a hypercorrection, though I have generally
heard it from well-educated individuals who should have known better. It
used to be much more common than it is today, though it is still to be heard
occasionally.

In the case of at least one word, however, its use is relatively common,
even in individuals who do not use it in other words, and that is the word
_law_, which they pronounce the same as _lore_.

John Duckworth
Preston, Lancashire


----------

From: jkrause <jkrause at old-sod-shanty.com.flexwebhosting.nl>
Subject: Orthography

Gabriele,
There are places in the USA where that r is inserted after the final vowel.
I remember my mother used to giggle over how President Kennedy (who was from
Massachusetts) used to say "Cubar."   Growing up on the Pacific Coast of the
US, I thought that treatment of words like Cuba, and  idea
rather--um--interesting.
Jim Krause

----------

From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Orthography

Hi All

Mark wrote

"Gabrielle asked:  "So,do they or don't they?"
Yes, they do.  When I was in college taking my
linguistics courses, I
was
told that the added "r" on idea was an example of
overcorrection.  So
many
words ending in "r" orthographically are pronounced
schwa by New
Englanders
and the British.  So, on words that really end in
schwa, there's a
tendency
to add an "r".  Go figure."

This is half true. In the case of American English,
because the prestige form contains 'r' the adding of
'r' in dialects where it does not exist is very
possibly a case of over- (or hyper-) correction.
However in England the prestige form does not have 'r'
and the adding of 'r' - which only occurs at the end
of a word when followed by a vowel, is a case of
analogy. Thus 'idea' said on it's own or before a
consonant, in areas of England where the 'r' has been
lost, does NOT have an 'r' but a phrase like 'the
idea(r) is' does. In the same way as 'deer' said on
it's own or before a consonant does not have an 'r'
but the phrase 'the deer is' does.

I think the case in America is often that 'idea' will
have an 'r' in all positions - this then is
overcorrection and not analogy.

I hypercorrect myself on occasion. In London English
we have lost the 'l' in the same position as the lost
'r' (and also add it in the same way as 'r' is added
i.e. before a vowel). When I'm trying to speak posh
(doesn't often happen - but sometimes when teaching
English it's necessary) I tend to add an 'l' when it's
written. Thus I will say words like 'talk' and 'half'
with an 'l' - I now always have to check in a
dictionary with words with 'l' to see whether it's
pronounced or not. I constantly have to look up words
like 'salt' and 'talk' (said by me as 'suwt' and
'tuwk' - it's very annoying - get rid of all 'l's in
this position, they only clutter things up... ;-)

Gary

----------

From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (08) [E]


Sandy wrote:
"If we're talking about pronunciation (rather than writing) then there's
really no such thing as British English - the Scottish varieties are
pronounced in a way completely foreign to any of the English varieties."

Then there's the phonemic difference within English Englishes too. With
regard to orthography I must counter Sandy and suggest that 'British
English' is a little inappropriate a term - even though I've used it myself.
The last time I checked, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South
Africa were not a part of Britain. 'Commonwealth English' as an alternative
falls flat because Ireland isn't a member. Any ideas?

Go raibh maith agat

Criostóir.

----------

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

Folks,

I've always thought of "intrusive r" in non-rhotic* English in terms of
explainable phonological rules, namely as placing an epenthetic "r" -- which
surfaces as a result of liaison before an initial vowel in the next word.
The "r" is placed there because a word-final unstressed vowel is not
permissible in those English varieties, occurs only in foreign words and
names.  In other words, word-final unstressed vowels in foreign words and
names are processed like native _-er_ ([ə(r)]/[@(r)], which can also be
spelled _-or_ or _-ar_ in loanwords).  You say "neveragain" for "never
again;" analogously you say "Africarorasia" for "Africa or Asia," as though
it were "Afriker or Asier."

I've written about this in a couple of articles:
(1991) Diachronic aspects of regular disharmony in Modern Uyghur. In: W.G.
Boltz and M.C. Shapiro, eds., _Studies in the Historical Phonology of Asian
Languages_, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 68-101.
 (1991) Modern Uyghur _y~r_-insertion: nativization through analogical
extension. _Acta linguistica hafniensia_ 24:77-96.

In those articles I compare the English phenomenon with a very similar one
in Uyghur (a Turkic language used mostly in what is now Western China, also
als a minority language in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Usbekistan).  Uyghur
is also a non-rhotic language (which is rather atypical for the Turkic group
of languages).  An "r" or a "y" (dialect-dependent) is inserted after a
word-final long syllable in foreign (mostly Arabic, Persian, Russian and
Chinese) words and names when these words and names undergo suffixing.  A
long vowel at the end of a word is foreign to the language and creates a
predicament when suffixes are added in this Altaic, thus agglutinating,
language.  Insertion of "r" or "y" solves this problem because this type of
sequence can occur in native words.  I think of English intrusive "r" as a
similar process.  In other words, it is a part of phonological loan
adaptation.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

* P.S.: For those of you who aren't already aware of this, "non-rhotic"
varieties are those in which final "r" is "deleted," actually assimilated to
the preceding vowel; e.g., _never_ pronounced as "nevva" or "nevvuh" rather
than as "nevver".

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 16:37:41 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 09:37:41 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Literature" 2004.06.08 (04) [E/German]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.093741.0700.>

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

Folks,

I received a request in German (below), apparently in response to my
Lowlands Saxon (Low German) translation of "Auld Lang Syne"
(http://www.sassisch.net/auld_lang_syne.htm).  The question is if Robert
Burns' songs had been translated into LS earlier and have been published in
book form.  If so, I would be surprised, especially if it had been in the
18th century, as surmised.  I am aware only of Friedrich Freudenthal (one of
the two Freudenthal Brothers, the Scholars and Bards of the Lunenburg Heath,
http://freudenthal-gesellschaft.de/) having translated one of Burns'
Scottish English love poems in 1873.

I have also translated Burns' monumental ballad "Tam O' Shanter" into LS,
but so far I have shared it only with close friends because it is not yet
published.

Any information would be appreciated and would be forwarded.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***

Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 11:43:28 +0100 (BST)
From: "Anita Sikora" nitaeva75_si at yahoo.co.uk
To: sassisch at yahoo.com
Subject: Burns-Gedichte in Platt


Sehr geehrter Herr Hahn,

Da ich gerade meine Abschlussarbeit in einem Uebersetzerstudiengang hier in
Grossbritannien schreibe, und gerade nach Uebersetzungen von
Robert-Burns-Gedichten ins Plattdeutsche recherchiere, bin ich auf Ihre
Webseite gestossen. Ich habe da eine Frage und wuerde mich freuen, wenn Sie
sie mir beantworten koennten. Ich habe in einem Buch mit plattdeutschen
Gedichten (das hier fuer mich nicht zugaenglich ist) gelesen, dass es im
18.Jahrhundert schon mal eine niederdeutsche Uebersetzung seiner Gedichte
gegeben hat. Wissen Sie vielleicht von wem?
Ich hoffe, von Ihnen zu hoeren. Ich wuerde mich auch  gerne ueber die
plattdeutsche Sprache mit Ihnen austauschen.

Mit freundlichen Gruessen,

Anita Sikora

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 16:42:15 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 09:42:15 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.08 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.094215.0700.>

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From: burgdal32admin <burgdal32 at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (02) [E]

> From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
> Subject: Dutch Spelling Reform
>
> Hello all,
>
> With regard to spelling reform in English, I am curious to know if
> native
> speakers of Dutch find reading 19th century literature written in Dutch
> difficult given the number of spelling reforms that have taken place
> since
> then. Being a foreigner (I live in Flanders), I really have no idea.
>
> I think it safe to say that native Anglophones can read 19th
> literature in
> English with little problem since the orthography is almost identical
> today;
> changes in word meanings are the major problem. 18th century English is
> perhaps not as easy, but still manageable by most native speakers.
> Conversely, Shakespeare is usually a challenge.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Troy
Hi Troy,
It gives me no trouble at all to read 19th century Dutch. Even older
literature is rather easy because it tends to move slowly to my more
archaic West-Flemish.  Even Shakespeare is sometimes more easy to
understand than some difficult modern English book, for the same reason.
Groetjes
luc vanbrabant
oekene

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 19:16:20 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 12:16:20 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.08 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.121620.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.08 (05) [E]

Dear Luc, Troy & All,

Subject: LL-L "Orthography"

    I, personally, find Vondelen easier to manage than Modern Hollands, at
any rate. I won't presume to guess why, it just flows better. Also the terms
& names as such are easier to follow in the earlier language than in the
later.

    As far as English goes, a bilingual S.African, & even more, a native
Afrikaans speaker has a serious advantage with the older forms of English.
Even in A. Conan Doyle you find English usages more amiable to Afrikaans
practice than modern English e.g. a merchant quoting the cost of an article
at "five-and-twenty Shillings!". There are many other examples.
    In Shakespeare the advantage is more marked. In High School we studied
two to four plays of Shakespeare every year, & we country-boys used the
annotations to the text a lot less than the British immigrant kids studying
with us. One cute example is from 'Macbeth' where a witch uses the word
'paddock' for frog. The Pommies (pardon, fellows) didn't have a clue, but we
still use the word 'padda'.
    Getting to Chaucer, the advantage is serious. I never studied it in
University (which is probably why I still enjoy it), but friends who did say
their English speaking fellow students were all at sea. A few of the local
'Dutchmen' planted some serious obligations with the occasional tutoring.
    Coming to Caxton's 'Reynarde' it is manifest how much more carries over
into the English from the 'Flemish' of his time than any continental
language does with the English of today. I wont pretend they were closely
related at that time, or even dialectically related, but there were many
parallels.

    Yrs Sincerely,
Mark

---------

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

Mark, Folks,

Sorry I'm crossing this thread over to "Language varieties," even though
there is an orthographic component to it.  I think what we are starting to
talk about here now is degrees of mutual comprehension among Lowlands
language varieties (albeit only in writing so far).

Let me add that I, too, had relatively few problems with Chaucer's and other
folks' Middle English writings, approaching them from a German and Lowlands
Saxon background with then added smatterings of Modern English, Danish,
Dutch and Afrikaans, well before I started on the path down into the murky
depths of linguistics and acquired analytical skills that come with it.
Already then did I seem to have far fewer problems understanding Middle
English than did or do monlingual native English speakers or English
speakers with non-Germanic foreign language background.  Nowadays I read
Middle English (mostly poetry) with relative ease, referring to glossaries
and notes only rarely.

I used to have serious beginners' problems reading Old English but gradually
acquired fair reading skills, mostly by just reading and reading, looking up
vocabulary (less and less) and occasionally referring to grammar notes.  The
other day I read a short Old English story "cold," about one third into a
textbook I picked up at a store, and I understood the entire thing without
having to look up anything.  My reading skills in Old English and Old Saxon
are on similar levels.  All in all, I would say that I started off with a
distinct advantage over native English speakers who have no knowledge of
other Germanic languages and are not familiar with Germanic alternatives of
what in Modern English are Latinate words, and who are thrown off by the
relatively complex Old English morphology (which is a piece of cake to
speakers of German and Icelandic for example).

I cannot stress enough the importance of exposure to languages that are
closely related to one's own.  Not only does it train one in understanding
other language varieties but it also enhances one's understanding of one's
own language variety and its ancestors.  Here on Lowlands-L we have
opportunities to practise this.  Particularly those bi- or trilingual
postings are no doubt very useful and are lapped up by many on this list.
So keep them coming, folks!

(Of course, I cannot stress enough the importance of learning languages that
are "unrelated" or are distantly related to one's own, for that teaches one
even more about one's own.  But that's a second step, another trip and
another story ...)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 22:43:27 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 15:43:27 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.08 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.154327.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Platt sample"

Dear Lowlanders,

I have mentioned before that I was born in the Harz/Solling region in
Southern Lower Saxony; my mother hailed from Mecklenburg, and my father's
parents came from the Harz and the Lüneburger Heide northeast of Hannover,
respectively. So, as a child, I was exposed to different varieties of Lower
Saxon. Also, I had seen the language written in three varieties, namely by
Fritz Reuter, "the" poet from Mecklenburg, Wilhelm Busch, "the" poet from
Lower Saxony, and the Brothers Grimm (a number of their fairy tales were
originally written in Platt, including the famous race between the hedgehog
and the hare).

When I was almost 14, we moved to the city of Hameln on the Weser river
(i.e. Hamelin of Pied Piper fame), some 50 km to the north-east, and I was
amazed to find how much their flavour of "Platt" was different from what I
was used to (and certainly very different from the Lower Saxon spoken on the
German coast); it is probably quite heavily influenced by Westphalian Platt
(just a guess). This was also reflected in the spelling. "Dewezet", the
local newspaper, used to run a humourous column every day called "Die
plattdeutsche Ecke". They discontinued it around twenty years ago, and
although I had been trying to get my hands on a sample for this forum, I had
no luck. Last weekend, while going through the last of my late stepfather's
papers, I finally found a booklet called "Dat Hamelnsche ABC", which
contains a collection of little essays and anecdotes, possibly by the same
author who ran the column.

So here's a little story as a sample. Please forgive me if, at the moment, I
am too busy to provide a translation. maybe I'll have time later this week,
or maybe someone else would like to try his hand. Enjoy!


Erinnerungen, Stükker drai!

Minsche, secht miene Fruu, dien Gedächtnis weert aberst jümmer slechter, as
se öhren Braif an Schenettentante naa veer Dagen ut miener Manteltasche
fische. "Dien Gedächtnis is jaa as'n Rathuus: luter lege Stoben! Getze
nümmste den Braif we'er mee." Un se bunt mek uppe Seele: "Vergett dat aberst
nich nochmaal! Et gaiht düttmaal umme Geld. Verspräkeste mek dat?" - Ek
hebbe et hoch un hailich versproken un doch we'er vergäten. Doch wat
passeere allet an düssen Daage:

Gaiht doch ne Fruu an mek vorbi, kiekt mek an un secht mee so'n Plinkern
ümme de Ogen: "Na, dütmaal vergätet Sai den Braif aberst bestimmt nich!"
"Wat", segge ek, "wat schall ek nich vergäten?" De fremde Fruu lache un säe:
"Den Braif, den Braif!" Ek wolle se fraagen, woher weetet Sai denne, dat ek
en Bräif instäken mott, da was se al weege. En bet'n laater tippe mek so'n
Keerl uppe Schuller: "Junge, vergett den Braif nich, is'n wichtigen Braif,
gah naa'n Braifkasten, süss weerste tohuus we'er anefratset!"

Ek wusste nu gaanich mehr, wat ek darup seggen scholle. Denne ook düsse
Slaumaier griene kort un weege was hai.

Annen Braifkasten lache mek denne so'n drallet Mäken an un secht: "Dat is
aberst fain, dat Sai den Braif hüte instäket!" Ek segge: "Het miene Fruu Sai
uppekregen oder kennet Sai mek?" "Nee", gnikkere dat Mäken, "ek kenne öhre
Fruu nich un de kennt mek ook nich. Aberst öhre Fruu maaket sek doch Sorgen
ümme Sai un ümme den Braif!"

"So", segge ek, "nu rekket et mek aberst, verklaart Sai mek mal akkeraat,
wat is dat for dummet Tügs mee düssen Braif?" Da kamm dat Mäken ganss dichte
an mek ran, packe mek anne Schuller, harre upstunns en Zeetel inner Hand un
säe: "Öhre Fruu hett Sai düssen Zeetel annen Mantel espendelt!" "Wat staiht
denn da upp'n Pupaier?" fraage ek hibbelich.

Dat Mäken prusche los un hett mek denne voreläsen, wat miene Fruu
uppeschreeben hett:
"Bitte erinnern Sai öhne. Hai schall en wichtigen Braif instäken. Hai
vergett jümmerst allet. Un veelen Dank in voruut!"

Gabriele Kahn

---------

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

Thanks for the interesting language sample (above), Gabriele!

The Hamlin variety seems to me to be transitional between the Westphalian
and Eastphalian groups of Lowlands Saxon (Low German) dialects.  Certainly,
past participial _e-_ for _ge-_ (Eastern _je-_, Northern zero; Dutch _ge-_,
Old English _ge-_ ~ _(y)e-_) in conjunction with the diphthong [a.I]
(Northern [e.I] ~ [a.I], e.g., _Braif_ 'letter', Northern _breyv_ (<Breef> ~
<Breif>)) seems rather Eastphalian, also 2nd personal familiar verbal suffix
_-est du_ > _-este_ (e.g., _verspräkeste_ 'you promise').

Most definitely Eastphalian is _mek_ for 'me' (~ _mik_, also _dek_ ~ _dik_
'thee', consistent with reflexive _sek_ ~ _sik_), where other dialect groups
have _mi_ (and _di_, but _sik_) respectively.  So, this striking
characteristic would put this dialect into the Eastphalian category in a
world in which everything is neatly and clearly categorized.

However, it seems to me to be farwestern Eastphalian transitioning to
Westphalian in the west and North Saxon in the north.  It is rather
conservative, preserving many _-e_ suffixes (e.g., _ek segge_ [Ek 'zEg@],
cf. Northern _ik segg_ [Ik zEC] 'I say'), including the old 3rd person
preterite _-e_ (e.g., _hai tippe_ 'he tapped', cf. Northern _hey tip an_).

Unlike "hardcore" Eastphalian dialects, it has long _ü_ [y:] (like North
Saxon) rather than Eastphalian-type _iu_ ~ _ui_ (e.g., _hüte_ 'today', cf.
E. _hiute_ ~ _huite_, N. _hüte_ ~ _hüüt_).

Isn't Hamlin in the area of Engria (German _Engern_) of the Old Saxons
times?  That region was indeed wedged between Westphalia and Eastphalia, all
of them situated south of Northern Albingia (which was north of the Elbe
river, pretty much today's Holstein, south of Anglia).  Engria ceased to
exist and came to be disregarded.  However, perhaps transitional dialects
like this one could still be considered remnants of its heritage.

The dialect of Hanover (_Hannover_) is definitely Eastphalian, albeit
Western Eastphalian, I think.  Hamlin isn't far from there.

The Harz Mountains region is linguistically highly complex, because it was
at one time a mining area and attracted people from far and wide, not only
Saxon speakers.  As far as I know, it is only along its northern foothills
that sizeable Saxon language communities are found, but I am not sure about
this.

I am curious to know what others think about this.

Thanks again!

The translation of the piece is below.

Reinhard/Ron

***


Memories, Three Times!

"Goodness," said my wife as she pulled her letter to Auntie Jean out of my
coat pocket, "you memory keeps getting worse all the time! Why, your memory
is like a town-hall: full of bad steps (? empty rooms?). You go and take the
letter with you again." And she insisted, "But don't you forget it yet
again! This time it's about money. Will you promise me that?" – I promised
by my honor, and yet I forgot it again. Well, you know ... all those things
going on these days ...

A woman passes me, looks at me and says with some sort of twinkle in her
eyes, "Well, make sure you don't forget the letter this time!" "What," said
I, "what am I not supposed to forget?" The stranger laughed and said, "The
letter! The letter!" I wanted to ask how she knew I was supposed to mail the
letter, but by that time she had gone. A little later, some guy tapped me on
the shoulder, "Buddy, don't forget the letter; it's an important letter.
Head for the mailbox, or else you'll get yelled at back home."

I was lost for words. And that wise guy grins at me, and off he goes.

At the mailbox, a strapping girl smiles at me and says, "Now that's nice of
you to mail the letter!" I say, "Has my wife gotten hold of you, and do you
know me?" "No," the girl giggles, "I don't know your wife, and she doesn't
know me either. But your wife is worried about you and that letter!"

"All right," I said, "I've had enough of this. Please, exactly explain to me
what all this nonsense with the letter is about." The girl came up to me
really closely, got hold of my shoulder, then held a piece of paper in her
hand and said, "Your wife has pinned this note to your coat!" "What does it
say?" I asked impatiently.

The girl burst out laughing and read to me what my wife had written:
"Please remind him. He is supposed to mail an important letter. He keeps
forgetting things. And many thanks in beforehand!"

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 14:24:38 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 07:24:38 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.09 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.072438.0700.>

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From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: Orthography

Regarding some of the gentle amusement/criticism of English "Spelling Bees",
non-Dutch speakers may be interested to known there is a Dutch equivalent.
Every year the Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal [oops, I almost typed "van
de Nederlandse Taal"...] is held on television. Competitors from the
Netherlands, Flanders, and (sometimes) former Dutch colonies write down a
series of texts (some word lists, some full paragraphs) that are read aloud,
like the dictations/spelling tests Anglophones do in school (or used to).
The person with the fewest spelling (or other) errors wins. See:

http://www.omroep.nl/nps/grootdictee/

There are some sample texts as well (click "oefendictees")

Typically the errors made have to do with using the reformed spelling vs.
the old reformed spelling, which was a bit more liberal in its acceptance of
variant spellings. As with all events of this sort, there is often an
element of national boasting rights between Belgium and the Netherlands,
which is one of the reasons it is actually televised at prime time
(something not done with the US national spelling bee).

Cheers all,

Troy

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 14:27:41 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 07:27:41 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2004.06.09 (02) [E]
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From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Hi All

John, you wrote:

"As an Englishman I would regard this intrusive final -r as an affectation,
and it probably did originate as a hypercorrection, though I have generally
heard it from well-educated individuals who should have known better."

As I said in my previous mail - in England it's definitely not a form of
hypercorrection. I'm fairly
well educated (now studying for my doctorate) and I would use it after the
vowels of 'spa', 'law' and 'idea' when they occur before a following vowel.
These 'r's have been commonly - and I think rather unfairly - called
intrusive 'r's as if they shouldn't be there; but this smacks of
prescriptive grammar, which as we all know is the ultimate evil.

There's a universal tendency in languages towards a syllabic structure of
C(+)V(C+) (i.e. syllables starting with consonants). This is always the case
in German for example, where words beginning orthographically with a vowel
actually start with a glottal stop - which is a consonant. This is also the
case in many varieties of English. This glottal stop before a vowel only
occurs in my English when the vowel-initial syllable in question is at the
start of a phrase, as in 'It's raining'. Elsewhere I always have some form
of glide between vowels to preserve the CV structure, so 'me' on its own is
[mi:] and 'you' is [ju:], but I have 'me[j]and you' and 'you[w]and me'.
In the same way 'battle' is [bæto] but 'Battle of...' is [bæt at l@v...], and
thus also law is [lO:] but I have 'law[r]is'. I wouldn't say that it is
intrusive, I would regard it more as a phonemically determined linking-r.

Ok, historically there was no 'r' in this position, but historically there
was no 't' pronounced in
'often', but the pronunciation with 't' is increasingly becoming the
standard pronunciation, with
'offen' becoming increasingly dated - or at least to my youngish English
ears.

"As an Englishman I would regard this intrusive final -r as an affectation"

It's definitely NOT an affectation - an affectation is when an Englishman
pronounces 'witch' and 'which' differently. This difference died out during
the last century in all parts of England (with the possible exception of
Northumberland), however lives on in Scotland, Ireland, Canada and America.

Who am I meant to be copying when I use this 'intrusive' r? It's not
something that I started to
add later on in life because I thought it sounded nice. I didn't even know I
added an 'r' in this
position until it was pointed out to me, in much the same way as I would
have always denied vocalising my 'l's before I started studying linguistics
and heard recordings of my own speech.

"though I have generally heard it from well-educated individuals who should
have known better."

As said, I'm fairly well educated, and I do know better :)

Gary

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 14:29:28 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 07:29:28 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.09 (03) [E/German]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.072928.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.08 (07) [E]

Thanks for the translation, Ron. But shouldn't the header be "Reminders,
three times"?

I found a little note in the back of the booklet:

"Zum Sprachraum
Unsere Mundart gehört zum ostfälischen Sprachgebiet, siehe die Karte. Hameln
liegt im Westen dieses Gebietes, fast an der Grenze. Spracheinflüsse aus dem
Westfälischen, das ostfälische Grundgut der Sprache mit den Einflüssen des
Umlandes und die Eigenart des städtischen Lebens schufen die typische
Hamelner Mundart."

"About the language area
Our idiom belongs to the Eastphalian language area, see the map. Hamelin
lies in the west of this area, almost on the border. Linguistic influences
from Westphalian, the Eastphalian basics of the language together with the
influence of the surrounding countryside and the idiosyncrasies of city life
have formed the typical idiom of Hamelin."

I can post some more examples if you're interested.

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 17:47:51 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 10:47:51 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.09 (04) [E/S]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.104751.0700.>

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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: "LanguagePolitics" [S/E]

This airticle wis prentit in the Aiberdeen Press & Journal. Micht be o
interest tae fowk that's thinkin on veesitin Scotland for tae enjoy the
linguistic heritage. It seems the tourist buird wad prefer ye didna.
Andy Eagle
______
      TOURIST OFFICES STAFF TOLD TO TONE DOWN THEIR LOCAL SLANG

      IAN ABERNETHY

      09:00 - 04 June 2004

      Excuse me, what's a brae?

      Is there a difference between a loch - a lock and a lake?

      Such queries by non-Scottish visitors to tourist information centres
in the Highlands are standard, and usually answered helpfully and humorously
by the counter staff.

      Yet they have now been issued with a VisitScotland edict to "haud
their wheesht" when it comes to using their own local dialect.

      The high heid yins in Edinburgh have drawn up new guidelines for TIC
assistants.

      Included are instructions to avoid using local dialects, "jargon or
slang".

      So visitors to Fort William Tourist Information Centre, the busiest in
the Highlands, will not be hearing the weather described as "dreich ? with
the rain persisting in pouring down".

      They won't be directed to an evening "ceilidh" for the "craic".

      Nor will they be allowed to hear any other short, sharp and
descriptive Gaelic phrases which are part of Fort William's everyday
conversation.

      VisitScotland's newly introduced "Quality Service Standards" are aimed
at providing clarity of explanation during customer contact ? in person or
by phone.

      One staff member in the Highland area responded by saying: "This is
having the opposite effect to that which was intended ? by making all of us
pretty crabbit.

      "Here we are - Highlanders employed by VisitScotland to promote
Scotland ? and we are being denied the basic right of speaking as we were
brung up!"

      He went on: "So, if a bed and breakfast is up a brae, do we have to
tell the customer it is on a steep hillside? The visitors have enough
problems in distinguishing between a loch, a lock and a lake ? so do we not
now emphasise the ch sound to help them

      understand the difference?"

      A VisitScotland spokeswoman said yesterday : "Revised guidelines have
been drawn up by people responsible for TIC staff throughout Scotland, and
they have had wide consultation.

      "It's to provide clarity of explanation to visitors of all
nationalities, avoiding local slang, and letting them understand us."

      But Highland MSP, Mary Scanlon was well scunnered.

      She said: "This shows that VisitScotland fails to value local culture.
Who are they going to employ who does not have the dialect of the area ?
people from outwith it? "

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 19:06:31 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 12:06:31 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.09 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.120631.0700.>

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Language varieties

Beste liëglanners,

I'd like to bring under your attention a very interesting paper that
Wilbert Heeringa has published together with Charlotte Gooskens, titled
"The Position of Frisian in the Germanic Language Area". The languages
that are compared with Frisian are Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian,
Swedish, Danish, English, Dutch and German. Linguistic distances are
calculated and related to mutual intelligibility. You can find it here:
http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/tdg03.pdf
More can be found under
http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/

Greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

----------

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

Thanks for the reference (above), Luc.

This is an interesting article.  Unfortunately, there are some omissions.
It does not include Scots, but in my opinion more serious still is the
omission of Saterland (East) Frisian and the North Frisian varieties of
Germany.  It gets tiresome when people write about "Frisian" and only refer
to Westerlauwer Frisian of the Netherlands.  Also serious is the omission of
Lowlands Saxon (Low German), given that Frisian, Dutch and German are
included.  LS is a missing linkthere, so to speak.  Hopefully, all these
will be included in future studies.

Thanks again.

Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 19:08:20 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 12:08:20 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.09 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.120820.0700.>

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From: Ansgar Fehnker <ansgar at ece.cmu.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.09 (01) [E]

> From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> There are some sample texts as well (click "oefendictees")
>
> Typically the errors made have to do with using the reformed spelling vs.
> the old reformed spelling, which was a bit more liberal in its acceptance
of
> variant spellings.

Although I agree that the Groot Dictee is big fun, at least the few time
that I watched it, my impression was that most errors were regardless of
old or new spelling. They were just uncommon words, before and after the
reform. I can still remember the infamous "guichelheil" and
"antimakassartje".  And it is said that Flemish participants do
typically better than Dutch ones.

Regards

Ansgar

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 21:07:12 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 14:07:12 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.09 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.140712.0700.>

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From: Gustaaf Van Moorsel <gvanmoor at aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: Orthography

Ansgar Fehnker <ansgar at ece.cmu.edu> writes:

 >Although I agree that the Groot Dictee is big fun, at least the few time
 >that I watched it, my impression was that most errors were regardless of
 >old or new spelling. They were just uncommon words, before and after the
 >reform. I can still remember the infamous "guichelheil" and
 >"antimakassartje".  And it is said that Flemish participants do
 >typically better than Dutch ones.

I have seen only a few examples of words in the Groot Dictee
but enough to admit I probably would have done pretty badly
(though I consider myself a good speller).  For the record,
I would have gotten the two words above right, but that is
because I don't think they are particularly difficult.

Gustaaf

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 21:22:43 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 14:22:43 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.09 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.142243.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language varieties" [E/S]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> I cannot stress enough the importance of exposure to languages that are
> closely related to one's own.  Not only does it train one in understanding
> other language varieties but it also enhances one's understanding of one's
> own language variety and its ancestors.  Here on Lowlands-L we have
> opportunities to practise this.  Particularly those bi- or trilingual
> postings are no doubt very useful and are lapped up by many on this list.
> So keep them coming, folks!

Michty me, my havers in twae langages, like ane's no eneuch?

Well, you asked for it...

> (Of course, I cannot stress enough the importance of learning languages
that
> are "unrelated" or are distantly related to one's own, for that teaches
one
> even more about one's own.  But that's a second step, another trip and
> another story ...)

[English below]

I dout ye'v a road yit afore ye'r a marrae for me thare, Ron! Hiv ye tried a
langage wi nae phones ava?  :)

Ye'll ken, bein linguists aa, that the smaaer the langage (in terms o the
wirds intil't) the mair productive the lexicon haes tae be. In a muckle
langage like English, for example, the stechie lexicon's gey an lairge, an
the productive lexicon's gey smaa. Scots, on the ither haun, haes a smaaer
stechie lexicon (at least it dis whan it comes tae the wirds fowk uizes),
but's mair productive. For example, whaur in English ye micht spaek aboot a
langage haein a "vocabulary", in Scots a body's mair like juist caa this
"the wird's intil" the langage. Fowk maks up mair in Scots, whaur wirds in
English is creat aforehaun.

But BSL daes this a lot mair than aither Scots or English. Bi English or
even Scots, the arna mony wirds (signs) in BSL ava. Mair like, the'r a
muckle rowth o signs for things that's juist made up as ye gaun alang. Sae
we'r aye rinnin intae lairners that spiers, "What's the sign for
'skateboard'?" or "What's the sign for 'tin can'"? an nae maiter what guid
ye micht be at the BSL, this haes got ye ficklt. Syne ye think, "What wad ye
_want_ a sign for 'skateboard' for?" Gin ye ken BSL fine it's obvious hou
tae produce the richt sign for it athoot kennin it!

I dout if oor Scots writers kent the BSL they'd lairn better thair ain
langage an aa. Insteed o greetin that the'r nae wird for this, that an the
ither in Scots, an makkin up rideeclous "inkhorn" terms, thay'd lift the
idea o some langages haein less wirds and mair o thair ain weys o makkin new
wirds nor ithers, an mak better uise o the productive featurs o the langage.

[English]

I reckon you've some way to go before you can impress me with the range of
languages you know, Ron! Have you tried any with no phones at all?  :)

Being linguists, you'll know that the smaller a langage (in terms of
vocabulary) the more productive the lexicon has to be. In a big language
like English, for example, the fixed lexicon's very large, and the
productive lexicon quite small. Scots, on the other hand, has a smaller
fixed lexicon (at least Scots speakers' active vocabulary is small), but
there's a lot more language production involved in the act of speaking or
writing Scots. For example, where in English you might say a language has a
"vocabulary", in Scots it's more likely one would talk of "the wirds in" the
language. Scots speakers make up more phrases as they go along, in place of
what in English would be part of the fixed lexicon.

But BSL carries this to extremes. Compared to English or even Scots, there
are very few words (signs) in BSL. Rather, many signs are just made up on
the spot. So we're always meeting learners who ask, "What's the sign for
'skateboard'?"  or "What's the sign for 'tin can'"? and however accomplished
you might be in BSL, you're stumped. Then you find yourself thinking, "Why
would you _want_ a sign for 'skateboard'?" If you know your BSL you'll know
how easy it is to produce the correct sign without prior knowledge!

I suppose if our Scots writers knew BSL they'd understand their own language
better. Instead of complaining that there's no word for such and such in
Scots, and making up ridiculous "inkhorn" terms, they'd appreciate that some
langages have a smaller vocabulary and a wider range of native production
techniques than others, and make better use of the productive features of
the language itself.

(But as always, I don't think I can keep up these bilingual texts - I'd have
said a lot more in this post if I didn't have to say it all twice!  :)

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Sandy:

[English below]

> I dout ye'v a road yit afore ye'r a marrae for me thare, Ron! Hiv ye tried
a
> langage wi nae phones ava?  :)

Dang! Whit a gunk! Pleasin ye is ower sair, Sandy! Bit it's guid advisement,
gien that ma ears 's gittin iller.

> I reckon you've some way to go before you can impress me with the
> range of languages you know, Ron! Have you tried any with no phones
> at all?  :)

Darn! What a let-down! It's too hard pleasing you, Sandy! But it's good
advice, given that my ears are steadily going downhill.

Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 23:51:29 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 16:51:29 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.09 (09) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.165129.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
> Subject: "False friends" [E]
>
> grape (in Scots this means "garden fork").
> greet (in Scots this means "weep").
> fit (in Scots this means "foot").
> gate (in Scots this means "road, way").
> soup (in Scots this means "sweep").
> girdle (in Scots this means "griddle").
> shiver (in Scots this means "cold sore" - Scots for "shiver" would be
> "chitter").
> law (in Scots this means an isolated or dominant conical hill).
> steer (in Scots this means "stir").
> clap (in Scots this means "to pet").
> canny (in Scots this means "calm, easy, laid back" - different from
> Northumbrian).
> braid (in Scots this means "broad").
> lie (in Scots this means "a pool of stagnant water in a field").

I just thought of some more "first class" false friends between English and
Scots (as opposed to "second class" such as "bather" that are written the
same but pronounced differently or "flyte -> flight" that are pronounced the
same but written differently):

chap (in Scots this means "to knock").
knock (in Scots this means "clock").
clock (in Scots this means "beetle").
slider (in Scots this means "ice-cream wafer").
slap (in Scots this means "a gap in a dyke or hedge" - while a "slap" is a
"skelp" in Scots).
rift (in Scots this means "to burp").
flee (in Scots this means "a fly" - while a "flea" is a "flech" [flE:x] in
Scots).

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 14:24:34 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 07:24:34 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2004.06.10 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.072434.0700.>

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From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2004.06.09 [E]

Dear all,

I haven't been following this debate that closely, so
this may have been said already, but to my
Northumbrian and layman's ear, the insertion of the
'r' is primarily, although I guess, not exclusively an
RP/polite/educated speech affectation that has been
educated into people through the education system, the
media and it has to be said through class. I have even
seen this in Northumberland and up north. However, I
have mates all over England in all professions, and
they don't use this 'r'. It is confined mainly to
certain social stratas from my experience.

gan canny,

Glenn Simpson
Northumbrian Language Society

----------

From: sam s claire <gamlhs at juno.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.05.03 (03) [E]

I am not skilled in phonetics, phonology, et al, but I do believe my
ears.  One late night I was aroused by the TV with a fellow speaking with
(I thought) a decided British accent.  As I awoke though, I realized that
he really was speaking in a U.S. southern drawl.   Sam

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 15:38:40 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 08:38:40 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.083840.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
> Subject: "False friends" [E]
>
> > grape (in Scots this means "garden fork").
> > greet (in Scots this means "weep").
> > fit (in Scots this means "foot").
> > gate (in Scots this means "road, way").
> > soup (in Scots this means "sweep").
> > girdle (in Scots this means "griddle").
> > shiver (in Scots this means "cold sore" - Scots for "shiver" would be
> > "chitter").
> > law (in Scots this means an isolated or dominant conical hill).
> > steer (in Scots this means "stir").
> > clap (in Scots this means "to pet").
> > canny (in Scots this means "calm, easy, laid back" - different from
> > Northumbrian).
> > braid (in Scots this means "broad").
> > lie (in Scots this means "a pool of stagnant water in a field").
>
> chap (in Scots this means "to knock").
> knock (in Scots this means "clock").
> clock (in Scots this means "beetle").
> slider (in Scots this means "ice-cream wafer").
> slap (in Scots this means "a gap in a dyke or hedge" - while a "slap" is a
> "skelp" in Scots).
> rift (in Scots this means "to burp").
> flee (in Scots this means "a fly" - while a "flea" is a "flech" [flE:x] in
> Scots).

I also just realised that there are a lot of English-Scots false friends of
the type commonly found between English and French, ie not necessarily
spelled or pronounce the same but cleary cognates and so causing learners to
guess the meaning wrongly:

mince pie: in English, a Christmas pie with sweet filling, in Scots an
everyday savoury pie filled with minced beef.

pancakes: in English, large thin pancakes made by frying and tossing, in
Scots small thick pancakes made by dropping batter on a griddle.

teacakes: in English, a kind of currant bun, in Scots, biscuit with a
marshmallow on top covered in chocolate.

brummles (brambles): in Scots, refers to the fruit (blackberry) as well as
the plant.

glammer (glamour): in Scots, means "magic".

fear: in Scots, means "to frighten", (eg "dinna fear the horse", "I'm no
feared fae you.")

feel: in Scots means "to smell" (but this usage is unusual these days).

finnd (find): in Scots means "to feel" (but again, this usage is unusual
these days).

man: in Scots means "husband" as well as "man".

wife: in Scots means "woman" as well as "wife".

We also have words whose usage is like some other language, rather than the
English usage, eg:

"dout" [du?]: used like the French "doute" rather than English "doubt".

"seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".

Talking about false friends between closely related languages, there are
surely false friends between different forms of English? Eg British
English/American English "bum", "alternate", "fag", "vest", "pants",
"rubber", etc.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Thanks, Sandy!

The following for North Saxon dialects of Lowlands Saxon (Low German, < > =
German-style spelling):

> brummles (brambles): in Scots, refers to the fruit (blackberry) as well as
the plant.

generic, berries or plant: brummel(s) ~ brommel(s) ~ brammel(s)
berries: brummelbeer ~ brommelbeer ~ brammelbeer (pl. ...beren)
plant: brummeldourn ~ brommeldourn ~ brammeldourn (<...doorn>, pl. ...döyrn
<...döörn>), dourn 'thorn')

> > > grape (in Scots this means "garden fork").
greep [gre:p]  'handle'

> man: in Scots means "husband" as well as "man".
man 'man', 'husband'

> wife: in Scots means "woman" as well as "wife".
wyv (<Wief> [vi:f], pl. wyver <Wiever> ['vi:v3]) 'woman' (now archaic, under
German influence derogatory), 'wife'

> "seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".
süyk ~ syk (<süük> ~ <siek> [zy:k] ~ [zi:k]) 'ill', 'unwell'
-> s(ü)ykenhuus (['zy:kNhu:s] ~ [zi:kNhu:s]) 'hospital' (huus 'house')

syk (<Siek> [zi:k], pl. syken <Sieken> ['zi:kN]) '(small) valley', 'dell',
'dip' ,'hollow'

Of course, there are lots of false friends between LS and English
(especially dialects of Southeastern England and of Australia and New
Zealand).  The following barely scratches the surface.

schyt (<Schiet>, like "sheet") 'excrement', 'dirt'
poul (<Pool>, like "pole") 'pool'
baar ([bQ:], like "bar") 'bare', 'naked'; 'bear' (animal)
kop (<Kopp>, like "cop") 'head'
steyn (<Steen>, like "stain") 'stone', 'rock'
beyn (Been>, like "bane") 'leg'
bark (<Bark>, like 'bark') 'birch' (but also 'bark of a tree'), 'barge'
beer (<Beer>, like 'bear') 'berry'; 'bore' (pig); 'beer'; 'pear'
byt! (<biet!>, like "beat!") 'bite!'
blyd' (<blied>, like 'bleed') 'happy', 'glad', 'friendly'
buk (<Buck>, like "book") 'buck'
schuut (<Schuut>, like "shoot", "chute") 'barge'
put (<Putt>, like "put") 'pot'
schört (<Schört>, like "shirt") 'apron'
schoul (<School>, like "shoal") 'school'
ryk (<riek>, like "reek") 'rich'
ryk (<Riek>, like "reek") 'realm'
ney (<nee>, like "nay") 'new'
kok (<Kock>, like "cock") 'cook' (worker)
hil (<hill>, like "hill>) 'urgent', 'in a hurry', 'busy'
hil (<Hill>, like "hill") 'storage room in a barn'
heyl (<heel>, like "hail") 'whole'; 'quite', 'very'
deyl (<Deel>, like 'dale') 'deal', 'part'
moud (<Moot>, like "moat") 'mood'; 'courage'
spittel (<Spittel>, like "spittle") 'puny guy'
kark (<Kark>, like "cark") 'church'
luun (<Luun>, like "loon") 'mood'
lok (<Lock>, like "lock") 'hole'
lyv (<Lief>, like "leaf") 'body'
lyk (<Liek>, like "leak", "leek") 'corpse', 'cadaver'
lid (<Lidd>, like "lid") 'member', 'link'
klot (<Klott>, like "clot") 'cap'
gil (<Gill>, like "gill") 'guild'
bloud (<Bloot>, like "bloat") 'blood'
luus (<Luus>, like "loose") 'louse'
pyl (<Piel>, like "peel") 'arrow'
pyr (<Pier>, like "peer", "pier") '(sand) worm', 'earthworm'
Pyp (<Piep>, like "peep") 'pipe', 'flute'
vyr (<Fier>, like "fear") 'party', 'festivity'
viddel (<Fiddel>, like "fiddle") 'loose woman', 'messy woman'

Etc. ...

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 16:06:22 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:06:22 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.090622.0700.>

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

Folks,

I wonder about the origin of the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) verb
_schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) 'to bitch' ('to complain
loudly'); 'to scold', 'to shame'; 'to spoil', 'to vandalize'.  It is
constructed like a Romance loan (/-eir-/), but I wonder if it is made up to
seem like one, perhaps a blend of German _schimpfen_ (Missingsch [SImfm], LS
_schimpen_) 'to scold' and native _schaam_ 'shame' and _(sik) schamen_ 'to
be ashamed'.  Does anyone know?

There is also this group:
schafuder ~ schafuter (neuter) 'reprimand', 'scolding'
schafudern ~ schafutern 'to reprimand', 'to scold'

What might the origin of this one be?  Could it by any chance be linked with
_schafot_ ~ _schafut_ (<Schafott> ~ <Schafutt>) 'scaffold (for public
execution or humiliation)'?

Thanks for thinking about it.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 16:12:25 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:12:25 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.091225.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

I wrote:

> beer (<Beer>, like 'bear') 'berry'; 'bore' (pig); 'beer'; 'pear'

Obviously that was supposed to be spelled <boar> for the male pig.  Sorry.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]

Ron quoted some false friends:

> klot (<Klott>, like "clot") 'cap'

Oh dear,that reminds me... When I first learned Dutch, talking to family and
friends, I often frivolously replaced words I didn't know with the German
equivalent and the ending "-tje", which in some cases makes perfectly good
Dutch; more often, it doesn't, but then at least it's good for a laugh.

So I was looking for the toilet in a restaurant, and couldn't come up with
the Dutch word for "loo", which is "plee" - I used the German word "Klo"
instead and modified it to sound more Dutch. So I told my somewhat
bewildered father-in law: "Ik ga even het klootje zoeken", which means
something like "Excuse me while I go look for the testicle".

Older and wiser,
Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 17:02:25 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 10:02:25 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.100225.0700.>

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From: Wim <wkv at home.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]

>>From wkv at home.nl
Wim verdoold

Hi,

The word in dutch,  schamper comes to my mind, as in  "een schampere
opmerking"  a mocking like remark.  It has to do with the german word
schimpfen I think,

Hope this is of any help...

Wim.

----------

From: Gustaaf Van Moorsel <gvanmoor at aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: false friends

Gabriele Kahn <globalmoose at t-online.de> wrote:

(...)

 > So I was looking for the toilet in a restaurant, and couldn't come up
with
 > the Dutch word for "loo", which is "plee" - I used the German word "Klo"
 > instead and modified it to sound more Dutch. So I told my somewhat
 > bewildered father-in law: "Ik ga even het klootje zoeken", which means
 > something like "Excuse me while I go look for the testicle".

A great story to start off the morning!  It made me curious about
the etymology of the word 'plee' (which, by the way, I think is a
coarser term than 'loo').  I found the following link, though I
cannot vouch for its veracity:

http://www.wiedenhof.nl/ul/tk/pbl/mssm/stellg11.htm

Gustaaf

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Thanks, Wim.

Again, I wrote:

> I wonder about the origin of the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) verb
> _schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) 'to bitch' ('to complain
> loudly'); 'to scold', 'to shame'; 'to spoil', 'to vandalize'.  It is
> constructed like a Romance loan (/-eir-/), but I wonder if it is made up
to
> seem like one, perhaps a blend of German _schimpfen_ (Missingsch [SImfm],
LS
> _schimpen_) 'to scold' and native _schaam_ 'shame' and _(sik) schamen_ 'to
> be ashamed'.  Does anyone know?

I should have said that _schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) is
especially used in many of the dialects of Mecklenburg (Mekelborg).

I am particularly puzzled by the "f", which seems very non-native.

Elsewhere, this equivalent is prevalent: _schandeyren_ (<schandeern> ~
<schanneern>), obviously related to _schande_ ~ _schanne_ (<Schanne>)
'shame', 'disgrace', originally also 'destruction', 'ruin', preserved in
_tou schannen maken_ (<toschannen maken>) 'to destroy', 'to ruin'.  Perhaps
_schandeyren_ (<schandeern> ~ <schanneern>), too, plays a role in the
creation of _schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>)?

Hoi, Gabriele and Gustaaf!

> I used the German word "Klo"

As you probably already know, German _Klo_ ([klo:]) comes from
(_Wasserklosett_ > W.C. ?) _Klosett_ < Old French diminutive _closet_ or
from its base form _clot_ (< Latin _clausum_ > German _Klause_ 'hermitage',
'(monk's/nun's) cell', 'retreat (for solitude)'; '(mountain) defile').
_Closet_ originally denoted a small room for privacy, hence also English
"closet," nowadays (certainly in North America) mostly used for a built-in
storage space, especially for clothing (or a "broom closet" for cleaning
supplies, etc.).  So, you'd better not ask your host for the _Klosett_ if
you want the "loo" or "bathroom" in an English-speaking home.

Interestingly, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) one of the many words for
"loo" or "bathroom" is _paddemang_ ~ _partemang_, assumedly from French
_appartement_ (< Latin _appartîmentum_), from which also English _apartment_
is derived.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 19:32:08 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 12:32:08 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (06) [E]
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From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]

We use 'skamfere in Danish (don't know if the spelling is correct). For
instance you can become very 'skamferet' if you are in an accident...ie.
get a lot of wounds.

Kenneth

> Folks,
>
> I wonder about the origin of the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) verb
> _schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) 'to bitch' ('to complain
> loudly'); 'to scold', 'to shame'; 'to spoil', 'to vandalize'.  It is
> constructed like a Romance loan (/-eir-/), but I wonder if it is made up
to
> seem like one, perhaps a blend of German _schimpfen_ (Missingsch [SImfm],
LS
> _schimpen_) 'to scold' and native _schaam_ 'shame' and _(sik) schamen_ 'to
> be ashamed'.  Does anyone know?

----------

From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]

from my dictionary:

skam'fere. Middledanish from Low Saxon schamferen, not related to skam
(schaam). Meaning 'tilrede slemt' fx 'han fik ansigtet skamferet.

Kenneth

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 19:50:02 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 12:50:02 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.125002.0700.>

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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]

Sandy wrote:

> "seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".

As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.
It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in any
way mentally deranged.
They are simply ill ;-)

Andy Eagle

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Andy (above):

> It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in any
> way mentally deranged.
> They are simply ill ;-)

But doesn't English use "sick" in this sense as well?  Surely, "sick" in the
sense of "deranged," "twisted" etc. is a relatively recent semantic
derivation.  I suppose in American English  "mad" has undergone a similar
specialized shift fairly recently to mean "angry," which is why many
Americans made jokes about the term "mad cow disease," imagining herds of
infuriated cattle.

> As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.

And the one in Toronto, Canada (whose website http://www.sickkids.on.ca/,
incidentally, seems to treat the location as a secret. You have to dig to
find it ... Good website planning! "Hospital for Sick Children"?! Duh!
*Everyone* in the world knows where *that* is!).

Anyway, this name has always puzzled me.  "Hospital for *Sick* Children?"
Is there one for healthy children as well?  How about "Children's Hospital"
or "Pediatric Hospital" like elsewhere?  Or is there something I'm missing?
Might "hospital" once have had other meanings as well, such as that of
"hostel"?  Perhaps in Scots, transferred to Scottish English?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 20:26:10 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 13:26:10 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Request" 2004.06.10 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.132610.0700.>

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From: Szelog, Mike <Mike.Szelog at citizensbank.com>
Subject: Off Topic Request - Quick Translation Request - Old Script

Hello all,

Sorry to bother the list with an off-topic request, but I'm a bit stumped
with this one.

I'm translating some old journal entries from the 1800's for an acquaintance
and I'm stuck on the last page (of course!). I have most of it, but there's
just a few words I really can't seem to make out.

I was wondering if anyone might be willing to take a quick look at the
passage and offer a transliteration into German along with a translation?

I'd have to e-mail you the passage as an attachment - it was sent to me
sideways, so I have to bring it up in something like
 "Imaging " and turn it the right way to read it.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated - anyone want to try their hand
at the old style script?

I can send along my attempt at transliteration if it would be helpful.

Thanks very much!

Mike S
Manchester, NH - USA

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 20:28:32 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 13:28:32 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (09) [E]
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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (07) [E]

> Sandy wrote:
>
> > "seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".
>
> As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.
> It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in any
> way mentally deranged.
> They are simply ill ;-)
>
> Andy Eagle
>
> ----------
>
R. F. Hahn wrote:
>
> Andy (above):
>
> > It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in
any
> > way mentally deranged.
> > They are simply ill ;-)
>
> But doesn't English use "sick" in this sense as well?  Surely, "sick" in
the
> sense of "deranged," "twisted" etc. is a relatively recent semantic
> derivation.  I suppose in American English  "mad" has undergone a similar
> specialized shift fairly recently to mean "angry," which is why many
> Americans made jokes about the term "mad cow disease," imagining herds of
> infuriated cattle.
>
> > As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.
>
> And the one in Toronto, Canada (whose website http://www.sickkids.on.ca/,
> incidentally, seems to treat the location as a secret. You have to dig to
> find it ... Good website planning! "Hospital for Sick Children"?! Duh!
> *Everyone* in the world knows where *that* is!).
>
> Anyway, this name has always puzzled me.  "Hospital for *Sick* Children?"
> Is there one for healthy children as well?  How about "Children's
Hospital"
> or "Pediatric Hospital" like elsewhere?  Or is there something I'm
missing?
> Might "hospital" once have had other meanings as well, such as that of
> "hostel"?  Perhaps in Scots, transferred to Scottish English?

I don't think you're missing anything. A friend of mine used to live near
the aforementioned hospital.
I could never walkpast without grinning an thinking of it being full of
disgusting, gruesome, macabre, mentally deranged children. Even though this
interpretation is based on a relatively recent semantic change. Maybe just
my 'sick' sense of humour. But as you ask 'why sick children'? There are no
doubt many institutions called X Children's Hospital. This is possibly the
start of a new thread Institutions where the obvious is stated in the title.

Andy Eagle

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 22:03:22 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 15:03:22 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (10) [E/LS]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.150322.0700.>

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From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]

>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Etymology
>
>Folks,
>
>I wonder about the origin of the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) verb
>_schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) 'to bitch' ('to complain
>loudly'); 'to scold', 'to shame'; 'to spoil', 'to vandalize'.  It is
>constructed like a Romance loan (/-eir-/), but I wonder if it is made up to
>seem like one, perhaps a blend of German _schimpfen_ (Missingsch [SImfm],
LS
>_schimpen_) 'to scold' and native _schaam_ 'shame' and _(sik) schamen_ 'to
>be ashamed'.  Does anyone know?
>
>There is also this group:
>schafuder ~ schafuter (neuter) 'reprimand', 'scolding'
>schafudern ~ schafutern 'to reprimand', 'to scold'
>
>What might the origin of this one be?  Could it by any chance be linked
with
>_schafot_ ~ _schafut_ (<Schafott> ~ <Schafutt>) 'scaffold (for public
>execution or humiliation)'?

Moin Ron,

hest dor maal an dacht, dat dat ok vun de franzööschen Wöör
"chahuter" = larmen, spektakeln, stören, rümjachtern un
"chambarder" = dörnannerbringen, tokehr gahn, krakeeln
herkamen mag.

Inne Franzozentied hebbt se bannig veel Wöör  in´t Neddersassische
inbörgert, to´n Bispill Fiesematenten, perdu oder ok Etepetete.

Kumpelmenten
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

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

Moin, Utz!

[English below]

Aha!!! Treffer! Dat is up'n Prick, wat ik wull.  Wees' bedankt!  Ik was mi
al moden west, dat dat ut't Franzöössche keem.

Ik maak so pö-a-pö (!) Listen vun Lehnwöörd' ut't Ingelsche, Franzöössche,
Hollandsche, Slaawsche un villicht Skandinaawsche.  De wies' ik Jo denn
later.

Bingo! Utz gave me just what I had hoped for: _schamfeyren_ is a French loan
in Lowlands Saxon (Low German), from _chahuter_ 'to create an uproar',
perhaps "cross-fertilized" by _chambarder_ 'to turn upside down'.

Utz reminded me that LS took on a lot of French loans, especially during
Napoleonic occupation in the early 19th century.  I was aware of this and am
currently _pö-a-pö_ (< French _peu-� -peu_ 'bit-by-bit') putting together a
list of French loans in LS, also one each of loans from English, Dutch and
Slavonic, perhaps also from Scandinavian.*

*Scandinavian loans are found in the dialects of regions that used to belong
to Denmark and Sweden.  For example, in some dialects of Pomerania, once
under Swedish power (for nearly 200 years, beginning with 1630), the word
for 'cranberry' (elsewhere _kraansbeer_) are called _linjong_, from Swedish
_lingon_ (> English "lingonberry," _Vaccinium vitis-idaea_, apparently a
type of cranberry, _Vaccinium macrocarpon_).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

P.S.: Here is a nice wensite about the Swedish heritage of Pomerania:
http://www.gutshaeuser.de/stiftung.html

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 14:30:53 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 07:30:53 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.073053.0700.>

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From: Tom <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (09) [E]

> <>R. F. Hahn wrote:
>
> Anyway, this name has always puzzled me. "Hospital for *Sick* Children?"
> Is there one for healthy children as well? How about "Children's Hospital"
>
>>or "Pediatric Hospital" like elsewhere?  Or is there something I'm
>missing?
>
>>Might "hospital" once have had other meanings as well, such as that of
>>"hostel"?  Perhaps in Scots, transferred to Scottish English?

Hello All,

"Hospital" were originally places where guests were received, like
hospices, hostels and hotels. The word comes via Old French "hospital"
from the medieval Latin "hospitale" which was the noun form of
"hospitalis", an adjective meaning 'of a guest'. The semantic shift
belongs in the 15th. cent. where it began to mean a place for the infirm
and down-and-outs.
'Hospitality/hospitable' in modern English still have the original
meaning of 'receiving guests'.

As for Andy Eagle's remark about sick children, 'gruesome' is not an
appropriate description in my opinion. 'Poignant' or 'tragic' might be
words that spring to mind when thinking of the guests these hospitals
harbour.

Regards,

Tom

----------

From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: Sick vs. Ill

on 10.06.2004 10.28 PM, Lowlands-L wrote:

> From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>

>> Sandy wrote:
>>
>>> "seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".
>>
>> As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.
>> It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in
any
>> way mentally deranged.
>> They are simply ill ;-)

> R. F. Hahn wrote:

>> But doesn't English use "sick" in this sense as well?  Surely, "sick" in
the
>> sense of "deranged," "twisted" etc. is a relatively recent semantic
>> derivation.  I suppose in American English  "mad" has undergone a similar
>> specialized shift fairly recently to mean "angry," which is why many
>> Americans made jokes about the term "mad cow disease," imagining herds of
>> infuriated cattle.

The "sick" vs. "ill" issue in English has to do with US vs. British
varieties. In North American English "sick" *primarily* means "suffering
from or affected with an illness", so it is completely normally to say
"doctor, I feel sick" or "I am sick; I can't come to work to day". It can
also mean "mentally ill or disturbed" (informally in "one sick puppy"
meaning "crazy person"), but this is a secondary usage.

In my Dutch class, the instructor (who is more familiar with British
English) went out of his way to explain that Dutch "ziek" means "ill" not
"sick", much to the confusion of his American and Canadian students...

Cheers,

Troy

----------

From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]

Dear Sandy Fleming/Lowlanders,'

You said:

'glammer (glamour): in Scots, means "magic".'

But also English 'glamour' comes from Scots 'glammer', which itself comes
from the Scots for 'grammar' because in those days a magician was also a
scholar.

Jorge Potter

----------

From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
Subject: "False friends"

Hello all !
When I look onto Ron's list I experience that there are false friends at
least between different Low Saxon variants:
> poul (<Pool>, like "pole") 'pool'
Eastern Friesland: pôl = cap / pauel = pool
> baar ([bQ:], like "bar") 'bare', 'naked'; 'bear' (animal)
EF: boer = bear
> kop (<Kopp>, like "cop") 'head'
EF: kop = head, cup
> beer (<Beer>, like 'bear') 'berry'; 'bore' (pig); 'beer'; 'pear'
EF: bēr [be:@] = barley / bäj [bE:I]= berry /pēr = pear / bæær [bæ:@] = beer
> schört (<Schört>, like "shirt") 'apron'
EF: sğööer = crack / sğûd = apron
> ney (<nee>, like "nay") 'new'
EF: nē [ne:] = no / näj [nE:I] = new
> hil (<hill>, like "hill>) 'urgent', 'in a hurry', 'busy'
EF: hiel [hI:l] = storing place beneath the roof of a farm-house's barn
> deyl (<Deel>, like 'dale') 'deal', 'part'
EF: dêl [de:`el] = floor, plank / däil [dæIl] = part
> lyv (<Lief>, like "leaf") 'body'
EF: līf = belly, abdomen / līcham = body
> lyk (<Liek>, like "leak", "leek") 'corpse', 'cadaver'
EF: līk = straight / lîk = corpse
> lid (<Lidd>, like "lid") 'member', 'link'
EF: lid = member / lid = joint
> bloud (<Bloot>, like "bloat") 'blood'
EF: blōt = only / blaud = blood
> pyl (<Piel>, like "peel") 'arrow'
EF: pîl [pi:`il] = streamlet / pīl [pi:l] = arrow / pīddel [pi.l:] = penis
> Pyp (<Piep>, like "peep") 'pipe', 'flute'
EF: pîp = pipe, flute, stove-pipe, leg-part of trousers
> Etc. ...
Greetings
Holger

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 14:57:45 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 07:57:45 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.11 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.075745.0700.>

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Etymology

Hi Ron (en andere lui),

When I read your list of false friends between Low Saxon and English,
the word "luun" (LS) ("whim', "mood" in English) triggered my mind
somewhat. Surely it must be a cognate of German "Laune", of which Duden
claims that it has been derived from Middle High German "lūne", denoting
"lunar phase". According to medieval astrology, human moods were
apparently strongly correlated with the moon ("luna" in Latin). There's
also Dutch "luim" for the same kind of emotion.

In Brabantish we have the words "striel(e)n" and "loet(e)n" (always in
plural) for any quirky behavior: "Ze kraëgt wal eul loetn", "A ei wal
zön strieln". A "loete" is also a sort of shovel with which bread can be
shoved into an oven, maybe there's a connection with this tool, but I
can't imagine how the meaning must have shifted. Frisian and Middle Low
German knew the word "lote" too, but for a "rake". Maybe "lo(e)te" is
some kind of nominalization of the verb "laden" (D) (G), "to load" (E)?
This would explain "loeten" (B) as a burden that was loaded on a
person's mind.

At the same time this Saxon word "luun" is a false friend of Brabantish
"loejnig", said of anything that grows profusely. The latter stems from
Middle Dutch "ludich", which in turn is related to Gothic "liudan" (to
grow) and "Leute" (G)...and ultimately "lieden, lui" (D).

Greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 16:18:01 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 09:18:01 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Member news" 2004.06.11 (03) [E/LS]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.091801.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Member news

Lowlanders,

[Mennonite Lowlands Saxon (Low German) -- English below]


En Tiet trigj hab ekj berechtet, daut onsa Frint Reuben App (Kelowna,
Kaunadau) krank wea, on daut hee nohäa wada jesunt woat. Nu es hee
onverhoffs al wada krank jewoade, on de Doktasch habbe am aum Buck
oppereart. Daut es en Nootfaul jeweese. Jlekjeljawies es aules good jegone,
on em Uagenblekj es onsa Reuben tuss aum Vepuste on aum Jesuntwoare. Sien
Berecht finje Jie unje.
     Lewe Reuben, em Nome von aula Lied, dee Die leew habbe on Die bewundre
wensch ekj Die on Dien lewe Irmgard daut Baste.  Komm boolt wada trigj!

[Northern Lowlands Saxon (Low German) -- English below]

Een Tied trügg harr ik Ju künnig maakt, dat us Fründ Reuben Epp (Kelowna,
Kanada) süük was, un dat he dunn wedder uprappel. Nu is he mitmaal wedder
süük worrn, un de Dokters hebbt an em an'n Buuk oppereert. Dat is 'n
Noodfall west. To'n Glück is allens good gaan, un upstünds is us Reuben
tohuus' an't Versnuven un Bäterwarrn. Sien Bericht findt Ji ünnen.
     Leve Reuben, in'n Naam vun all de Lüüd', de Di leev hebben un bewunnern
doot wünsch ik Di un Dien leve Irmgard vun't Gode dat Best. Kaam gau wedder
trügg!

[English]

You may remember that a while ago I informed you that our friend Reuben Epp
(Kelowna, Canada) had fallen ill and had recovered. This week he fell ill
again and had to undergo abdominal surgery as a case of emergency.
Fortunately, everything worked out fine, and our Reuben is currently resting
and recovering at home. You will find his report below.
     Dear Reuben, on behalf of everyone who loves and admires you, I wish
you and your dear Irmgard the best. Make sure you'll return to us soon!

Reinhard/Ron

***

From: "Reuben Epp" reuben at silk.net
To: "R. F. Hahn" sassisch at yahoo.com
Subject: Emergency Operation
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 19:25:56 -0700

Dear Ron and Dianna,

I wish to confirm to you and our dear friends in Germany, that I had major,
emergency abdominal surgery late Wednesday evening, 3rd June 2004. Today,
Thursday, 10th of June, I am at home since yesterday and resting fairly
comfortably.

The response to my very severe and sudden pain was astonishingly swift and
thorough in the emergency ward of our hospital. And completely successful.

My personal physician (not the surgeon), who happened to be in the hall of
the hospital when we left, remarked, "Do you realize that you just dodged
the bullet?"

Irmgard and I both realize all too well, that this is the second time in
about half a year that the Good Lord has seen fit to allow me to sidestep
the bullet.

All the best! Must get back to rest!

Ron: Would you please pass this on to our mutual friends? I have not the
energy to translate nor to write any more today.

Reuben

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 17:36:44 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 10:36:44 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.103644.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (01) [E]

Ron wondered whether they are also hospitals for healthy children... well,
of course there are! They are called birthing clinics...

My oldest daughter spent four weeks in a hospital although she was in
perfect health, and so do many other children who were born prematurely...

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 19:37:42 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 12:37:42 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (05) [D/E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.123742.0700.>

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From: Ed Alexander <edsells at cogeco.ca>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (01) [E]

At 07:30 AM 06/11/04 -0700, Troy Sagrillo wrote:
>The "sick" vs. "ill" issue in English has to do with US vs. British
>varieties. In North American English "sick" *primarily* means "suffering
>from or affected with an illness", so it is completely normally to say
>"doctor, I feel sick" or "I am sick; I can't come to work to day". It can
>also mean "mentally ill or disturbed" (informally in "one sick puppy"
>meaning "crazy person"), but this is a secondary usage.
>
>In my Dutch class, the instructor (who is more familiar with British
>English) went out of his way to explain that Dutch "ziek" means "ill" not
>"sick", much to the confusion of his American and Canadian students...

Then we have the famous seemingly contradictory senses of "homesick" and
"seasick", as well as the somewhat confusing sentence one sometimes sees in
church bulletins, requesting prayers for "the sick of this parish."

Finally, perhaps under False Friends as well, "Ile de France" does not mean
"Sick of France."

Ed Alexander, Hamilton, Ontario

----------

From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (01) [E]

>From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
>Subject: "False friends"
>
>Hello all !
>When I look onto Ron's list I experience that there are false friends at
>least between different Low Saxon variants:

Moin alltohoop,

today I read in the webedition of the "Leeuwarder Courant" the following
headline:
"Koeien alleen naar buiten voor Slachte"

I translated it for myself to LS as "Keuh  alleen na buten to´n  Slachten"

That was a "false friend".  The text furthermore was:
"KUBAARD - Langs de Slachtedyk lopen morgen veel koeien speciaal voor
deze dag buiten voor de deelnemers van het wandelfestijn. De organisatie
heeft de veehouders gevraagd hun koppels de wei in te sturen om het
landschap te verfraaien. Veel agrariërs houden hun koeien normaal op
stal...."

That reminded me to a place in Bremen which is called "Schlachte" or
"Slachte". That was the first harbour of Bremen and nothing more like a
wall at the waterfront where ships were bound and loaded. I think this
"Slachte" is more related to this Dutch "Slachte" as it is "Slachter",
"slachten", Slachtköst" or even "Slacht".

I know from Dutch another word which contains "slacht"; it is
"slachtoffer". That seems to be more related to the LS "Slacht",
isn´t it? I wonder what is the origin and connection between them.
Does anybody know?

Best regards
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Utz,

In the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) dialects of the Bremen and Oldenburg
(Ollenborg) regions, _Slacht(e)_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_) means or
used to mean 'bank reinforcement (wall)'.  It still occurs in street names
in that region.

The other _Slacht_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_), used in all dialects,
means battle, is thus related to Dutch and Afrikaans _slag_ and to English
"slaught" (formerly "slaucht" < Middle English _slaƺt_ ~ _slaht_ < Old
English _sleaht_) and "slaughter."  Cf. Old English _slaga_ 'murderer', thus
"slayer" (< "slay" < _slé-a_, cf. LS _slagen_ ~ _slaan_ 'beat', 'slay',
etc.).  The _-t(e)_ or _-d(e)_ is a deverbal noun suffix.  So it should
really be spelled _slagd(e)_, _Schlagt_, etc.

LS _Slachter_ (lit. "slayer" or "slaughterer") for 'butcher' survived in
North German _Schlachter_, one of those words that shows up a North German
speakers as opposed to Southerners who use words like _Metzger_ (lit.
"slaughterer"), _Fleischer_ ("flesh-er," "meat-er") or _Fleischhauer_
("flesh-/meat-chopper").

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: Tom <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
> Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (09) [E]
>
> > <>R. F. Hahn wrote:
> >
> > Anyway, this name has always puzzled me. "Hospital for *Sick* Children?"
> > Is there one for healthy children as well? How about "Children's
Hospital"
>
> As for Andy Eagle's remark about sick children, 'gruesome' is not an
> appropriate description in my opinion. 'Poignant' or 'tragic' might be
> words that spring to mind when thinking of the guests these hospitals
> harbour.

When I said the Scots use of "sick" was like the Dutch "ziek", gruesomeness
never crossed my mind. It's just that in Scots it's more usual to use "seek"
where in English one might rather say "ill" (though I see from other
submissions that this isn't true of American English after all).

I agree with Tom that "Hospital for Sick Children" is one of the few
examples of a phrase where a euphemism is really necessary.

> From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
> Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]
>
> Dear Sandy Fleming/Lowlanders,'
>
> You said:
>
> 'glammer (glamour): in Scots, means "magic".'
>
> But also English 'glamour' comes from Scots 'glammer', which itself comes
> from the Scots for 'grammar' because in those days a magician was also a
> scholar.

Yes, that's the point - the words in my most recent list are cognates, so
you would expect them to be borrowings or have a common ancestry

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (09) [E]

Dear Sandy Andy & All,

    How old is the Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children?
I ask because it is comparatively recently that the word 'hospital' applied
only to accommodation for the sick. The word is cognate with 'Hotel' from
the French, in which language it used to mean 'dwelling' - unspecified. What
about Child's Hospital?

> > As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun 12 00:02:32 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 17:02:32 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.170232.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends


Greetings Lowlanders,

I am a little bit confused by the inference in the discussion that there is
a semantic difference between _sick_ and _ill_ in British English. I am
originally from Lancashire in the North-West of England, and I can remember
using the words almost synonymously since I was young. I say 'almost'
synonymously, because maybe in the word _sick_ there is a sense of feeling
nauseous, as well as just being off colour. I have lived in various parts of
the UK and have never noticed them being used differently anywhere else; I
start to wonder if I have just overlooked the difference.

In our local English _Are you feeling sick?_ would more or less mean _Are
you feeling nauseous?_ or perhaps _Have you got a stomach ache?_. _To be
sick_, on the other hand was used of vomiting: _I have just been sick_ would
mean _I have just vomited_. _Sick_ is also used as a noun for 'vomit'.

We had another adjective (in the form of an adverb) too for sick/ill,
_poorly_, as in: _She was feeling poorly, so she didn't go into work._

_Sick_ in the sense of 'obnoxious', etc., seems to me to be a secondary
meaning imported from the States (though sometimes this impression later
turns out to be erroneous), we would however have said:'You're sick in the
head, you are!'

Interestinly enough I have a Pakistani friend who lived most of his life in
England, and speaks English fluently, who for some reason thinks that _ill_
means 'having a high temperature', and would say _not well_ or _sick_  to
describe having any other complaint.

John Duckworth
Preston, Lancashire

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

John,

Whatever it's worth, all you said above -- with the exception of the
linguistic peculiarity of the Pakistani friend (though I have a Pakistani
friend too) -- is what I had thought also, having spent considerable amounts
of time in English-speaking countries such as the England, Australia, Canada
and the US, as well as Singapore and Hong Kong.  I was beginning to doubt my
perception, but now I know that I am not alone.  Thanks for the boost!

> _Sick_ is also used as a noun for 'vomit'.

I haven't come across this one, though, but I take your word for it.

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun 12 16:20:31 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 09:20:31 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.12 (01) [D/E/LS/German]
Message-ID: <SAT.12.JUN.2004.092031.0700.>

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From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (05) [D/E]

>I know from Dutch another word which contains "slacht"; it is
>"slachtoffer". That seems to be more related to the LS "Slacht",
>isn´t it? I wonder what is the origin and connection between them.
>Does anybody know?
>
>Best regards
>Utz H. Woltmann
>
>----------
>
>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: False friends
>
>Utz,
>
>In the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) dialects of the Bremen and Oldenburg
>(Ollenborg) regions, _Slacht(e)_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_) means or
>used to mean 'bank reinforcement (wall)'.  It still occurs in street names
>in that region.
>
>The other _Slacht_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_), used in all dialects,
>means battle, is thus related to Dutch and Afrikaans _slag_ and to English
>"slaught" (formerly "slaucht" < Middle English _slaƺt_ ~ _slaht_ < Old
>English _sleaht_) and "slaughter."  Cf. Old English _slaga_ 'murderer',
thus
>"slayer" (< "slay" < _slé-a_, cf. LS _slagen_ ~ _slaan_ 'beat', 'slay',
>etc.).  The _-t(e)_ or _-d(e)_ is a deverbal noun suffix.  So it should
>really be spelled _slagd(e)_, _Schlagt_, etc.
>
>LS _Slachter_ (lit. "slayer" or "slaughterer") for 'butcher' survived in
>North German _Schlachter_, one of those words that shows up a North German
>speakers as opposed to Southerners who use words like _Metzger_ (lit.
>"slaughterer"), _Fleischer_ ("flesh-er," "meat-er") or _Fleischhauer_
>("flesh-/meat-chopper").
>
>Regards,
>Reinhard/Ron

Moin Ron,

ik heff noch wat funnen in de webeditie vun dat "Leidsch Dagblad":

"Welke verouderde woorden leven er nog in het Leids? Een ervan is
slachte. 'Slachte', zegt u, 'dat is toch gewoon Nederlands?' Ja, wel als
je denkt aan vee en aan een slager. Maar dat slachten bedoel ik niet. Er
is een ander slachte dat voorkomt in de betekenis 'lijken op'. In het
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal staat een mooi citaat uit de
dichtbundel 'Makamen en Ghazelen' van de Vlaming J.A. van Droogenbroeck
uit 1806: ,,Soms aard ik den wilden ramme, soms slacht ik den stillen
lamme! - Ik zeil bij allerlei winden.'' Vertaald luidt dat: nu eens heb
ik de aard van een woeste, wilde ram, dan weer lijk ik op een stil
onschuldig lammetje. Ik waai met alle winden mee.

In de Leidse taal kun je zeggen dan slacht je mij wat. Letterlijk
betekent dat 'dan lijk je wat op mij'. Maar je gebruikt het meestal
wanneer je met iets instemt wat een ander zegt. Je lijkt op mij, dus ben
ik het volledig met je eens. Slachten is verwant aan geslacht, je
voorvaderen en je nazaten. Daar lijk je meestal ook wat op."

Kumpelmenten
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (05) [D/E]

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

>Subject: False friends
>
>Utz,
>
>In the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) dialects of the Bremen and Oldenburg
>(Ollenborg) regions, _Slacht(e)_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_) means or
>used to mean 'bank reinforcement (wall)'.  It still occurs in street names
>in that region.
>
>The other _Slacht_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_), used in all dialects,
>means battle, is thus related to Dutch and Afrikaans _slag_ and to English
>"slaught" (formerly "slaucht" < Middle English _slaƺt_ ~ _slaht_ < Old
>English _sleaht_) and "slaughter."  Cf. Old English _slaga_ 'murderer',
thus
>"slayer" (< "slay" < _slé-a_, cf. LS _slagen_ ~ _slaan_ 'beat', 'slay',
>etc.).  The _-t(e)_ or _-d(e)_ is a deverbal noun suffix.  So it should
>really be spelled _slagd(e)_, _Schlagt_, etc.

Hello Ron,

you are right, I have found an explanation in www.bremen-tourism.de:

"Die Schlachte... Ihr Name leitet sich ab vom niederdeutschen Wort
‚slait’, was soviel wie schlagen bedeutet. Damit Schiffe anlegen konnten
und das Weserufer vor Eis und Sturmflut geschützt war, wurden Holzpfähle
in den Boden geschlagen."

"...Schlachte Promenade...Its name originates from Low German slait,
meaning to ‘slam’ and recalls the days when wooden stakes were used to
protect the quayside from icing and tidal storms."

Best regards
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Dank ook, Utz!

> Maar dat slachten bedoel ik niet. Er
> is een ander slachte dat voorkomt in de betekenis 'lijken op'.

Och, ja!  Dat hebbt wi in 't Neddersassische (Nedderdüütsche) ook:
_slachten_ ~ _slechten_, vun _Slag_ 'Aard', schull daarwegen beter <slagten>
or <slegten> schreven warrn.

Utz mentioned archaic Dutch _slachten_ in the sense of 'to resemble
(something)'.  I mentioned that we have that word in Lowlands Saxon (Low
German) as well: _slachten_ ~ _slechten_ 'to take after', 'to resemble',
from _Slag_ 'kind', 'sort', should thus be spelled _slagten_.

Examples:

Hey slagtt/slegtt an/up/op syn vadder.
He slacht/slecht an/up/op sien Vadder.
He takes after/resembles his father.

Den slag kraam weett he niks vun af.
Den Slag Kraam weet he nix vun af.
He doesn't know anything about that sort of stuff.

It's apparently also related to _geslegt_ (<Geslecht>) 'kin(ship)', 'seed',
'extraction', 'house', 'sex', 'gender'

In somewhat archaic German, _Schlag_ and _(ein)schlagen_ have similar
meanings.

It all seems to go back to the same source as that of "slay."

Danish and Norwegian have borrowed _slag_ in this sense.

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun 13 16:18:17 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:18:17 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.13 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.091817.0700.>

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (06) [E]

Ron wrote:
"I haven't come across this one (i.e., "sick" to mean "vomit"), though, but
I take your word for it.

This is the usual meaning of "sick" in Nottingham English, e.g., "there's
sick all over the floor." "E's just gone en bin sick everywhere." We use
"ill" where everyone else on this list seems to use "sick", e.g., "I feel
ill". "He's not here's because he's off ill". Then of course we use the term
"poorly" as well, which describes a mild illness, especially that of
children - it's a little condescending, I suppose. "Are yeh feelin poorly,
duck?" "Are yeh a bit poorly? <patronising coo> Arr."

Whenever I hear the word "sick" used to mean "ill" it grates as an
Americanism.

Criostóir.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun 13 16:20:45 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:20:45 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.13 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.092045.0700.>

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From: Dan Prohaska <daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Dear All,

Unfortunately I was unable to open the below link - but then again I have
been having some computer difficulties lately...

In reference to what Reinhard said below I can only agree that the languages
most closely related to West Frisian ought to be included in a comparative
study of the kind.

Among West Frisians I have noted a tendency to stress and over-emphasise an
affiliation with the Scandinavian languages, Danish in particular. I don't
know why this is but the similarities to Scandinavian are few (except for
the features shared by all Germanic languages) compared to the connections
with English, Low Saxon and not to mention the other varieties of Frisian.
I've always found West Frisian to be very similar to Low Saxon and have also
heard West Frisians saying that they find Frisian has many expressions
'closer to German than to Dutch'. Such subjective remarks are very
interesting when trying to ascertain certain attitudes.

Best wishes to all,
Dan

=============

From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Language varieties

Beste liëglanners,

I'd like to bring under your attention a very interesting paper that
Wilbert Heeringa has published together with Charlotte Gooskens, titled
"The Position of Frisian in the Germanic Language Area". The languages
that are compared with Frisian are Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian,
Swedish, Danish, English, Dutch and German. Linguistic distances are
calculated and related to mutual intelligibility. You can find it here:
http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/tdg03.pdf
More can be found under
http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/

Greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

----------

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

Thanks for the reference (above), Luc.

This is an interesting article.  Unfortunately, there are some omissions.
It does not include Scots, but in my opinion more serious still is the
omission of Saterland (East) Frisian and the North Frisian varieties of
Germany.  It gets tiresome when people write about "Frisian" and only refer
to Westerlauwer Frisian of the Netherlands.  Also serious is the omission of
Lowlands Saxon (Low German), given that Frisian, Dutch and German are
included.  LS is a missing linkthere, so to speak.  Hopefully, all these
will be included in future studies.

Thanks again.

Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 02:38:41 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 19:38:41 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.13 (02) [D/E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.193841.0700.>

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From: Roger Hondshoven <roger.hondshoven at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.12 (01) [D/E/LS/German]

Utz,

Je moet heel waarschijnlijk uitgaan van de betekenis: "een dier dat als
offer geslacht wordt";

Beste groeten,

Roger

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends

Greetings Lowlanders!

Considering all the hullaballoo about _sick_ versus _ill_, I decided to take
a look in some dictionaries.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Ninth Edition) gives the primary meaning of
ILL as: "Out of health; sick (is ill; was taken ill with pneumonia;mentally
ill people)." It also points out :"The use of ILL to mean 'vomiting' or
'tending to vomit' is non-standard."

The Concise Oxford Thesaurus, A Dictionary of Synonyms, gives SICK, and
SICKLY as synonums of ILL. Similarly it gives ILL as a synonym of SICK.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, gives the 6th meaning of the word ILL
as 'not in good health; sick.' It states that this is the predominant modern
usage, and that it dates back to Late Middle English.

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary states:

SICK :1 "Feeling ill as if you are going to vomit."
          Lucy felt sick the morning after the party.
          If you eat any more of that cake, you'll make yourself sick
          2 be sick to vomit:
          She was sick after she ate too much chocolate."

It also gives:

"SICK : noun [U] UK INFORMAL vomit:a pool of sick on the floor".

The same dictionary gives:

"ILL (NOT WELL) : adjective : not feeling well, or suffering from a disease:
I felt ill so I went home.
He's been ill with meningitis.
Sophia fell ill/was taken ill (= became ill) while on holiday.
He is critically (= very badly) ill in hospital."

The same dictionary even lists POORLY as meaning 'ill', without any
criticism of the usage.

The Merriam-Webster (Online edition) is a little confusing in the way it
sets the entries out, but it appears to accept the sense "not in good
health" as one of the secondary meanings.

The same dictionary is clearer when it comes to SICK:

"1 a (1) : affected with disease or ill health " (2) : "of, relating to, or
intended for use in sickness <sick pay> <a sick ward>" b : Queasy,
nauseated: <sick to one's stomach> <was sick in the car> "

POORLY is also given in the adjectival sense of "somewhat ill; indisposed."

Since SICK is of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) origin (OE sEoc, cf. Old High
German seoh), and ILL is from Old Norse (ON illr, of unknown origin), could
the reason for the disagreement, in the British Isles at any rate, be a
tribal one, between Anglo-Saxons and Norse.ILL in the older sense of
'immoral', 'vicious' is said by at least one dictinary to be chiefly
Scottish; is it possible that the older meaning of ILL survived in Scotland,
 so they used the Anglo-Saxon word SICK in the sense of 'not well'? A quick
glance at a map of settlements of the Angles,Saxons and Jutes in 600 AD,
seems to show that Nottingham was probably in the Anglian territory, which
would explain why SICK is more prevalent there. In my area of Lancashire
(which at that time was still British [i.e. Celtic]) both SICK and ILL are
probably equally distributed, and POORLY was very common too a few decades
ago.

John Duckworth

Preston, Lancashire

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 03:11:29 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 20:11:29 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.13 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.201129.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Etymology

Ron and other Lowlanders,

While we are on the subject of being ill, has anyone any idea where the
Australian slang word _crook_ meaning 'not well in health' came from. It
also seems to have the meaning of 'not working properly' (of machinery and
so on), and even just 'bad'. Since you spent some time in Australia, Ron,
perhaps you have given some thought to its etymology?

I started wondering about why High German replaced the Old High German word
_sieh_ (sick) with New High German _krank.I looked at the history of the
word _krank_ given by Jakub and Wilhelm Grimm in Das Deutsche Woerterbuch
( http://www.dwb.uni-trier.de/index.html ), and there I found an inference
that Scots has a word _crank_, also meaning 'unwell' (and not in the sense
of 'a cranky person' ). I wonder if Sandy or someone else can confirm that.

Also, Ron, is _krank_ used in Low Saxon alongside cognates of _sick_ ?

John Duckworth
Preston, UK

----------

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

Hi, John, Lowlanders!

Happy Father's Day (or what remains of it) to those of you who celebrate(d)
it today!  (Or did I get the date wrong again?)

> Since you spent some time in Australia, Ron, perhaps you have given
> some thought to its etymology?

I have lived there for quite some years, am a naturalized Australian and am
likely, at the very latest, to experience my last sunset there, John.
However, this does not mean that I am an expert in the area of Australian
English, although I often do "research" it and, yes, I *have* given "crook"
in this sense some thought.  Having said this, I hasten to add that others
on the List, Australians and non-Australians alike, may well know more about
this.

In Australian and New Zealand English dialects, "crook" can mean several
things: 'unsatisfactory', 'unpleasant', 'dishonest', 'bad-tempered',
'angry', 'unwell', 'injured', sometimes even 'broken' in the sense of 'out
of order'.  If someone "goes crook" it usually means that he or she gets
angry, disgruntled or ill-tempered, but if he of she "is crook" it tends to
mean that he of she is unwell, ill or sick.  So, all in all, the meaning is
something like "out of sorts" or, more basic, "wrong," "not as it should
be," "abnormal."

In other English dialects, this comes through in the noun "crook" in the
sense of 'rogue', 'swindler', 'criminal', so 'dishonest (person)', "someone
who acts wrongly, thus is (socially) abnormal."

Apparently, in the senses of the above, there used to be dialectal variation
between "crooked" and "crook."  "Crook" came to predominate in Australasia,
while "crooked" came to predominate elsewhere.  In American English you
talk, for instance, about "crooked cops," namely about corrupt police
officers, or about something "crooked" someone (a "crook") has been up to,
namely something illegal or otherwise contrary to regulations or
expectations.

I have a hunch that this "crook(ed)" started off in the sense of "bent."
(Remember the noun "crook" for the bent shepherd's staff, later the bishop's
staff.)  So, something "bent" or "crook(ed)" is not "straight," is thus not
right or normal according to this line of cultural imagery.

Why "crook" instead of "crooked"?  Whatever the reason, I think it's the
same morphological phenomenon as "broken" and "broke."  In most English
dialects, you can say that someone is "broke" if he or she is out of money.
In American dialects you can, to a degree, interchange "broken" and "broke."
Thus, a table leg, for instance, can be "broken" or "broke."

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 03:20:59 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 20:20:59 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.13 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.202059.0700.>

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

[Sorry! This one got away before I was finished.  So here we go again ...]

Hi, John, Lowlanders!

Happy Father's Day (or what remains of it) to those of you who celebrate(d)
it today!  (Or did I get the date wrong again?)

> Since you spent some time in Australia, Ron, perhaps you have given
> some thought to its etymology?

I have lived there for quite some years, am a naturalized Australian and am
likely, at the very latest, to experience my last sunset there, John.
However, this does not mean that I am an expert in the area of Australian
English, although I often do "research" it and, yes, I *have* given "crook"
in this sense some thought.  Having said this, I hasten to add that others
on the List, Australians and non-Australians alike, may well know more about
this.

In Australian and New Zealand English dialects, "crook" can mean several
things: 'unsatisfactory', 'unpleasant', 'dishonest', 'bad-tempered',
'angry', 'unwell', 'injured', sometimes even 'broken' in the sense of 'out
of order'.  If someone "goes crook" it usually means that he or she gets
angry, disgruntled or ill-tempered, but if he of she "is crook" it tends to
mean that he of she is unwell, ill or sick.  So, all in all, the meaning is
something like "out of sorts" or, more basic, "wrong," "not as it should
be," "abnormal."

In other English dialects, this comes through in the noun "crook" in the
sense of 'rogue', 'swindler', 'criminal', so 'dishonest (person)', "someone
who acts wrongly, thus is (socially) abnormal."

Apparently, in the senses of the above, there used to be dialectal variation
between "crooked" and "crook."  "Crook" came to predominate in Australasia,
while "crooked" came to predominate elsewhere.  In American English you
talk, for instance, about "crooked cops," namely about corrupt police
officers, or about something "crooked" someone (a "crook") has been up to,
namely something illegal or otherwise contrary to regulations or
expectations.

I have a hunch that this "crook(ed)" started off in the sense of "bent."
(Remember the noun "crook" for the bent shepherd's staff, later the bishop's
staff.)  So, something "bent" or "crook(ed)" is not "straight," is thus not
right or normal according to this line of cultural imagery.

Apparently, all this goes back to Old Norse word _krókr_ 'hook' borrowed by
Middle English.

Why "crook" instead of "crooked"?  Whatever the reason, I think it's the
same morphological phenomenon as "broken" and "broke."  In most English
dialects, you can say that someone is "broke" if he or she is out of money.
In American dialects you can, to a degree, interchange "broken" and "broke."
Thus, a table leg, for instance, can be "broken" or "broke."

German _krank_ 'ill', 'unwell', too, originally meant "bent" or "crooked,"
or simply "not straight," is related to words like _Kringel_ 'squiggle',
'(edible) ring', and Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _kring_ (<Kring> ~ <Krink>
[krI.N(k)]) 'circle' (> 'club', 'association').

I hope this was of help.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 14:47:56 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 07:47:56 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.14 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.14.JUN.2004.074756.0700.>

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From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.12 (01) [D/E/LS/German]

Hi,
In our family "schlagen" is very commonly used in this sense.
"Er schlägt nach seinem Vater" COULD mean "he is hitting out at his father",
but more frequently it would be used in the sense, mostly negative, critical
"He displays the (bad) attitudes, (bad) manners of his father", but it can
also refer to phyical features, both positive and negative (and neutral).
Whether this comes from the LS substrate, I don´t know.
Mike Wintzer

----------

From: Peter Snepvangers <snepvangers at optushome.com.au>
Subject: False Friends

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Greetings Lowlanders!
Considering all the hullaballoo about _sick_ versus _ill_, I decided to take
a look in some dictionaries.

Hello John, Ron et al...
The use of sick for vomit is very prevalent here in Australia and is also
commonly used to mean ill. One of the new usages for sick now is for sick
meaning "totally cool". Not in the usual sense meaning as hip, up to the
minute, exciting, new but in a tangental sense, a clever sense of cool. It
is used by the teenagers and ethnic (middle eastern, asian, lebanese)
Aussies originally but is gaining acceptance with all mainstream kids. It
has even been used on television here on our SBS tv station on a program
called Fat Pizza. Now when you see someone do a cool drawing or a great
stunt you would say" that was totally sick, man!!!"
I wonder if we are unique down under here with this usage?
Cheers
Peter Snepvangers
snepvangers at optushome.com.au

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 14:59:52 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 07:59:52 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.14.JUN.2004.075952.0700.>

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From: Andrys Onsman <Andrys.Onsman at CeLTS.monash.edu.au>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.13 (03) [E]

To: Ron and John
Re: Being crook.

> .  In American English you talk, for instance, about "crooked cops,"
namely
> about corrupt police officers, or about something "crooked" someone (a
> "crook") has been up to, namely something illegal or otherwise contrary to
> regulations or expectations.
>
> I have a hunch that this "crook(ed)" started off in the sense of "bent."
> (Remember the noun "crook" for the bent shepherd's staff, later the
bishop's
> staff.)  So, something "bent" or "crook(ed)" is not "straight," is thus
not
> right or normal according to this line of cultural imagery.

Whilst agreeing with most of what Ron has to say about "crook", I think that
Australians too mostly use crooked when speaking of bent cops. A crook cop
is a
sick policeman, a crooked cop is a corrupt policeman. As a current resident
in
Melbourne, I read daily reports in the media about the latter. A quick
Google
search for crook cops gives 4 results, for crooked cops 796. Perhaps
dishonest
policemen rarely get ill.

Apparently there are a number of possible sources for crook(ed): the Old
Norse
"krokr" hook, corner, the Norman "crique", meaning creek, the French "croc"
for
Shepherd's crook  and the O.H.G. "krapmhe" cramp, spasm, related to "kramph"
bent, crooked" amongst others. They all seem to relate to bent or unwell.

But I have no idea why "going crook at" means getting angry with in
Australian
English.

Best wishes
Andrys Onsman

----------

From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: Etymology

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Etymology
>
> Also, Ron, is _krank_ used in Low Saxon alongside cognates of _sick_ ?
>
In my Low Saxon dialect the word krank is sometimes used to mean ill.
But usually the word seyk (sik, with superlength i) is used.

Also, the Dutch dictionary Van Dale lists krank as meaning ill.

regards,
Henry

----------

From: Peter Snepvangers <snepvangers at optushome.com.au>
Subject: Etymology

>From John Duckworth and Ron Hahn:
While we are on the subject of being ill, has anyone any idea where the
Australian slang word _crook_ meaning 'not well in health' came from.

Hello Ron and John,
Ron you seemed to answer the original question on crook very well. It has
had all the meanings and connotations you described. The only thing I would
add is the change in usage over time. Crook was very commonly used in the
1960's, to the 1980's and Bent started to be used more generally after this
time. The usage of bent seemed to me to be used by the drug using sub
culture which was very prevalent in the 1980's here in Australia after the
initial Hippie sub culture (post Vietnam war ) of the 1970's. A bit of a
generalisation I know but an observation none the less. I think it was more
of a generational thing ( the oldies and yobbos used crook while the kids
used bent) but both had the meaning of "off the straight and narrow" to use
a colloquial term.
Cheers
Peter Snepvangers
snepvangers at optushome.com.au

----------

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

Thanks for the very interesting responses (above), guys!  And great to have
you back, Henry!

I wrote:

> German _krank_ 'ill', 'unwell', too, originally meant "bent" or "crooked,"
> or simply "not straight," is related to words like _Kringel_ 'squiggle',
> '(edible) ring', and Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _kring_ (<Kring> ~
<Krink>
> [krI.N(k)]) 'circle' (> 'club', 'association').

I should add that English _cranc_ > "crank" is suspected to have been
derived from the Old English verb _crincan_ (thus morphophonemically
/krink-/) 'to fall in battle', originally meaning 'to curl up'.  Also note
the specialized nautical meaning of the adjective "crank": 'liable to
capsize', suspected to be derived from the earlier meaning 'weak', 'shaky',
'unstable'.  So "crook(ed)" and "crank(y)" seem to have a lot in common.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 21:06:00 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 14:06:00 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.14.JUN.2004.140600.0700.>

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.13 (02) [D/E]

John Duckworth wrote describing the Anglo-Saxon and Norse origins of "sick"
and "ill" respectively. I'd go along with his assessment, except to point
out as strongly as I can that "ill" is predominant around Nottingham (John
suggested "sick" was, perhaps in a confused misreading of my original post).
This is hardly surprising as Nottingham was long a part of the Danelaw.

With regard to Peter Snepvangers contribution about "sick" meaning "cool" in
Australia - this is certainly an innovation, but it may be confined to the
eastern states. I never once heard it when I lived in Western Australia, and
I worked at a school there.

Criostóir.

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends

Peter Snepvangers said:

"One of the new usages for sick now is for sick meaning "totally cool". Not
in the usual sense meaning as hip, up to the minute, exciting, new but in a
tangental sense, a clever sense of cool. It is used by the teenagers and
ethnic (middle eastern, asian, lebanese)
Aussies originally but is gaining acceptance with all mainstream kids."

It is used in the same context by teenagers here; 'Wow! That's sick, man!'
Or just an exclamated,'Sick!' There are one or two other apparent reversals
of meaning used to show various levels of approval among teenagers on the
street; unfortunately I can only remember 'wicked!' and 'Evil!' both of
which are a little dated now.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK.

----------

From: Wim <wkv at home.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (02) [E]

From: wim verdoold. wkv at home.nl

Hi,  about crooked...  the dutch words verkreukeld, gekreukt, en
gekrookt  are coming to my mind, all meaning the same.    ( crumple,
what you do to paper , or a reed that you try to break).

Hope this was any help..

Wim.

http://members.home.nl/wkv/index.html

----------

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

Henry Pijffers:

> > Also, Ron, is _krank_ used in Low Saxon alongside cognates of _sick_ ?
> >
> In my Low Saxon dialect the word krank is sometimes used to mean ill.
> But usually the word seyk (sik, with superlength i) is used.

What Netherlands group of Lowlands Saxon does your dialect belong to again,
Henry?  Twente?

Again, in North Saxon dialects of the German side of the border, too, you
can say both _süyk_ ~ _syk_ (German spelling <süük> ~ <siek>, Dutch spelling
<zuuk> ~ <ziek>) or _krank_.  Also, 'hospital' can be _süykenhuus_ ~
_sykenhuus_ (German spelling <Sükenhuus> ~ <Siekenhuus>, Dutch spelling
<zuuknhoes> ~ <zieknhoes>) or _krankenhuus_ (German spelling <Krankenhuus>,
Dutch spelling <kraanknhoes>).  I have a feeling that the use of _krank_ and
derivations thereof is on the increase due to German influence (_krank_,
_Krankenhaus_).

Andrys Onsman:

> Whilst agreeing with most of what Ron has to say about "crook", I think
that
> Australians too mostly use crooked when speaking of bent cops. A crook cop
> is a
> sick policeman, a crooked cop is a corrupt policeman. As a current
resident
> in
> Melbourne, I read daily reports in the media about the latter. A quick
> Google
> search for crook cops gives 4 results, for crooked cops 796. Perhaps
> dishonest
> policemen rarely get ill.

I wonder if this is because of American media influence offering a way out
of a potentially ambiguous construction.

By the way, note also the use of _bent_ (past participle of "to bend") in
the sense of "illicit" or "twisted."  In American slang I have come across
the slang phrase "the cop is bent" or "bent cop," denoting the same as
"crooked cop" (Has anyone else?), namely a police officer that has gone
"bad" (hence the alternative "bad cop").  So there is definitely a common
theme; all the loose ends seem to meet: "crook(ed)," "crank(y)" and "bent"
all start off with the idea of "not straight" and end up being used to mean
"not right," "out of the ordinary," "out of sorts," etc., physically,
morally or psychologically.

I wrote:

> I should add that English _cranc_ > "crank" is suspected to have been
> derived from the Old English verb _crincan_ (thus morphophonemically
> /krink-/) 'to fall in battle', originally meaning 'to curl up'.

This may be a clue to the semantic origin of the three adjectives mentioned
above.  You are all right ("normal") if you walk or stand upright, and
especially if you are upright in battle.  If you double over (bend over) or
curl up, you are assumed to be physically injured, ill, or whatever, i.e.,
"abnormal," "not as it should be."

Andrys further wrote:

> But I have no idea why "going crook at" means getting angry with in
> Australian

Well, it kind of makes sense to me.  If you look at my previous paragraph it
might make sense to you too.  "Not right," "not as usual," might also be
applied to mood.  If someone suddenly displays anger toward you ("having a
go at you," as they say in Britain) and this is unusual, he or she is
turning "weird," "different from usual," "not as it should be," almost like
mentally ill.  Hence also American English "mad" for "angry," probably
originally in the sense of "mad with anger."

John Duckworth:

> It is used in the same context by teenagers here; 'Wow! That's sick, man!'
> Or just an exclamated,'Sick!' There are one or two other apparent
reversals
> of meaning used to show various levels of approval among teenagers on
> the street; unfortunately I can only remember 'wicked!' and 'Evil!' both
of
> which are a little dated now.

I assume that's along the same lines as "bad" at one (short) time being used
to mean "good," at least in American slang.  I furthermore assume that
things of this sort are flashes in the pan, here today and gone tomorrow,
products of folks in a rebellious phase in which values are shifted, twisted
and turned around in-your-face fashion, a phase in which "being bad" is
"being good," "cool," "sweet," etc.  So, if someone deliberately does
something "sick" (i.e., something perverse, seemingly mentally twisted,
offensive to those "old farts" who value traditional norms) it may be
considered "good," "cool," "right on," "bad," "awesome," or whatever the
current term may be, among his or her equally rebellion-obsessed peers.

Wim Verdoold:

> Hi,  about crooked...  the dutch words verkreukeld, gekreukt, en
> gekrookt  are coming to my mind, all meaning the same.    ( crumple,
> what you do to paper , or a reed that you try to break).

North Saxon dialects of Lowlands Saxon (Low German):

krük (<Krück>) 'crook', 'crique', 'bent walking stick'
krökel (<Krökel> ~ <Krœkel>) 'wrinkle', '(tight) curl'
krökelig (<krökelig> ~ <krœkelig>) 'wrinkled', 'crumpled', '(very) curly',
'frizzy'
krökeln (<krökeln> ~ <krœkeln>) 'cause to be wrinkled,crumpled or tightly
curled'

I assume the _-l(-)_ here is a diminutive marker, thus "small bend/curl."

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 22:44:53 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 15:44:53 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.14.JUN.2004.154453.0700.>

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From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (03) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Etymology
>
> Henry Pijffers:
>
>>In my Low Saxon dialect the word krank is sometimes used to mean ill.
>>But usually the word seyk (sik, with superlength i) is used.
>
> What Netherlands group of Lowlands Saxon does your dialect belong to
again,
> Henry?  Twente?
>
Yes, from Twente (one could call that western West Phalian I guess).

> Again, in North Saxon dialects of the German side of the border, too, you
> can say both _süyk_ ~ _syk_ (German spelling <süük> ~ <siek>, Dutch
spelling
> <zuuk> ~ <ziek>) or _krank_.  Also, 'hospital' can be _süykenhuus_ ~
> _sykenhuus_ (German spelling <Sükenhuus> ~ <Siekenhuus>, Dutch spelling
> <zuuknhoes> ~ <zieknhoes>) or _krankenhuus_ (German spelling
<Krankenhuus>,
> Dutch spelling <kraanknhoes>).

 > I have a feeling that the use of _krank_ and
> derivations thereof is on the increase due to German influence (_krank_,
> _Krankenhaus_).
>
But how do you explain _krank_ appearing in a Dutch dictionary, with the
meaning of ill? And the use of _krank_ in Twente Low Saxon? Those
languages aren't influenced by German that much (at least not as much as
the Saxon varieties in Northern Germany)

> North Saxon dialects of Lowlands Saxon (Low German):
>
> krökel (<Krökel> ~ <Krœkel>) 'wrinkle', '(tight) curl'
> krökelig (<krökelig> ~ <krœkelig>) 'wrinkled', 'crumpled', '(very) curly',
> 'frizzy'
> krökeln (<krökeln> ~ <krœkeln>) 'cause to be wrinkled,crumpled or tightly
> curled'
>
It's the same in Twente.

regards,
Henry

----------

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

Henry (above):

> Yes, from Twente (one could call that western West Phalian I guess).

Nice to see that you and I see it alike, that there is someone else willing
to look across the political border.

> > I have a feeling that the use of _krank_ and
> > derivations thereof is on the increase due to German influence (_krank_,
> > _Krankenhaus_).
> >
> But how do you explain _krank_ appearing in a Dutch dictionary, with the
> meaning of ill? And the use of _krank_ in Twente Low Saxon? Those
> languages aren't influenced by German that much (at least not as much as
> the Saxon varieties in Northern Germany)

I'm not talking about existence but about prevalence.  I take it as a given
that both words already existed in Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but that on
the German side of the border people may now avail themselves more and more
of the _krank_ choice because of German influence.  (Modern German has only
_krank_, besides words like _unwohl_ "unwell," but no cognate of the
adjective _süyk_ ~ _syk_.)  I believe that _süyk_ ~ _syk_ used to be
predominant (as in Dutch and Netherlands LS) but is now gradually losing
ground to _krank_ in Germany under German influence, at least in certain
dialects.  A couple of speakers in the greater Hamburg area have told me
that they preferred _krank_ because _süyk_ ~ _syk_ reminded them too much of
German _Seuche_ 'epidemic', 'scourge'.  One thought of _süykenhuus_ for
'hospital' as "silly" because it sounded to her like a place in which people
a quaranteened.  I guess this would be an example of a special type of
language interference, one in which native speaker competence is being
eroded due to foreign cognate associations.  (I wonder if this has been the
subject of academic investigation.)

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 23:13:49 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 16:13:49 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language news" 2004.06.14 (05) [E]
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language news

Dear Lowlanders,

Just now I caught a small soundbyte bundle of language news on the CNN TV
news channel.  It contained no satisfactory detail and was obviously a
filler, was rather interesting anyway.

According to a recent study (no details), older adults that knew more than
one language did significantly better in memory tests than did those that
were monolingual.  I don't know if with "people with only one language" they
really meant actually monolingual people or included those that learned a
foreign language in school but didn't really use it outside the classroom
and for long periods of time.  Also, there was talk of "people with more
than one language" and "people who grew up with two languages," apparently
used interchangeably.  So that's rather ambiguous.  At the end they said
something like "Two languages is good, more languages is better."

So far, no elaboration has been posted at the CNN site (http://www.cnn.com).

There you have it: the health benefits of language learning!  If you haven't
started yet, this is the time to jump on the bandwagon.  (Picture all those
folks on treadmills and exercise bikes, "hydration bottles" hanging from
belts, staring into language textbooks, listening to language CDs rather
than to music ones ...)

This makes me realize that by now I'd be in even worse shape memory-wise had
I lived monolingually ...  Maybe our Sandy is right and I do need a new
challenge: a phone-less language like sign language.  That'd do it: "extend
the life of the brain's elasticity," as mentioned on CNN.

It's official now.  Keep learning and using your languages, folks!
(Doesn't this merely confirm a hunch we've had for a long time?)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 15 19:50:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 12:50:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (01) [E]
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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.13 (02) [D/E]

Dear All,

May I toss a stone in the bush?

So very little note is taken of the use of euphemism & its place in the
development of terminology. I, now, imagined everybody KNEW the expression
'He's "sick!" ' or 'That is so 'sick!" ' or (for Californians) 'He's a "sick
puppy"!' meaning mentally deranged in a nasty way, was the last stage of an
Americanism, using 'sick' as a tactful euphemism for 'insane'.

 I have no quarrel with that, as long as South Africans still understand me
when I say I feel sick. But we should beware of euphemism's destructive
propensities in language too.

Take for example the euphemism 'gay', which before Victorian Times, I find,
referred to any brand of licenciousness whatever ('Gaying instrument' - the
penis: 1811 DICTIONARY of the Vulgar Tongue). But subsequently restricted to
'the vice that dared not speak its name', 'Gay' became the euphemism for
'Homosexual' & with the gradual erosion of social reticence is now a
generally accepted term for the same.

This is in my opinion a great pity. The 'orientation' in question is no
longer a matter for the Law, or even Social Propriety, but 'Homosexual ' has
fallen out of use! The word 'Gay' meaning 'lively, bright, sportive, merry'
can no longer be used as such without misunderstanding. The mood appropriate
to that usage in older literary works is needlessly destroyed, & we can't
teach the same application to our young.

A small digression - how's this for a false friend? 'gay = merry' (Gay
fellow) English as opposed to 'gey = serious' (Gey Gordon) Scottish!

& still euphemism marches on. There are still contexts, even in that
fraternity, in which euphemism is preferable to the less subtle truth, &
what word is falling into that use? 'Fey!' ("I was approached by a fey young
man ---.").

What happens when we have to refer to something that IS fey?

Yrs Sincerely,
Mark

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.13 (03) [E]

Dear John Duckworth, & All,

This usage must go back very far in Germanic, or else be a very persuasive
loan. In Afrikaans, 'krank' also means 'sick, unwell, ill, but for 'insane,
you must specify, e.g. 'kranksinnig'.

On the other hand, 'kronkel means 'twisted, coiled, crinkled, or with a
kink.

Once again, has anybody else raised the issue of euphemism?

Yrs, Mark.

> I started wondering about why High German replaced the Old High German
word
> _sieh_ (sick) with New High German _krank. I looked at the history of the
> word _krank_ given by Jakub and Wilhelm Grimm in Das Deutsche Woerterbuch
> ( http://www.dwb.uni-trier.de/index.html ), and there I found an inference
> that Scots has a word _crank_, also meaning 'unwell' (and not in the sense
> of 'a cranky person' ). I wonder if Sandy or someone else can confirm
that.
>
> Also, Ron, is _krank_ used in Low Saxon alongside cognates of _sick_ ?

----------

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

> May I toss a stone in the bush?

Sure!  Toss away!  We can probably catch them in mid-flight.  :)  Not that
*I* necessarily will, mind you.

>  I have no quarrel with that, as long as South Africans still understand
me
> when I say I feel sick. But we should beware of euphemism's destructive
> propensities in language too.

Sure, Mark, but how can you stop it?  It's awfully hard, if not impossible,
to regulate language, including semantic shifts.

We have indeed talked about euphemisms many times, within various contexts.
It is true that euphemisms tend to cause all sorts of semantic shifts and
replacements.

By the way, Lowlands Saxon (Low German) refers to 'insane', 'mentally ill',
as _mal_ (<mall> [ma.l]), derived from French _mal_ 'bad', 'wrong', 'hurt',
'ill'.  It can also mean 'silly' or 'excentric' if used within certain
contexts.

Derivations are the following:
mallerig 'silly', 'excentric', 'crazy'
mallen 'to behave in a silly or crazy way', 'to fool around'
malmööl (<Mallmöhl> "crazy/silly mill") 'carousel'
mal-aap ~ mayaap (<Mallaap> ~ <Maiaap> "silly/May ape/monkey") 'silly
person', 'idiot'

There *are* native words and other loanwords for "crazy" and similar words;
e.g., ...

verdrayd (<verdreiht> "twisted")
verrükt (<verrückt> "deranged")
bregen-klöterig (<bregen-klöterig> "brain-clotted," "lumpy-brained")
beklopt (<bekloppt> "hit-on")
dul (<dull> "crazed")
narsch (<narrsch> "foolish" from _nar_ <Narr> "fool")
tüyterig (<tüterig> from _tüyter_ "twist," "tangle")
tüytelig (<tütelig> from _tüytel_ "twist," "tangle")
vimmelig (<fimmelig> from _vimmel_ (<Fimmel>) 'foible')
unwys' (<unwies> "unwise")
blööd' (<blööd> ~ <bleud> originally "deaf and dumb")
blöödsinnig (<blöödsinnig> ~ <bleudsinnig> < "deaf-and-dumb-sensed")
splynig (<splienig> from _splyn_ (<Splien>) "excentricity")
maschukken (<maschucken> < Rothwelsch _meschugge_
   < Yiddish _meshuge_ משגע < Hebrew _m at shugâ`_ מְשֻׁגָּע 'insane')
vagelig (from _vagel_ "foible" < "bird")

The rest consists mostly of idiomatic phrases ... lots of them.

Talking about words for "deaf"[1] and "dumb"[2] as replacements for "insane"
or "unintelligent," this would be another set of examples of the semantic
shifts you are talking about, Mark, where it is (nearly) impossible to use
the words with their original meaning.

[1] LS _douv_ (<doof>) 'deaf' > 'stupid' > German _doof_ 'stupid' vs native
_taub_ 'deaf'

[2] English "dumb" 'unable to speak' > 'stupid'

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 15 20:40:47 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 13:40:47 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (02) [E]
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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (01) [E]

Mark mentioned various euphemisms... so what do you call the opposite of a
euphemism? There are former four-letter or taboo words which nowadays have
come to mean something completely harmless. For example, in German, "geil"
used to mean "randy, horny", and now, within two short generations, it has
come to also (and even predominantly) mean " really great, cool, phat". When
my teenage daughter's friend wanted to pay me a compliment recently, she
called me "affengeil", and I was truly flattered - much more so than my
mother would have been if one of my friends had called her "horny as a
monkey"! That would have been absolutely unthinkable!!!

Looks like most areas where euphemisms are applied either lie below the
belt, or they have to do with the last big taboo in most western cultures -
passing away, buying the farm, going west, kicking the bucket, departing,
expiring, pushing up the daisies, being no longer among us!

Wait, there are more issues among politicians, of course... hundreds of
euphemisms for telling lies and, lately, even for torture... er, I mean,
specialized gentle persuasion!

Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Semantics" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Semantics
>
> [1] LS _douv_ (<doof>) 'deaf' > 'stupid' > German _doof_ 'stupid' vs
native
> _taub_ 'deaf'

This is interesting - in current Scots usage we have the noun "duif" [dIf]
meaning "a stupid person", and "dowf" [dauf] meaning "listless,
unresponsive", as well as "deif" [dif] meaning "deaf".
I'm assuming "duif" is the correct spelling - I've only given the
pronunciations in my own dialect, but seem to remember concluding from
reading some Scotstext text that this is the "ui" diaphoneme as in "guid"
&c.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Sandy (above):

> This is interesting - in current Scots usage we have the noun "duif" [dIf]
> meaning "a stupid person", and "dowf" [dauf] meaning "listless,
> unresponsive", as well as "deif" [dif] meaning "deaf".

Interesting indeed!  I wonder if _duif_ is a loanword.  Given the
construction of the Scots form, the most obvious source seems to be
Scandinavian: Danish _døv_ [døw], Dano-Norwegian (Bokmål) Norwegian _døv_
[døv], Neo-Norwegian (Nynorsk) _dauv_ [daʉv] ~ _døv_ [døv], Icelandic
_dauf-_ [daʉf...] ~ [daʉv...], Old Norse _dauf-_.  I am not so sure about
the modern languages, but Old Norse _dauf-_ can mean 'numb' or
'unresponsive' besides 'deaf', as can Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _douv_
(<doof>), German _taub_ and Yiddish _toyb_ טױב.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 15 22:28:14 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 15:28:14 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.15.JUN.2004.152814.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Semantics" [E]

> From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (01) [E]
>
> Mark mentioned various euphemisms... so what do you call the opposite of a
> euphemism? There are former four-letter or taboo words which nowadays have

Strangely enough, I discovered this only yesterday while reading - the word
is "dysphemism".

It was defined as meaning a word used to be deliberately more shocking than
the usual word. Since it was a book on BSL linguistics, example given was
the dysphemistic sign for "abortion" that really means "stab in the
stomach". I suppose an English equivalent would be the way some
anti-abortionists call it "murder".

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 15 23:27:58 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 16:27:58 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.15.JUN.2004.162758.0700.>

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From: Gustaaf Van Moorsel <gvanmoor at aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: semantics

Gabriele ( Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>) wrote:

 > For example, in German, "geil"
 > used to mean "randy, horny", and now, within two short generations, it
has
 > come to also (and even predominantly) mean " really great, cool, phat".

Of course, in Dutch, 'geil' only has its original meaning, and the new
German meaning can indeed create confusion.

 > Wait, there are more issues among politicians, of course... hundreds of
 > euphemisms for telling lies and, lately, even for torture... er, I mean,
 > specialized gentle persuasion!

In his Daily Show, John Stewart called it 'Freedom Tickling'.

Gustaaf

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 16 15:22:12 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 08:22:12 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Administrativia" 2004.06.16 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.16.JUN.2004.082212.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-L.net>
Subject: Administrativia

Dear Lowlanders,

This is another administrative message. I sent the last one out on June 1,
2004.

First of all, I would like to welcome those who have joined us since then.
You will find their places of residence listed below.

I am very happy that a few people have rejoined us, several of them of the
"vocal" type.  It is great to have them back (and to know that they weren't
able to stay away for good).

There are no quota of any kind on this list.  Nevertheless, I would like to
particularly encourage our female subscribers to come forth and post.  There
are too few of you that do.  Furthermore, it is up to each subscriber to
choose to stay silently in the background "lurking" or to come forward to
participate in information exchange.  Yet, I would like to take this
opportunity to encourage everyone who has not firmly made up his or her mind
to try participating.  Please bear in mind that nothing horrible will happen
if you do.  No one will ridicule you, you are not expected to be experts in
anything, and your language proficiency (whichever language) does not need
to be perfect.  If you have burning questions that are relevant to this
list, or if you feel very tempted to share something relevant, please have a
go.  If you have any prior questions and/or are worried you do the wrong
thing, please read the rules (see below), and ask me
(lowlands-l at lowlands-L.net) if you are still unsure then.

Rules and Guidelines:
Dutch: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regels
English: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules
German: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regeln-de
Limburgish: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regele
Lowlands Saxon (Low German): http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regeln
Russian: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules-ru

There are four types of things that are often wrong even in more experienced
subscribers' posting submissions:

(1) Keep subjects separate
(2) Stick to the subject title
(3) Edit quotes
(4) Give credit

Please pay particular attention to these on the Rules and Guideline pages.

Please also bear in mind that the list server stips all messages of special
formatting and attachments.  So please do not bother with those.

Please also pay attention to the following:

TEMPORARY ABSENCE
Before you take a trip or for some other reason need to stop LL-L mail
arriving for a given length of time, please write to us
(lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net) to let us know the date you want mail to be
stopped and the date you want mail to be resumed. As some of our members can
attest, this has been working really well, certainly beats the old, crude
method of signing off and on again. Once in a while people find themselves
unsubscribed without notice. Some of them immediately suspect the worst:
that I have "booted them out" for some infraction or other. (I know this for
sure only about those that contact me.) Please do not jump to this
conclusion unless you have received prior reprimands and warnings (which has
occurred very rarely, not at all for well over one year). If you find
yourself disconnected from Lowlands-L, the reason is most likely that the
automated server has unsubscribed your address because of repeated
"bouncing," i.e., because your mail servers keep informing the list server
that you cannot be reached or is filled above quota. Most of the time this
is due to temporary disconnection. Sometimes the reason is that a
subscriber's junk mail filter (or "spam" filter) has not been "told" to
exempt Lowlands-L mail, which is why our mailings do not arrive in your
inboxes. So, if Lowlands-L mail stops coming, please first check your "spam"
filters and adjust them if necessary, and only contact me about the problem
if all of the above fails. Should you indeed be disconnected, please write
to me or resubmit an application
(http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=subscription). I'll be more than
happy to bring you swiftly back to the fold.

USE OF LANGUAGE
Preferably, you should submit postings in any one of the Lowlands language
varieties (including English). No language variety is considered better or
worse than others on this list. However, you need not limit yourselves to
Lowlands varieties, because *any* language or language variety is
permissible and welcome. Just bear in mind that the more "exotic" your
language choice the fewer members will understand you. If you use a language
that is foreign to you (including English, of course), please do not worry
about making mistakes. Once in a while I dabble in Afrikaans, Dutch,
Frisian, Scots and other languages, knowing full well that my proficiency is
wanting. One of the reasons I do this is to signal an invitation for you to
pluck up the courage to use the languages you are learning. Those of you who
use language varieties that are less commonly encountered and are of
interest to folks on this list may want to consider writing a translation
into one of the more common languages. Learners and researchers will thank
you. If you wonder what languages we are being used, please look for clues
in the subject line ([ ]).

TOPICS
You are quite welcome to mention interests that are not directly
Lowlands-related. Since hardly anything in this world of ours is completely
irrelevant and unrelated to other things, we often strike out beyond our
garden fence. However, we always want to keep an eye on our main area and
want to explore in what ways those "external" matters apply to or impact our
Lowlands area and what we can learn from them. Please also bear in mind that
you need not limit yourselves to language matters. Anything about culture,
history, geography, belief systems and especially interethnic, interregional
and international relations is welcome, as long as the Lowlands remain our
main focus. (We have members with specific interests, such as architecture,
music, genealogy or poetry, and their contributions are just as well
received as any.) If you have any questions, please let us know. Don't wait
and get all frustrated! As far as I know, there are no mind readers among
us. If you fear that your questions or comments would be too basic, and that
the "experts" on the List would laugh at you, please rest assured that any
relevant question is perfectly permitted, while derisive behavior is not,
would not slip by me (unless I'm on automatic pilot, in which case I would
shoulder the blame). We have been an exceptionally well-behaved group with a
familial and friendly atmosphere for over nine years now. It is very
important to us that everyone feels welcome and valued, irrespective of
knowledge, education, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual
orientation and any other background facets.  We are all here to learn,
learn together and from each other.

Lowlands-L is now well into its tenth year. Let's keep it going strong!
Thanks for your support!

Regards,
Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

***

Places of Residence of New Lowlanders since June 1, 2004:

   Australia:
        New South Wales:
             Sydney [1]
   Belgium:
        Western Flanders (West-Vlaanderen):
             Wevelgen [1]
   Canada:
        British Columbia:
             Abbotsford [1]
   Denmark:
        Copenhagen (København):
             Copenhagen (København) [1]
   Germany:
        Lower Saxony (Neddersassen/Niedersachsen):
             Hanover (Hannover) [1]
   Malaysia:
        Butterworth:
             Butterworth [1]

Netherlands:
        Drenthe:
             Emmen [1]
        Overijssel (Oaveriessel):
             Deaventer/Deventer [1]
        Tweante/Twente:
             Rysem/Risum [1]
   Pakistan:
        Sindh:
             Saddar Town, Karachi [1]
   Philippines:
        Camarines Sur:
             Ocampo [1]
   Poland:
        Lublin:
             Lublin [1]
   Romania:
        Dâmboviţa:
             Târgovişte [1]
   United States of America:
        California:
             San Mateo [1]
        Florida:
             Tampa [1]
        Illinois:
             Chicago [1]

==============================END===================================
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 16 19:18:55 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 12:18:55 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.16 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.16.JUN.2004.121855.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (01) [E]

Dear Ron, Gabriele, & Sandy.

    First of all, thanks Sandy for 'dysphemism'. Actually, I must confess I
was being lazy. I should have come up with that one myself. I have maybe
just enough Greek.

    These are no longer euphemisms, those that ever were: The Afrikaans
synonyms for 'Mad'; mal, dwaas, gek, sot, dol, kranksinnig, dof, dom,
verspot, onnosel, laf.

    I appreciate learning that 'mal ' comes from the French. I suppose it
came to us via the Low Saxon. I wish I had the means to trace up the others
as well.

    Verdrayd we would follow, thinking it was Yiddish. Dul too, though we
would say dol. Also narsch, though the Afrikaans is naars. Unwys would be
seriously misunderstood; there being generally a big difference between the
unwisdom of a sane man & the stupidity (if any) of a madman.

> Talking about words for "deaf"[1] and "dumb"[2] as replacements for
"insane"
> or "unintelligent," this would be another set of examples of the semantic
> shifts you are talking about, Mark, where it is (nearly) impossible to use
> the words with their original meaning.

    Conceded, Ron (sadly).

    Thanks for all that,
Yrs sincerely,
Mark.

----------

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

Haai, Mark!

> Dul too, though we would say dol.

You can say that in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) also (spelled <doll>
according to German-based rules).

One way of classifying the dialects of that language is by vowel height.
Some dialects have high short vowels (e.g., dul, vun, vinster, dinken, mist,
etc.) where others have mid-level short vowels (e.g., dol, von, venster,
denken, mest, etc.), though this does not work consistently.

The German cognate of _dul_ ~ _dol_ is, predictably, _toll_ 'crazed',
'crazy'.  It can also be used to mean 'great', 'fantastic', etc. (which LS
_dul_ ~ _dol_ can not).  In Northern German dialects (which have been
variously influenced by LS), _doll_ has been borrowed in the specialized
sense of 'very (much)', 'greatly', etc.  For example, _Sie hat sich (ganz)
doll gefreut_ 'She was terribly glad'.  So there is a difference between
native _toll_ and loaned _doll_ (though so far I have never come across the
combination _doll toll_ 'terribly crazy').

>     I appreciate learning that 'mal ' comes from the French. I suppose it
> came to us via the Low Saxon.

Unless it comes from Zealandic.

> gek

This is a noun in LS (spelled <Geck> in Germany), meaning 'fool' and
pronounced with a "hard G" ([gEk]) in most dialects, except the farwestern
dialects in which it is fricative ([GEk] ~ [xEk]).

>    Verdrayd we would follow, thinking it was Yiddish.

I can understand that, considering that the LS and Yiddish forms of 'turn'
and 'twist' coincide: LS _drayen_ and _verdrayen_ vs. Yiddish _drayn_ and
_fardrayn_ respectively (vs German _drehen_ and _verdrehen_ respectively).

Groete,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 16 21:45:30 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 14:45:30 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.16 (03) [E/LS/German]
Message-ID: <WED.16.JUN.2004.144530.0700.>

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From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.16 (02) [E]

>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Semantics
>
>
>
>
>The German cognate of _dul_ ~ _dol_ is, predictably, _toll_ 'crazed',
>'crazy'.  It can also be used to mean 'great', 'fantastic', etc. (which LS
>_dul_ ~ _dol_ can not).  In Northern German dialects (which have been
>variously influenced by LS), _doll_ has been borrowed in the specialized
>sense of 'very (much)', 'greatly', etc.  For example, _Sie hat sich (ganz)
>doll gefreut_ 'She was terribly glad'.  So there is a difference between
>native _toll_ and loaned _doll_ (though so far I have never come across the
>combination _doll toll_ 'terribly crazy').

Moin Ron,

in Bremen seggt se ok in Missingsch: "Dascha doll, is dascha man" orrer
"Dascha´n dolles Ding, is dascha man".

Kumpelmenten
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

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

Moin, Utz!

> in Bremen seggt se ok in Missingsch: "Dascha doll, is dascha man" orrer
> "Dascha´n dolles Ding, is dascha man".

Dange, dassu mich daran erinnast, Utz.  Genaauso sacht man dasscha auch in
Hambuggä Missingsch!  Dscha, weischa: iägnkwas muss man immä vägessn.

Wees' bedankt, dat Du my daar up anstöten hest, Utz.  Lyk so segt 'n dat in
't Hamborger Missingsch!  Tjer, weetst ja, wo dat so gayt: eyn saak mutt 'n
altyd vergeten.

Folks, Utz reminded me that in Bremen Missingsch (German dialect with
Lowlands Saxon [Low German] substrate) you can use _doll_ to mean 'great',
'fantastic', etc., also.  I thanked him and told him that this applies in
Hamburg Missingsch as well.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 17 17:37:56 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 10:37:56 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2004.06.17 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.17.JUN.2004.103756.0700.>

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

Dear Lowlanders,

For all of us who are learning Dutch, here are two little online
dictionaries of children's Dutch:

http://www.pinkelotje.nl/woordenboek.html
http://www.ouders-online.nl/xwb_kin1.htm

Enjoy!

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun 19 23:14:17 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 16:14:17 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Holidays" 2004.06.19 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.19.JUN.2004.161417.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Holidays

Dear Lowlanders,

Happy Father's Day tomorrow (June 20) to our subscribers in or from Canada,
Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States!  I
hope I haven't forgotten any countries, and sorry I was a week ahead in my
mind last time.

On Monday (June 21), happy Midsummer (Summer Solstice) to everyone in the
Northern Hemisphere, and happy Midwinter (Winter Solstice) in the Southern
Hemisphere!  This means Alban Heruin and Litha for those in the North, Alban
Arthuan and Yule in the South, as well as the beginning of Bjelyje noči
(Белые ночи "White Nights") for our Russian subscribers.

Furthermore, it will be the national day of our friends in Kalaallit Nunaat
(Greenland) who will also hopefully enjoy the longest night of the year.
Inuugujoq, kutta!

   Nangmineq erinllik
   nunarput, utorqarssuángoravit
   ni ar qutuligsimavoq qînik!
   qîtornatit kivssumiáinarpatit,
   tunivdlugitsineriavit pînik!

   Our land
   Which has now grown so old -
   Your head is crowned with white -
   Have held us, your children, to your breasts,
   Providing the treasures of your coasts.

          (National anthem, 1st verse)

Regards,

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun 20 18:43:19 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004 11:43:19 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Holidays" 2004.06.20 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.20.JUN.2004.114319.0700.>

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From: Gaidheal <gaidheal at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Holidays" 2004.06.19 (01) [E]

Feasgar math, a Lowlanders:

Ron said:
Happy Father's Day tomorrow (June 20) to our subscribers in or from Canada,
Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States!  I
hope I haven't forgotten any countries, and sorry I was a week ahead in my
mind last time.

Something I find semantically interesting: Is it Father's Day, or is it
Fathers' Day? I think Fathers', because it's celebrating all fathers, not
just one. Any other ideas, comments?

Beannachdan,

Uilleam Òg mhic Sheumais

------------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Holidays" 2004.06.19 (01) [E]

Ron wrote:
> ...and sorry I was a week ahead in my mind last time.

and then:
> Furthermore, it will be the national day of our friends in Kalaallit
Nunaat
> (Greenland) who will also hopefully enjoy the longest night of the year.

Don't worry, Ron, a week ahead is quite forgivable. But what are we to do
with someone who is a whole SIX MONTHS ahead??? :-)

Just wondering,
Gabriele Kahn

-----------

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

Uilleam:

> Something I find semantically interesting: Is it Father's Day, or is it
Fathers' Day?
> I think Fathers', because it's celebrating all fathers, not just one. Any
other ideas,
> comments?

I was following predominant spelling, though I often think what you said,
also in the case of Mother's Day = Mothers' Day.

> Don't worry, Ron, a week ahead is quite forgivable. But what are we to do
> with someone who is a whole SIX MONTHS ahead??? :-)

Hah!  Of course it was supposed to be "longest day"!  I was just checking if
anyone paid attention (or was alive).  ;-)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun 20 18:54:49 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004 11:54:49 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.20 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.20.JUN.2004.115449.0700.>

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From: Dan Prohaska <Daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" [E]

Reinhard,

Low Saxon (LS) seems to be following the High German (HG) trend to replace
the etyma that gives LS <süyk> and HG <siech> with krank. HG replaced it in
the later mediaeval period.

Though literary or dialectal it cannot be said that the adjective cognate
does not survive, albeit with a slightly different meaning (usually
"suffering heavily" or even "terminally ill").

Derivations from the verb <siechen> and the verb itself are very much alive
in HG.

Reinhard/Ron wrote:

<I take it as a given that both words already existed in Lowlands Saxon (Low
<German), but that on the German side of the border people may now avail
<themselves more and more of the _krank_ choice because of German influence.

<(Modern German has only _krank_, besides words like _unwohl_ "unwell," but
<no cognate of the adjective _süyk_ ~ _syk_.)  I believe that _süyk_ ~ _syk_
<used to be predominant (as in Dutch and Netherlands LS) but is now
<gradually losing ground to _krank_ in Germany under German influence, at
<least in certain dialects.  A couple of speakers in the greater Hamburg
<area have told me that they preferred _krank_ because _süyk_ ~ _syk_
<reminded them too much of German _Seuche_ 'epidemic', 'scourge'.  One
<thought of _süykenhuus_ for 'hospital' as "silly" because it sounded to her
<like a place in which people a quaranteened.  I guess this would be an
<example of a special type of language interference, one in which native
<speaker competence is being eroded due to foreign cognate associations.  (I
<wonder if this has been the subject of academic investigation.)

<Kumpelmenten,
<Reinhard/Ron

----------

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

Good one, Dan!

Few people seem to make this connection with _siechen_ ['zi:C at n], at least
in the LS dialects that have a rounded vowel (_süyk_ [zy:k]), but they do
tend to make a connection with _Seuche_ ['zOIC@], assumedly because of a
more obvious LS /üü/ = German /oi/ relationship (e.g. tüyg [t_hy:C] = Zeug
[ts_hOIk] 'stuff', lüyd' [ly:.d] = Leute ['lOIt_h@] 'people', 'folk', düyr
[dy:3] = teuer ['t_hOI@`] 'dear', 'expensive').

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 17:10:39 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 10:10:39 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.101039.0700.>

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


Dear Lowlanders,

Should any of you be alive/awake, I would like to revisit the topic of
plural morphology and invite you to give me (us) some input from the point
of view of various Lowlands language varieties.  In particular, I am
currently interested in apparently irregular plural marking of nouns.

As for double plural marking, so far I can come up with a few examples from
Dutch, Afrikaans and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but I am sure that there
are other varieties with this type of phenomenon as well.

Dutch:
schoen [sxuːn] 'shoe'
schoenen [sxuːnə(n)] 'shoes'

It appears that the old plural form (with /+ən/ was turned into a singular
form, and, etymologically speaking, the new plural form contains another
plural-marking suffix (/+ə(n)).

Similarly, Afrikaans:
skoen [skuːn] 'shoe'
skoene [skuːnə] 'shoes'

Theoretically (*), this ought to have been as follows:
Dutch:
   *schoe [sxuː] 'shoe'
   *schoeën [sxuːə(n)] or schoen [sxuːn] 'shoes'
Afrikaans:
   *skoe [skuː] 'shoe'
   *skoeë [skuːə] 'shoes' (or perhaps *skoes [skuːs])

Cf. "regular"
Englisch: shoe -> shoes
Scots: shae -> shuin (originally regular with /+n/ plural)
German: Schuh -> Schuhe
Yiddish: שו šu [ʃu] ~ [ʃi] -> שוך šux [ʃux] ~ [ʃix]

Lowlands Saxon (Low German) has the same pattern as that of German, but the
main vowel underwent umlauting, and in most dialects the final vowel has
been dropped:
schou (<Schoh>) [sɣɔˑ� ] ~ [sxɔˑ� ] ~ [ʃɔˑ� ] ~ [ʃaˑ� ] 'shoe'
schöy (<Schöh>) [sɣœːɪ] ~ [sxœːɪ] ~ [ʃœːɪ] ~ [ʃɔːɪ] 'shoes'
derived from schöye ['sɣœˑɪe] ~ ['sxœˑɪe] ~ ['ʃœˑɪe] ~ ['ʃɔˑɪe] 'shoes'

Another example:
Dutch:
   kind [kɪnt] 'child'
   kinderen ['kɪndərə(n)] 'children'
Afrikaans:
   kind [kə̃nt] 'child'
   kinders ['kə̃n(d)ərs] 'children'

In this case, the singular form is etymologically predictable, while the
plural form receives two plural suffixes (Dutch /+ər+ən/, Afrikaans
/+ər+s/).|

The Afrikaans case is like that in Lowlands Saxon, but double-marking is
optional or varies from dialect to dialects:
kind (<Kind>) [kʰɪˑnt] 'child'
kinder (<Kinner>) ['kʰɪˑnɝ] ~ kinders (<Kinners>) ['kʰɪˑnɝs] 'children'

Some speakers use _kinders_ only as a vocative: 'children!', 'kids!'

The opposite of this, I suppose, is apparent "non-marking" of plural forms,
namely zero marking (/+0/).  In English, this tends to occur where plurality
denotes (or denoted) uncountable or uncounted mass.  (Examples of mass nouns
would be "sand," "water," "people," and "cattle.") E.g.,

English:
fish | fish (not *"fishes," at least not in this sense)
herring | herring (not *"herrings," at least not in this sense)
sheep | sheep (never *"sheeps")

Lowlands Saxon has the same:
visch (<Fisch>) [fɪʃ] 'fish' (sg. & pl.)
heyrn (<Heern> ~ <Hiern>) [hɛˑɪɝn] ~ [hiːɝn] 'herring' (sg. & pl.)
schaap (<Schaap> ~ <Schoop>) [sɣɒːp] ~ [sxɒːp] ~ [ʃɒːp] 'sheep' (sg. & pl.)

In Lowlands Saxon, the plural for "sheep" can be regular (_schapen_
(<Schapen> ~ <Schopen>) ['sɣɒːpm̩] ~ ['sxɒːpm̩] ~ ['ʃɒːpm]), in some
dialects either consistently or as an alternative to mass marking.  This
does not apply to "fish," and I am not sure about "herring."

Lately, I have been noticing a trend among Lowlands Saxon writers toward
orthographic non-marking of plurals where the plural marker /+n/ directly
follows a nasal consonant (to which it assimilates).  Such instances are
particularly numerous in dialects in which final /-nd/ is pronounced not
[-nt] but just [-n] and in German-based spelling (< >) is written <-n>;
e.g.,

leen (<Lehn>) [leːn] ~ [lɛːn] 'back (of a chair or sofa)'
lenen (<Lehnen> ~ <Lehn>) [leːnː] ~ [leːn] ~ [lɛːnː] ~ [lɛːn] 'backs (of
chairs or sofas)'

hand (<Hand> ~ <Hann>) [haˑnt] ~ [haˑn] 'land', 'country'
handen (Hannen ~ <Hann>) [haˑnː] ~ [haˑn] 'lands', 'countries'

plum (<Plumm>) [pl� ˑm] 'plum'
plummen (<Plummen> ~ <Plumm>) [pl� ˑmː] ~ [pl� ˑm] 'plums'

lung (<Lung>) [l� ˑŋ] 'lung'
lungen (<Lungen> ~ <Lung>) [l� ˑŋː] ~ [l� ˑŋ] 'lungs'
     (~ lungs (<Lungs>) [l� ˑŋs] 'lungs')

Incidentally, this also occurs with verbs ending with stem-final nasals when
the infinitive marker /+n/ _-en_ ought to be written; e.g.,

ik leen (<ik lehn>) [ʔɪk leːn] ~ [ʔɪk lɛːn] 'I lean'
lenen (<lehnen> ~ <lehn>) [leːnː] ~ [leːn] ~ [lɛːnː] ~ [lɛːn] 'to lean'

ik vind (<ik find> ~ <ik finn>) [ʔɪk fɪˑnt] ~ [ʔɪk fɪˑn] 'I find'
vinden (<finnen> ~ <finn>) [fɪˑnː] ~ [fɪˑn] 'to find'

ik kaam (<ik kaam> ~ <ik koom>) [ʔɪk kʰɒːm] 'I come'
kamen (<kamen> ~ <komen> ~ <kaam> ~ <koom>) [kʰɒːmː] ~ [kʰɒːm] 'to come'

ik sing (<ik sing>) [ʔɪk zɪˑŋ] 'I sing'
singen (<singen> ~ <sing>) [zɪˑŋː] ~ [zɪˑŋ] 'to sing'

Anyway, hopefully this will resurrect or wake up some of you and will get
you thinking.  Any thoughts and relevant information would be appreciated.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 19:13:43 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 12:13:43 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.121343.0700.>

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From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]

Just a bit of random info that might prove helpful

Kenneth

> Dutch:
> schoen [sxuːn] 'shoe'
> schoenen [sxuːnə(n)] 'shoes'
>
> It appears that the old plural form (with /+ən/ was turned into a singular
> form, and, etymologically speaking, the new plural form contains another
> plural-marking suffix (/+ə(n)).

This is also what all dutch etymology dictionaries tell

> Similarly, Afrikaans:
> skoen [skuːn] 'shoe'
> skoene [skuːnə] 'shoes'
>
> Theoretically (*), this ought to have been as follows:
> Dutch:
>    *schoe [sxuː] 'shoe'
>    *schoeën [sxuːə(n)] or schoen [sxuːn] 'shoes'
> Afrikaans:
>    *skoe [skuː] 'shoe'
>    *skoeë [skuːə] 'shoes' (or perhaps *skoes [skuːs])

skoen is a loan from Hollandic Dutch. You cannot compare the plural
ending in Afrikaans to Dutch (just like you cannot compare the adjective
system with Dutch either) as Afrikaans probably has developed as a Cape
dialect mixed with two Dutch based Pidgins spoken by the Hottentot. The
-s after -er etc is kept, but -e is used for plural for almost
everything else. Non-mother tongue speakers will guess that -e was the
plural ending of skoen.

> Lowlands Saxon (Low German) has the same pattern as that of German, but
the
> main vowel underwent umlauting, and in most dialects the final vowel has
> been dropped:
> schou (<Schoh>) [sɣɔˑ ] ~ [sxɔˑ ] ~ [ʃɔˑ ] ~ [ʃaˑ ] 'shoe'
> schöy (<Schöh>) [sɣœːɪ] ~ [sxœːɪ] ~ [ʃœːɪ] ~ [ʃɔːɪ] 'shoes'
> derived from schöye ['sɣœˑɪe] ~ ['sxœˑɪe] ~ ['ʃœˑɪe] ~ ['ʃɔˑɪe] 'shoes'

In Danish sko is both used in singularis and pluralis

> Another example:
> Dutch:
>    kind [kɪnt] 'child'
>    kinderen ['kɪndərə(n)] 'children'

Dutch has double plural for all words originally having plural with -er.
Maybe these are all loanwords from Low Saxon [?] or -er became a foreign
plural form at some point

> Afrikaans:
>    kind [kə̃nt] 'child'
>    kinders ['kə̃n(d)ərs] 'children'

Kinders is also a known Hollantic dialect form, as well as a Low Saxon
dialect form

> In this case, the singular form is etymologically predictable, while the
> plural form receives two plural suffixes (Dutch /+ər+ən/, Afrikaans
> /+ər+s/).|

-s probably from South Hollandic dialect.

> The Afrikaans case is like that in Lowlands Saxon, but double-marking is
> optional or varies from dialect to dialects:
> kind (<Kind>) [kʰɪˑnt] 'child'
> kinder (<Kinner>) ['kʰɪˑnɝ] ~ kinders (<Kinners>) ['kʰɪˑnɝs] 'children'

Was kinder used before the standardization of the language? And what is
used in Orange River Afrikaans?

> Some speakers use _kinders_ only as a vocative: 'children!', 'kids!'
>
> The opposite of this, I suppose, is apparent "non-marking" of plural
forms,
> namely zero marking (/+0/).  In English, this tends to occur where
plurality
> denotes (or denoted) uncountable or uncounted mass.  (Examples of mass
nouns
> would be "sand," "water," "people," and "cattle.") E.g.,

Danish: Sand (uncountable), slim (uncountable...It is also said today
that Latin virus (originally slime) is actually both singularis and
pluralis; virii and vira are invented forms), vand, får, sko, lort,
folk, fisk, sild etc

> English:
> fish | fish (not *"fishes," at least not in this sense)
> herring | herring (not *"herrings," at least not in this sense)
> sheep | sheep (never *"sheeps")

danish
fisk fisk
sild sild
får får

Kenneth

----------

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

Thank for the response (above), Kenneth.

> You cannot compare the plural
> ending in Afrikaans to Dutch (just like you cannot compare the adjective
> system with Dutch either)

I don't think I was doing that.  Or does it look as though I did?  I was
merely noting that both languages have what etymologically are double plural
markers, just as I pointed out that Lowlands Saxon does too.  None of this
should be seen as amounting to stating or implying that one was derived from
or influenced by the other.

> Dutch has double plural for all words originally having plural with -er.

Apparently, as in ...
Dutch:
   ei 'egg' -> eieren 'eggs'
   hoen 'chicken' -> hoenderen ~ hoenders (?) 'chickens' [1]
Afrikaans:
   ei 'egg' -> eiers 'eggs'
   hoender [2] 'chicken' -> hoenders 'chickens'

[1] hoenderen seems to have predominated in Middle Dutch (e.g., _Om te
stouen hoenderen metten vercken vleesce_ 'to stew chickens with pork', 1510,
http://users.pandora.be/willy.vancammeren/NBC/, _ses en veertich gebraeden
Hoenderen_ 'forty-six roasted chickens'
http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_vee001veel01/Veelder_022.htm, _het kaeckelen van
de Hoenderen_ 'the chickens' cackling', 1614
http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/joris/sinnepoppen/html/em2.45.html)
[2] old plural form -> modern singular?

> Maybe these are all loanwords from Low Saxon [?] or -er became a foreign
> plural form at some point

I hazard the guess that the latter is the case.

However, even then it is somewhat remarkable that the relic suffix survived.
Would it not be similar to English adding plural _-s_ to "children" and
"brethren" (thus, child -> *childrens, brother -> *brethrens)?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 20:16:39 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:16:39 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Deaf cultures" 2004.06.22 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.131639.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Deaf Culture" [E]

Since it's quiet I thought I'd say a bit more about sign language and deaf
culture, which isn't to say that I necessarily disturb the silence when I
speak :)

This time I'm writing about how poetry is performed (or, these days, even
written) in sign languages.

As with oral poetry, there's nothing terribly clever about signed prosody,
it's how you put things together that make the poem.

While there are effects like rhythm in signed poetry, it seems to me that
fluidity is often considered more important. There are a few ways in which a
poet can make their signing more fluid and continuous.

One is by using signs such that the second starts with the hands in the same
position as the first ended. For example, the sign for "darkness falls" is
two flat hands raised in front of the face being brought in and down to
horizontal, while the sign for "bat" is two flat hands used as wings flying
diagonally upwards. So in her poem "Evening", we see Dot Miles using the
line, "...darkness falls, a bat..." with no repositioning between the signs.

Another way of increasing fluidity is to keep all the signing moving in one
direction. For example, "flower" is normally signed as a left-to-right
movement under the nose. If a poet wants start a line on her right side and
end it on the left, and the sign "flower" occurs in the middle, you might
find she signs "flower" in the wrong direction, just to keep all the
movement connected.

It's not hard to see how rhyme can be done in sign - just as some words have
a minimal phnoneme difference, so some signs have minimal feature
differences (there's a certain difference of level between signed and oral
languages in my opinion - in signed languages the "feature" level is more
obvious than in oral languages). Thus the signs for "nervousness" and
"heartbeat" are exactly the same, other than being made on slightly
different parts of the body.

While spoken languages are mostly confined to one channel (the mouth, unless
you also include gestural information), signed languages use three
channels - two hands and the face. This doesn't mean you can speak about
three different things at the same time, because the "left" or non-dominant
hand is usually much less active than the dominant hand, and the face is
also used mostly for supplementary information.

However, sign language poets tend to make better use of the three channels,
sometimes developing special classifiers (cf Navajo?) such as for flying
birds, swimming octopuses and suchlike, so that they can sign about one
character in their narrative with one hand, another with another, and a
third with the face. An example is a poem by Dot Miles where she describes
taking her dog for a walk and a bird joins them in the park. There are
places where all three are spoken about at the same time.

There's a sense in which translating poetry between any two languages could
be said to be a lost cause - not that it's not worth doing but that
languages, especially in poetic forms, don't map easily onto one another.
The way sign language poetry can make use of three channels (even in
writing) shows one very difficult translation problem, but I think even more
problematic is the fact that in oral language, vocabulary tends to be
discrete, where as in signed languages it tends to be continuous.

For example, in English an angry person might be described as "annoyed",
"angry" or "furious", but in BSL there's only one sign for all these, and
the intensity of the emotion is shown by the intensity of the movement,
handshape and facial expression, amongst other things. This sort of
continuity applies to all sorts of things - facial expression being used not
literally but in a more abstract way.

An example of this in poetry is the famous BSL poem "Loss" (at least, I
think it's a poem - it's certainly inspiring!) where at the start we see an
aeroplane accelerating down a runway. It's hard to think how you could put
the idea of the plane _gradually_ moving faster and faster (the trick to
doing this while standing still is to use the active hand as the runway and
the passive hand as the plane) into an oral language without either using
music or just completely losing the original effect. And then again, we see
the plane soaring _gradually_ though higher and higher layers of cirrus. And
then we see a multi-channel dogfight...!

I think we need translators who really like a challenge - though I'm not
saying it couldn't be done!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Deaf culture

Thanks for sharing the interesting information about signing, Sandy!

I am particularly fascinated by signed poetry and song.  The few times I
watched the Seattle Men's Chorus (http://www.seattlemenschorus.org/) perform
I was more focused on the choir's sign language interpreter than on the
choir itself.  He seemed to be doing just what you described: creating
fluidity of signs, and at the same time marked the songs' rhythms with his
arms and torso.  I thought that was a formidable feat.

> However, sign language poets tend to make better use of the three
channels,
> sometimes developing special classifiers (cf Navajo?)

This is something I've long thought offered itself to sign language, as to
non-phonal written languages like Chinese.  In Chinese, there is a certain
set of classifying glyphs (214 in most systems), known as "radicals," that
can be used as characters in their own right but in conjunction with other
glyphs (denoting sound or semantic hints) can make up new characters.  For
example, the character for 'fish' (魚) may serve as a classifier for all
names of fish and other aquatic animals (e.g., 魷 'squid', 鮑 'abalone', 饅
'eel', 鱈 'cod') and also things associated with these (e.g., 鰭 'fin') or are
considered similar (e.g., 鱷 'crocodile').  All the above have phonological
information added to the radical, though the right-hand part of the
character for 'abalone' may be both phonological and semantic, denoting
'envelop' or 'encapsule', as does 鰈 for 'flounder': an ancient phone as well
as the meaning 'leaf' (= 'flat').  Using this method, you can create some
sort of visual semantic theme that strikes the reader right away and sets
the tone, so to speak.  I can imagine that this would lend itself
excellently to signing.

The linguistic term "classifier" tends to be used more with regard to
numeral classifiers that are used with numbers and are determined by groups
and types of nouns, similar to "14 head of cattle," "three sheets of paper,"
"a pride of lions," "a piece of fruit," etc., except that their consistent
use is mandatory in some languages, such as those of Eastern Asia and many
of the Americas.

The closest I can think of that is similar to written Chinese radicals and
the type of classifier/radical I thought of in the case of sign languages is
the prefix system in Bantu languages; e.g., Swahili m-/wa- for humans (e.g.,
mtu 'man', watu 'men' <- -tu), m-/mi- for plants (e.g., mgomba 'banana
plant', migomba 'banana plants' <- -gomba), n- for fruit, animals and
foreign loans (e.g., ndege 'bird' <- dege), and ki- for objects (e.g., kisu
'knife' <- -su).

In Germanic languages, as in all Indo-European languages, the closest
related thing might be noun compounds in which the modified second part is
the "primitive," "radical" or "classifier" component; e.g., lime-tree,
birchtree, oaktree, pinetree, mapletree, palmtree; hedgehog, wart-hog;
codfish, jelly-fish, shellfish, cuttle-fish.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 20:20:46 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:20:46 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (04) [E]
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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]

Dear Reinhard,
Subject: Morphology

    Just a quick one while I think about it.
In Afrikaans we still say ( where an Englishman says 'sold it for a song')
'Vir 'n appel en 'n ei' - 'For an apple & an egg', the Afrikaans singular &
plural is 'eier' (singular), & 'eiers' (plural).
I believed it to be hypercorrection.

    Was it once 'skoe - skoen'? like Middle English 'shoe - shoen'?
The Afrikaans is skoen - skoene
    Ditto 'kind - kinder'?
Afrikaans 'kind - kinders'

> Dutch:
>    kind [kɪnt] 'child'
>    kinderen ['kɪndərə(n)] 'children'
> Afrikaans:
>    kind [kə̃nt] 'child'
>    kinders ['kə̃n(d)ərs] 'children'

Afrikaans wanders furthest, in my opinion, from analytic to idiosyncratic in
the matter of plurals specifically, though not so bad as in English
muis - muise & huis - huise (mouse & house)
leeu - leeus & leuen - leuens (lion & lie)
Here is vowel mutation, with '-s' & with '-e' suffix
karba - karba:s & vat - va:te (both mean barrel, like 'carboy' & 'vat')
((the colon after the vowel isn't how we spell it, that's the phonetic way.
You just have to know)).
ou - ouens & nooi - nooiens (lads & lasses)
& alternatives
kat - kattens of katte & lam - lammers of lamme (cat & lamb)

Yrs sincerely,
Mark

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (02) [E]

Dear Kenneth  & Reinhard,
Subject: LL-L "Morphology"

My pennyworth:
    I don't see that the word 'loan' applies here: The artifact & the name
is native to the culture & language. I aver that the Taal evolved initially
'tween decks in the VOC packets, & there was a mengelmoes enough of tongues
to 'borrow', if that happened, plural forms familiar to speakers of other
West Netherfrankish dialects than the native tongue of the Hollandse Seeman.
    What is the Zeeus form? skoe - skoen, skoen - skoene, skoen - skoenen,
or something else?

    To to offer  the Hottentot's guess of the appropriate form for a plural
is not useful. 'He' would have to have 'guessed' the appropriate form from a
selection of related Indo-Germanic dialects he heard using the term. There
is no disputing that the plurals, howsoever idosyncratic, are nonetheless
Germanic. Now - now, which were these dialects? His own Khoikhoi languages
would be no help, & the Hottentot 'dialects', I know about, among them
Grikwa & Koranna, developed from an already substantially established
language.

    Please elaborate on the thesis that the Cape Hottentots spoke ?two?
Dutch-based pidgins.

    Unfortunately, Afrikaans just hasn't been around long enough to develop
much more than 'styles'. There are a few variable forms such as I have noted
in a previous letter, all mutually intelligible, & available to any speaker,
dependant mostly on how formally he wishes to speak. Adam Small makes the
point that it was not until the political alienation between the races that
came into being in the Last Century, that any notable racially distinctive
forms of Afrikaans developed.

> > The Afrikaans case is like that in Lowlands Saxon, but double-marking is
> > optional or varies from dialect to dialects:

    Please explain further.

> Was kinder used before the standardization of the language? And what is
> used in Orange River Afrikaans?

    Are you referring to the Afrikaans spoken by the Poet & President of the
O.F.S. Reitz, or to that of the denizens of Kanoneiland, or to the Grikwa
dialect of Afrikaans, which was nonetheles to them only an alternative to
their own Khoikhoi language, according to G.F. Selous?

Yrs sincerely,
Mark

----------

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

Thanks a lot for your input, Mark.

> > > The Afrikaans case is like that in Lowlands Saxon, but double-marking
is
> > > optional or varies from dialect to dialects:
>
>     Please explain further.

It was poorly phrased on my part.  Sorry.

I meant to say that double-marking is optional or varies from dialect to
dialects in *Lowlands Saxon*, not in Afrikaans.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 21:39:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 14:39:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.22 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.143933.0700.>

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From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (04) [E]

The following might be wrong, but it is what I have understood from
reading various articles about Afrikaans...

> Dear Kenneth  & Reinhard,
> Subject: LL-L "Morphology"
>
> My pennyworth:
>     I don't see that the word 'loan' applies here: The artifact & the name
> is native to the culture & language. I aver that the Taal evolved
initially
> 'tween decks in the VOC packets, & there was a mengelmoes enough of
tongues
> to 'borrow', if that happened, plural forms familiar to speakers of other
> West Netherfrankish dialects than the native tongue of the Hollandse
Seeman.
>     What is the Zeeus form? skoe - skoen, skoen - skoene, skoen - skoenen,
> or something else?

The VOC spoke a southern Hollandic dialect (look at the Kroeke dialect
maps)

>     To to offer  the Hottentot's guess of the appropriate form for a
plural
> is not useful. 'He' would have to have 'guessed' the appropriate form from
a
> selection of related Indo-Germanic dialects he heard using the term. There
> is no disputing that the plurals, howsoever idosyncratic, are nonetheless
> Germanic. Now - now, which were these dialects? His own Khoikhoi languages
> would be no help, & the Hottentot 'dialects', I know about, among them
> Grikwa & Koranna, developed from an already substantially established
> language.

Well it is a lot more complicated and I am not competent to explain
this. Please read 'Hans den Besten 'From Khoekhoe Foreignertalk via
Hottentot Dutch to Afrikaans: the Creation of a Novel Grammar, from:
Martin Pütz, REné Dirven (eds.), Wheels within wheels. Papers of the
Duisburg Symposium on Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1989, p. 207-249

It explain pretty well what could have happened and attacks the opinion
of the Afrikaanse Skole.

Thomas L. Markey, 'Afrikaans: Creole of Non-Creole', Zeitschrift für
Dialektologie un Linguistik 49 (1982), p. 169-207 is also very
interesting, but highly technical.

What I was saying is that though the mengelmoes the Dutch system has
often disappeared, like what for instance is the case with the
attributive adjectives (if you can read Danish, I can send you my paper
- which unfortunately contains a few mistakes :))

>     Please elaborate on the thesis that the Cape Hottentots spoke ?two?
> Dutch-based pidgins.

There are signs of pidgins being developed before 1652 based on English
and Dutch...and later this led to a Dutch based pidgin/creole spoken by
the Khoi and another Dutch-based creole spoken by the slaves of which
many already spoke a creole language based on Malay-Portuguese (that is
where they think the vir construction comes from - direct object marker
- related to Malay-Portuguese per)

>     Unfortunately, Afrikaans just hasn't been around long enough to
develop
> much more than 'styles'. There are a few variable forms such as I have
noted
> in a previous letter, all mutually intelligible, & available to any
speaker,
> dependant mostly on how formally he wishes to speak. Adam Small makes the
> point that it was not until the political alienation between the races
that
> came into being in the Last Century, that any notable racially distinctive
> forms of Afrikaans developed.

Well Afrikaans (when not looking at the standardized language) is a
group of dialects, with West Cape Afrikaans being closest to Dutch and
Standard Afrikaans, and Orange River Afrikaans (mostly spoken by the
Oorlaam - Khoikhoi who learned "Dutch" and became christen to gane
social status) being furthest from Dutch - and a lot more creolized.

> > Was kinder used before the standardization of the language? And what is
> > used in Orange River Afrikaans?
>
>     Are you referring to the Afrikaans spoken by the Poet & President of
the
> O.F.S. Reitz, or to that of the denizens of Kanoneiland, or to the Grikwa
> dialect of Afrikaans, which was nonetheles to them only an alternative to
> their own Khoikhoi language, according to G.F. Selous?

Orange River Afrikaans (mostly spoken in Namibia) is the 'Dutch' spoken
by the Khoikhoi which later has been influence by the Dutch spoken by
the rest...all these various dialects and pidgins based on Dutch has
influenced eachother and are today considered one language called
Afrikaans consisting of various dialects.

Cheers,
Kenneth

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 21:51:12 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 14:51:12 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.145112.0700.>

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From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (02) [E]

> I don't think I was doing that.  Or does it look as though I did?  I was
> merely noting that both languages have what etymologically are double
plural
> markers, just as I pointed out that Lowlands Saxon does too.  None of this
> should be seen as amounting to stating or implying that one was derived
from
> or influenced by the other.

It looked like you thought the Afrikaans form developed independently
from the Dutch one. Anyway, I was just checking.

> Apparently, as in ...
> Dutch:
>    ei 'egg' -> eieren 'eggs'

(Danish: et æg -> flere æg)

This seems to have happened to all -er plurals in Dutch.

> > Maybe these are all loanwords from Low Saxon [?] or -er became a foreign
> > plural form at some point
>
> I hazard the guess that the latter is the case.
>
> However, even then it is somewhat remarkable that the relic suffix
survived.
> Would it not be similar to English adding plural _-s_ to "children" and
> "brethren" (thus, child -> *childrens, brother -> *brethrens)?

I think it would.

Kenneth

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]

Ron wrote:
> As for double plural marking, so far I can come up with a few examples
from
> Dutch, Afrikaans and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but I am sure that there
> are other varieties with this type of phenomenon as well.

Well, certainly, especially in American English:

"one visum" has become "one visa", and "several visas";
"one criterion" has become "one criteria", and "several criterias" (more
than 52,000 hits in Google!!)

There must be more of these, but I must admit that they hurt my sense of
grammar so much that I'd rather not think about them...

Gabriele Kahn

P.S. Ron, you'll probably find that posts from Europe will pick up again
once the European football championship is over...

----------

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

Gabriele:

> Well, certainly, especially in American English:
>
> "one visum" has become "one visa", and "several visas";
> "one criterion" has become "one criteria", and "several criterias"

Sure, and there are cases like interpreting Greek-derived "kudos" and
"gyros" as plural forms and deriving from them supposedly singular "kudo"
and "gyro" respectively.

However, this subject of more "exotic" specialized loan morphology (which at
least originally was outside the sphere of ordinary speakers, still is in
many spheres of society) is somewhat marginal to this topic.  What I meant
us to deal with is seemingly or actually irregular morphology of *native*
words.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

> P.S. Ron, you'll probably find that posts from Europe will pick up again
> once the European football championship is over...

Ah, thanks for reminding me!  I knew about it but didn't make the
connection.  Don't folks have a *real* life, like Lowlanding?  ;-)

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 14:29:21 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 07:29:21 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.23 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.072921.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.22 (05) [E]

Dear Kenneth,

 Subject: LL-L "Morphology"

> The VOC spoke a southern Hollandic dialect (look at the Kroeke dialect
> maps)

    Sorry, The VOC spoke several dialects. Even the Heeren XVII spoke their
local dialects on business. I have read that the Representative for the
Middelburg House complained of a headache from trying to follow his
collegues in council of the Amsterdam House. Jan Alleman in his Diary shows
that the overwhelming majority of the VOC's employees came from outside the
Hollands speaking area, so much so that it was good business to be an agent,
for said would-be recruits!

    But you are correct, in respect of 'official' language policy, which
could not, of course be enforced across the board. This was a lasting
problem according to the Cape Company Administration & ultimately
unmanageable. They tried to suppress Afrikaans.
Now the effect of this policy was that compliance or fluency became a matter
for promotion & advancement. Remember, the Cape was only a way-station on
the VOC Books. Fluent Hollands speakers got promoted out, to Maritius, even,
& ultimately to Batavia. Those left behind were with rare exceptions not
dialect compliant.

> Well it is a lot more complicated and I am not competent to explain
> this. Please read 'Hans den Besten 'From Khoekhoe Foreignertalk via
> Hottentot Dutch to Afrikaans: the Creation of a Novel Grammar, from:
> Martin Pütz, REné Dirven (eds.), Wheels within wheels. Papers of the
> Duisburg Symposium on Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1989, p. 207-249

    Well, That which you have passed on to me is not convincing. The little
Nama I have invites me to look for indications in Afrikaans of Khoikhoi
speech patterns, terminology, & pronunciation, even sounds. & with the
single exception, the 'Eina!' expression, I find none. The conclusion is
that native Hottentot speakers were not the medium of transmission from
Dutch to Afrikaans. Tell me, this Hans den Besten: Does he speak Nama?
Between you & me & the gatepost, Afrikaans Grammar is not really novel. The
analytic form has its roots in the usages of many West Netherfrankish
dialects, & Inglis, or Lowlands Scots, could make a better case for being
the medium of transmission from Dutch to Afrikaans than the Capoid tongues.
See D.F. Bleek, 'BUSHMAN LANGUAGES'. By the way, the VOC was chockful of
Scots. The Last VOC Governer of the Cape was even an ethnic Scot, by the
name of Gordon.

> It explain pretty well what could have happened and attacks the opinion
> of the Afrikaanse Skole.

I distrust theories based on what 'could have happened'.
What is the opinion of the Afrikaanse Skole?,

> Thomas L. Markey, 'Afrikaans: Creole of Non-Creole', Zeitschrift für
> Dialektologie un Linguistik 49 (1982), p. 169-207 is also very
> interesting, but highly technical.

I also distrust linguistic use of the term 'Creole' The difficulty is to
define it in a way that any two scholars working in the same field agree, &
find it useful.

> What I was saying is that though the mengelmoes the Dutch system has
> often disappeared, like what for instance is the case with the
> attributive adjectives (if you can read Danish, I can send you my paper
> - which unfortunately contains a few mistakes :))

Well, an Afrikaans speaker might [think] he can follow written Danish (I
do), I am well aware I couldn't do it justice in any scientific sense. If
it's any consolation, I would almost certainly miss the mistakes.
there is a simpler way, though.
Give us a brief list of the attributive adjective in Hollands, but Hollands,
& in parallel with the attributive form in Afrikaans. How did it look in
Zeeus? Ron might help here.

> >     Please elaborate on the thesis that the Cape Hottentots spoke ?two?
> > Dutch-based pidgins.
>
> There are signs of pidgins being developed before 1652 based on English
> and Dutch...and later this led to a Dutch based pidgin/creole spoken by
> the Khoi and another Dutch-based creole spoken by the slaves of which
> many already spoke a creole language based on Malay-Portuguese (that is
> where they think the vir construction comes from - direct object marker
> - related to Malay-Portuguese per)

    This is correct, but I would call the one Malay-Portuguese based & the
other English based (Harry the Hottentot, the interpreter for Van Riebeek's
colony, had shipped on an English vessel, & learned his English there). When
Jan Van Riebeek's party came ashore at the Cape, the Hottentots there
greeted them, brought them the post, & asked in English & in French for Rum.
VOC language policy differed from the English & the Portuguese. They were
hostile to 'pidgins' across the board, & promoted their employees who
studied the languages of their customers & colonies. They also established
schools for their servants & slaves to inculcate fluency & literacy in
Hollands. English traders were content to make themselves understood in a
simple way. They borrowed freely from the lingo of their 'customers' & their
previous trading contacts, & as a result, there are Colonial British pidgins
with a non-English substrate all over the world e.g. Creole, Beche le Mar, &
even Pidgin.
The Portuguese were equally casual, thus contributing magnificantly to the
richness of Afrikaans (as well as our cuisene). However, the usage you have
quoted is not Hottentot, but Cape Malay, an influental  linguistic heritage
still open to deep study.
Some things that may be called dialects later developed among the
Hottentots, based  on a Cape Dutch substrate, but they did not communicate
with their Dietsman neighbours or employers in that tongue, but Afrikaans.
So much so that they even resorted to it as 'private speech' in the company
of strangers.

> Well Afrikaans (when not looking at the standardized language) is a
> group of dialects, with West Cape Afrikaans being closest to Dutch and
> Standard Afrikaans, and Orange River Afrikaans (mostly spoken by the
> Oorlaam - Khoikhoi who learned "Dutch" and became christen to gane
> social status) being furthest from Dutch - and a lot more creolized.

    Ja, well I dislike the notion of any 'standardised language' don't you?
I differ - I differ, but first let us clear some ground. Dutch is not a
language, but a language group. Are we speaking of Algemeen Beskaafde
Nederlands - Hollands? Afrikaans grew from a body of 17th Century Dutch
dialects, of which the Hollands [of that day] was only one. Modern
Afrikaans, Modern Hollands & even the A.G. Nederlands have evolved from
there. Three & a half centuries have passed.
The scholars of Stellenbosch have long lost their hold, & Standard
Afrikaans, alas, is much closer to the Transvaal form than the Cape form
(klankbreek). It is the arrested development of klankbreek in Cape Afrikaans
alone, to my mind, that gives Cape Afrikaans any degree of proximity to
modern Dutch dialects.
Klankbreek is also, along with the RRRiebeek Wes BRRRei, or the Platkops
Dorp practise of pronouncing the 'J' the English way (Cape Coloureds do it
too), one of the three significant 'dialectic' features of local Afrikaans.
This, in my opinion, doesn't rate 'Dialect'.
I will only say - ask, in respect of Grikwa, to what extent is their
language a product of the agglommaration of Afrikaans & Khoikhoi; & to what
extent is it the product of ablation of Dutch & Khoikhoi dialects? These two
considerations give useful information. To call something 'creolized',
doesn't contribute to understanding a Tongue's relationships or the  process
of development. Nobody would differ that Grikwa is some distance from
Hollands, but a Grikwa in conversation with a stranger, or the Dominee, will
speak 'standard' Arikaans.

> > > Was kinder used before the standardization of the language? And what
is
> > > used in Orange River Afrikaans?

'Kinders', to both, according to my reading.

This is Fun! Thanks, Kenneth

Cheers,
Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 14:48:59 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 07:48:59 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.074859.0700.>

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From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Phrases

Dear all,

I've been doing some transcription of tapes & have
become aware of a phrase used by a number of people in
the Northumberland area of England. They 'for-to-get'
as in "you needs lots of money 'for-to-get' that car".
Its doesn't mean 'forgotten'. Is this used anywhere
else around the globe.

Gan canny,

Glenn Simpson
Northumbrian Language Society

----------

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

Hi, Glenn!

It's good to hear from you, as always.

Isn't the phrase "for to get" related to the older "for to"-type of phrases
denoting "in order to" or "with the purpose of"?

   Oh, I went down South
   FOR TO SEE my Sal
   ...
                    (Polly Wolly Doodle)

   ...
   She's lying at the quay
   FOR TO TAKE our Pat with a shovel on his back
   To the shores of Botany Bay
   ...
                    (Botany Bay)

I have a feeling this type of phrase is not unusual in Germanic language
varieties.  In German you use the construction _um ({object}) zu
{infinitive}_, thus _um den Wagen zu kaufen_ 'in order to (be able to) buy
that car'.  Likewise, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) you can us the
construction _üm ({object}) tou {infinitive}_, thus _üm den wagen tou
köypen_ for the same thing (though this sounds somewhat _geel_ "yellow,"
i.e., German, more colloquial being conditional _wen den wagen köypen wult_
"if you want to buy that car").

Might this type of phrase have been petrified in the set phrase "for to get"
in Northumbrian?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 14:52:50 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 07:52:50 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (03) [D/E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.075250.0700.>

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From: marco [evenhuiscommunicatie] <marco at evenhuiscommunicatie.nl>
Subject: language politics

Dear all,

Today I received a message by someone from the administration of the
province of Zeeland I'd like to pass on. It is in Dutch:

<quote>

Beste mensen,

Helaas hebben wij vanmorgen een brief van het ministerie van Binnenlandse
Zaken ontvangen, waarin ons advies (van 3 jaar geleden) het Zeeuws te
erkennen van de hand gewezen wordt. Het Zeeuws zal niet worden erkend, want
volgens het ministerie is er geen sprake van eenzelfde situatie als bij het
Limburgs en Nedersaksisch.
Volgens het ministerie dient de vraag beantwoord te worden in hoeverre het
Zeeuws moet worden gezien als dialect van het Nederlands dan wel als een
zelfstandige regionale taal.

De redenering is dan als volgt:

Het Nedersaksisch is een variant van het Nederduits, vanouds gesproken in
het noorden van Duitsland en het noordoosten van Nederland.
Aan weerszijden van de Neder-Duitse grens worden dezelfde dialecten
gesproken, zodat het moeilijk vast te stellen is waar in dat grensgebied de
dialecten van het Nederlands ophouden  en die van het Nederlands beginnen
Zeeuwse dialecten zijn echter van oudsher dialecten van het Nederlands
taalgebied.
Er is dus geen sprake van gelijke gevallen. Het Zeeuws wordt niet erkend.

Onze portefeuillehouder de heer Van Waveren zal op korte termijn in overleg
treden met de consulent streektalen en andere belanghebbenden om na te gaan
op welke wijze gereageerd richting ministerie en/of het zinvol is tegen het
besluit van de minister in beroep te gaan.

Het leek mij goed jullie van deze stand van zaken op de hoogte te stellen.

Met spijtige groet,
Conny Boersma

<unquote>

As anyone can see, the reasons for the Dutch government not to recognize
Zeeuws/Zeelandic as a regional language, have nothing to do with the
European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Therefore, a lot of
people here in Zeeland want the provincial administration of Zeeland to
appeal to this decission.
Reactions to this letter, e.g. to convince her and the Zeeland deputy of
culture Van Waveren to appeal to this decission of the Netherlands
government, can be send to Conny Boersma:

Provincie Zeeland
Afd. Welzijn
t.a.v. Conny Boersma
Postbus 153
4330 AD Middelburg
tel. +31(0)118 63 14 79
fax +31(0)118 62 78 39
email: cj.boersma at zeeland.nl

All help will be much appreciated!

Regards,

Marco

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 15:02:48 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:02:48 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.080248.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (06) [E]

Ron wrote:

> Sure, and there are cases like interpreting Greek-derived "kudos" and
> "gyros" as plural forms and deriving from them supposedly singular "kudo"
> and "gyro" respectively.
>
> However, this subject of more "exotic" specialized loan morphology (which
at
> least originally was outside the sphere of ordinary speakers, still is in
> many spheres of society) is somewhat marginal to this topic.  What I meant
> us to deal with is seemingly or actually irregular morphology of *native*
> words.

Fine, be that way - although it seems that most modern English words were
"exotic" at some point.

Still, I've got a "native" "kudo/gyro" example for you: the word "pease",
from which the supposedly singular form "pea" was derived a long time ago.
And then they eventually gave it a new plural form: "peas".

Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: Holger Weigelt <platt at holger-weigelt.de>
Subject: "Morphology"

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Morphology
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> Should any of you be alive/awake, I would like to revisit the topic of
> plural morphology and invite you to give me (us) some input from the point
> of view of various Lowlands language varieties.  In particular, I am
> currently interested in apparently irregular plural marking of nouns.
>
> As for double plural marking, so far I can come up with a few examples
from
> Dutch, Afrikaans and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but I am sure that there
> are other varieties with this type of phenomenon as well.
>
> Dutch:
> schoen [sxuːn] 'shoe'
> schoenen [sxuːnə(n)] 'shoes'

Hello Ron !

Because it's late just in brief:
In Eastern Friesland Low Saxon we have a lot of words with double plurals
like the following few examples:
hūs / hūsen / hûs  (house)
bōm / bōmen / bööem  (tree)
land / lannen / lân  (country)
Sometimes the use of either of them is ruled by context. That means they are
not freely interchangeable.
Greetings
Holger

----------

From: Andy Eagle <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: "Morphology"

Gabriele Kahn wrote:

>P.S. Ron, you'll probably find that posts from Europe will pick up
>again
>once the European football championship is over...

>From: R. F. Hahn wrote:

>Ah, thanks for reminding me!  I knew about it but didn't make the
>connection.  Don't folks have a *real* life, like Lowlanding?  ;-)

I Haven't watched any football games. So back to *real* life;-)

Aren't Children and kyne/kine examples of (double plurals) what
you're after?

child + er + en - children
Cow - kye + en - kyne

Andy Eagle

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Morphology


Greetings Lowlanders!

Ron said:

"In particular, I am currently interested in apparently irregular plural
marking of nouns."

I remember that when I was young all the older generation of people in
Lancashire (at least in the Preston area where I lived) used to use the
world _childer_ (with short /i/ ) as the plural of _child_ (which they
pronounced approximately as in modern Standard English, with /ai/ ). I
hardly ever heard _children_ from the older generation, unless it was from a
non-Lancastrian or someone educated outside the area.These days this plural
might still be heard occasionally, but it has more or less died out.

The plural _childer_ does also occur in MIddle English, though when I did a
search through a corpus of Chaucer's works I didn't come across it.
Surprisingly, it seems to occur quite a lot on the Internet, maybe as a sort
of preudo-Archaic form. The word also occurs in Scots (which I am sure Sandy
will confirm), and I am sure I have heard it in some of the American
dialects.

Ron also goes on to mention:

"Dutch:schoen [sxuːn] 'shoe'
schoenen [sxuːnə(n)] 'shoes'

This reminds me of the fact that the older people in Lancashire also
occasionally used the plural _shoon_ for what we now call _shoes_.
(Reminding me of the Scots _shuin_.)

Ron, you also mention the fact that Standard English _fish_ has no separate
plural form, but again in the Lancashire dialect _fishes_ was quite common,
as in: _Theres loads o little fishes in' river_ (the apostrophe representing
a glottal stop).

I have been trying to rack my brains to see if I could remember any more
such plurals, but I can't for the moment.

Incidentally, Ron, I had trouble reading your phonetics and Hebrew
characters today even though I set my computer for unicode; did you use some
other encoding?

John Duckworth
Preston, UK.

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Morphology


I just remembered another example of an archaic plural preserved in
Lancashire. The older generation used to use two plurals for _eye_, one was
the regular _eyes_, but another was the more unusual _een_.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK

----------

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

Thanks for the interesting input, everyone!

John (above):

> Incidentally, Ron, I had trouble reading your phonetics and Hebrew
> characters today even though I set my computer for unicode;
> did you use some other encoding?

Not that I know of, John.  I just looked at that posting again and could
read everything, and, yes, encoding mode is UTF-8.  Could it be that the IPA
symbols don't show with the font you load for UTF-8?  I could (should) use
SAMPA versions (http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/home.htm) as well, I
guess.  If you use Arial Unicode you should be able to read all symbols I
use.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 15:13:14 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:13:14 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.23 (05) [E/German]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.081314.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Performing arts

Folks,

There is now a Lowlands Saxon (Low German) version of Shakespeare's "A
Midsummer Night's Dream" (> _Mitsommernachtsdröömen_) to be performed on
stage and as a radio play.

Below are announcements in German, courtesy of Volker Holm, Plattnet.de
(www.plattnet.de).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***


SHAKESPEARES MITSOMMERNACHTSTRAUM AUF PLATT
als Hörspiel der NDR 1 Welle Nord
Termin: Sonntag, 27. Juni | 19.00 Uhr | Molfsee, Drathenhof

Shakespeare mal ganz anders gibt es am Sonntag, 27. Juni, im Drathenhof in
Molfsee zu erleben. „Mitsommernachtsdröömen" heißt die plattdeutsche Fassung
der weltbekannten Komödie, die die NDR 1 Welle Nord als Live-Hörspiel auf
die Bühne bringt. Gleichzeitig wird Shakespeares Mitsommernachtstraum auf
Platt auch als Hörspiel für die Radioprogramme des Norddeutschen Rundfunks
produziert. Hauptdarsteller des Abends ist Wilfried Dziallas, bekannt aus
der ARD-Vorabendserie „Großstadtrevier" und aus dem Ohnsorg-Theater.
Karten für den „Mitsommernachtsdröömen" gibt es für 10 Euro zzgl. VVK-Gebühr
in der Kieler Buchhandlung Erichsen und Niehrenheim und unter der Hotline
0431-98 30 50.
Die NDR 1 Welle Nord sendet die Aufzeichnung von „Mitsommernachtsdröömen"
aus dem Drathenhof am Freitag, 2. Juli, um 21.00 Uhr.
15. Juni 2004/TK (Pressestelle des NDR Landesfunkhaus Kiel) -
presse.kiel at ndr.de

***

Hörspiel-Tournee

SHAKESPEARE PLATT UND BEKIFFT:
MITTSOMMERNACHTSDRÖÖMEN
Niederdeutsches Live-Hörspiel von Holger Janssen

Das „Bühnen-Hörspiel“ ist eine Adaption von Shakespeares A Midsummernight´s
Dream. Nur der Umstand, dass Oberon hier Tetje Obermann und Lysander Lothar
heißen und alles im Wald von Albernhusen spielt, lassen den kundigen
Hörspielfreund hellhörig werden: Sollte hier wieder ein Beispiel für diese
hinreißend albernen niederdeutschen „Klamotten“ vorliegen, die schon seit
den 50er-Jahren regelmäßig auf die Hörer losgelassen werden? Genau so ist
es.

„Mittsommernachtsdröömen“ ist aber nicht nur ein Hörspiel, sondern auch eine
Bühnenshow mit Live-Musik, bei der die Schauspieler wie im Hörspielstudio
agieren – ein manchmal Zwerchfell erschütternder Anblick! Natürlich muss das
Publikum beim Herstellen der Geräusche tüchtig mithelfen, denn die
Schauspieler sind dieser wahrhaft titanischen Aufgabe allein gar nicht
gewachsen!

In Kiel wird das Spektakel  als Kooperation von Radio Bremen und dem NDR
uraufgeführt und tourt dann in Kooperation mit dem Ohnsorg-Theater durch
Niedersachsen, Hamburg und Bremen - möglicherweise die weltweit erste
Hörspieltournee!

Eine Aufzeichnung der Veranstaltung wird am unten bezeichneten Termin in
Ihrem Sendegebiet ausgestrahlt.

Darsteller:

Tetje Obermann (Oberon)   Wilfried Dziallas   „Girlfriends“,
„Großstadtrevier“
Hilde (Titania)   Ursula Hinrichs   Ohnsorg-Theater
Egon Wisch (Zettel)   Jens Scheiblich   Ohnsorg-Theater
Mine, seine Tochter (Hermia)   Birthe Kretschmer   Ohnsorg-Theater
Lene, Mines Freundin (Helena)   Svenja Pages   versch. Fernsehserien
Lothar (Lysander)   Peter Kaempfe   Gründungsmitglied Shakespeare Companie,
TAB – Theater aus Bremen
Detelf (Demetrius)   Frank Grupe   Oberspielleiter Ohnsorg Theater
Kalli (Puck)   Benjamin Utzerath   Schauspieler Thalia-Theater Hamburg
Staatssekretär, Pizzabote, Musiker   Jan Christoph   Musiker und Komponist
aus Bremen  u. a. Lyrik-Performances

Regieassistenz   Eva Garthe
Regie   Hans Helge Ott

Aufführungsorte:
Kiel-Molfsee, Drathenhof            So. 27. Juni 2004
Hamburg, Ohnsorg-Theater            Mo. 28. Juni 2004
Peine   Mi. 30. Juni 2004
Bremen, Radio Bremen Sendesaal            Do. 1. Juli 2004

Sendedaten:
Nordwestradio:   Sa. 24. Juli ´04, 19.05 Uhr
NDR1 Welle Nord (Kiel):   Fr. 2. Juli ´04, 21.05 Uhr
NDR 90,3 (Hamburg):   Sa. 3. Juli ´04, 20.05 Uhr
NDR - Radio MV:   Sa. 3. Juli ´04, 19.05 Uhr
NDR1 - Radio Niedersachsen:   Mo. 5. Juli ´04, 19.05 Uhr

NDR / Radio Bremen - hans-helge.ott at rb



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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 16:45:04 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 09:45:04 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.094504.0700.>

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From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

Lowlands-L wrote:
 >
> I've been doing some transcription of tapes & have
> become aware of a phrase used by a number of people in
> the Northumberland area of England. They 'for-to-get'
> as in "you needs lots of money 'for-to-get' that car".
> Its doesn't mean 'forgotten'. Is this used anywhere
> else around the globe.
>
It's used in Dutch by some people, and by analogy to Dutch in
Netherlands Saxon perhaps. In Dutch some people say "Je hebt veel geld
nodig voor een auto te krijgen".

regards,
Henry

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Syntax

Henry, the person you quoted above was Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
(not Lowlands-L).

Regards,
Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

----------

From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

> From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Phrases
>
> Dear all,
>
> I've been doing some transcription of tapes & have
> become aware of a phrase used by a number of people in
> the Northumberland area of England. They 'for-to-get'
> as in "you needs lots of money 'for-to-get' that car".
> Its doesn't mean 'forgotten'. Is this used anywhere
> else around the globe.
>
> Gan canny,
>
> Glenn Simpson
> Northumbrian Language Society
>
> ----------
>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Syntax
>
> Hi, Glenn!
>
> It's good to hear from you, as always.
>
> Isn't the phrase "for to get" related to the older "for to"-type of
phrases
> denoting "in order to" or "with the purpose of"?
>
>    Oh, I went down South
>    FOR TO SEE my Sal
>    ...
>                     (Polly Wolly Doodle)
>
>    ...
>    She's lying at the quay
>    FOR TO TAKE our Pat with a shovel on his back
>    To the shores of Botany Bay
>    ...
>                     (Botany Bay)
>
> I have a feeling this type of phrase is not unusual in Germanic language
> varieties.  In German you use the construction _um ({object}) zu
> {infinitive}_, thus _um den Wagen zu kaufen_ 'in order to (be able to) buy
> that car'.  Likewise, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) you can us the
> construction _üm ({object}) tou {infinitive}_, thus _üm den wagen tou
> köypen_ for the same thing (though this sounds somewhat _geel_ "yellow,"
> i.e., German, more colloquial being conditional _wen den wagen köypen
wult_
> "if you want to buy that car").

It is not uncommon to hear it in colloquial (some would say "plat" =
uncouth) speach:

Ik ga naar de winkel voor een brood te kopen.
(I go to the shop for a bread to buy, literally)
instead of standard Dutch
Ik ga naar de winkel om een brood te kopen.
Or the equally correct (but without the verb)
Ik ga naar de winkel voor (een) brood.
(Or slightly unusual, but correct IMHO;  my wife disagrees though)
Ik ga naar de winkel om brood.

The incorrect form seems some sort of contamination between the correct ones
> Might this type of phrase have been petrified in the set phrase "for to
get"
> in Northumbrian?
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron

Regards

Henno Brandsma

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 17:02:47 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 10:02:47 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.100247.0700.>

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From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Morphology
>
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> Should any of you be alive/awake, I would like to revisit the topic of
> plural morphology and invite you to give me (us) some input from the point
> of view of various Lowlands language varieties.  In particular, I am
> currently interested in apparently irregular plural marking of nouns.
>
> As for double plural marking, so far I can come up with a few examples
from
> Dutch, Afrikaans and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but I am sure that there
> are other varieties with this type of phenomenon as well.
>
> Dutch:
> schoen [sxuːn] 'shoe'
> schoenen [sxuːnə(n)] 'shoes'
>
> It appears that the old plural form (with /+ən/ was turned into a singular
> form, and, etymologically speaking, the new plural form contains another
> plural-marking suffix (/+ə(n)).
>
> Similarly, Afrikaans:
> skoen [skuːn] 'shoe'
> skoene [skuːnə] 'shoes'
>
> Theoretically (*), this ought to have been as follows:
> Dutch:
>    *schoe [sxuː] 'shoe'
>    *schoeën [sxuːə(n)] or schoen [sxuːn] 'shoes'
> Afrikaans:
>    *skoe [skuː] 'shoe'
>    *skoeë [skuːə] 'shoes' (or perhaps *skoes [skuːs])

In Westerlauwer Frisian this is
singular "skoech" [sku:x] (note the archaic [x]-sound, which is suggested by
German Schuh
(which also indeed (in Old German) had a guttural soud here; is there
another non-Frisian
Germanic variety that preserves the guttural here? Also, eg., W-Frisian has
"( hy) sjocht" for "(he)sees", also preserving an old guttural most
varieties seem to have lost..)
plural "skuon" [skwon] (< *skoen = [sku. at n] with breaking).

> Cf. "regular"
> Englisch: shoe -> shoes
> Scots: shae -> shuin (originally regular with /+n/ plural)
Is this change merely orthographic or does it reflect an old umlauting (as
below)?

> German: Schuh -> Schuhe
> Yiddish: שו šu [ʃu] ~ [ʃi] -> שוך šux [ʃux] ~ [ʃix]
>
> Lowlands Saxon (Low German) has the same pattern as that of German, but
the
> main vowel underwent umlauting, and in most dialects the final vowel has
> been dropped:
> schou (<Schoh>) [sɣɔˑ ] ~ [sx ˑ ] ~ [ ɔˑ ] ~ [ aˑ ] 'shoe'
> sch y (<Schöh>) [sɣœːɪ] ~ [sxœːɪ] ~ [ʃœːɪ] ~ [ʃɔːɪ] 'shoes'
> derived from schöye ['sɣœˑɪe] ~ ['sxœˑɪe] ~ ['ʃœˑɪe] ~ ['ʃɔˑɪe] 'shoes'
>
The "child", children (also a double one in English) is not present in
W-Frisian
as the word here is "bern" [bE:n], which has "non-marking", i.e. also the
plural is
bern. The same happens with the word "skiep" [ski. at p] = sheep.
Also (with numbers, as in Dutch) with "jier" ([i. at r]): "twa jier" (but the
plural
"jierren" [jIr at n] does exist: eg. "yn dy jierren gie dat sa" (= in those
years it was like that ).
Dutch has the same "twee jaar" eg.

> The opposite of this, I suppose, is apparent "non-marking" of plural
forms,
> namely zero marking (/+0/).  In English, this tends to occur where
plurality
> denotes (or denoted) uncountable or uncounted mass.  (Examples of mass
nouns
> would be "sand," "water," "people," and "cattle.") E.g.,
>
> English:
> fish | fish (not *"fishes," at least not in this sense)
> herring | herring (not *"herrings," at least not in this sense)
W-Frisian does have "fisken" en "hjerringen" or "hjerrings" (a mostly
West-East difference)
> sheep | sheep (never *"sheeps")
[snip]
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron

Groetenis,

Henno Brandsma

----------

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

Henno:

> Also (with numbers, as in Dutch) with "jier" ([i. at r]): "twa jier" (but the
> plural
> "jierren" [jIr at n] does exist: eg. "yn dy jierren gie dat sa" (= in those
> years it was like that ).
> Dutch has the same "twee jaar" eg.

Also In Lowlands Saxon (Low German):

eyn jaar (one year)
twey jaar (two years)
etc.

But I feel that with 100, 1000, etc., you could say either:

hunnerd jaar ~ hunnerd jaren (100 years)
dusend jaar ~ dusend jaren (1000 years)

Otherwise you use the plural form:

In dey (daar) jaren is dat so west.
'In those years (= days) it was like that.'

In dey (daar) jaren güng dat so.
This, literally translated from Henno's Westerlauwer Frisian example ("In
those (there) years went it/that so"), could mean the same, but to me the
primary meaning is "In those days is was all right (= passable,
acceptable)."

This applies to measures also; e.g., _vyv pund meel_ 'two pounds of flour',
_Hest vöftayn mark by dy?_ 'Do you have fifteen marks on you?' (not _punds_
and _marks_).

Isn't there a thing like this in some English and in Scots dialects also,
something like "two year ago," "five pound of flour," "Do you have fifteen
pound on you?"?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 19:52:06 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 12:52:06 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Deaf culture" 2004.06.23 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.125206.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Deaf cultures" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Deaf culture
>
> I am particularly fascinated by signed poetry and song.  The few times I
> watched the Seattle Men's Chorus (http://www.seattlemenschorus.org/)
perform
> I was more focused on the choir's sign language interpreter than on the

Hmmm, well...! This is a very "hearing" thing, I would say. Since the
structure of sign languages are quite foreign to the structure of the
singing language, you can't really sign along with a song without mangling
the language.

On the deaf programmes on British TV, particularly around Christmas when
some carol singing is in order, we sometimes see a "deaf choir" where the
signers sign along with the words of the carol. The signing tends to follow
the order of the English words, making it very linear or "flat" and
grammarless, and I generally find the whole performance as dull as
dishwater, and quite often rather annoying, I mean:

"Hark the herald angels sing"?

Surely this should be:

"Behold, the herald angels sign"?

Of course after the performance the deaf TV presenters say things like,
"Thanks to the Humbugton Christmas Choir. I really enjoyed that." I once
asked a deaf BBC presenter what she really thought of signing choirs. She
said, "I don't see the point." Then next Christmas she was on TV, "Thanks to
the..."

In my experience deaf choirs often have a hearing person as the driving
force behind them, either a hearing churchgoer who signs, or a minister who
is determined to get deaf people involved. I think hearing people who find
this sort of thing wonderful do so partly because they're enjoying the
music, and partly because they don't realise that the signing isn't really
doing anything meaningful.

As for the "Behold, the herald angels sign" kind of translation, I don't
think you see this in signed song, but you do see deaf people borrowing
idiom from English in this way, eg, "In one eye and out the other", "My
hands are sealed", and "Wash your hands with soap!"

> > However, sign language poets tend to make better use of the three
> channels,
> > sometimes developing special classifiers (cf Navajo?)
>
> This is something I've long thought offered itself to sign language, as to
> non-phonal written languages like Chinese.  In Chinese, there is a certain
> set of classifying glyphs (214 in most systems), known as "radicals," that
> can be used as characters in their own right but in conjunction with other
> glyphs (denoting sound or semantic hints) can make up new characters.  For
> example, the character for 'fish' (?) may serve as a classifier for all
> names of fish and other aquatic animals (e.g., ? 'squid', ? 'abalone', ?
> 'eel', ? 'cod') and also things associated with these (e.g., ? 'fin') or a
re
> considered similar (e.g., ? 'crocodile').  All the above have phonological
> information added to the radical, though the right-hand part of the

I don't think this is the same as classifiers in signed languages, although
signed languages do use a technique like this for borrowing from spoken
languages. For example, because there's no written tradition is sign
languages, people don't generally know signs for distant towns and cities.
While fingerspelling is often considered the "correct" way of using an
English word in BSL, this is not popular for long words and rather than
fingerspelling "Edinburgh", say, a deaf person in the south of England might
instead sign "Scotland" while mouthing the word "Edinburgh". Classifying it
as something to do with Scotland gives the lipreader the necessary context
to guess the word.

This technique is particularly widespread in German Sign Language. Perhaps
because many German words take so long to spell?

> character for 'abalone' may be both phonological and semantic, denoting
> 'envelop' or 'encapsule', as does ? for 'flounder': an ancient phone as
well
> as the meaning 'leaf' (= 'flat').  Using this method, you can create some
> sort of visual semantic theme that strikes the reader right away and sets
> the tone, so to speak.  I can imagine that this would lend itself
> excellently to signing.

This is beginning to sound more like sign language classifiers. Classifiers
in sign languages arise from the use of proforms. Proforms, as I've
explained, are handshapes that stand in place of other signs, just as
pronouns stand in place of nouns. Thus a flat hand with fingers together in
BSL is a proform standing for something flat, or useful to think of as flat,
such as a car, lorry, van, wall, ceiling, sheet of paper or book.

Classifiers are subsets of these: this proform when used to represent a car,
lorry, van &c is called the "vehicle classifier" but when it's used to
represent sheets of paper or books it might be called the "page classifier"
and so on.

In this way you might sign "I was driving along with a lorry behind me" by
signing "My car" and then using the flat left hand as the vehicle classifier
to represent the car, and then signing "lorry" and positioning the flat
right hand behind the left hand to show both vehicles as classifiers. You
can then describe the further adventures of the lorry and car using the
classifiers alone.

Often an object has such a distinctive classifier that you don't need a sign
for it at all. For example, the fist with thumb and pinkie sticking out is a
proform for things with two sticky-out bits, but in practice it's mostly
used for the aeroplane classifier and the telephone classifier, so actual
signs the nouns "aeroplane" and "telephone" don't really exist because you
can't really confuse an aeroplane with a telephone, so the classifiers alone
are sufficient. However, things like the vehicle classifier can also be used
alone, because the motion of the sign is often sufficient when you're not
worried about describing the exact type of vehicle.

It's the use of classifiers like this (plus facial expression and body
movement) that often puzzle non-signers with the sheer amount of information
that's sometimes given with a single sign. Phrases like "the aeroplane crash
landed upside down and slid along the runway", "could you two shift over a
bit?" and "the tree snapped, shivered and crashed to the ground"  each only
take a single sign to express.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Deaf culture

Thanks for your interesting clarifications, Sandy.

Just to P.S. the Chinese "radical" thing again, I ought to add that the
apparently earliest way they were put together to form new characters was
without sound indication and without categorization.  This type of character
can be found in the earliest unearthed artifacts, especially on cow bones
used for Shamanist devination.  Examples are 好 (< 女 woman + 子 child) 'good',
'love', 閃 (< 門 door + 人 person) 'glimpse', 'dodge', 'flash by', and 溺 (< 水
water + 弱 weak) 'drown'.  I wonder if this is similar to some signing
methods.  It seems to me that it may be, given what you said above.

This also leads me to ask how spoken- and written-language-influenced sign
languages are.  Do those in English-speaking communities have English
slants, etc.?  It would seem logical to me that those in Chinese-,
Japanese-, Korean- and Vietnamese-speaking communities would utilize methods
similar to Chinese writing (although Chinese characters are no longer
officially used in Korea and Vietnam).

Are there ever any sound clues outside of finger spelling (like "sounds like
'fish' but is a container" = "dish" in charade fashion), or would that make
signing too spoken-language-dependent?

Just wondering.

Another question (not only for Sandy):

What about signing among minority language speakers.  For example, is or was
there any sign language specific to Lowlands Saxon (Low German) speakers?  I
expect there is not, if there ever was one, which would mean that deaf
people of that language region are split apart by the Dutch-German political
border, using Dutch sign language in the west and German sign language in
the east.  Do speakers of Westerlauwer Frisian use only Dutch sign language
also, or do they have their own variant?  What about Limburgish people?  I
understand that there is only one sign language in the UK now, the Old
Kentish one being extinct (though its derivative Matha's Vineyard Sign
Language of Massachussetts is apparently still used, as is Hawaiian Pidgin
Signing besides American Sign Language in the US.)  So I take it this means
that in England, Wales, Scotland, The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands
only one sign language is used despite diversity in spoken language.  I
furthermore wonder if it is right to assume that both Irish and British Sign
Language are used in Northern Ireland.

Thanks and regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 20:03:05 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:03:05 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (09) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.130305.0700.>

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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

Glenn Simpson wrote: Subject: Phrases

> I've been doing some transcription of tapes & have
> become aware of a phrase used by a number of people in
> the Northumberland area of England. They 'for-to-get'
> as in "you needs lots of money 'for-to-get' that car".
> Its doesn't mean 'forgotten'. Is this used anywhere
> else around the globe.

Its used in Scots meaning 'in order to'.

see http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/verbs.htm

Caw cannie,

Andy Eagle

----------

From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: syntax[E]

Ron,

On the 'for-to-get' phrase, I think that you're right
that it may have become 'petrified' in certain
localities. Actually I should have written it in
Northumbrian 'fo'-tu-get' as it tends to be used that
way most often. I think a lot of Northumbrian is
language that has remained in use but died out
elsewhere.

Interesting to see that other lowlands languages are
similar.

Keep ahaad,

Glenn

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

Dear Glenn Simpson & Reinhard

 Subject: Phrases

> I have a feeling this type of phrase is not unusual in Germanic language
> varieties.  In German you use the construction _um ({object}) zu
> {infinitive}_, thus _um den Wagen zu kaufen_ 'in order to (be able to) buy
> that car'.  Likewise, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) you can us the
> construction _üm ({object}) tou {infinitive}_, thus _üm den wagen tou
> köypen_ for the same thing (though this sounds somewhat _geel_ "yellow,"
> i.e., German, more colloquial being conditional _wen den wagen köypen
wult_
> "if you want to buy that car").

Yes. In Afrikaans we also use the 'om te'
as in, "Om te gaan swem moet jy vêr loop."
"In order to go swimming you must walk far."

Yrs,
Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 20:04:21 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:04:21 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Travel" 2004.06.23 (10) [E]
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From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Travel[E]

Dear Lowlanders,

I'm going on holiday during the first week of August &
will be travelling around Flanders (Belgium and
France). Just wondering if there are locations,
events, festivals etc where I can hear some of the
various dialects/languages spoken? I may also take a
trip into Holland. Any information would be
appreciated.

Gan Canny,

Glenn Simpson
Northumbrian Language Society

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 20:36:52 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:36:52 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (11) [E]
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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (07) [E]

R. F. Hahn wrote:

> Isn't there a thing like this in some English and in Scots dialects also,
> something like "two year ago," "five pound of flour," "Do you have fifteen
> pound on you?"?

In Scots , nouns of measure usually remain singular directly after cardinal
numbers.

This system is breaking down due to the influence of standard English.

Andy Eagle

----------

From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Morphology [E]

Ron

You're right about English/Scots using the singular
'Five pound of flour'. I often hear it in
Northumberland such as 'he was driving at 100 mile an
hour' (North'd - He wes drivin et ih hundrid mile an
oo-wah), rather than 100 miles an hour.

cheers,

Glenn

----------

From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (04) [E]

> From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (06) [E]
>
> Ron wrote:
>
> > Sure, and there are cases like interpreting Greek-derived "kudos" and
> > "gyros" as plural forms and deriving from them supposedly singular
"kudo"
> > and "gyro" respectively.

What means "gyros?"

Jorge Potter

----------

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

Jorge:

> What means "gyros?"

A sandwich made usually of sliced roasted lamb, onion, and tomato on pita
bread.

Best pronounced like "YEE-ross" (from Modern Greek γύρως <gúros> ['jirOs]
'circle' (from the turning of the meat on a spit)

It's the Greek version of the Arabic _shawarma_.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 23:13:06 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:13:06 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Deaf culture" 2004.06.23 (12) [E]
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Deaf culture" [E]

>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Deaf culture
>
> used for Shamanist devination.  Examples are ? (< ? woman + ? child)
'good',
> 'love', ? (< ? door + ? person) 'glimpse', 'dodge', 'flash by', and ? (< ?
> water + ? weak) 'drown'.  I wonder if this is similar to some signing
> methods.  It seems to me that it may be, given what you said above.

Not sure - I can't seem to relate these examples to anything I know.

> This also leads me to ask how spoken- and written-language-influenced sign
> languages are.  Do those in English-speaking communities have English
> slants, etc.?  It would seem logical to me that those in Chinese-,
> Japanese-, Korean- and Vietnamese-speaking communities would utilize
methods
> similar to Chinese writing (although Chinese characters are no longer
> officially used in Korea and Vietnam).

One example is that although BSL seems to be the sort of language where
adjectives follow the noun, it's not unusual to see people signing
adjectives before the noun. This seems to be influence from English syntax,
but you also have to take into account the fact that some deafened people
use SSE (Sign Supported English) which is just English glossed with BSL
signs really, and the existence of English structures in signed conversation
with people who haven't mastered BSL conversation doesn't mean that English
is having such an influence on BSL itself. Most deaf people use a fairly
pure form of BSL simply because mixed forms are genuinely tedious and
sometimes vague, and yet can be seen using more English-like forms when
speaking with unskilled signers.

It's not unusual to see people using English idiom in BSL as a sort of
literal translation, however. I'd say this tends to consist of the English
itself mouthed, with sign glosses to allow for the fact that the "listener"
can't hear the English words.

Having said that, BSL idiom tends to consist of single signs. For example,
phrases like "Not my problem", "I'm bored stiff", "There's none left",
"That's put me in my place" and "Long time no see" are single, conventional
and mostly abstract signs in BSL. So a knowledgable signer is hardly likely
to resort to English much for everyday idiom, because it would be relatively
tedious.

You would of course use sign-glossed English when, for example, quoting
films and books and expecting the listener to recognise the source: "Me love
you long time", "Make my day, punk" &c.

> Are there ever any sound clues outside of finger spelling (like "sounds
like
> 'fish' but is a container" = "dish" in charade fashion), or would that
make
> signing too spoken-language-dependent?

Firstly, you have to realise that deaf people can't hear - a concept that
I've noticed a lot of hearing people have difficulty grasping! Any such puns
will normally be based on lip patterns, not sounds, or they can hardly enter
into general deaf culture (though I can think of one exception - "Tesco"
which is signed as "sneeze" - is this something only a hearing person would
think of? - but "Tesco" isn't _really_ like "atchoo" - so is it something
only a deaf person would think of?).

There are some English lip-pattern based sign constructions, usually
intentionally humorous, eg "M-Spider" for "Marks and Spencer", because
"Spencer" is apt to be lipread as "spider" if there's no context.

["Marks and Spencer" and "Tesco" are Brtiish chain stores]

> What about signing among minority language speakers.  For example, is or
was
> there any sign language specific to Lowlands Saxon (Low German) speakers?
I
> expect there is not, if there ever was one, which would mean that deaf
> people of that language region are split apart by the Dutch-German
political
> border, using Dutch sign language in the west and German sign language in
> the east.

I think, historically, deaf people were overseen by the church, and sign
language boundaries have tended to be religious (eg Catholic vs Protestant)
rather than political.

> that in England, Wales, Scotland, The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands
> only one sign language is used despite diversity in spoken language.  I

Seems so. However, I wonder if Old Kentish Sign Language is only known as a
result of the large amount of research into Martha's Vineyard? Many regions
of England used to have isolated clusters of parishes like the Kentish
Weald, we maybe just didn't (or don't) hear about them.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 23:49:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:49:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (13) [D/E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.164933.0700.>

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From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: Zeeuws


Hoi Marco,
Ik zie een ideale kans voor LLs om te laten zien dat we niet alleen een
babbel- en zeurklupje zijn maar ook in staat  om tot actie over te gaan. Ik
stel voor, Marco, dat je een text opstelt die iedereen die daarvoor voelt
naar de Provincie stuurt. Ik denk wel dat dat honderden berichten zal
opleveren. Indien ik me vergis...tant pis.
Vriendelijke groeten, Mike Wintzer

----------

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

Hi, Marco!

Thanks for sharing the sad news about the withholding of language status for
Zeelandic in the Netherlands.  I suppose quite a few of us would like to
help.

I agree with Mike (ondanks zijn niet bijzonder flatteuze beschrijving van
onse lijst) that we need some type of appeal letter template (in Dutch and
English?), if for no other reason then to tell us what we should and should
not write, possibly using our own words to avoid cookie-cutter letter.

Mike:

> Ik zie een ideale kans voor LLs om te laten zien dat we niet
> alleen een babbel- en zeurklupje zijn

Well, "babbling" and "boring" is what we do here.  I suppose that's within
the sphere of our first and foremost purpose:

<quote>
Lowlands-L is dedicated to discussion, exchange and dissemination of
information as well as to networking among persons who have certain
interests in common
<unquote>

While it *is* mentioned that we equally respect and are willing to be
equally supportive of *all* language and culture varieties within our focus
area, and while we have quite frequently used the List to appeal for
support, this is not and will never be a political action organization.

Lowlands-L is a "home" for *all* the Lowlands languages and cultures, not
only for those of minorities.  In fact, we are in the interesting position
of dealing both with some of the world's smallest and most endangered
language varieties (Frisian varieties of Germany) and with English, *the*
most powerful language in today's world.  We are not in the business of
taking sides and of spending all our time sticking up for the supposed
underdog, laudable such a pursuit and your preoccupation with it may be.

Mike, I very much respect the place in which you have your heart.  By the
same token, I would be pleased if you would afford our information exchange
the same degree of respect.  You may not have meant to come across so hard,
but some of us may take exception to the depiction _babbel- en zeurklupje_
"little babble and bore club."

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 23:55:04 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:55:04 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Events" 2004.06.23 (14) [E/LS]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.165504.0700.>

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

Dear Lowlanders,

Below please find an announcement of a Lowlands Saxon (Low German)
children's summer camp in Northern Germany, courtesy of Plattnet.de.

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

***


De Lutherische Heimvolkshochschool Harmsbörg un de Arbeitsgemeinschaft
"Plattdüütsch in de Kark" Neddersassen / Bremen laden in:


Kumm mit nah Plattdütschland!

9. PLATTDÜTSCHE KINNERFREETIED

 in BORCHELSMOOR bei Rotenburg/Wümme

16. Juli bis 24. Juli 2004



Hallo Kinner! Dat is sowiet! Nu künnt ji jau to de Plattdütsche
Kinnerfreetied anmelln. Wi hebt in uns Huus Platz för 22 Jungs und Deerns.
In Borchelsmoor steiht allens parat: Dat Huus, Dischtennisplatten, de
Backoben, Wisch un Wald. Veel Platz is dor to'n Speelen und Toben. Wi hebbt
veel vör in us Tiet in ,Plattdütschland': Kanu fohrn, Basteln, Baden,
Geschichten vertellen un speelen. Gottsdeenst fieern un Jesusgeschichten
hört dar natürlich ok tau. Un dat allens op Platt! Wenn dat ok noch nich so
glückt - Dat lehrst du fix! Wi freit us op jau! Jaune Holger Lehmberg
(BerufspraktikantIDiakon), Birgit Frese (Studentin), Insa Dammann
(Schölerin), Elfie Günther (Huusfrau), Ingrid Schütt un Peter Voigt (Pastor
i.R.). Kösten deit dat 110 €, för Geschwister 100 €.



Anmelln kann'n sik bi de: HeimVolkshochschule, Postfach 1280, 29315
Hermannsburg, Fax (0 50 52) 9899-55;

Fragen kann'n stelln bi: Holger Lehmberg, Lutterweg 16, 29315 Hermannsburg,
Privat Tel. 05052/ 9899 -59, Büro Tel. 05052/ 9899-0


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:30:19 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:30:19 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.073019.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (13) [D/E]

Ron wrote:
> the same degree of respect.  You may not have meant to come across so
hard,
> but some of us may take exception to the depiction _babbel- en zeurklupje_
> "little babble and bore club."

Actually, this translates to "babble and whine"... he never claimed we were
boring!

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:32:13 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:32:13 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.073213.0700.>

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Semantics

Beste liëglanners,

Sandy's remark about choirs signing "Hark the herald angels sing" made
me think about this interesting verb "to hark", as it also exists in
both Flemish ("horken", "örkt e kiër", "listen to this"), Frisian and
Saxon.
On the other hand, Brabantish doesn't have it at all, and even though
German has "horchen", according to Duden this must have been a "recent"
development, variations on "to listen" being the norm in southeastern
Germanic lands during the Middle Ages. That's why I wonder if there's
any semantic difference between "to listen" and "to hark" in either
Flemish, English, Frisian or Saxon.
On a side-note I'd like to add that Brabantish vocabulary does have the
noun "(h)ork" though, but it denotes a callous, heartless man, something
entirely different. Maybe fear of homonymy played a role here???

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:33:54 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:33:54 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (03) [E]
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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Syntax

Beste Glenn en Ron,

We always use 'voor te + verb' in Brabantish instead of 'om te + verb'
like Dutch does, when we want to express a certain goal.

"Vö te traave mürre mé twië zaën" (B) ~ "Om te trouwen moet je met twee
zijn" (D) ~ "It takes two to marry" (E)
"'t És naa te kaat vö mé de vloo te raan" (B) ~ "Het is nu te koud om
met de fiets te rijden" (D) ~ "It's too cold now to ride a bike"

Off the record, French (and Italian too?) uses "pour" (and "per"?) in a
similar way but maybe this merely reflects Germanic influence?

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:39:38 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:39:38 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Delectables" 2004.06.23 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.073938.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (11) [E]

> > What means "gyros?"
>
> A sandwich made usually of sliced roasted lamb, onion, and tomato on pita
> bread.
>
> It's the Greek version of the Arabic _shawarma_.

It is also the Greek version of the Turkish "döner", and traditionally
served with tsatsiki, a sort of dressing made of yogurt, garlic, cucumbers,
dill and varying other ingredients. In Germany, Turkish döner stands are the
most popular fast food providers these days. It has a lot less fat and
calories than burgers, for example, and a lot more fresh veggies.

Unfortunately, what they serve as "gyros" in restaurants in America is
usually not the "real stuff", but made of ground meat and therefore more
sausage-like.

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:42:08 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:42:08 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.074208.0700.>

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From: Kevin Caldwell <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Syntax
>
> Hi, Glenn!
>
> It's good to hear from you, as always.
>
> Isn't the phrase "for to get" related to the older "for to"-type of
> phrases
> denoting "in order to" or "with the purpose of"?
>
>    Oh, I went down South
>    FOR TO SEE my Sal
>    ...
>                     (Polly Wolly Doodle)
>
>    ...
>    She's lying at the quay
>    FOR TO TAKE our Pat with a shovel on his back
>    To the shores of Botany Bay
>    ...
>                     (Botany Bay)

And here in the US, there is the song "Oh Susanna", by Stephen Foster:

I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee.
I'm goin' to Lou'siana
My true love for to see.

Kevin Caldwell (kcaldwell31 at comcast.net)

----------

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

Thanks, Kevin.  But isn't "Polly Wolly Doodle" from the US also?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:50:49 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:50:49 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.23 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.075049.0700.>

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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.23 (05) [E/German]

R. F. Hahn quoted:

>Hörspiel-Tournee
>
> SHAKESPEARE PLATT UND BEKIFFT:
> MITTSOMMERNACHTSDRÖÖMEN
> Niederdeutsches Live-Hörspiel von Holger Janssen
>
That BEKIFFT bit surely can't be what I'm thinking?
Shakespeare flat(out) and stoned?

Andy Eagle

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Performing arts

Search *me*, Andy.  Of course we know what they mean by _platt_ (Lowlands
Saxon/Low German).  But _bekifft_ (stoned, high)?  Maybe the LS version is
so bad and/weird that Shakespeare could have only written that sort of stuff
if he had had a smoke or sniff or two ...  My hunch is that it's a spoof and
that claiming its a spoof is the only way they were able to pull it off ...

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 16:19:42 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 09:19:42 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.23 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.091942.0700.>

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From: Pyt Berg <pytbergy at YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Romance family words in Lowlands lanaguages


My request resent from 18/6/04

In Dutch & German there are some French words like, Muir, platform, egal,
etc

English uses an awful lot of special French words and expressions, like
Grand Prix, savoir faire, vaux pas, volte face, c'est la vie, etc, etc

Can anybody tell me whether the lowlands lanaguages like Frisian and Low
Saxon use
these kind of words and expressions or would they be considered taboo?

Pieter Bergman.

----------

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

Hi, Pyt!

Sorry, I didn't get your request before today, when I got it in triplicate.

There are tons of French loanwords in Lowlands Saxon (Low German), partly
borrowed via Dutch and German (especially in the 18th century when French
was all the rage) and partly borrowed directly during French occupation in
the early 19th century.  Some of them are quite distorted due to most people
not knowing and reading French (at the time), and some are blends of LS or
German words with French loans (e.g., _vutteraasch_ <Futteraasch>
'provisions' < German _Futter_ 'feed' + French _fourrage_ 'feed').  Also,
there appear to be a few pseudo-French words; they seem like French loans,
but so far there is no satisfactory etymological explanation.  Two example
are _etepetete_ 'fussy', 'finicky', 'hoity-toity', 'niminy-piminy',
'pernickety', and _Schisslaweng_ '(overly/excentrically) grandiose
flourish'.

I have started compiling a (not exhaustive) list of such loans (also lists
of English, Dutch and Slavonic loans).  I can only give you a few tidbits of
the French loan inventory here:

schosen (<Schosen>) 'things', 'stories', 'matters', 'happening(s)' (<
choses)
tuur (<Tuur>) 'tour', 'trip', 'outing', 'way (of doing)', 'mood', 'rut' (<
tour)
paslatant (<Paßlatant>) 'activity for passing one's time', 'entertainer' (<
pour passer le temp)
perdü 'lost', 'gone' (< perdu)
partu 'in any case', 'by all/no means', 'absolutly' (< partout)
musche (<Musche>) 'mister' (usually jocular) (<monsieur>)
mamsell (<Mamsell>) '(female) housekeeper' (< mademoiselle)
raasch (<Raasch>) 'rage', 'anger' (< rage)
ambraasch ~ ambraass (<Ambraasch> ~ <Ambraas>) 'to-do', 'fuss' (< embarras)
schenant 'embarrassed', 'embarrassing' (< gênant)
schemisett (<Schemisett>) 'chemise', 'undershirt' (< chemisette)
pö-a-pö 'bit-by-bit', 'gradually' (< peu-� -peu)
momang (<Momang>) 'moment' (< moment)
priwee (<Privee>) 'privy', 'toilet' (< privé(e))
maless ~ malesch (<Maless> ~ <Malesch>) 'problem', 'trouble' (< malaise)
profoss 'forcefully' (< par force)
schossee (<Schossee>) 'causeway' (< chaussée)
visaasch (<Visaasch>) 'face', 'mug' (< visage)
schangs (<Schangs>) 'chance' (< chance)
schüy (<Schü>) 'sauce' (< jus)
assamblee (<Assamblee>) 'assembly', 'meeting' (< assemblée)
eksküys (<Exküüs>) 'excuse' (< excuse)
kuntreer (<kunträr>) 'contrary' (< contraire)
durabel ~ dürabel 'durable' (< durable)
vigilant (<figilant> ~ <vigilant>) 'vigilant' (< vigilant(e))
bredulj(e) (<Bredulje> ~ <Bredulch>) 'tense situation', 'jam' (< bredouille)
(ver)deffendeyren (<(ver)deffendeern>) 'defend' (< défendre)
eklepaasch (<Eklepaasch>) 'equipage' (< équipage)
entfamig(t) ~ entfaamt 'infamous', 'dastardly', 'mean' (< infâme)
kalmeyren (<kalmeern>) 'to calm down' (< calmer)
kamsool (<Kamsol>) 'sort jacket' (< camisole)
kaprytsch (<kaprietsch>) 'capricious' (< capricieux/se)
kontant ~ kuntant 'content' (< content(e))
jüst(emang) 'just (now)' (< juste(ment))
kastrull (<Kastrull>) 'casserole dish', 'saucepan' (< casserole)
alert 'alert (< alerte)
biljett (<Billet> ~ <Biljett>) 'ticket' (< billet)
awekk (<Aweck>) 'flourish', 'emphasis', 'belaboring addition' (< avec)
kumpabel 'capable', 'able' (< compable)
k(u)raasch (<K(u)raasch>) 'courage', 'daring' (< courage)
kumpelment (<Kumpelment>) 'compliment', 'regard', 'greeting' (< compliment)

Etc., etc. ...

Kumpelmenten!
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 23:20:49 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:20:49 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Call for papers" 2004.06.23 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.162049.0700.>

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From: Horst Simon <horst.simon at univie.ac.at>
Subject: workshop on 'exceptions in grammar' - call for papers

Call for Papers:

EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED: EXCEPTIONS IN GRAMMAR

Workshop as part of the 26th Annual Meeting of the German Society for
Linguistics (DGfS)
University of Cologne, Germany
23rd-25th February, 2005
Organizers: Horst Simon & Heike Wiese (Humboldt-University Berlin)

Keynote speakers: Frans Plank (University of Konstanz)
Marga Reis (University of Tuebingen)
Tom Wasow (Stanford University)

A general goal of scientific theories is to systematise data from a
particular field as completely and as elegantly as possible; ideally,
all phenomena should be accounted for within a simple system.
Is such a methodological aim also adequate for human language? In the
analysis of linguistic data, one frequently faces phenomena that pose
a problem for systematisation because they do not follow the standard
patterns one observes otherwise. There are various ways to deal with
this problem; possible options, as realised in different frameworks,
include:

- ignoring special cases and concentrating on abstract model building
instead,
- reserving a specialised part of the model (the 'lexicon') for
idiosyncrasies,
- dispensing with generalisations altogether and concentrating on
in-depth analyses of case studies.

In addition, some approaches favour 'softer' grammatical models (such
as Prototype Theory or Stochastic Optimality Theory) that can
integrate 'exceptions' without bestowing them a special theoretical
status.  Finally, for some models of language change (e.g. those
based on evolutionary theory), the existence of exceptions is an
integral and constitutive part of the theory.

Exceptions can be defined both inter- and intra-linguistically.
First, typologically, exceptions can represent counter-examples to
cross-linguistically formulated general regularities, while they
might constitute a systematic phenomenon in the individual language
in which they occur (cf. e.g. the cases collected in the Constance
Raritätenkabinett). Second, in a particular language, exceptions can
represent an idiosyncratic phenomenon that cannot be captured by
intra-linguistic grammatical generalisations and therefore requires
special descriptive efforts.

In the workshop, we want to explore the theoretical and practical
problems that such intra- and inter-linguistic exceptions pose for
grammatical modelling. In particular, the workshop will be dedicated
to the following questions:

- How can exceptions be identified? In how far is their special
status tied to the particular grammatical model used?
- Do exceptions constitute sub-systems? Are there special areas in
grammar where exceptions abound?
- How do exceptions emerge diachronically? How are they levelled out again?
- Are there special acquisitional patterns for exceptions? How are
they affected in situations of language loss? What is their status in
language processing?
- Are exceptions also a part of communication systems of other
species, or are they a species-specific characteristic of the human
language faculty? Do they play a role in language evolution?

We invite linguists from all persuasions who work on grammatic
modelling and who reflect on methodological issues, in particular
those working in the fields of grammatical theory, typology,
historical linguistics, psycho- and neurolinguistics, and computer
linguistics. General theoretical discussions and analyses of case
studies are equally welcome.

Talks will be 20 minutes each, with 10 minutes of discussion.
Please send an anonymous abstract of max. 500 words, as a text file
or Word file,
to exceptions at staff.hu-berlin.de

DEADLINE: August 15th, 2004

Notification of acceptance will be sent by email in September.

For further enquiries please contact:

Horst Simon or Heike Wiese,
Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany

horst.simon at univie.ac.at (until Sept 20th) /
horst.simon at rz.hu-berlin.de (from Oct 1st)
heike.wiese at rz.hu-berlin.de

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:37:02 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:37:02 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.25 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.073702.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.23 (06) [E]

Andy wrote:
> > SHAKESPEARE PLATT UND BEKIFFT:
> > MITTSOMMERNACHTSDRÖÖMEN
> > Niederdeutsches Live-Hörspiel von Holger Janssen
> >
> That BEKIFFT bit surely can't be what I'm thinking?
> Shakespeare flat(out) and stoned?

I guess they're trying to reach a wider, younger audience by adding this
intriguing concept...

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:38:46 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:38:46 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.25 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.073846.0700.>

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From: Frédéric Baert <baert_frederic at CARAMAIL.COM>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (02) [E]

Kenneth wrote :

>Just a bit of random info that might prove helpful
>
>Kenneth
>
>> Dutch:
>> schoen [sxuːn] 'shoe'
>> schoenen [sxuːnə(n)] 'shoes'
>>
>> It appears that the old plural form (with /+ən/ was turned into a
singular
>> form, and, etymologically speaking, the new plural form contains another
>> plural-marking suffix (/+ə(n)).
>
>This is also what all dutch etymology dictionaries tell
>
>> Similarly, Afrikaans:
>> skoen [skuːn] 'shoe'
>> skoene [skuːnə] 'shoes'
>>
>> Theoretically (*), this ought to have been as follows:
>> Dutch:
>>    *schoe [sxuː] 'shoe'
>>    *schoeën [sxuːə(n)] or schoen [sxuːn] 'shoes'
>> Afrikaans:
>>    *skoe [skuː] 'shoe'
>>    *skoeë [skuːə] 'shoes' (or perhaps *skoes [skuːs])
>
>skoen is a loan from Hollandic Dutch. You cannot compare the plural
>ending in Afrikaans to Dutch (just like you cannot compare the adjective
>system with Dutch either) as Afrikaans probably has developed as a Cape
>dialect mixed with two Dutch based Pidgins spoken by the Hottentot. The
>-s after -er etc is kept, but -e is used for plural for almost
>everything else. Non-mother tongue speakers will guess that -e was the
>plural ending of skoen.

Hi,

Comparisons can be interesting sometimes : indeed, unlike dutch, west
flemish (at least in France) has conserved "schoe" for "shoe" and "schoen"
for "shoes". However, french west flemish has numerous irregularities in
plural formation of nouns and I'm not sure they have always good
explanations. i.e., plural of "katte" is "kats" that J.L. Marteel explains
by an intermediary form in "kattens" with dissapearance of "en". But the
alternance of plural forms of noun in "-s" and in "-en" is characteristic.
Best regards

Frédéric Baert

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:46:38 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:46:38 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.25 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.074638.0700.>

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From: Pyt Berg <pytbergy at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.23 (07) [E]


> From: Pyt Berg
> Subject: Romance family words in Lowlands lanaguages
>
> My request resent from 18/6/04
>
> In Dutch & German there are some French words like, Muir, platform, egal,
> etc
>
> English uses an awful lot of special French words and expressions, like
> Grand Prix, savoir faire, vaux pas, volte face, c'est la vie, etc, etc
>
> Can anybody tell me whether the lowlands lanaguages like Frisian and Low
> Saxon use
> these kind of words and expressions or would they be considered taboo?
>
> Pieter Bergman.
>
> ----------
>
> From: R. F. Hahn
> Subject: Etymology
>
> Hi, Pyt!
>
> Sorry, I didn't get your request before today, when I got it in
triplicate.
>
> There are tons of French loanwords in Lowlands Saxon (Low German), partly
> borrowed via Dutch and German (especially in the 18th century when French
> was all the rage) and partly borrowed directly during French occupation in
> the early 19th century. Some of them are quite distorted due to most
people
> not knowing and reading French (at the time), and some are blends of LS or
> German words with French loans (e.g., _vutteraasch_
> 'provisions' < German _Futter_ 'feed' + French _fourrage_ 'feed'). Also,
> there appear to be a few pseudo-French words; they seem like French loans,
> but so far there is no satisfactory etymological explanation. Two example
> are _etepetete_ 'fussy', 'finicky', 'hoity-toity', 'niminy-piminy',
> 'pernickety', and _Schissl aweng_ '(overly/excentrically) grandiose
> flourish'.
>
> I have started compiling a (not exhaustive) list of such loans (also lists
> of English, Dutch and Slavonic loans). I can only give you a few tidbits
of
> the French loan inventory here:
>
> schosen () 'things', 'stories', 'matters', 'happening(s)' (<
> choses)
> tuur () 'tour', 'trip', 'outing', 'way (of doing)', 'mood', 'rut' (<
> tour)
> paslatant () 'activity for passing one's time', 'entertainer' (<
> pour passer le temp)
> perdü 'lost', 'gone' (< perdu)
> partu 'in any case', 'by all/no means', 'absolutly' (< partout)
> musche () 'mister' (usually jocular) ()
> mamsell () '(female) housekeeper' (< mademoiselle)
> raasch () 'rage', 'anger' (< rage)
> ambraasch ~ ambraass ( ~ ) 'to-do', 'fuss' (< embarras)
> schenant 'embarrassed', 'embarrassing' (< gênant)
> schemisett () 'chem ise', 'undershirt' (< chemisette)
> pö-a-pö 'bit-by-bit', 'gradually' (< peu-� -peu)
> momang () 'moment' (< moment)
> priwee () 'privy', 'toilet' (< privé(e))
> maless ~ malesch ( ~ ) 'problem', 'trouble' (< malaise)
> profoss 'forcefully' (< par force)
> schossee () 'causeway' (< chaussée)
> visaasch () 'face', 'mug' (< visage)
> schangs () 'chance' (< chance)
> schüy () 'sauce' (< jus)
> assamblee () 'assembly', 'meeting' (< assemblée)
> eksküys () 'excuse' (< excuse)
> kuntreer () 'contrary' (< contraire)
> durabel ~ dürabel 'durable' (< durable)
> vigilant ( ~ ) 'vigilant' (< vigilant(e))
> bredulj(e) ( ~ ) 'tense situation', 'jam' (< bredouille)
> (ver)deffendeyren (<(ver)deffendeern>) 'defend' (< défendre)
> eklepaasch () 'equipage' (< équipage)
> entfamig(t) ~ entfaamt 'infamous', 'dastardly', 'mean' (< infâme)
> kalmeyren () 'to calm down' (< calmer)
> kamsool () 'sort jacket' (< camisole)
> kaprytsch () 'capricious' (< capricieux/se)
> kontant ~ kuntant 'content' (< content(e))
> jüst(emang) 'just (now)' (< juste(ment))
> kastrull () 'casserole dish', 'saucepan' (< casserole)
> alert 'alert (< alerte)
> biljett ( ~ ) 'ticket' (< billet)
> awekk () 'flourish', 'emphasis', 'belaboring addition' (< avec)
> kumpabel 'capable', 'able' (< compable)
> k(u)raasch () 'courage', 'daring' (< courage)
> kumpelment () 'compliment', 'regard', 'greeting' (< compliment)
>
> Etc., etc. ...
>
> Kumpelmenten!
> Reinhard/Ron



That's Great thanks,

What about those special expressions like "deju vu", savoirfaire etc etc?

Pieter.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn
Subject: Etymology

Hoi again, Pieter!

> What about those special expressions like "deju vu", savoirfaire etc etc?

Wouldn't the following fall into that category?

pö-a-pö 'bit-by-bit', 'gradually' (< peu-� -peu)

paslatant () 'activity for passing one's time', 'entertainer' (< pour passer
le temp)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:49:21 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:49:21 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.25 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.074921.0700.>

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From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (13) [D/E]

Ron wrote:
> but some of us may take exception to the depiction _babbel- en zeurklupje_
> "little babble and bore club."

I sincerely apologise for letting myself being carried away
and expressing it in such a pointed way. I wanted to highlight
the difference between what we  normally do and what
I propose we could do for once.
Nichts für ungut!
Mike Wintzer

----------

From: R. F. Hahn
Subject: Language politics

That's all right, Mike.  Don't worry about it.  We love you anyway.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:51:02 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:51:02 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.25 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.075102.0700.>

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From: Lee Goldberg <leybl_goldberg at yahoo.com>
Subject: Deaf Culture (Korean and Chinese)

Actually, Chinese characters are still used in South Korea, mixed together
with the native Hangul alphabet (much as in Japan), but not in North Korea
(you're right about Vietnam).   According to Bernard Comrie, ed., "The
World's Major Languages" (1987), the South Korean government at that time
required students in secondary schools to learn 1,800 Chinese characters.
If you pick up a newspaper in a Korean restaurant in the U.S., you'll see
some Chinese characters (called "hamsa", I believe, in Korea, which is the
same word as standard Chinese "Han4 Zi4" and Japanese 'kanji') on each page
(but not nearly enough to represent all the words of Chinese origin, which
are said to make up more than half of the Korean vocabulary).

Lee

Ron wrote:
  > It would seem logical to me that those in Chinese-,
  > Japanese-, Korean- and Vietnamese-speaking communities would utilize
  methods
  > similar to Chinese writing (although Chinese characters are no longer
  > officially used in Korea and Vietnam).


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:59:23 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:59:23 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.25 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.075923.0700.>

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From: Dan Prohaska <daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>

Subject: Spelling Reform (E)



Dear All,



Recently an all-time reoccurring topic popped up again here: A reform of
English spelling. For just under a year now I’ve been a member of an e-mail
correspondence list called “saundspel”. Never before have I seen so many
different spelling proposals for English. Of course that inspired me to
create my own ‘reformed’ English spelling. I had come up with several
spelling systems most of which found little favour with the list members.
Lately I’ve settled for a moderate approach which cuts redundant letters and
places diacritics on vowels to distinguish quality and/or quantity. Apart
from afore mentioned simplifications there is also a set of morphemes that
are distinguished. It is by no means a phonemic spelling system, but a
system that aims for high predictability and retention of legibility of
traditional spelling (TS) rather than an ideal phonemic representation of a
certain accent of world English. It allows variants for forms that are
incompatible but tries to minimise these to changes in diacritics. My system
is still very much under construction, it’s a cut and paste job of several
proposals that have been brought forth on the list. Some approaches I have
found, others I have plagiarised from other saundspellers.  Here’s a quick
guide to the general system:



Vowels:



The short vowels in stressed position generally stay the same:



<a>      as in TS <pat>, <mad>; generally there is no distinction made
between the vowel in <pat> and <pass>; this could from a UK perspective be
construed as a Northernism, though it is actually a compromise towards US
English, optionally southern UK English speakers can place <^> on the <a> to
distinguish it. In final position of polysyllabic words <a> represents
schwa, as in <sofa>, and in final position of monosyllabic words <a>
represents the diphthong /eI/ as in <tha> TS ‘they’ and <da> TS ‘day’.



<e>       as in <pet>, <wed>; note that words such as ‘any’ and ‘many’ are
changed to <eny> and <meny>;



<i>       as in <pit>, <lid>;



<o>       as in <pot>, <cod>; when ‘au’ is short the spelling is changed to
<o> as in ‘because’ which becomes <becos>;



            In final position <o> stands for the diphthong /@U/ as in <go>,
<lo> ‘low’, or <tho> ‘though’.



<u>       stands for the vowels in <put> and <putt>. The vowel in <put>,
<gud> ‘good’ and <wud> ‘would’ can optionally be written <ü>: <püt>, <güd>,
<wüd> if desired.



<y>       occurs in word final position as the unstressed high front vowel,
as in <tíny> ‘tiny’. Note that it does not change in the plural: <story> =>
<storys>.  Stressed <y> in final position is the diphthong /aI/ as in <hy>
‘high’; <ly> ‘lie’; <why>; <shy>; in cases of doubt <y> when /aI/ is written
<ý> as in <simplifý>.



Accented vowels:



<á>      is the diphthong in ‘made’, ‘raid’, ‘stayed’: <mád>, <rád>, <stád>.
Note that <stád> alternates with <sta> though <stá> is also permitted.



<â>      is the long vowel in ‘father’ <fâther>. US speakers an
alternatively write words such as UK <bother> as US <bather>.



<é>       is the long vowel in ‘leave’, ‘keen’, ‘speak’, ‘speech’, ‘detail’:
<lév>, <kén>, <spék>, <spéch>, <détál>. Word finally <é> can also be written
without the acute accent if it leaves no room for doubt: ‘be’, ‘see’, ‘thee’
, ‘me’ => <bé>, <sé>, <thé>, <mé>, or <be>, <se>, <me>, but not *the* ‘thee’
because of <the> ‘the’.



<í>       is the diphthong /aI/ in ‘side’, ‘white’, ‘light’, ‘write’: <síd>,
<whit>, <lít>, <rít>. Words that have /aI/ in final position have <y>:
<hy> - <hyer> ‘high’ – ‘higher’; <ly> - <lyd> (or lýd) ‘lie’ – ‘lied’.



<ì>       is used where traditional spelling has the Latin value as in
<clìk> or <antìc> ‘antique’ which can alternatively have the ‘anglicised’
spelling <anték>.



<ó>       is the diphthong /@U/ (except word finally), ‘holy’, ‘wholly’,
‘both’, ‘home’: <holy>, <holy>, <both>, <hóm>. <Ó> can alternate with <o> in
‘flow’ – ‘flowing’ <flo> - <flóing> etc.



<ú>       is /j/+/u:/, ‘use’, ‘few’, ‘new’, ‘music’, ‘human’, ‘duke’: <ús>,
<fú>, <nú>, <músic>, <húman>, <dúk>. US can distinguish /ju:/ with <músic>
and /u:/ in <prodûs> by using <û> or <u> word finally in <nu>. ‘You’ is
written as the sight word <U> which contrasts with sight word <I>.



<û>       is the long /u:/ in ‘group’, ‘loose’, ‘move’: <grûp>, <lûs>,
<mûv>. In word final position the acute accent can be left out: ‘who’, ‘glue
’, ‘blue’, ‘to/two/too’, ‘do’ <hu>, <glu>, <blu>, <tu>, <du>.



<ù>       this is the short /j/+/U/ combination in ‘irregular’ <iregùlar>.
The original /j/ has often caused palatalisation either with or without
subsequent loss of the /U/ component as in ‘usual’ <úzùal>, ‘educational’
<edùcáznl>.



<au>     is the half open back vowel <O:>. Word finally <au> is spelt <aw>.
UK English continues to distinguish ‘flaw’ and ‘floor’ as <flaw> and <flor>,
as well as ‘flawed’ and ‘floored’ which are <flaud> and <flord>. In many
instanced US speakers can replace UK <au> with US <o> where in US
pronunciation /O:/ and /A/ have coalesced, as in UK <aul> vs. US <ol> ‘all’;
UK <aut> vs. US <ot> for ‘ought’.



<ou>     is the diphthong <aU> as in ‘house’, ‘louse’, ‘out’, ‘shout’:
<hous>, <lous>, <out>, <shout>. Word finally <ou> is spelt <ow>: ‘now’, ‘cow
’, ‘how’: <now>, <cow>, <how>.



<oi>      as in traditional spelling: ‘boil’, ‘foil’, ‘annoyed’, ‘toyed’:
<boil>, <foil>, <anoid>, <toid>. Word finally <oi> is spelt <oy>: <boy>,
<anoy>, <toy>.



<ea>      constrasts with <éa> in <ídea> vs. <ídéal>.



<ia>       though generally <ia> is written for /I@/: <aria>; <Britania>.




Unstressed vowels:



/@/       schwa is probably the most complicated vowel to approach
systematically in English without inventing a separate symbol for it. I
would have agreed to the turned e of IPA, but most e-mail codes are not
compatible with this as yet. It would also destroy the visual link between
various derivations. Schwa can thus be as diversely spelt as in traditional
spelling. However I wanted to raise predictability. Word initially and
finally schwa is usually <a>: ‘sofa’, ‘ago’, ‘along’, ‘anew’: <sófa>, <ago>,
<along>, <anú>. In checked position, i.e. when followed by a consonant schwa
is <e>: ‘redundant’ <redundent>,  ‘society’ <sosíety>, ‘appearance’
<apérens>. Concerning schwa are also the most morphemic generalisations such
as: ‘-able/-ible’ becomes <-abl>; schwa in ‘pro-‘, ‘con-‘ and ‘com-‘ remains
<o>; ‘-er’ is <-er> etc. Exceptions are when derivations show another vowel
such as <regular> with <–ar> because of <regùlarity> vs. <náber> and
<náberhud>, <ability> because of <ábl>.



/I/ and /i/ is <y> word finally and <e> internally: ‘because’, ‘wanted’,
‘believe’, ‘enough’, ‘sorry’, ‘story’, ‘foreign’, ‘horrid’: <becos>,
<wonted>, <belév>, <enuf>, <sorry>, <story>, <forren>, <horred>.




Consonants:



Consonant are generally not doubled except where ambiguous and then only
<rr> as in <sorry>, <lurry>, <ocurens> vs. <ocur>.



b, d, f, h, l, m, n, p, qu, r, t, v, w, x are the same as in traditional
spelling:



<c>       has the value /k/ and is generally written before consonants <a>,
<o>, and <u>. Word initially <c> can also stand for /s/ before <e>, <i> and
<y>. It is part of the standardised suffix <-ic>.



<k>       has always got the value /k/. It is generally written before <e>
and <i>, as well as word finally in monosyllabic words.



<g>       always has the value /g/. Where TS has /dZ/ the reformed spelling
has <j>.



<j>        always has the value /dZ/.



<s>       RS (reformed spelling) does not distinguish between voiced /z/ and
voiceless /s/. Both are spelt <s>. Alternatively /s/ can be spelt <c> in
word initial position if TS has ‘c’ here. The voiced or voiceless character
of <s> can on occasion be seen in verbs where the past tense (and/or
participle) ending is <d> or <t>: ‘pronounced> <pronounst> vs. ‘caused’
<causd>. The suffixes such as’-tion’, ‘-sion’ /S at n/, ‘-tial, -sial, -cial’
/S at l/ are standardised as <-sion> and <-sial>



<y>       is the semi-vowel /j/ in ‘year’, ‘yacht’, ‘yellow’: <yér> (US alt.
<yir>), <yot>, <yelo>.



<z>       word internally it stands for /Z/, especially before <-ion> and
<-ùr>: ‘measure’, ‘treasure’, ‘leisure’, ‘vision’, ‘occasion’: <mezùr>,
<trezùr>, <lezùr>, <vizion>, <ocázion>.



            In initial position <z> stands for /z/ as in TS: ‘zeal’ <zél>,
‘zone’ <zón>, ‘zillion’ <zillion>.



<sh>     is /S/ in initial position as in <ship>, and word finally such as
<fish>, <Inglish>.



<th>      as in TS there is no distinction between voiced /D/ and voiceless
/T/. ‘the’, ‘they’, ‘their’, ‘bath’ vs. ‘bathe’, ‘south’ vs. ‘southern’:

             <the>, <tha>, <thár>, <bath> vs. <báth>, <south> vs. <suthern>.



<wh>, <w>   the <wh> spelling is optional and can be written wherever TS has
<wh>. But alternatively <wh> can simply be spelt <w>.



Other sounds and their spelling:



/3:/        is generally written <er> except in a few words that alternate
with /V/ in derivatives such as ‘occur’ <ocur> vs. ‘occurrence’ <ocurens>.



/E@/     is <-ár->: ‘bare’, ‘pair’, ‘where’, ‘their’, ‘there’: <bár>, <pár>,
<whár>, <thár>, <thár>.



/i@/       can be <-ior> in words such as ‘inferior’ <inferior>, because of
‘inferiority’ <inferiority>. Otherwise in r-combinations it is spelt <ér>:
‘here’, ‘hear’ both <hér>. ‘Idea’ is <ídea>.



RS allows all kinds of alternatives where regional difference of
pronunciation of a national standard variety is phonemically distinct. The
most examples will result from differences between UK and US pronunciation.
Here are a few examples:



UK                     US               TS

aluminùm                              alûminum

nú                                           nu

tu prodús                                tu prodûs

íther                                        éther

dans (opt. dâns)                      dans

chans (opt. châns)                   chans

clark                                        clerk

shedùl                                     skedùl

privasy                                    prívasy

tomâto                                    tomáto

got                                          gotn

advertisment                          advertísment

anti-                                        antí-

capsúl                                     capsl

clìk                                          clik
(clique)

dâta, dáta                                dáta, data

herb, erb                                 erb, herb

lezùr                                       lézùr

léver                                        lever

leftenent                                  lûtenent

misíl                                       misl

prógres                                    progres

rût                                          rout, rût

vâs                                          vás

roth                                         rath
(wrath)

ároplán                                   árplán

darby                                      derby

gusbery                                   gûsbery



Here’s an example text in RS:



Cornish Launch Fít for Inclûzion on the Frámwerk Convension ov Nasionl
Mínoritys: Grand Bard Spéks Out Agenst Asimilásion



Brussels / Bruxelles 3/8/2004 , by Davyth Hicks



On Frídá Cornish campáners fíting for the rít tu be ofisially recognísd as
an ethnic mínority launcht a légl chalenj agenst the British Guvernment in
the Hy Cort in Lunden.


The campáners from the civl ríts NGO, Cornwall 2000, chós St Pyran's Da, the
pátron sánt ov Cornwall, to isù jûdisial révú procédings agenst the Hóm
Ofis.


Párents hav bén frustráted at the guvernments refúsl tu extend the
provizions ov the Counsl ov Europ Frámewerk Convension for the Protecsion ov
Nasionl Mínoritys tu Cornish pépl.


Auther and civl ríts campáner John Angarrack, from Bodmin, sed scûls had
mist out on milions ov pounds ov extra funding tu promót the Cornish langwej
and cultùr.



Thár hav aulso bén insidents ov Cornish children béing punisht at scûl for
sáing tha wer Cornish and not Inglish.



Mr Angarrack tóld the pres that: "Pépl lík the Ulster Scots and Gaels hav
had milions ov pounds aworded tu thár cultùral grûps and edùcásion sistm tu
develop thár langwej, history and cultùr and we hav had nuthing.


"This is the ferst tím the Cornish hav actùally instigáted acsion agenst the
guvernment. The Cornish pépl hav bén on the recéving end ov litigásion from
central guvernment befor but this is the ferst tím we hav gon doun this rût
ourselvs." He sed the acsion wos béing braut under húman ríts lejislásion
and the Rás Relásions Act.



"The Hóm Ofis is stil preventing the Cornish from benefiting from the meny
edùcásionl and cultùral ríts acorded tu nasionl mínoritys by the Frámwerk
Convension. Thár is no légl justificásion for this." he sed.


Solisiter Martin Pearce, hu is acting for the grûp ov párents, tóld the
Western Morning Nús that: "The Cornish wont recognision under the
convension. But representativs hav bén tóld that wón't hapn becos the
Cornish hav not bén recognísd as an ethnic grûp by the British corts."


Campáners hav aulredy discust the merits ov the cás with the Comision for
Rásial Equolity. Tha debáted discriminásion in the provizion ov edùcásion
and cultùral funding as wel as conserns over housing and emploiment.



The légl acsion is líkly tu be embaresing for the Hóm Ofis in the very sám
yér that the guvernment is oblíjd tu submit its secnd Frámwerk Convension
Complíens Report tu the Counsl ov Europ.



The légl submision asks the Hóm Ofis a number ov importent questsions
reláting tu the formùlásion and implementásion ov British rás polisy.
Campáners sa thár is clér evidens that léving the Cornish out ov the
convension is unlauful.



The acsion folós a sucsesful méting the wék befor, whár párents and ofisials
from the Comision for Rásial Equolity resulted in the Comision promising tu
ták imédiat acsion.



Tha sa tha wil combat discriminásion agenst the Cornish in the félds ov
edùcásionl provision and cultùral funding.



Párents fíting for thár childrens rít tu hav the Cornish langwej, history
and cultùr taut in scûls atended the méting in Lunden at the end ov
February. The méting consentráted on the guvernments obligásions tuwords the
Cornish in respect ov laus desínd tu end the marjinlísásion and forst
asimilásion ov cultùral mínoritys.



Spesific áreas discust inclûded public authority presentásion ov history,
mínority langwej oportúnitys, and efectiv cultùral partisipásion. Ménwhíl
thru-out Cornwall celebrásions wer held for Cornwalls pátron sánt, St Pyran,
and Grand Bard Rod Lyon ov the Cornish Gorseth, a cultùral organísásion, úsd
the ocázion tu spék out agenst the ongóing cultùral and politicl asimilásion
ov Cornwall by her larjer náber Ingland.


"On this grát da a host ov St Pyran flags hav bén proudly caryd thru the
stréts ov Trûró by dedicáted men and wimen hûs harts ar in Cornwal. Tha ar
pépl from aul wauks ov líf hu hav spent and ar spending a vast amount ov
thár fre tím tu ensúr the nám ov Cornwall and its heritej ar not asimiláted
intu larjer násions.



"In spít ov the Frámwerk Convension for the Protecsion ov Nasionl Mínoritys,
sínd by aul the májer pours in Europ, this próses ov asimilásion continús,
oftn (ofn) cóvertly. It is thés proud pépl ov Cornwal hu ar sacrifísing so
much tu hault this. Luking around hér tuda, I se meny ov them amung us.”



The tradisionl parád in Trûró wos wun ov meny events tu ták plás not just in
Cornwal but in Cornish comúnitys acros the werld in oner ov St Pyran.
(Eurolang)


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 16:00:09 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 09:00:09 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.25 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.090009.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn
Subject: Language varieties

Folks,

I received a message from someone who contributes information about and in
the Low Franconian dialect of Mühlheim (Mölm) an der Ruhr, Germany.  As far
as I can tell, this dialect and related ones of farwestern Germany are
closest related to Limburgish, somewhat farther probably also to Brabantish,
Flemish and Dutch, but I leave this to our experts to decide.

First of all, here is the communication from Mr. Firla (whom I am copying
here):

<quote>

Hello Mr. Hahn,
I just discovered your net-contributions to questions of Low Franconian
dialects.
And the versions of "Sinter Mätes Vögelschen".
Would you please be so kind  to have a friendly look on my website, where I
have - under "Mölmsche Lieder" - some pages of "Mätes-Forschung"

http://moelmsch.muelheim-ruhr.de

Perhaps you understand German as well?

Best regards

Franz Firla
</quote>

Yes, I understand German as well, as do many others on our list.  And I
understand your local dialect pretty well also.

Below is my attempt at loosely assimilating the spelling of the poem "Us
Dörpke" ("Our Village") by Walter Ferschen
(http://www.muelheim-ruhr.de/ae4e7d31fdd16fce76f9d521adc3bb51.html) to the
orthography of the Limburgish varieties of the Netherlands and Belgium.
Corrections and suggestions would be welcome.  Note short /a/ realized as
"au" (e.g., _Laund_ 'land', 'country') like in Mennonite Lowlands Saxon (Low
German, Plautdietsch)!

The writer of the poem is quite right in saying that, despite the reputation
of the area as a dismal coal mining region, the area he loves is quite
beautiful and charming, very lush and green.  As a teen I once spent a few
summer weeks in Mühlheim (Mölm) and thought it and the people there were
just lovely.  Unfortunately, I was too young and inexperienced to appreciate
their language varieties at the time.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***


   ÓS DÖRPKE

   Ós haimaot ös em Duutsjen laund
   eis kaolenpot mèr eis bekaunt.
   Mer, dat nou graad hie oeze gegend
   en stukse èrd ös, van Got gegeve,
   wat zich waal zene lote koos,
   dat wait bai oes der klainste poos.
   Wen boeterluud van aunderwèrts,
   die ós dörpke nei kenneliert,
   nou zich waal geve gròte muhe
   ós Roerlaund eis drekgat te versjrieë,
   do zègge wai hat: "Haulent die sjnoete",
   wege dat wai op oes dörp niks koemme lote.
   Dat wèrt oes haimaot nei gerèch,
   oes Saan, dat ös garnei zò sjlèch.
   Jo, hie sjtond kain haoge berge eröm,
   op die me im zoemmer sjie vare kan.
   Et gif ouk kaine sjtraund met saund
   hie, in oezem Saansjen laund
   oen bös no'm meir, dat waite git
   ös et waal gans ordenlich wied.
   Wat mak nou graad in oezem dörp
   dat leive mangs sò levenswèrt?
   Woröm doon völ, die erges vòrtgegange,
   öär leve lang aan Saan me'm hatte hange,
   vöär die, mit welterfahrung mèr eis stief
   oes leiv dörpke al ömmer haimaot bliev?
   Dat löt zich nei sò rèch verklöäre,
   et ös, sèlvs vöär die, die hie gebòre,
   al ömmer wieër en gròt erbaue,
   dat oes Saan mit roeren oen aue
   wat wounebaore ös op oeze wèlt
   oen oes Saansje mangs tezamehöit.
   Zò eis et hait in en aule kalleroot:
   "Mölm boven aan oen Saan boven drop!"


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 21:08:20 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 14:08:20 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.25 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.140820.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.25 (02) [E]

Speaking of double plurals... here are two recent example from High German
that you hear a lot these days: "the pedal", as on a bicycle", is "das
Pedal"; plural is "die Pedale". Now quite a few people seem to think that
"die Pedale" is a female singular noun, and come up with the plural "die
Pedalen".

The other one is similar: "the hoof" = "der Huf", plural "die Hufe" - some
people think this is female singular and come up with the "plural" form "die
Hufen".

I hope this isn't catching...

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 28 18:07:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 11:07:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.28 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.28.JUN.2004.110733.0700.>

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

Dear Lowlanders,

A few things I have been hearing lately have provoked me to revisit in my
mind the issues of language survival and language spread.  Under "language
spread" I would like to include second-language learning, which, in my
opinion goes hand in hand with international attention, which strengthens
language prestige and confidence, thus increasing survival chances. I would
like to invite your input on these topics.

Let us take the example of Dutch.  Quite often we hear about people feeling
that the Dutch language is in one way or another being threatened, even
under siege.  There are those native speakers that feel there is too much
English influence on Dutch, oftentimes in the form of gratuitous adoption of
English terms where native ones are available or could easily be created.
Furthermore, the influential organization Onze Taal (Our Language) appears
to fear that official recognition of regional languages of the Netherlands
as separate from Dutch chips away at Dutch, reducing the number of native
speakers and national as well as international significance and prestige of
Dutch.  It regrets that Lowlands Saxon and Limburgish have been officially
recognized, and it may have played a role in the recent governmental refusal
to officially recognize Zeelandic.

It appears to me that the number of native speakers is not as important as
the attitude of native speakers.  As we have mentioned many times before,
Dutch speakers of the Netherlands have an international reputation for being
more than willing to use languages other than Dutch -- typically English,
German and/or French -- not only with foreigners who actually require the
help but more often than not with those that do not require or want the
help, including people who desparately try to learn Dutch.  Recently I have
bumped into a number of Americans and other nationals that have lived in the
Netherlands and now speak good or even excellent Dutch and that have a
continued interest in Dutch and Netherlands culture.  Each one told me that
it often felt like an exaspirating uphill battle, especially in Amsterdam,
because people would automatically address them in English, would sometimes
even answer in English when addressed in Dutch.

Dutch speakers in general seem to believe that they have to learn and use
"more significant" foreign languages because their own is insignificant
outside the Netherlands, Belgium and former Netherlands colonies.  This
appears to apply even to foreign residents  at home.  The impression this
gives the foreign visitor has an extreme in a snippet of conversation I
recently picked up at an airport, where an American woman told others, "Now
that the Dutch are changing over to English ..."  I had to eavesdrop to find
out if she really meant what I thought she meant, and she did!  It took all
I had to resist interfering in that conversation.

It occurred to me that rather than struggle with campaigns to halt the
influx of English and other foreign loanwords -- which may be futile,
especially among younger people with a need for rebellion -- it might be
more condusive to language survival to start a campaign urging Dutch
speakers to be helpful to foreign visitors who do not know Dutch but to
otherwise use Dutch with selfconfidence, though without chauvinism, while
expecting and helping foreign residents to learn and speak Dutch.  In my
opinion, this may well work because the Netherlands have an unusually high
percentage of foreign residents.  Going by what I see on Lowlands-L and from
applications for membership alone, there is a large number of people who
wish to learn Dutch, and many foreign residents returning home continue use
of and contacts with Dutch.  If the average Dutch speaker became really
aware of this level of intererest, perhaps this would increase their
confidence in their own language, and this would make them less uptight with
regard to granting official status to the regional languages of their
country.

What I am trying to suggest here is "Don't underestimate the power of
foreigners' interest, but take advantage of it!"

Furthermore, I wonder if the same applies to regional and minority
languages.  In the case of Lowlands Saxon (Low German) of Germany, for
example, the predominant assumption is that it is an internal, regional
affair, that no one outside the region and country would be interested in
it, that it is at best something some local German speakers want to learn
(which is why language courses are being offered mostly to adult German
speakers).  I have told some of the people on the "inside" that, judging by
the large number of email inquiries I get, there is a considerable number of
non-Germans who are interested in the language and wish to learn it but are
deterred by having to do it through the medium of German.  My argument that
there is demand for LS resources and courses in English tend to be dismissed
as based on aberrations, wishful thinking and overestimation.

Am I alone in assuming that international attention is potentially condusive
to strengthening the image and thus the survival chances of a language?

I would be interested in your thoughts on these matters.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 28 22:23:40 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:23:40 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Onomastica" 2004.06.28 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.28.JUN.2004.152340.0700.>

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From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
Subject: Etymology

Dear Ron and other Lowland fans,

At the tender age of nine I moved into the New York Township of Mannheim.
Dad said that "Mann" was the German for "man" and "Heim" the German for
"home", but couldn't explain why the Township to the northeast was called
"Oppenheim".

Totally innocent of any language but third grade English, I convinced myself
it had to be Oppenheim because it was across the river from us. Also it
consisted of some marginal farms in the threshhold of my beloved Adirondack
mountains, while our side had a slipper factory, the "Hal Schumacher"
baseball bat factory, a lumber mill, churches, bars and other modern
conveniences.

I still wonder about those names. Can anybody help me?

Jorge Potter

----------

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

Hi, Jorge!

This _Oppen-_ in Central German place names (perhaps also _Offen-_, as in
_Offenbach_, farther south) tends to refer either to "upper" or to a
sacrificial cult center (cf. German _Opfer_ 'sacrifice' < _opfern_ 'to
sacrifice' < Old German _opfarôn_ < Late Church Latin _operârî_ 'to
work/operate').  I don't know which one it is.

German shift: -p- > -pp- > -pf- (> -ff-)

_Heim_ refers to 'settlement', 'village', and has numerous equivalent in
Germanic and indeed Indo-European, amongst others English _-ham_.

Strictly speaking, this does not fall into the Lowlands area, but I'll let
it slide.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 28 22:25:51 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:25:51 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.28 (03) [E]
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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.23 (01) [E]

Dear Kenneth, Reinhard & Gabriele & All,

Subject: Formal & Informal Language.

Reflecting on our last correspondence, Kenneth, I am moved to raise certain
points of interest.
Although I aver that Afrikaans is at present represented by only one
dialect, there are nonetheless significant differences between various kinds
of Afrikaans.

These differences are the product of Formal & Informal, Deferential &
Intimate. This is surely not peculiar to Afrikaans. I would rather believe
that English has lost most of what the Afrikaner takes for granted in this
regard. For those ( this probably excludes most of us) who wonder what I
mean, I would say this. Deferential Formal Speech uses 'U' in place of the
English 'You', Intimate Informal, 'Jou'  for the English 'Thee' (long gone),
& so on. The Deferential Informal abandons personal pronouns, using rather
constructions like this 'Will Mama do such-&-such' instead of 'Mama, will
you do such-&-such. Etc. There are a host of such differences.

& then there is the deliberate affectation of informal as opposed to formal
vocabulary. Much of this is slang known & used to a greater or lesser degree
across the whole language spectrum, in selected social contexts. It is a
universal phenomenon, I know. Some slang usages can be lasting, & come
gradually into formal use, but most is ephemeral, & changes from decade to
decade. We have the case that Grikwas of the older generation confess with
outrage that they don't understand the younger. On the other hand, the
features accredited to their grandparent's 'dialect' is as obscure to them
as it is to us, failing study. It isn't dialect lost, it is slang.

There is the inclination common to all polyglottal communities, to borrow
casual terminology from other language groups, but to abandon them in formal
context. Some Czech language students came over to S. Africa a while ago,
who had acquired fluency in Afrikaans, & I heard them speak; they had.
However, they complained that when conversation became casual, they lost the
thread - there was too much English in it, & they hadn't enough English.

When people accredit the Grikwa, or Koranna, or Nama, or Rehaboth Baster, or
Namakwalander, or Namibia Afrikaner, or Botswana Afrikaner, with a
'Dialect', I am moved to wonder to what extent the Scholars in question
augered in on Informal Speech & casual language, the ephemera, or borrowings
(just for the occasion)
from another tongue.

Certainly, these features will in the future lead to divergent dialects, but
I think not yet.

Here is something from R. K. Belcher:

DISTRICT SIX

Ma is dood
onder 'n trein.
Ons leef van brood
en Pa van wyn.

Hoit gamat, kappit kappit eit
want môre is jy alles kwyt.
Spoeg in die lug en sing jong, sing
want die lewe is 'n bitter ding.

Georgie Peorgie pudding and pie -
hoe sê jy ek het God verraai?
Ou klong, you sommer make me cry.
Hoes daai?

Mary had
a little lamb,
its feets was white
like snow.
hul het hom toe
mos vasgenael,
en kyk
hoe lyk
hy
nou.

This is touted by some as dialect, but not by me. The party that would speak
this way in the intimacy of his drinking buddies could equally well speak
fluent Algemeen Beskaafde Afrikaans in the Magistrate's Court (for example).
All the language found here could with the same facility be used by a  white
Transvaaler, in the appropriate context.

'Hoit' is peculiar to the Boland, by any racial group, but a Freestater will
use it in a 'Cape' anecdote. 'Gamat' is a group nickname for a Cape Malay
(short for Muhammad), as 'Taffy' in England applies to a Welshman. 'Kappit
kappit' 'step it step it'  is slang; an urge to dance: These days though, a
ghoffel is more likely to say 'get down'. 'Eit' is 'casual' for 'uit'.
'Klong' is the term for a Cape Malay of the previous generations, & a
Transvaaler would know & use it too. 'You "sommer" make me cry.' is English,
with an Afrikaans interpolation: In both directions, it is common practice
across the board. Notice how much English there is? It might be another
language, though, like Nama. As with the rather more polyglottal Englishman
of previous generations, who used a lot of French in his common
conversation, this had no bearing on the English he spoke.

Yrs Sincerely
Mark.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 28 23:07:36 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:07:36 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.28 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.28.JUN.2004.160736.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language use" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language use
>
> Let us take the example of Dutch.  Quite often we hear about people
feeling
> that the Dutch language is in one way or another being threatened, even

I think the Dutch case is a good demonstration of the fact that just because
a language has the government's backing and an education system doesn't mean
it's future is guaranteed!

Ultimately, after history has ran it's course and you look back on dead
languages, the only thing that really matters in language survival is its
status in the eyes of its speakers. Official backing and a place in the
national curriculum certainly raises its status, but it's the raised status
that results in the language thriving, not the official backing itself. An
example worth considering is Latin and Greek, which remained well alive in
Britain until quite recently, simply on the strength of their status making
them seem important to include as part of a man's education. And yes, I do
mean a "man's" education - low-status languages like French and Spanish were
only taught to women!

A long time ago on Lowlands-L, John Magnus said that Shetlanders who went on
holiday to Wales considered the Welsh to be rude because they spoke Welsh
even when they (the Shetlanders) were present. Whereas Shetlanders are
polite, and only speak English in the presence of off-islanders.

It's no surprise though, that Shetlandic has been dying a dramatic death in
the past few decades, while Welsh continues to thrive. The real difference
is that the Welsh want to speak Welsh, and Shetlanders want to speak
English. The Welsh aren't rude, all they're doing is according their
language proper language status, while the Shetlanders call their language
"dialect". Yes, the Welsh language has a lot of official backing and a place
in the educational system, but this is only because Welsh speakers struggled
for it. I think that if Shetlanders had tried as hard, the language would
have the same recognition. But their "polite" image in front of visitors is
more important to them than their language.

It's very difficult getting even knowledgeable people to accept this idea.
For example, when I said that Cornish died out because Cornish speakers
wanted their children to speak English, the idea was dismissed as
"laughable". Activists keep saying that Welsh, Scots, Cornish &c are
"oppressed by the English". In fact, most English people never even think
about Scots, Cornish and Welsh, let alone attempt to oppress them. It's
entirely a question of the status the speakers of the language accord to it.

In the case of BSL it's a little different. There seems little chance of the
language dying out simply because many of it's best speakers simply _must_
use it. This automatically accords it a high status in the eyes of its
speakers. It's also different from other languages in that oral cultures
find the speakers living and using the language in their midst, and so
active attempts are made to suppress it. The ancient Greeks tried to supress
it by infanticide, Alexander Graham Bell tried to suppress it by eugenics,
the medical profession has tried to suppress it by finding cures, and the
teaching profession has tried to suppress it by brute force. But nothing
will wipe out a language that its speakers have decided they just have to
use.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Thanks for the thought-provoking input above, Sandy!

I totally agree with your statement that the speakers' attitudes, more than
institutionalization, are of paramount importance for the continued use of a
language.

I would go as far as including "heirs" along with speakers.  This follows
from your thread of speakers who "must" use a certain language.  This may no
longer seem that strange if you consider the fact that certain languages,
ancestral languages, even though technically extinct as native languages,
continue to be used and even thrive because they are inextricably connected
with and even basic to belief systems, religions.

You mentioned Latin, which is one example, representing Roman Catholicism,
still being used as a lingua franca, not only in writing but also verbally.

The roles of New Testament Greek and Old Church Slavonic are as important in
Eastern Orthodoxy, though they probably are not used in casual conversation.

Another example is Sanskrit, which "officially" changed from a living
language to a liturgical one in about the 4th century B.C.E., being still
widely studied, mostly in Hinduism and to a somewhat lesser degree also in
Mahâyâna Buddhism.  Similar to Latin in the Roman Catholic world, it is
still used as a literary language and is still spoken as a second language,
especially as a lingua franca.  To some Indians this is preferable to having
Hindi as a national language, since it does not favor a certain ethnic
group.  In fact, Sanskrit is one of India's official languages (with Hindi,
English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam,
Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri and Sindhi).  In India there are
even Sanskrit radio programs, outside of India only offered by Deutsche
Welle as a part of their Hindi programming (though it appears to be
discontinued now).  Many Sanskrit courses offered in India and elsewhere
include the teaching of conversational skills, using neologisms for which
native Sanskrit compounding has been utilized.

Classical Arabic enjoys the highest of prestige and is promised a rosy
future because it is basic to Islam, even though it is the native dialect of
virtually no one.

As I mentioned a while ago, Hebrew has never totally ceased to be a living
language.  It was still used in literature and in international Jewish
communication even prior to the birth of Zionism, though it was extinct as a
native language.

All of this is due to high prestige, sacred language status, among the
speakers' heirs.

The case of Hebrew shows us that on that basis a language can even regain
native language status.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 29 14:27:13 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 07:27:13 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.29 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.29.JUN.2004.072713.0700.>

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.28 (04) [E]


Sandy wrote:
"But their "polite" image in front of visitors is more important to them
than their language. It's very difficult getting even knowledgeable people
to accept this idea. For example, when I said that Cornish died out because
Cornish speakers wanted their children to speak English, the idea was
dismissed as "laughable". Activists keep saying that Welsh, Scots, Cornish
&c are "oppressed by the English". In fact, most English people never even
think about Scots, Cornish and Welsh, let alone attempt to oppress them.
It's entirely a question of the status the speakers of the language accord
to it."

Sandy sets up two inter-related arguments here: 1) that the status of
languages is entirely the responsibility of their speakers and 2) that, in
the British context, the English State (for that is what it is) should
commensurably be absolved of any fault for the state of Welsh, Scots,
Cornish et al.

It is certainly the case that Welsh speakers are more proud of their
language and more pro-active about it, and that Welsh has secured a certain
prestige in Wales as a consequence of pride, refusal to bow to social mores
(unlike the Shetlanders), and civil disobedience. In that sense, Sandy is
correct. I have long said that language activists should stand up to
metropolitan language speakers in social situations (the pub cliché is
always a good one), vandalise or destroy public signage in 'imperial'
language, and respond to official forms in their own, rather than the
'imperial', language.

However, Sandy tendentiously omits the basic facts that, in Britain, the
State, which is dominated demographically by the English core, has always
been against local language promotion. The idea that the State can be
absolved of its continuing campaign against local languages is wrong-headed.
Firstly, it ignores the basic fact that the State is the main location of
linguistic prestige (e.g., public signage, courts, government, schools,
hospitals, etc.), and that a State refusing to concede linguistic rights is
therefore protecting the linguistic hegemony of the 'imperial' language*
and, quite frankly, short of replacing roadsigns with local language
equivalents (which will themselves be replaced by the State as a challenge
to its authority), setting up private schools, hospitals and shadow
governments that use the local language - and I cannot imagine any language
community can afford that - language activists find it almost impossible to
challenge the State. In thi s context, Sandy's absolution of the sins of the
State is puzzling.

*A good example of this is the way the British Government continues to
abrogate its obligation toward Irish (and Ulster Scots) under the Good
Friday Agreement - the banality of inaction.

Go raibh maith agat,

Criostóir.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 29 21:34:27 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 14:34:27 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.29 (02) [D/E/French]
Message-ID: <TUE.29.JUN.2004.143427.0700.>

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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.28 (01) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language use
> Furthermore, the influential organization Onze Taal (Our Language) appears
to fear that official recognition of regional languages of the Netherlands
as separate from Dutch chips away at Dutch, reducing the number of native
speakers and national as well as international significance and prestige
of Dutch.  It regrets that Lowlands Saxon and Limburgish have been
officially recognized, and it may have played a role in the recent
governmental refusal to officially recognize Zeelandic.

This battle is even going on in France, quotation below:

Regards,
Roger

From: Alliance Régionale Flandre-Artois-Hainaut
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 10:16 AM
Subject: LETTRE OUVERTE / OPEN BRIEF

La Gorgue, Pays-Bas français, le 03 juin 2004.
De Gorgue, Franse-Nederlanden, 3 juni 2004

L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT
Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESIË-HENEGOUWEN

�  Monsieur Jean Pierre DECOOL,
maire de Brouckerque/Broekkerke, conseiller général, député

Aan mijnheer Jean-Pierre Decool,,
Burgemeester van Broekkerke, algemeen raadslid, afgevaardigde,

Monsieur le maire, Monsieur le député,
Mijnheer de burgemeester, Mijnheer de afgevaardigde,

L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT vient d'apprendre par la presse
(Le Journal des Flandres du 27/05/04), la création d'une « Akademie Voor
Nuuze Vlaamsche Tale - Académie pour notre langue flamande », ainsi que le
patronage que vous lui apportez.

Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESIË-HENEGOUWEN heeft zojuist vernomen
door de pers (Le Journal des Flandres du 27/05/04), de oprichting van een «
Akademie Voor Nuuze Vlaamsche Tale », evenals het beschermheerschap dat u
het verleent.

Cette initiative, telle qu'elle a été rapportée dans cet article, suscite de
notre part un certain nombre de réflexions :

Dit initiatief, zoals het aangehaald werd in het artikel, verwekt bij ons
een aantal opmerkingen :

 1. Qui dit « Académie », dit uniformisation, fixation de règles. Ceci est
possible pour une langue écrite de large communication : la Taalunie a
entrepris cet effort avec succès pour les différentes variantes flamande,
limbourgeoise, hollandaise, etc. du néerlandais standard (AN ou Algemeen
Nederlands). Mais quel sens lui donner pour un dialecte , par définition non
écrit, connaissant des disparités d'un coin du Westhoek �  l'autre ? Quel «
vlaemsch » ou « vlaamsche » va l'emporter ? Celui de Bray-Dunes ? Celui de
Belle/Bailleul ? Faudra-t-il faire une synthèse générale ?... qui sera
parlée par qui ? Problème de fond : comment fixer l'orthographe d'un...
dialecte ?
Sans prétendre que ces questions sont nécessairement insurmontables, avouons
qu'elles sont de taille !

 1. Wie « academie » zegt, zegt gelijkvormigheid, vast gelegde regels. Dit
is mogelijk voor een geschreven taal met grote kennisgeving : De taalunie
heeft een grote inspanning met succes geleverd voor het Vlaams, het
Limburgs, het Hollands, enz., die gewijzigde vormen zijn van het Algemeen
Nederlands. Maar welke betekenis geef je een dialect, per definitie niet
geschreven, met de verschillen die gekend zijn van de ene uithoek van de
Westhoek naar de andere ? Welk « Vlaemsch » of « Vlaamsche » zal de overhand
behouden ? Het Vlaams uit Bray-Duinen of dat van Belle ? Of zou er een
algemene samenvatting moeten gemaakt worden ?...Dat gesproken zal worden
door wie ? Diepgaand probleem : Hoe een spelling vastleggen van een ...
dialect.
Zonder te beweren dat deze vragen noodzakelijk onoverkomelijk zijn, moet er
toegegeven worden dat ze zwaar doorwegen !

 2. La défense du flamand fait partie du programme ([lire]) de l'ALLIANCE
REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT.
Ce programme reprend les dispositions du
Manifeste des Flamands de France, co-signé par l'ensemble des associations
culturelles de Flandre française en 1982, et recommande « l'enseignement de
la langue populaire flamande... dans le cadre d'une pédagogie adaptée »,
dans les écoles maternelles et dans le primaire (c'est-� -dire, sous forme
orale de comptines, chansons, saynètes, poésies, etc.), avec passage rapide,
voire simultané, au néerlandais écrit. La création d'une « Akademie » doit
œuvrer pour ce type d'enseignement.

 2. De verdediging van het Vlaams maakt deel uit van het programma ([lezen])
van Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESIË-HENEGOUWEN.
Dit programma herneemt
de stellingen van het manifest van de Vlamingen uit Frankrijk, mede
ondertekend in1982 door het geheel van Vlaamse verenigingen in Frankrijk.
« Het onderwijs van de volkse Vlaamse taal... in een aangepast pedagogisch
kader », in kleuter en lager onderwijs wordt aanbevolen, (Dit wil zeggen
onder mondelinge vorm van verhalen, liedjes, toneelstukken, gedichten,
enz.), met een vlugge of gelijklopende overgang naar het geschreven
Nederlands. De oprichting van een « academie » moet werken naar deze vorm
van onderwijs.

 3. L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT proteste contre toute
déclaration visant �  présenter le néerlandais comme langue étrangère. Qu'une
telle affirmation émane d'autorités parisiennes est une chose, qu'elle soit
reprise par certains Flamands d'ici n'est guère compréhensible, et contribue
�  nous maintenir dans le ghetto linguistique et par conséquent économique
des frontières d'Etat, ceci �  l'heure où la construction européenne
relativise partout ailleurs ces frontières ! La « schreve » n'est pas un
rideau de fer éternel ! Ne voudrait-on que l'Anglais comme seule langue nous
permettant de nous ouvrir vers le Nord, comme l'a dénoncé le sénateur
Jacques Legendre dans son dernier rapport sur l'enseignement des langues
vivantes en France ?

 3. Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESIË-HENEGOUWEN
 is tegen elke verklaring
die het Nederlands afschildert als een vreemde taal. Dat deze bevestiging
voortvloeit uit de Parijse overheid is een punt, maar dat deze gedachtegang
overgenomen wordt door enkele Vlamingen is onverstaanbaar en houdt het
taalkundig getto in stand met gevolgen voor de economie op de grenzen van de
staat. En dit, vandaag, waar de Europese constructie al zijn grenzen
relativeert. De « schreve » is geen eeuwig durend ijzeren gordijn ! Zou men
willen dat het Engels de enige taal is om ons open te stellen naar het
noorden, zoals de senator Jacques Legendre aanklaagde in zijn laatste
verslag over het onderwijs van de levende talen in Frankrijk.

 4. L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUTdéfend une politique
d'ouverture culturelle et économique passant par l'enseignement prioritaire
du néerlandais, ainsi que la municipalité de BELLE/BAILLEUL l'a bien
compris. Le néerlandais, forme littéraire du flamand langue régionale, est
AUSSI une langue régionale et notre langue HISTORIQUE. C'est la seule langue
qui puisse nous donner accès �  notre propre Histoire, dont nous réclamons
aussi l'enseignement dans nos établissements. Les écrits des grands auteurs
issus du Westhoek, Michiel De Swaen, Andries Steven, Pieter Datheen (qui a
publié une traduction des psaumes encore utilisée aux Pays-Bas), ou même
d'auteurs plus contemporains (JB Van Grevelinghe), les tonnes d'archives
inexploitées, les catéchismes, la toponymie, etc., tout cela est en
néerlandais de l'époque et du lieu, avec, certes, des graphies et des
tournures particulières, mais du néerlandais , même si chacun s'accorde �
l'appeler « flamand » !

 4. Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESIË-HENEGOUWENverdedigt een open
politiek inzake cultuur en economie met aandacht voor het prioritaire
onderwijs van de Nederlandse taal, dit heeft het gemeentebestuur van BELLE
goed verstaan. Het Nederlands, De literaire vorm van onze Vlaamse
streektaal, is OOK een streektaal en onze HISTORISCHE taal. Het is de enige
taal die ons toegang kan geven tot onze eigen geschiedenis, dat ook
onderwezen moet worden in onze instellingen. De geschriften van de grote
auteurs uit de Westhoek, Michiel De Swaen, Andries Steven, Pieter Datheen
(die een vertaling uitgegeven heeft van psalmen die nog gebruikt worden in
Nederland), of zelfs nog hedendaagsere auteurs (JB Van Grevelinghe), de
tonnen ongebruikte archieven, De catechismussen, de toponymie, enz, dit
alles is in het Nederlands van die tijd, met eigen uitzonderlijke
vervormingen en schrijfwijzen, maar toch Nederlands, zelfs al noemden ze het
« Vlaams » !

 5. Qu'il y ait des correspondances �  établir entre le « vlaemsch » et le
néerlandais, est évident. L'enrichissement sera réciproque ! C'est la
complémentarité langue de communion et langue de large communication...
encore faut-il réhabiliter le néerlandais comme langue historique et ne pas
mener notre population dans l'impasse anti-néerlandaise. C'est en effet ce
que pourrait laisser croire le choix d'une graphie volontairement (?) en
même temps que partiellement (!), différente du néerlandais : ex : «
Akademie » s'écrit en néerlandais avec un C et non un K. Pourquoi «
Vlaamsch » et non pas « vlaemsch » admis par tous ? Mais alors, « Nuus »
devrait faire « Nuze » et non « Nuuze ». Pourquoi « tale » et non pas «
taal » ? Ces quelques contradictions dans le titre de l' académie nous
étonnent : s'agit-il d'erreurs d'appréciations ou d'un nouveau «
sectarisme » anti-langue néerlandaise ?

 5. Het is evident dat de overeenkomst tussen het « Vlaemsch » en het
Nederlands moet hersteld worden. De verrijking zal wederzijds zijn ! Het is
de aanvulling tussen de gemeenschap taal en de taal van de communicatie...
men moet het Nederlands in eer herstellen als historische taal van de streek
en het volk niet in een doodlopend straatje leiden naar het anti-Nederlands.
De vrijwillige Vlaamse schrijfwijze komt in zekere mate geloofwaardig over
(?) en tegelijk maar gedeeltelijk (!) verschillend van het Nederlands: vb.:
« Akademie » in het Nederlands « academie », waarom « nuuze » en niet «
nuze ». Waarom « tale » en niet « taal », zijn enkele tegenstellingen in de
titel van de academie die ons verbazen. Gaat het hier over onwetendheid of
over een nieuwe vorm van « sektarisme » tegen de Nederlandse taal?

 6. Comment enfin, faire accéder des non flamandophones de plus en plus
nombreux (nos conjoints ou enfants parfois) �  la culture flamande ? Par la
petite porte de « nuuze vlaamsche tale » ? Pour communiquer entre quelques
uns mais avec qui d'autre ? Pour lire quelques textes traduits, mais quels
autres grands textes ? Et pour rédiger quoi ? Nous avons l'avantage de
partager une langue parlée par plus de 22 millions de voisins performants,
disposant de journaux, radio, TV, universités, enseignants, etc., langue qui
offre de formidables avantages au regard de l'emploi et des échanges
économiques, ou encore de l'apprentissage de l'anglais ou de l'allemand. Le
néerlandais, langue véhiculaire, est notre langue de culture et un atout
essentiel �  développer pour notre avenir économique, le tourisme, etc. Les
Flamands belges l'ont bien compris, et ont, �  l'issue d'une démarche
identique �  celle que nous proposons, réussi �  sauver ET leur langue de
large communication (le néerlandais), ET leurs dialectes toujours bien
vivants !

 6. Hoe moeten we, eindelijk, toegang verlenen aan de niet Vlaamstaligen,
die steeds talrijker worden, tot de Vlaamse cultuur ? Langs het klein
deurtje van « Nuuze Vlaamsche Tale » ? Om te communiceren in een beperkt
groepje, en wie anders nog ? Om enkele reeds vertaalde teksten te lezen,
maar welke andere grote teksten? En om wat onder woorden te brengen ? Wij
hebben het voordeel om een taal te spreken die gesproken wordt door 22
miljoen bekwame buren, die kranten bezitten, radio, televisie,
universiteiten, onderwijzers, enz., een taal die ongelooflijke voordelen
bied op vlak van werk en economische uitwisselingen, of voor het leren van
Engels en Duits. Het Nederlands, voertaal, is de taal van onze cultuur en
een essentiële troef voor de ontwikkeling van onze toekomst op economisch-,
toeristisch vlak, enz. . De Belgische Vlamingen hebben dit goed begrepen, na
een zelfde poging zoals wij voorstellen, geslaagd in het redden EN van hun
brede communicatie taal (Nederlands) EN van hun nog steeds levende
dialecten!

L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT dénonce �  la fois :

Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESIË-HENEGOUWEN klaagt tegelijk aan :

- la discrimination faite par l'Etat français vis-� -vis du flamand comme
attentatoire �  l'identité des Flamands de France.

- de discriminatie gemaakt door de Franse staat tegenover de Vlamingen met
schending van de identiteit van de Vlamingen uit Frankrijk.

- le repli frileux sur l'hexagone qu' entraîneraient la coupure avec le
néerlandais et l'insuffisance d'efforts pour sa promotion.
 - Het kouwelijk terugtrekken naar het hexagone die de kloof met het
Nederlands groot houdt en onvoldoende inspanning levert voor de bevordering
ervan.

L'Etat a un devoir de réparation vis-� -vis de la langue historique que
constitue le néerlandais. Ce devoir doit se traduire par une action
volontariste qui n'existe pas actuellement et qu'il nous faut obtenir, par
nos actions coordonnées, ici, dans notre Région des Pays-Bas français.

De staat heeft een plichtsherstel tegenover de historische taal waarvan het
Nederlands deel uit maakt. Deze plicht moet groeien uit de vrije wil, die
vandaag nog niet bestaat, maar die door ons kan bekomen worden. Dit door
samengaande acties, hier, in onze streek, de Franse-Nederlanden.

Nous vous invitons cordialement �  en débattre.

We nodigen u van harte uit voor een gedachten wisseling.

Restant �  votre disposition, et au nom de l'ALLIANCE REGIONALE
FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT, je vous prie d'agréer, Monsieur le maire, Monsieur
le député, l'expression de mes sentiments flamands et européens.

Blijvend tot uw beschikking, en in naam van het STREEK VERBOND
VLAANDEREN-ARTESIË-HENEGOUWEN, Mijnheer de burgemeester, Mijnheer de
afgevaardigde, Onze oprechte Vlaamse en Europese groeten.

Hoogachtend,

Pour l’ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT
Régis DE MOL

Voor het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESIË-HENEGOUWEN
Régis DE MOL

ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT
STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESIË-HENEGOUWEN
BP2 – 59253 LA GORGUE

http://www.streek-verbond.org
http://www.alliance-regionale.org

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 14:29:27 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 07:29:27 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.072927.0700.>

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From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language use"

on 28.06.2004 8.07 PM, R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Quite often we hear about people feeling that the Dutch language is in one
way
> or another being threatened, even under siege.

[snip]

> Dutch speakers of the Netherlands have an international reputation for
being
> more than willing to use languages other than Dutch -- typically English,
> German and/or French -- not only with foreigners who actually require the
> help but more often than not with those that do not require or want the
> help, including people who desparately try to learn Dutch.  Recently I
have
> bumped into a number of Americans and other nationals that have lived in
the
> Netherlands and now speak good or even excellent Dutch and that have a
> continued interest in Dutch and Netherlands culture.  Each one told me
that
> it often felt like an exaspirating uphill battle, especially in Amsterdam,
> because people would automatically address them in English, would
sometimes
> even answer in English when addressed in Dutch.

I have had much the same experience in Flanders. I am only at the
"intermediate" learning level, but I have lived here in Vlaams-Brabant about
a year now, though I have had extended visits may times before. (I am
originally from the USA and am married to a Fleming.) I quite frequently
have absurd conversations in stores and restaurants where I speak Dutch
(which my wife tells me is perfectly fine) and the Fleming speaks English
(or worse, for me, French). And I have also had Flemings in the village I
live in (which is quite rural) express absolute disbelief that I am even
trying to learn Dutch at all. (Primarily they are under the impression that
it is much too difficult for foreigners to learn at all.) My "Spreek
Nederlands a.u.b., ik wil oefenen!" t-shirt helps :-)

Some of the non-Anglophones and non-Francophones in my Dutch course have
told me that they will often claim to not know English or French (they
usually know one or the other) when in public so as to force the native
speakers to use Dutch. As a Yank, I don't have that luxury :-\

Having said this, however, I do find that generally speaking Flemings do
appreciate the fact that I am learning, and once they realise I am serious,
they tend to switch to Dutch and put up with my mistake-ridden attempts with
diplomatic good humor. Some will even offer corrections (which I
appreciate). However, my experience in the Netherlands has been quite the
opposite. I have had Dutch professional colleagues tell me I shouldn't waste
my time since "English is an international language". When I have expressed
writing an article in my field (Egyptology) in Dutch for Dutch journals, I
was similarly told not to waste time with it and publish in a "scientific"
(i.e, English, French, or German) journal. It is my understanding that many
graduate university programs in both Flanders and the Netherlands teach only
or mainly in English (mainly in the sciences and medicine).

I have had two extended courses in Dutch now. It has been interesting to me
to compare the attitudes of the instructors (both Flemings). The first is a
Germanic philologist. He uses a text book and media series that is published
here in Belgium and teaches a "General Belgian Dutch". It isn't a Flemish
dialect of course, but does at least recognise there are often significant
differences in pronunciation and lexicon between the Flemish and Dutch
varieties of the language. He was also open to teaching some more dialect
terms, at least those that are used more generally in the Vlaams-Brabant and
Antwerpen provinces (i.e., the kind of thing you could likely hear on TV or
read in a national news paper). One thing he would not teach, however, was
how to conjugate verbs with "gij". This is, in my opinion, very unfortunate
as you *will* hear it everyday in Flanders, so it might be useful to know,
even if you don't actually use it yourself. (And if anyone knows of a book
or website with it, please contact me offlist.)

My second instructor was quite the opposite. While she used a "General
Belgian Dutch" pronunciation, she used texts and media published in the
Netherlands. She insisted that this and only this was appropriate for Dutch
as a second language instruction and everything else was mere "dialect".
(For other list memebers, this is about the equivalent of being taught
Standard *British* English as a second language in the *USA*.) It was really
absurd as we were quite frequently obligated to learn vocabulary that is
never used here (or rarely), as even the instructor admitted. (Example: she
would take off points if we referred to a a student's flat as a "kot" rather
than a "studentenkamer"; this is a problem when you are living in the
university town of Leuven and only "kots" are advertised for rent.) The
audio material was also quite difficult for a number of students who had
little experience with the pronunciation of Dutchmen; it can be quite
incomprehensible to a learner that only hears Flemings on a daily basis.
This sort of attitude is not helpful when the student actually wants to
communicate outside of the classroom. True, he will be understood (but will
be immediately marked as foreign), but the student will not necessarily
understand what is being said to him either.

(I should note that these courses are designed to give foreigners a working
knowledge of the language for everyday use, and not, for example, reading
literature.)

> The impression this gives the foreign visitor has an extreme in a snippet
of
> conversation I recently picked up at an airport, where an American woman
told
> others, "Now that the Dutch are changing over to English ..."  I had to
> eavesdrop to find out if she really meant what I thought she meant, and
she
> did!

I am not at all surprised. I have met both Yanks and Brits living in the
Netherlands for over 20 years that haven't made any attempt to learn Dutch.
Why not? Absolutely no practical need to do so. I suppose there are similar
examples in Brussel and the region, but I doubt you would find such a
foreigner in Antwerp and elsewhere in Flanders. Part of that attitude is
stubbornness or laziness on the part of the foreigners, but I lay blame for
accepting and facilitating that attitude on the natives.

Cheers,

Troy

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 18:37:23 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 11:37:23 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.113723.0700.>

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From: denis dujardin <dujardin at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (01) [E]

Great letter from Troy!
That really is the only attitude which we Flemish do appreciate, because we
had a history of fighting for our language. (The Dutch never had to do
this).
We still have to fight for it in the area around Brussels.
People like Troy are more than aware that this area is Flemish spoken,
whereas a big number of immigrants in that area seem to be too lazy to
wonder what the cultural context is, in which they live. So they just switch
to French, helping that part of the French spoken community in that area
(Flemish) who never tried to adapt to the native speakers and highhartedly
continue to speak their language, regardless of the social and historical
context they went to live in.
Congratulations Troy!

denis dujardin
kortrijk
west-flanders.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn
Subject: Language use

Thanks to everyone for their informative and thought-provoking input in this
thread so far.

In my last response I indicated that I agreed with Sandy's statements.
While I still basically agree with the general tenet of his message, I keep
waffling back and forth in my mind about the statement that language loyalty
and revival depend upon the speakers' desire for it.

I still basically agree with it.  However, I wonder if the speakers' desire
cannot be engendered by "activists."  After all, there are the frequently
encountered phenomena "linguistic inferiority complex" and "linguistic
defeatism" (the latter stemming from an underlying sense of powerlessness).
I am pretty sure that in our area of interest this applies particularly to
Scots and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), less so to Westerlauwer Frisian, and
I am not sure about Flemish, Zeelandic and Limburgish.  Outside our area of
interest, I have come across this sort of attitude among some Yiddish
speakers, where there is strong personal emotional attachment and on the
other hand a sense that the language is somehow inferior and/or is
reminiscent or symbolic of an era and of types of circumstances and
attitudes that are remembered as bitter-sweet and belong to the past.

In cases of non-power languages (i.e., minority and regional languages) it
is more often than not the case that privately speakers do have the desire
to see their languages gain or regain greater prestige and thus stand a
chance of being reinvigorated, but they feel defeatist in the current
climate.   Oftentimes, after decades or centuries of political and/or social
opression, they themselves have come to believe that their languages,
despite their love for them, are inferior and are bound to die without
anyone "out there" caring.  (I have heared such speakers refer to their own
native languages as "jargon" or "slang," even as "common" in the sense of
"vulgar.")

In such cases I can see "activists" (preferably many of which come from
various walks of life with which other speakers can identify) playing the
role not only of language assertion agents but also of moral support agents,
convincing the defeatist average speaker that the language *is* worthy of
status and preservation, and that its extinction is *not* inevitable.

I can furthermore see a degree of usefulness in international attention,
where non-locals and non-nationals study and use such languages, which would
signal to the average speaker that there *are* people that know and care,
not only at home.  Our own Yasuji Waki's recent visit from Japan to Northern
Germany and all the media attention his interest in "Platt" (i.e., Lowlands
Saxon) received there is a case in point.  Sure, many people's first
reaction may well have been that it was a case of "exotic aberration."
However, it may have at least made them think, and further cases of the sort
might reinforce the notion that outsiders do care.  Might this not serve as
a morale booster?  I remember visiting Denmark as a teenager.  People
thought it really peculiar that a German boy (who did not belong to the
German minority of Denmark) learned Danish and made a real effort.  I even
ended up on the radio!  At the same time even more fuss was being made about
a young Frenchman who spoke rather good Danish; he even ended up on TV.
Since that time, Danes have encountered loads of foreigners, not only
immigrants, that know Danish, and I have a feeling this is now far less
peculiar to them then at that time.

What do you think about this, folks?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 18:39:01 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 11:39:01 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2004.06.30 (03) [D/E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.113901.0700.>

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From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (01) [E]

Tony schreef:

> read in a national news paper). One thing he would not teach, however, was
> how to conjugate verbs with "gij". This is, in my opinion, very
unfortunate
> as you *will* hear it everyday in Flanders, so it might be useful to know,
> even if you don't actually use it yourself. (And if anyone knows of a book
> or website with it, please contact me offlist.)

Wel, ik reageer even op de lijst zelf, aangezien andere leerders er wellicht
baat bij hebben.
Ik heb er even de ANS (algemene Nederlandse spraakkunst) bijgehaald, en die
vermeldt (2de druk) de (regelmatige) vormen op pagina 83 en 84.
In de tegenwoordige tijd: de -t vorm als bij "hij" (de t verdwijnt niet in
de inversie):
ge loopt, loopt ge? (zowel enkelvoud als meervoud)
[as an historical aside: gij/ge is the same as English "ye", (and Northern
Dutch jij, Low Saxon ji etc.)
and originally a plural form (like "vous" in French); originally it also was
"jullie komt"..]
ge vindt, vindt ge? etc.
In de verleden tijd wordt zwak gewoon -te of -de gebruikt:
ge werkte, ge leefde.
Sterk behoudt men een -t, hetgeen er vreemd uitziet: gij vondt, gij liept,
gij kwaamt
(met een uit het meervoud afkomstige lange a, vergelijk wij kwamen).
Als enkelvoud en meervoud sterk zijn en een verschillende lengte hebben
geldt dit steeds,
dus ook "ge naamt" bijv. (nam - namen). Steeds geldt dit voor enkelvoud en
meervoud.

Groeten,

Henno Brandsma

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 21:40:54 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:40:54 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.144054.0700.>

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From: denis dujardin <dujardin at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (02) [E]

Joining this discussion I would like to point out that the Brussels-area
problem has nothing to do with defaitism or lack of interest in ones own
language.
This is due to immigration of a big number of other-spoken (French)
immigrants through several years, which refuse to speak the language of
the area.
If they get quite numerous they unite in a language-thematic political
party to claim the right to speak their language, aiming at the official
recognition as such.
This a sort of soft Trojan-horse invasion.
The other way up is unthinkable. If you as a Flemish spoken citizen go
and live and the French spoken part of Belgium. Do not dare to speak
your language. You might be treated as an descendant of Nazi-collaborator.
It will become a hot item in Belgian politics in the years to come.

denis dujardin
kortrijk
west-flanders.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 22:55:12 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 15:55:12 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.155512.0700.>

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From: jean duvivier <duvassoc at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (04) [E]

Considering the problems of language divisiveness in Belgium as well as
Canada, it seems to me that excessive emphasis is being placed on variety of
languages and dialects. I learned Nederlandsch and Antwerpen flemish as a
child before WW2, but have forgotten most of it, because these are not used
anywhere else in the world. I do know Spanish , Portuguese and French
fluently and have been able to use them over many decades all over Latin
America and parts of Africa.
"English", whether the British or American or Canadian variety is understood
and used all over the world by educated people, even with words and accents
that vary widely (for instance Australian English).
French has lost the  international place it had in the 1700s and 1800s, and
German is only useful in Central Europe to a limited extent. I can well
appreciate local populations wanting to preserve their local usages and
dialects, but if they want to interact beyond their immediate surroundings,
they need English.
My grandparents and parents were Belgian, and still spoke some Walloon ,
which has local variants that vary from Hainault to Limburg and Luxemburg,
but anywhere else they spoke French.
There are vocabulary and usage variations in the Spanish (Castellano) spoken
in Mexico, Colombia or Argentina, but I have never encountered the kind of
extreme concern that I find expressed by some of your correspondents about
Vlaamsch or Nederlandsch. In fact in those countries, just like in Holland,
every one I dealt with spoke English.
The absurd extremes to which this concern about local languages can be
carried can be noticed when driving north to Brussels. For a while all road
signs are in French, then suddenly they are all in Flemish. Great help to
tourists and visitors ! In addition, for a small country like that having
two Parliaments and other split government agencies is totally absurd

It is an interesting footnote that the Irish, who have the most reasons to
dislike the Brits, speak and write English rather than Gaelic, and even use
"pounds" instead of "punts" when discussing their currency.

John F. Duvivier

-----

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

Thanks, Jean.

So, am I hearing you say that all of us should just forget about language
diversity, should all adopt English as our first language to get it over
with, that we should relinquish our native languages because they have
little or no international currency, that it is an entirely good thing that
the Irish have, to all intents and purposes, lost their own language and now
use the language of their former conquers?

Can you see a difference between loss of languages and the adoption of an
international auxiliary language (like English)?  Can't you retain native
language diversity and still have national and international linguae
francae?  Please bear in mind the possibility that the entrenched language
situation of Belgium is an aberration, that it may not be entirely justified
to draw internationally valid conclusions from it.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  1 17:46:29 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 10:46:29 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Administrativia" 2004.06.01 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.1.JUN.2004.104629.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Administrativia


Dear Lowlanders,

Happy June! I hope you are well and have been enjoying your various
holidays. As we approach the vacation (holiday) season in the Northern
Hemisphere, there are a few things you need to know about your
subscriptions.  You will find the information farther below.  Some of it is
relevant to "older" subscribers as well.

Many thanks again to Mathieu van Woerkom for standing in for me while I was
out recovering from surgery.

New Lowlanders
Before I get to the administrative stuff (yes, please, everyone should read
on), please let me send a very cordial welcome to all those who have joined
us since my administrative message of May 13. At the end of this message you
will find a list of their places of residence. (Please bear in mind that, as
almost always, this includes people that were not born in the cities and
countries from which they joined us.) I would like to let our New Lowlanders
know and remind our not-so-new Lowlanders that you are more than welcome
(but by no means obligated) to send us a message of introduction. If you do,
this is your opportunity to let us know what your interests are,
specifically your Lowlands-related interests. At any rate, it's wonderful
that you joined us. I hope that, like so many of us who have been here for a
while, you will come to consider yourselves members of a family rather than
just subscribers to a list. We consider each List member an individual and a
friend, not a representative of his or her country, ethnicity, language,
religion, etc. This has been working really well for us, because it has
lifted us above the conflicts, partisanships, disparities, prejudices and
hatred that unfortunately prevail throughout the world. This is not to say
that divisive matters are taboo topics. All it means is that we need to
avoid alienating and hurting other List members, given that it is safe to
assume that someone from the officially opposing side is on the List, that
we have members from countries and areas that are hostile or even at war
with each other. Let's take this opportunity to rise above it by regarding
Lowlands-L neutral ground!

TOPICS
You are quite welcome to mention interests that are not directly
Lowlands-related. Since hardly anything in this world of ours is completely
irrelevant and unrelated to other things, we often strike out beyond our
garden fence. However, we always want to keep an eye on our main area and
want to explore in what ways those "external" matters apply to or impact our
Lowlands area and what we can learn from them. Please also bear in mind that
you need not limit yourselves to language matters. Anything about culture,
history, geography, belief systems and especially interethnic, interregional
and international relations is welcome, as long as the Lowlands remain our
main focus. (We have members with specific interests, such as architecture,
music, genealogy or poetry, and their contributions are just as well
received as any.) If you have any questions, please let us know. Don't wait
and get all frustrated! As far as I know, there are no mind readers among
us. If you fear that your questions or comments would be too basic, and that
the "experts" on the List would laugh at you, please rest assured that any
relevant question is perfectly permitted, while derisive behavior is not,
would not slip by me (unless I'm on automatic pilot, in which case I would
shoulder the blame). We have been an exceptionally well-behaved group with a
familial and friendly atmosphere for over nine years now. It is very
important to us that everyone feels welcome and valued, irrespective of
knowledge, education, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual
orientation and any other background facets.  We are all here to learn,
learn together and from each other.

USE OF LANGUAGE
Preferably, you should submit postings in any one of the Lowlands language
varieties (including English). No language variety is considered better or
worse than others on this list. However, you need not limit yourselves to
Lowlands varieties, because *any* language or language variety is
permissible and welcome. Just bear in mind that the more "exotic" your
language choice the fewer members will understand you. If you use a language
that is foreign to you (including English, of course), please do not worry
about making mistakes. Once in a while I dabble in Afrikaans, Dutch,
Frisian, Scots and other languages, knowing full well that my proficiency is
wanting. One of the reasons I do this is to signal an invitation for you to
pluck up the courage to use the languages you are learning. Those of you who
use language varieties that are less commonly encountered and are of
interest to folks on this list may want to consider writing a translation
into one of the more common languages. Learners and researchers will thank
you. If you wonder what languages we are being used, please look for clues
in the subject line ([ ]).

RULES AND GUIDELINES
Everyone is expected to be familiar with our rules and guidelines:
Dutch: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regels
English: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules
German: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regeln-de
Limburgish: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regele
Low Saxon (Low German): http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=regeln
Russian: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules-ru

TEMPORARY ABSENCE
Before you take a trip or for some other reason need to stop LL-L mail
arriving for a given length of time, please write to us
(lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net) to let us know the date you want mail to be
stopped and the date you want mail to be resumed. As some of our members can
attest, this has been working really well, certainly beats the old, crude
method of signing off and on again.
   Once in a while people find themselves unsubscribed without notice. Some
of them immediately suspect the worst: that I have "booted them out" for
some infraction or other. (I know this for sure only about those that
contact me.) Please do not jump to this conclusion unless you have received
prior reprimands and warnings (which has occurred very rarely, not at all
for well over one year). If you find yourself disconnected from Lowlands-L,
the reason is most likely that the automated server has unsubscribed your
address because of repeated "bouncing," i.e., because your mail servers keep
informing the listserver that you cannot be reached or is filled above
quota. Most of the time this is due to temporary disconnection. Sometimes
the reason is that a subscriber's junk mail filter (or "spam" filter) has
not been "told" to exempt Lowlands-L mail, which is why our mailings do not
arrive in your inboxes. So, if Lowlands-L mail stops coming, please first
check your "spam" filters and adjust them if necessary, and only contact me
about the problem if all of the above fails. Should you indeed be
disconnected, please write to me or resubmit an application
(http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=subscription). I'll be more than
happy to bring you swiftly back to the fold.

PROBLEMS WITH POSTING
A few of our subscribers have occasional trouble getting their posting
submissions to arrive via the listserver. Apparently this is caused by a
combination of the "reply-to" message setup of the listserver and individual
subscribers' email program setups. So far we have not been able to identify
the exact cause and thus find out why problems occur apparently randomly.
However, our setup has been tweaked to lessen the frequency rate of such
problems. If you do not see your submissions displayed or have not heard
from me after about two days, please contact me. Alternatively, please
resend the submissions to <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net> (instead of the usual
<lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>). If you turn out to be among the
minority with this recurring problem, please use lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
from then on. Please do not send the same submissions simultaneously to both
addresses, since sorting out duplicates would be too labor-intensive for me.
     Please do not send attachments with your posting submissions, and do
not use special formatting (e.g., bold, italic, font changes), since all or
most of these will be lost by the list processor.  You can use the following
marrkings: _italic_ and *bold*. Please do not use ALL-CAPITALS mode
throughout your writings, since it is hard to read, is perceived as
"obnoxious" and as "shouting" and is a no-no in email etiquette.
     If you have difficulties reading the postings, bear in mind that we use
Unicode UTF-8 encoding. You should set your encoding mode (under "View" and
"Encoding" or something to this effect) to (Unicode) UTF-8. The so far best
font to use for this is Arial Unicode. It comes with many of the latest
Microsoft software programs.

Lowlands-L is now well into its tenth year. Let's keep it going strong!
Thanks for your support!

Regards,
Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

***

Places of Residence of New Lowlanders since April 13, 2004:

     Australia:
          New South Wales:
               Sydney [1]
     Belgium:
          Flemish Brabant (Vlaams-Brabant):
               Bertem [1]
     Brazil:
          S?o Paulo:
               S?o Paulo [1]
     Canada:
          Ontario:
               Hamilton [1]
     Chile:
          Santiago:
               Santiago de Chile [1]
     Greece:
          Attica:
               Athens [1]
     Iran:
          Tehran:
               Tehran [1]
     Spain:
          Rioja:
               Logro?o [1]
     United Kingdom:
          England:
               Essex:
                    Harlow [1]
               Stafford:
                    Staffordshire [1]
     United States of America:
          California:
               Los Angeles [1]
          Michigan:
               Wyandotte [1]
          New York:
               Sayville [1]
          Ohio:
               The Plains [1]
          Washington:
               Seattle [1]

==============================END===================================
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun  3 19:12:48 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 12:12:48 -0700
Subject: LL-L "History" 2004.06.03 (01) [E/German]
Message-ID: <THU.3.JUN.2004.121248.0700.>

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=======================================================================

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

Dear Lowlanders,

I hope you are all still there and there is nothing wrong with the list
server.  I am wondering because I haven't heard anything from anyone in a
few days.  Well, I guess the travel season has begun and it's nicer to be
outside now that the weather is improving, at least in the Northern
Hemisphere.

Some of you may remember our discussion about the Hamburg flood of 1962.
Well, an English gentleman (Sapper M. Yarnold), who is not one of our
subscribers, found this discussion in our archives
(http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html) and was nice
enough to send us a summary of his experiences during the event.

Thanks a lot, Mike!  We who lived through the flood, especially those of us
hardest hit in (Harburg-)Wilhelmsburg like myself, fondly remember all the
incredible help we received from the neighboring countries as well as from
the United States and Canada.  Once again, a disaster proved to be an
opportunity for nations to come together for reasons other than conflict and
material gain.  So, to you, Mike, and to all the others who at that time
rushed to our aid, I send very sincere expressions of gratitude on behalf of
my family and the people in our then neighborhood.

Folks, please find a copy of Mike's letter below.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***

From: mike.yarnold at tiscali.co.uk
Date: Thursday, June 03, 2004 11:24 AM
To: lowlands-l at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Hamburg floods 17 February 1962


I was just looking for archive material referencing this event when I cam
across your listings from Friedrich-Wilhelm Neumann and Reinhart (R. F.
Hahn ).

I was there too. Reinhard was a little boy and I was only 22. I was an
English soldier with the Royal Engineers stationed in Germany. We were sent
to Hamburg Harburg to help as best we could. It was not only flooding, but
also very cold -20grad C.

I always remember with happiness, the way the German people treated us. They
gave us so much respect and we did not need to pay for anything. We could
walk into a bier keller after duty and all our drinks and food would be paid
for by the local people who came and shook our hands.

We were later presented with a medal, certificate and book by the president
of the Praesidium.

My certificate reads:

DER SENAT DER FREIEN UND HANSESTADT HAMBURG
VERLEIHT
Sapper M. Yarnold
IN DANKBARER ANERKENNUNG DER TAETIGEN HILFELEISTUNG AUF HAMBURGISCHEM
STAATSGEBEIT WAEHREND DER STURMFLUTKATASTROPHE 1962 DIE DANKMEDAILLE
HAMBURG, IM JULI 1962.

In the book, there are the statistics of the casualties, the cost in lives
and money, and the names of those who died.

There were 315 people killed of which 5 were helpers.
It cost a total of 64,791,110 DM.

Regards,
Mike

==============================END===================================
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun  3 20:22:30 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 13:22:30 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.03 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.3.JUN.2004.132230.0700.>

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=======================================================================

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

Dear Lowlanders,

Below please find a copy of a newspaper article (_Seattle Times_, June 3,
2004, p. A11) about a topic we have discussed and revisited many times: the
rather controversial and polarizing issue of orthographic reform for
English.

Mentioned are two types of attitudes: (1) total dismissal and ridicule, and
(2) calls for reform backed by the claim that the irregular English spelling
"method" (by and large based on certain English dialects of 15th and 16th
century England) is a serious obstacle for education and functional
literacy.  Not mentioned is that this problem (if recognized as such) is
magnified by virtue of the fact that English now is or soon will be *the*
universal auxiliary language, a worldwide lingua franca that in the future
will be used by pretty much everyone on Earth as a first language or as a
foreign language.  So, the claim can be made that English spelling is a
serious obstacle in this regard as well, that "Reform? Yes or No?" is no
longer just an internal matter for native English speakers to handle, or, to
put it differently, English speakers ought to feel obligated to consider
non-native speakers when discussing the spelling of their language.

For those of you who do not already know this, let me explain that a
"spelling bee" is a spelling competition, usually held among primary and
secondary school students in English-speaking countries.  Contestants are
orally given words (and clues, if requested) and must spell them out
correctly.  This may sound somewhat funny to many of you whose languages use
fairly regular, predictable spelling, in which case "spelling bees" would be
rather unexciting events, especially if you take languages with near
exemplary, phonemically-based spelling systems, such as Finnish, Estonian,
Hungarian or Basque.  Well, you can probably imagine that a "spelling bee"
is a lot more interesting if you remember that in the case of English (as
also in the cases of Tibetan and Mongolian) spelling is more historically
and etymologically based than phonemically based, and that therefore the
spelling of every single word in the language (rather than just a set of
rules) must be memorized, that the contestants thus can show off just how
many "weird" and unusual words they can spell.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***

SPELLING-BEE PROTESTERS 'THRU WITH THROUGH'

English's lack of logic spells trouble/or many, demonstrators say

Gannett News Service and The Associated Pres

WASHINGTON ? Protesters delivered a message yesterday to the national
spelling bee: Enuf is enuf!

Members of the American Literacy Society picketed the 77th annual spelling
bee, which is sponsored every year by Cincinnati-based Scripps Howard.

The protesters' complaints: English spelling is illogical, and the national
spelling bee only reinforces the crazy spellings that they say contribute to
dyslexia, high illiteracy and harder lives for immigrants.

"We advocate the modernization of English spelling,' said Pete Boardman, 58,
of Groton, N.Y. The Cornell University bus driver admitted to being a
terrible speller.

Protester Elizabeth Kuizenga, 56, is such a good speller that she teaches
English as a second language in San Francisco. She said she got involved in
the protest after seeing how much time was wasted teaching spelling in her
class.

Bee spokesman Mark Kroeger said good spelling comes from knowing the story
behind a word ? what language it comes from, what it means.

"For these kids who understand the root words, who understand the etymology,
ifs totally logical," he said.

The protesters contend that the illogical spelling of English words makes
dyslexia more difficult to overcome and helps explain studies that suggest
one in five Americans are functionally illiterate.

"If these people were able to read and write with a simplified spelling
system, they would be able to fill out a job application, stay employed and
stay out of prison,' said Sanford Silverman, 86. The retired accountant was
handing out copies of his book, "Spelling for the 21st Century: The Case for
Spelling Reform."

Carrying signs reading "I'm thru with through," "Spelling shuud be lojical,"
and "Spell different difrent," the protesters drew chuckles from bee
contestants.

"I can't believe people are picketing against something this ridiculous,"
said contestant Steven Maheshwary, 14, of Houston.

By day's end yesterday, 46 of the original 265 spellers remained for today's
championship. The participants are competing for a top package of $17,000 in
cash and other prizes.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun  3 23:22:43 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 16:22:43 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.03 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.3.JUN.2004.162243.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language contacts" [E]

As most people know, sign languages often incorporate a fingerspelling
alphabet for spelling out words and abbreviations from oral languages.
Fingerspelling may be very heavily used (as in American Sign Language) or
hardly used at all (as in Danish Sign Language). Some sign languages are
spoken in countries where the hearing languages don't use an alphabet, so
fingerspelling is irrelevant: for example in Chinese sign languages the
Chinese character is just written with a finger on the palm of the hand or
in the air when a Chinese word needs to be indicated.

In nearly all sign languages which have a fingerspelling alphabet, the
letters are spelled using one hand, including those which use written
alphabets other than the Roman: Cyrillic and Greek alphabets are also
fingerspelled on one hand (this isn't to say that fingerspelling is always
the same for any given alphabet, however: Swedish, French, British and
American fingerspelling are all very different, for example - though
American and French fingerspelling are closely related - even though they
all use the Roman alphabet).

British Sign Language (BSL) is one of the exceptions, being fingerspelled on
two hands. Although Australian, New Zealand and Martha's Vineyard
(Massachussetts) sign languages also use two-handed fingerspelling systems,
these are descended from the British alphabet. The British two-handed
alphabet is in turn derived from Dalgrano's Glove, a fingerspelling system
devised by the Aberdonian George Dalgranoch around the year 1680.
Statistical analysis suggests that Dalgranoch based his system on Ogham
script, such as might be seen on standing stones in some parts of Britain.

I've heard from a Norwegian signer that although in Norway they don't use
fingerpelling much, they actually have two fingerspelling systems - one is
one-handed and the other two-handed. She said that they two-handed system
was very much like the British system except for the vowels. In the British
system there are five vowels, and a different finger is used for each one,
so it makes sense that in Norway they would have to alter the vowel system
to fit the Norwegian vowels.

But the question is, what's the historical connection between the UK and
Norway in this respect? Unfortunately the history of the Deaf isn't always
recorded and I don't think it's enough to just consider "mainstream" history
to establish sign language connections - there has to be some connection
between the Deaf in the UK and the Deaf in Norway. Any ideas?

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Thanks a lot, Sandy.  This is really interesting.  (And nice to know that
I'm not suddenly alone on this list.)

For the benefit of everyone (including myself), below are a few
finger-spelling-related links:

British:
http://www.learntosign.org.uk/fingerspelling.php
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fagb.htm

Scottish (?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/schottisch.htm

Irish (?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/irland.htm

Australian:
http://www.wadeaf.org.au/auslan.shtml#fingerspelling
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faaustral.htm

New Zealand:
http://www.deaf.co.nz/fingerspelling.html
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/neuseeland.htm

American (including Anglo-Canadian?):
http://where.com/scott.net/asl/abc.html
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fausa.htm

German:
http://www.kidsweb.de/schule/zeichen/fingerz.htm
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/deutschland.htm
Alternative, after Hironymus Lorm ("Lormenalfabet"),
apparently with similarities to the British and Scandinavian systems:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/lorm.htm

Dutch (Netherlands):
http://www.dovenschap.nl/main.php?sid=27&cat=vingerspelling
hand-on-hand method:
http://www.dovenschap.nl/main.php?sid=27&cat=vingerspelling%20op%20hand
http://www.xs4all.nl/~hverdonk/vingerspellen.html

Belgian (Non-Romance?):
http://gebaren.ugent.be/
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fabelgien.htm

Danish:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fadanemark.htm

Norwegian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fanorwe.htm

Swedish:
http://student.educ.umu.se/~anaflk00/udt16h02/handalfabetet.htm

Icelandic:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/island.htm

French (including Belgian and French-Canadian?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fafrankr.htm

Tanzanian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/tansania.htm

Italian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/italien.htm

Spanish (Spain, including Catalan and Galician?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faspanien.htm

Mexican:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/famexik.htm

Costa-Rican:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/facostaric.htm

Paraguayan:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faparagu.htm

Uruguayan:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faurug.htm

Venezuelan:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/venezuela.htm

Chilean:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fachile.htm

Argentinian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faarbetin.htm

Portuguese (Portugal):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/portugal.htm

Portuguese (Brazil):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fabrasil.htm

Romanian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/romanisch.htm

Serbo-Croatian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/yugoslawien.htm

Polish:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/polen.htm

Russian:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/russisch.htm

Greek:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fagreece.htm

Finnish:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fafinland.htm

Arabic (Egypt):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faagypten.htm

Hebrew:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/israel.htm

Ethiopian (only Amharic? Also for Tigrinya?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faatiop.htm

Indian (all languages?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faindien.htm

Indonesian (only Bahasa Indonesia?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/indonesien.htm

Filipino (only for Tagalog, or others as well?):
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/philipinen.htm

Thai:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fathai.htm

Korean:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fakorea.htm

Japanese:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/japan.htm

Chinese:
Mainland: http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fachina.htm
Elsewhere: http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fahongkong.htm

Phonemic System:
http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/PMS.htm

International Sign Lingua Franca:
http://www.innerspace.be/vingerspelling/index_off_line_en.htm

This seems like a nice selection for some comparison and research.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 14:41:59 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 07:41:59 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.074159.0700.>

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From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.03 (02) [E]

Hello,

Correct spelling is basically a question of reading. The less you read
the more difficult it will be for you to spell 'correctly'.  Reading is
of course out of fashion in this audiovisual age.

Proposals to change traditional speling are based on replacing it with
phonetic spelling. But who's phonetics? Will we all have to spell with
an LA or NY accent for the convenience of economically powerful non-readers?

Whatever new spelling code, to learn it you will probably have to read it.

Regards,

Tom

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 16:55:34 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 09:55:34 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.095534.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (01) [E]

Tom Maguire wrote:

> Correct spelling is basically a question of reading. The less you read
> the more difficult it will be for you to spell 'correctly'.

That's true, in principle... but unfortunately, most of what many people
read today isn't spelled correctly in the first place - I'm talking of
Internet forums, personal websites and chat rooms. If you encounter the
spellings "recieved", "dalmation" and "priviledge" at least twenty times a
month, how long will it take until your brain classifies them as "correct"?

Gabriele Kahn

----------

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

Tom Maguire wrote:

> Correct spelling is basically a question of reading. The less you read
> the more difficult it will be for you to spell 'correctly'.

No one in their right mind would argue with that, Tom.  However, it does not
really address the core issue, which is that, in comparison with the vast
majority of the world's languages, way too much time and effort goes into
learning to spell and read English (and to learn to correctly pronounce each
word newly encountered while reading, which in the case of non-native
speakers is a very large number).  This level of deficient orthographic
predictability (which is similar in other extremely historical systems such
as Tibetan and vertically written Mongolian, as I had mentioned) is
surpassed only by wholly or partly non-sound-based systems such as those of
Chinese, Japanese and precontemporary (mixed-script) Korean.  It is similar
in Arabic and Hebrew (and to a lesser degree also in Farsi) in which vowels
(at least short vowels) are usually not represented.

> Proposals to change traditional speling are based on replacing it with
> phonetic spelling. But who's phonetics? Will we all have to spell with
> an LA or NY accent for the convenience of economically powerful
non-readers?

This is one of the most commonly made false assumptions.  No writing system
is "phonetic" other than the International Phonetic Alphabet and similar
systems for scientific use (in linguistics as well as speech and hearing
science).  Yes, the types of system we are talking about (i.e., alphabets
and syllabaries) are sound-based.  However, they are not phonetically based
but *phonemically* based.  In other words, ideally only phonemes (i.e.,
basic, "underlying" phonic segments) are represented.  In an ideal case
(namely where a system is truly phonemic) all you have to do is learn the
*system* (once, perhaps even in just a few hours, reinforced by reading and
writing practice) rather than the spelling of individual words (which goes
on for the rest of your life).  Furthermore, this type of system is by its
very nature interdialectal, because phonological differences (in the
phonetic output) between dialects do not even enter the equasion in reading
and writing.

However, as an American friend of mine said about this issue yesterday, the
attitude of the majority of English speakers (namely Americans) is such that
even otherwise universally applying metric standards will not be accepted by
the general public and their representatives, leave alone a "scary" thing
like spelling reform, no matter how compelling arguments in favor of it may
be.  And who cares about all those poor people and foreigners anyway?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 20:05:04 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 13:05:04 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.04 (03) [D/E/V]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.130504.0700.>

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From: Kris Denhaerynck <krisdenhaerynck at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Language varieties

Beste li?glanders,

Vloms (Kaster):
Een antal moanden gelin was 't er nogal wa te doen ip dees mailing lijste
over 't in Nature gedrukt artikel van R. Gray, da mee Bayseianse Markov
Monte Carlo-methoden nen evolutiebuam van de Indo-Europese tolfamilie oo
gereconstrueerd. Nui ee 't er blijkboar ne groep geli?rde van de Groningse
universiteit eenzelfde oefeninge gedoan veur 't Nederlands tolgebied. Da
stoa ten minste te lezen in 't NRC handelsblad van den 29sten meie en in de
Standoard van de vierden juni. Z' en wa gemakklijker statistische methoden
gebezigd, lijk multidimensionele scaleringe veur de relatieve afstanden
tussen de verschillige manieren van uitsproke van verschillige streken 't
onderzouken, en hi?rarchische clusteranalyse in 't ipstellen van nen
ontstoansbuam. Angezien al de nief verschijnende artikels in den online
wetenschapskatern van de Standoard moar een endeke toegankelijk zin veur 't
gruat publiek, ee 'k 't ekik mijzelven toegestoan ilder reportoage in dezen
email te plakk! en. De prentsjies (die van eigens 't interssantste zin) een
kost ik nie meesturen. Oa de Standoard mij ippakt veur 't schenden ilder
auteursrecht, zal ik zeggen da je gilder al te goare de gazette gekocht eet
veur de figuurkies te kunnen bekijken. :-)

Algemeen Nederlands:
Een aantal maand geleden was er nogal wat ophef op deze mailinglijst over
het in Nature verschenen artikel van R. Gray, dat met Bayesiaanse Markov
Monte Carlo-simulaties een evolutieboom van de Indo-Europese taalfamilie
reconstrueerde. Blijkbaar heeft een groep 'vorsers' aan de Groningse
universiteit een gelijkaardige oefening gedaan voor het Nederlandstalig
taalgebied, zo staat zowel in het NRC handelsblad van 29 mei als de
Standaard van 4 juni te lezen, zij het met toegankelijker statistische
methoden als multidimensionele scalering (om de relatieve afstanden tussen
de uitspraak van verschillende streken te verkennen) en hi?rarchische
clusteranalyses (in het opstellen van een ontstaansboom). Aangezien elk
nieuw verschenen artikel in de online wetenschapskatern van de standaard
maar tijdelijk publiek toegankelijk is, heb ik mij de vrijheid veroorloofd
hun rapportage in deze email te plakken. De bijhorende prentjes (die het
interessantst van al zijn natuurl! ijk) kon ik niet toevoegen. Als de
standaard mij aanklaagt wegens schending van het auteursrecht, zal ik zeggen
dat jullie massaal de krant hebben gekocht om de figuurkes te kunnen zien
:-)

English:
Some months ago, there was a lively discussion on this mailing list about
the article of R. Gray (appeared in Nature) which reconstructed the
Indo-European language family using Bayesian Markov Monte Carlo statistical
simulations. Apparently, a group of researchers from the university of
Groningen did a similar excercise for the Dutch speaking region, as can be
read in the NRC handelsblad of May, 29 and in de Standaard of June, 4. Using
somewhat easier statistical methods, they explored the relative distances
between the languages spoken in different area's (multidimensional scaling
techniques ) and reconstructed an evolution tree of the different regional
language groups using hierarchical cluster analysis as well. Because all
newly appeared articles in the online scientific part of de Standaard are
only temporarily accessible for non-subscribers, I took the permission to
paste their (dutch) text into this email body. I couldn't add the
accompanying images! , which are of course the most interesting part of the
whole story. If de Standaard accuses me of violating copyright, I 'll tell
them that all of you bought the newspaper to look at their figures. :-)
Groeten,

Kris Denhaerynck

***

Geleidelijke veranderingen streektalen in kaart gebracht
door berthold van maris  04/06/2004



In Vlaanderen klinkt wijn als 'w?n', maar een Groninger zegt 'wien'. In het
tussenliggende gebied is de uitspraak telkens iets verschoven. De
Nederlander Wilbert Heeringa maakte dialectkaarten van de verschuivingen.



EEN WANDELAAR die van West-Vlaanderen naar Oost-Groningen loopt en onderweg
praat met dialectsprekers, hoort het Nederlands veranderen. Het woord voor
'wijn' bijvoorbeeld verschuift langzaam van w?n naar wijn naar wain tot
wien. De wandelaar zal ook merken dat de veranderingen in sommige gebieden
subtiel zijn, terwijl ze elkaar in andere gebieden snel opvolgen. Als hij
door Oost-Vlaanderen loopt, verandert ergens tussen Nazareth en Lochristi
'deur' (deur) opeens in 'deure'. Om voorbij Moerbeke weer in 'deur' te
veranderen. Ongeveer bij de Nederlandse grens verandert 'pot-n' (potten) in
'potte': daar verschijnt de voor het Hollands zo kenmerkende meervoudsvorm
op -e. Een eindje voorbij de grens, in de buurt van Roosendaal, verandert
'w?n' in 'wijn'. Deze veranderingen vallen niet samen, het breekpunt ligt
voor ieder woord op een andere plek. Het gebied rond de Belgisch-Nederlandse
grens is een overgangsgebied, wa! arin de veranderingen elkaar sneller
opvolgen.



Op dialectkaarten van Vlaanderen en Nederland werden dialectgroepen tot nu
toe altijd met scherp getrokken grenzen ingetekend. Wilbert Heeringa,
taalkundige aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, heeft nu voor het eerst
kaarten gemaakt waarop de geleidelijke veranderingen goed in beeld worden
gebracht.



Heeringa ontleende zijn data-materiaal aan de Reeks Nederlandse
Dialectatlassen (RND), die werd samengesteld in de periode 1925 tot 1975.
Hieruit selecteerde hij 360 Vlaamse en Nederlandse dialecten. Vervolgens
bekeek hij de uitspraak van 125 alledaagse woorden, die voor al deze
dialecten zijn opgetekend.



Voor elk van de dialecten liet hij de computer de lingu?stische afstand tot
de andere 359 dialecten berekenen. Hiervoor gebruikte hij de techniek van de
Levenshtein-afstand, die eerder werd toepast bij het vergelijken van
DNA-structuren en vogelzangpatronen. De computer vergeleek woorden met
elkaar en berekende het verschil. Bijvoorbeeld: in het Oost-Vlaamse
Geraardsbergen wordt een paard een 'p?rt' genoemd, terwijl men in Geel in de
provincie Antwerpen spreekt van een 'pjeet'. De computer legt deze woorden
naast elkaar en bekijkt hoeveel veranderingen er nodig zijn om 'p?rt' in
'pjeet' om te zetten (of omgekeerd). Dat zijn er drie: van p?rt naar peert
naar pjeert tot pjeet. Dit getal wordt vervolgens gedeeld door de lengte van
het woord (waarbij de twee varianten eerst in elkaar worden geschoven, dus:
p, (j), ?/ee, (r), t = 5 klanken) en daar rolt dan het cijfer uit dat het
verschil weergeeft: 3 gedeeld door 5 ! is 0,6 (oftewel 60 procent). Zo werd
het verschil voor alle 125 woordparen berekend. En dat weer voor 360
dialecten, waarbij voor ieder dialect de afstand tot de overige 359
dialecten berekend werd. In totaal ging het om acht miljoen berekeningen.



Het cijfermateriaal dat hieruit rolde, werd vervolgens op verschillende
manieren gevisualiseerd. Allereerst werden op een gewone kaart van
Vlaanderen en Nederland de 360 dialecten met punten aangegeven, waarna ieder
punt door middel van lijntjes met de andere 359 punten verbonden werd. De
grijswaarde van het lijntje geeft de lingu?stische afstand aan. Een groot
verschil resulteert in een wit lijntje (dat wegvalt op de witte ondergrond),
kleinere verschillen leveren grijze lijntjes op. Hoe donkerder het lijntje,
hoe kleiner de lingu?stische afstand. Zo ontstond een kaart met donkere en
lichte gebieden. In de donkere gebieden veranderen de dialecten minder snel
dan in de lichte gebieden.



Deze kaart (kaart 1) laat mooi zien dat er in Noordoost-Nederland duidelijk
drie groepen dialecten te onderscheiden zijn: het Fries, het
Gronings-Neder-Saksisch en het Overijssels-Neder-Saksisch. (Met de ogen
halfdicht geknepen is het algemene beeld beter te zien.)



Voor de rest van Nederland, het domein van de Neder-Frankische dialecten, is
het beeld minder duidelijk. Limburg is nagenoeg wit, wat erop duidt dat de
verschillen tussen dat dialect en aangrenzende dialecten er veel groter zijn
dan elders in Nederland. Vlaanderen maakt een zeer verbrokkelde indruk, het
is een bonte verzameling van lichte en donkere gebieden.



Een andere manier om de lingu?stische afstand tussen de dialecten te
visualiseren heet multidimensional scaling: de dialecten worden in een
abstracte ruimte geplaatst, op zo'n manier, dat de ruimtelijke afstand
tussen de dialecten zo goed mogelijk correspondeert met de lingu?stische
afstand. Er is eigenlijk een ruimte van 359 dimensies voor nodig om die
afstanden precies weer te geven. Maar als je de dialecten in een
driedimensionale ruimte plaatst, wordt de werkelijke situatie al voor 88
procent benaderd. Bij 4, 5 en 6 dimensies is dat respectievelijk 92, 95 en
96 procent. Heeringa koos voor een driedimensionaal model, omdat de
meerwaarde van meer dimensies volgens hem gering is.



Bovendien is het aardige van drie dimensies, dat ze als kleuren op een
gewone landkaart kunnen worden geprojecteerd. Aan iedere dimensie wordt een
kleur toegekend (rood, blauw en groen) en die kleuren worden, als bij een
televisietoestel, met elkaar vermengd. Elk dialect krijgt zo zijn eigen
unieke kleur. Verwante dialecten krijgen kleurschakeringen die dicht bij
elkaar in de buurt liggen.



Op de kaart die zo ontstaat (kaart 2), is opnieuw goed te zien dat het Fries
(blauw) een geheel eigen positie inneemt. En opnieuw vormen de
Nedersaksische dialecten van Noordoost-Nederland (donkergroen) een duidelijk
geheel. De overgang naar de Neder-Frankische dialecten is ook goed te zien,
het overgangsgebied ligt boven de as Amersfoort-Groesbeek. Ook het Limburgs
(lichtgroen) tekent zich duidelijk af als een afzonderlijke groep. De
overgangen tussen de overige dialecten - Hollands, Utrechts, Brabants,
Zeeuws, Oost- en West-Vlaams - zijn geleidelijker; samen vormen deze
dialecten een continu?m van grijs naar donkerrood. Deze kaart maakt trouwens
ook korte metten met het idee dat er een duidelijk verband zou zijn tussen
de Friese en de Noord-Hollandse ('West-Friese') dialecten - iets wat vroeger
nog wel eens werd aangenomen op grond van de historische banden die er
tussen deze gebieden zijn.



Heeringa onderwierp zijn cijfermateriaal ook aan een 'clusteranalyse'
(afbeelding hierboven). De computer maakte een boomdiagram met binaire
vertakkingen, waarin zich eerst het Fries en daarna het Limburgs aftakt.
Vervolgens vertakt de boom zich verder: de Neder-Saksische en de
Neder-Frankische dialecten (minus het Limburgs) splitsen zich van elkaar. In
de traditionele indeling wordt het Limburgs vaak tot het Neder-Frankisch
gerekend, maar dit boomdiagram laat zien dat daar weinig reden voor is.



Een derde kaart (kaart 3), die Heeringa door de computer liet inkleuren,
laat zien hoe groot de afstand is tussen de dialecten en het ABN. Het
dialect van Haarlem ligt het dichtst in de buurt van het Standaardnederlands
(maar verschilt nog altijd voor 14,7 procent). Het (Friese) dialect van
Schiermonnikoog is er het verst van verwijderd: 44.9 procent. Dat wil zeggen
dat een tekst in ABN en de vertaling daarvan in het Schiermonnikoogs maar de
helft van de klanken met elkaar gemeen hebben.



Het Nederlandse dialectcontinuum eindigt abrupt in het Zuiden. Daar botst
het tegen het Romaanse dialectcontinuum. Maar in het Oosten, voorbij de
Nederlands-Duitse grens, gaat het continu?m gewoon door, het maakt deel uit
van het grotere Germaanse continu?m, dat pas bij Polen opbotst tegen een
ander groot continu?m, dat van de Noord-Slavische talen. Hoe de overgang bij
de Nederlands-Duitse grens is, en of daar nog gekke dingen gebeuren, heeft
Heeringa al eerder onderzocht, samen met collega's van de Groningse
universiteit. In 1999 bekeken zij zeventien dialecten aan weerszijden van de
grens bij Bentheim (de inham boven Twente). Materiaal uit 1975 werd
vergeleken met materiaal uit 1999. Daaruit bleek dat de Duitse dialecten in
die twintig jaar tijd een beetje verschoven waren richting Standaardduits,
terwijl de dialecten aan de Nederlandse zijde een beetje in de richting van
het ABN waren gekropen.


----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Language varieties

Beste Kris,

Welkom, en bedankt voor de bovenstaande bijdrage, je debuut op Lowlands-L,
voorbeeldig in elk detail!  Het is fantastisch om een gelegenheid te hebben
om je Vlaams dialect te lezen. Ook bedankt voor de vertalingen. Je krijgt de
verdiensteprijs van deze week: de Goudster van Lowlands-L.  :)

Welcome, and thanks for the contribution above, your debut on Lowlands-L,
exemplary in every detail! It's great to have a chance to read your Flemish
dialect.  Thanks also for the translations.  Please consider yourself in
receipt of this week's merit award: the Lowlands-L Gold Star.  :)

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 20:10:16 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 13:10:16 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.04 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.131016.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.03 (03) [E]

Dear Sandy Fleming & all,

This is a fascinating subject.

    Referring to Dalgrano's glove, Robert Graves thoroughly discusses the
covert ogham spelling system used in the druidical colleges. I particularly
enjoy the notion of 'Nose Ogham' but in the end I have to say it means you
use the bridge of the nose as the stave, & lay one to five fingers past,
against, over straight or over diagonally to spell. It's surely slicker than
the imitations of the script alphabet I have been shown. A related system is
the shin ogham, but truth to tell you can use anything straight for a stave.

    Another thing tickling me is the newness of sign languages of today. In
the monastries of the Middle Ages there were regular & frequent austerities
of silence, & the less than dedicated Brothers would sign like stormswept
windmills, such is the tale they tell. According to extant records, it
wasn't so crude a medium as served to ask your fellow to pass this or that,
for they were accustomed in the same way to argue the most abstruse points
of Philosophy & Canon Law by the same means.

   I spent some time among the Vasiquela bushman in Namibia, & there was a
ten-year-old-boy who had contracted measles as an infant, which destroyed
his hearing. People 'spoke' to him in 'Hunter's Sign' which among the
Bushmen is very highly developed & which everybody knows. The kid certainly
wasn't at a loss for company or conversation.They even planned to send the
boy to school, but were first teaching the teacher to sign ---.

Yrs sincerely,
Mark

> The British two-handed
> alphabet is in turn derived from Dalgrano's Glove, a fingerspelling system
> devised by the Aberdonian George Dalgranoch around the year 1680.
> Statistical analysis suggests that Dalgranoch based his system on Ogham
> script, such as might be seen on standing stones in some parts of Britain.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun  4 20:43:15 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 13:43:15 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.134315.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.03 (02) [E]

Dear All,

 Referring to English spelling, the torment of my school-days - Eina!

   Speaking from the perspective of another language, there is nothing quite
so horrific to contemplate, until you slam up against French orthography.

I have a point to add, though, not original, alas. I have just looked up
from an old book, 'The Loom of Language' by F. Bodmer (Ed. L Hogben), George
Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1955.

    One of the great merits of English, as with every other language, is the
vast treasury of it's Literature, composed, alak-a-day! in obedience to the
traditional & cripplingly idiosyncratic spelling system (I will not say
rule). Now institute spelling reform - feel free - & at a stroke you will
cut off the common reader's access to all the Literature that has gone
before. Do that, see, & you will have destroyed one of the major merits of
English as an international language. The loss will affect not merely the
works of Shakespeare, for example, or Dickens, or Kipling or even Tolkien,
but the scientific texts in Journals, of Gumow, Darwin, Hawkins, to name a
few.

    I will believe that the Chinese & the Japanese will entertain exactly
the same reluctant reservations about the reform of their highly
idiosyncratic scripts, for example. The cost of reform is just too high.

    Thanks, Ron, for breaking the logjam. I was afraid it was my computer.
How're you feeling?

Yrs Sincerely,
    Mark

----------

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

Mark (above):

>    Thanks, Ron, for breaking the logjam. I was afraid it was my computer.
> How're you feeling?

Thanks for asking.  I'm on a fast track to recovery.  If my correspondence
still seems weird by any chance, I can not blame any mind-altering pain
medication.

>    Speaking from the perspective of another language, there is nothing
quite
> so horrific to contemplate, until you slam up against French orthography.

Ugh, that's nothing in comparison with Tibetan, Mongolian and ... English.
At least there's *some* sort of an envisaged system.

>     One of the great merits of English, as with every other language, is
the
>  vast treasury of it's Literature, composed, alak-a-day! in obedience to
the
>  traditional & cripplingly idiosyncratic spelling system (I will not say
>  rule). Now institute spelling reform - feel free - & at a stroke you will
>  cut off the common reader's access to all the Literature that has gone
>  before. Do that, see, & you will have destroyed one of the major merits
of
>  English as an international language. The loss will affect not merely the
>  works of Shakespeare, for example, or Dickens, or Kipling or even
Tolkien,
>  but the scientific texts in Journals, of Gumow, Darwin, Hawkins, to name
a
>  few.

OK, so I'll continue in the role of the devil's advocate ...

What you say is, strictly speaking correct, and it is *the* excuse given to
cover for the real reason: the fear factor ("fear of change, one of the most
powerful fears there is").  However, especially in this day and age,
literature of yesteryear can be computer-transliterated in a split second
and then reprinted (or viewed online).  Those who want to see the original
versions -- which would be mostly academics and specialist enthusiasts --
would be trained to read the old "system."  This is exactly what has been
done in other languages for a long time, in the West and elsewhere.  For
example, Mongolian writings in the old vertical (Uyghur) script (which is
now being resurrected in Mongolia and has always been used in China) were
republished transliterated in the Cyrillic-based script for the general
population of Mongolia and Mongolic-speaking parts of the Soviet Union.  Not
even works by Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, in early Modern German, are
published orthographically exactly as they had been originally written and
published; they are somewhat "cleaned up" for today's readers, as are
Shakespeare's Early Modern English works, and as are vast numbers of Danish
and Norwegian works that had been published prior to the spelling reforms of
the early 20th century.

> The cost of reform is just too high.

Higher than the cost of maintaining an outmoded system that requires
lifelong learning and enormous educational resources, and which (allegedly)
exacerbates the types of economic and educational problems and missed
opportunities that result from functional illiteracy, even among native
speakers of the language?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 06:35:24 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 23:35:24 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.233524.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography

Greetings, LOwlanders!

Ron said:

"It is similar in Arabic and Hebrew (and to a lesser degree also in Farsi)
in which vowels (at least short vowels) are usually not represented.

I would agree with what you say in the case of Farsi, but not in the case of
Arabic. There are a number of Arabic letters used in (the large number) of
Arabic loanwords in Farsi, that are only there for historical reasons. The
Arabic letters Tha, Sin and Sad, for instance are pronounced identically in
Farsi; Zay, Dhal, Dad, Za' are also all pronounced as a simple /z/ sound.
Urdu too is very somilar to Farsi in this respect, and preserves both Arabic
and Farsi spellings for historical reasons.

The fact that Arabic does not normally represent short vowels is not
actually a problem, since in the vast majority of words native speakers know
which vowels to pronounce (and in fact often have a choice of two or three),
and foreign learners need only know a few rules of grammar to know which
vowel comes where. The Arabic orthography is actually very regular.

Hebrew vowels are perhaps somewhat more problematic than Arabic, but I think
perhaps a greater difficulty with Hebrew orthography is that the majority of
modern speakers do not distinguish between certain pairs of letters in their
pronunciation. The so-called 'Oriental' dialect does, but this seems to be
in the minority. (I bow my head before Ron's greater knowledge in Hebrew.)
Surely modern Israelis must have difficulty knowing whether to write a word
with a simple or an emphatic consonant, for instance.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK.

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (02) [E]

Ron stated some views which seemed to favour a spelling reformation of the
English language...

...which would probably be a great idea if I thought about it rationally
(just like I think Americans should finally drop their greenbacks and get
decent bills in different sizes and colours where you can see at first
glimpse how much money you have left and don't accidentally give out a
hundred instead of a ten)...

...but then, as I have outed myself before and have no reputation left to
lose...

... here goes: to me, a language is a living, breathing, SENSUAL thing, and
such a reform would kill its very soul. It would be like an "improved"
cybernetic horse which is perfect, calm and obedient in every respect, but
it would never grin when it quite accidentally stands on your foot, or take
a big step to the side when it feels you're already off-balance, and then
look down on you with an inquisitive smile... or nudge you when it feels
you're not up to snuff... if the English language were tamed and
"streamlined" to become a perfect tool for international communication - a
Stepford wife, for those who are familiar with the story - then I would kiss
it goodbye with the greatest regret and go look for a new lover with a sense
of humour who isn't ashamed of his own imperfections.

I'm quite a visual person (used to have a photographic memory, but my brain
gets more cluttered as I get older...), and seeing a word misspelled makes
me cringe in pain and sympathy... it was bad enough when we had to go
through the German spelling "reform" and "rauh", the word for "rough", which
looked plenty rough to me, suddenly became "rau" and completely lost its
character - like a woman in her sixties with one facelift too many. Picking
up an injured word and making it right is a bit like picking up an injured
bird and nursing it back to health (that's why I enjoy working as a
linguistic reviewer). There's a kind of music in those spellings that I have
known and enjoyed for decades that would just die and go away - maybe some
of you remember that old Star Trek episode where Data the cyborg who has no
emotions tries to learn to play the violin and gets the technique down to a
T and delivers a perfect performance - but even he notices that something is
missing, that his music is just not beautiful...

I am actually so visual that I can barely remember a word that I've heard
and don't know how to spell - as a matter of fact, every word anyone says to
me appears in writing in my brain, and then I read it from there (is there
anyone here who does the same)? This doesn't mean that I don't register the
quality of the voice, and I'm actually quite good at playing music by ear,
or remembering tunes - but even the words I say myself appear in writing on
my mental screen, and I therefore have a problem with words I've never seen
written.

Every word I know is an old acquaintance, a friendly face, and I would feel
a great sense of loss (as in the case of "rauh") if I didn't get to see it
again. Each word has its own character (that goes for numbers, too - my
favourites are twelve and twenty-four, they're honest, friendly and good
fun), and to me, that character has little to do with pronunciation (you'll
never hear me discuss glottal stops and fricatives, I couldn't care less -
that, to me, is music and ought to be left alone and just enjoyed as one of
the pleasures of life).

Now, if the spelling of the English language were to be severely reformed, I
would feel a terrible sense of loss. Of course it might make things easier
for some people - but why deprive anyone of the pleasure to get to know
those words in all their natural beauty, written the way they were meant to
be? And, just to prove that I haven't lost my marbles and can still see the
rational aspects: why would anyone think it's a good idea to "dumb things
down in general"? The human brain has been quite able to grasp the fine
details of English (French, German, you name it) spelling for centuries -
why expect less of those who live today? Let's face it - those who can't
spell now wouldn't be able to spell much better then.

Of course, I'm probably a bit of a hypocrite, because I find the Dutch
reformed spelling very handy, what with all those rules when to double
vowels and consonants and when to leave them alone... but if I had known the
old spelling first, I'd probably be just as sentimental about it. That's
because, to me, languages are basically love affairs...

Call me the Mae West of the Lowlands Forum... ;-)
Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (01) [E]

Nat biing a lingwist, aid sei thaet wi shoed yuz a speling sistem beist an
ai pi ei, but wiDaut aekcuali raiting it. (T)at iz, rait laetin aelfabet in
a fonetik wei beist an a staendoerd speling.

----------

From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (05) [E]

What do the Tibetans and Mongolians do with their spelling? Theirs come from
the Indian languages, so one would think that they'd be somewhat phonemic
due to the syllabaries.

----------

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

John wrote above:

> Surely modern Israelis must have difficulty knowing whether to
> write a word with a simple or an emphatic consonant, for instance.

Well, yes, several letters are nowadays pronounced alike, so the problem is
similar to that of Latin American Spanish (Castilian) who pronounce <s>, <c>
and <z> all alike as [s].

Ben asked above:

> What do the Tibetans and Mongolians do with their spelling? Theirs come
from
> the Indian languages, so one would think that they'd be somewhat phonemic
> due to the syllabaries.

They were fairly phonemic when they were first devised.  The problem is that
the spelling was fixed about 700-1000 years ago while the modern dialects
have changed considerably (thus similar to the case of English).  For
example, the Mongolian word for 'son' is pronounced something like [xu:] in
most modern central dialects, but in the vertical script it is still spelled
the equivalent of <k?beg?n>, the way it assumedly was pronounced around the
time of Gengis Khan. The capital of Southern ("Inner") Mongolia (a part of
China) is still spelled <k?kekota> ("Blue City") but is now pronounced
something like [huh'hOt].  The Kokonor (a lake and a province in Western
China, Chinese Qinghai ?? "Blue Sea") is written <k?ke nagur> but pronounced
[xoxe'nur] in Mongolian, and it is written <mtsho sngon po> but pronounced
[tSo:NOmpo:] in Tibetan.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 06:37:36 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 23:37:36 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.233736.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends

Dear Lowlanders,

I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them, like
'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
'poison' -a totally false friend, while others are partially false - thus,
French 'voyage' is any journey, while the English 'voyage' is only a journey
by sea.

Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this carefully:
do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What I
mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and Low
Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples, and
I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 06:51:45 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 23:51:45 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Introductions" 2004.06.04 (08) [E/S]
Message-ID: <FRI.4.JUN.2004.235145.0700.>

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From: Maggie Scott maggie.scott at expresswords.plus.com
Subject: New Member

Hello All,

I'd like to say 'thank you' to Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn for welcoming recent
newcomers to the list, and to introduce myself.

I am an editor for Scotland's national lexicographical body, Scottish
Language Dictionaries www.sldl.org.uk and formerly worked as an etymology
editor for the Oxford English Dictionary.  I recently completed a PhD on
Scottish place-names. My main interests are Scots and Germanic historical
linguistics, and I am keen to learn more about minority languages.

One quick advert, which may be of interest: as some of you may know, there
is now an online version of the Dictionary of the Older Scots Tongue and the
Scottish National Dictionary - the two have been electronically amalgamated
into one resource, the Dictionary of the Scots Language, available free at
www.dsl.ac.uk

I look forward to future conversations.

Maggie Scott

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Introductions

Walcome tae the Leet, Maggie!  A'm gey blithe that ye've jined wir faimlie o
fower hunder.

Guidwill!

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 15:15:37 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:15:37 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.081537.0700.>

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From: Pat Reynolds <pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]

In message <007001c44ac7$98526320$abb78e8c at dental.washington.edu>,
Lowlands-L <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net> writes
>do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
>mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and Low
>Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
>person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
>thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples, and
>I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.
I wonder if the West Midlands / Standard English pronunciation of the
'does not' contraction counts?  E.g. in West Midlands,
'I do see' means 'I don't see' - the pronunciation of 'do' (meaning
'don't') is with a very short o - very different from 'do' meaning
'do').

Some English dialects use 'fester' or 'fester up', where standard
English has 'gather' or 'gather up' (fester in standard English means
something quite different).

In some parts of the North and West an 'urchin' is a flea-infested
animal (a hedgehog) not a flea-infested child.

And then there is the widespread use of 'learn' meaning 'to teach'.  I
would say this is more of a working class usage than a particular
dialect (it has a nice history, too).

Hoping that some of this will learn you what you wanted to learn,

Pat
--
Pat Reynolds
pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk
   "It might look a bit messy now,
                    but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Pratchett)

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this
carefully:
> do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
> thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples,
and
> I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.

There's one problem to start with here - while long-standing "official"
languages like English and German may be good for word games, this sort of
thing is rather awkward in languages where neither spelling nor
pronunciation has ay official backing.

Also, sometimes a word is not only the false friend of a word in another
language, but because of the closeness and historical contacts between the
languages, the words falsely befriended also exist with the same meanings in
the other language. For example Scots "fit" (foot) is a false friend to the
English "fit" (eg "the shoe fit" or even in the sense of "seizure"), but the
English meanings of the word exist in Scots too. Whether this disqualifies a
word as a false friend I'm not sure - I don't really think it should,
though, since the language-learning problem of false friends still exists
for these.

Anyway, some false friends between Scots and English (choosing the Scots
spelling variant which best aids the effect, and using only words that are
generally pronounced the same throughout the dialects of Scots):

grape (in Scots this means "garden fork").
greet (in Scots this means "weep").
fit (in Scots this means "foot").
gate (in Scots this means "road, way").
soup (in Scots this means "sweep").
girdle (in Scots this means "griddle").
shiver (in Scots this means "cold sore" - Scots for "shiver" would be
"chitter").
law (in Scots this means an isolated or dominant conical hill).
steer (in Scots this means "stir").
clap (in Scots this means "to pet").
canny (in Scots this means "calm, easy, laid back" - different from
Northumbrian).
braid (in Scots this means "broad").
lie (in Scots this means "a pool of stagnant water in a field").

And so on!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]

To expand your "gift" example, in Danish, "gift" means
both "poison" and "married".  (Caution: don't chuckle
too much over that one in front of your spouse...)
:0)

Regards,

John Nelson
Rocky Mountains, USA

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 15:18:44 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:18:44 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.081844.0700.>

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From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: English Spelling Reform

on 04.06.2004 6.00 AM, R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Mentioned are two types of attitudes: (1) total dismissal and ridicule

There are many reasons for this. The biggest problem, among many, is whose
pronunciation becomes standard? Received Pronunciation (now routinely
disparaged as being "too posh")? General American? General New Zealand? And
what of the pronunciations used in the Deep South of the USA or New Dehli?
Don't they count? What about those UK dialects whose speakers don't
pronounce L ("aaw the peepoew")? Personally I would like to see the ensuing
USA/Canada/Ireland/Scotland vs Southern England arguments over R -- should
it be written or not?

Reform also has the problem of losing historical distinctions between what
are now homonyms. Is "niyt uv the niyt" "night of the knight" or "knight of
the night"?

On a more practical level, these reforms are dismissed and ridiculed because
they are frequently extreme to the point of incomprehensibility to a native
speaker. Sample <http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/ess.html>

A simplifid speling sistem for the Inglish languaj shood be cler and
consistent, and yet retain sum degre uv familiarity, espesialy in regardz tu
tha ruts uv wurdz and cognaits in uther languajez, tu alow us tu red books
and maneuscripts euzing tradisional speling with relativ ez.

An even more extreme example <http://www.ship.edu/%7Ecgboeree/epa.html> :

Tu be, or not tu be, dhat iz dh' kwesch'n:
wedh'r tiz nobl'r in dh' mind tu suf'r
Dh' slingz and aroz uv outraij's forchun,
Or tu taik armz 'genst ' se uv trub'lz,
and bi 'pozing, end dhem. Tu di, tu slep --
No mor, and bi ' slep tu sai we end
Dh' hart-aik and dh' dhouz'nd nach'r'l shoks
Dhat flesh iz air tu; tiz ' kansumaish'n
D'voutle tu be wisht.

Now as a native Anglophone I can read both of these with effort (frankly, I
have  an easier time with Scots), but they looks absolutely ridiculous and,
worse, they only barely reflect my own pronunciation. I have no doubt that
if someone from southern England were to re-write these, they would be
considerably different.

> (2) calls for reform backed by the claim that the irregular English
spelling
> "method" (by and large based on certain English dialects of 15th and 16th
> century England) is a serious obstacle for education and functional
> literacy.

I think the major problem now is poor educational practices, not the
orthography. Past generations of Anglophones from all over the world
managed, regardless of dialect, to learn to read and write though the
spelling system was substantially the same as now. What has changed since
the 1960s is the educational system. In the USA at least, children are no
longer generally taught to read via phonics but via the "whole word/look and
say" method (there are exceptions). This is a very highly political and
contentious issue in the US among educators and parents (less so than in
previous years). See

http://www.americanreadingforum.org/98_yearbook/html/01_monaghan_98.htm

> or, to put it differently, English speakers ought to feel obligated to
> consider non-native speakers when discussing the spelling of their
language.

With all due respect, what language has ever been "obligated to consider
non-native speakers" for any reason whatsoever? As a non-native learner of
Dutch, I personally find the latest AN spelling reform confusing and
inconsistent (will someone please suggest to the Taalunie that the terminal
"-sch" be changed to "-s"? Bedankt! And it would sure help me as a
non-native speaker to just read and write long vowels as doubled letters
*all the time* so there is no doubt in my mind. And while I am at it, if you
are going to have phonetic-based spelling in Dutch, could you kindly use "p"
and "t" at the end of words instead of "b" and "d"?). Unfortunately the
Taalunie didn't see fit to consult me about my needs as a non-native learner
of Dutch <grin>

In the case of English, I don't think there is any need to accommodate
non-native learners by completely overturning the language to the point of
incomprehensibility to natives. If this was a serious argument, every
language in the world should drop their traditional orthography and writing
system (esp. for those not using the Latin alphabet) and adopt the IPA
alphabet for the dominate/official dialect. (I am not sure what that would
be for English.)

Realistically English spelling will never be actively reformed. The language
and its speakers are too disparate and the traditional system is too
ingrained. More importantly, there is no government control over the
language in any country beyond basic education (i.e., there is no English
version of the Taalunie dictating anything at all, let alone orthography).
Such an organisation will never be set up because of the international
arguments that would ensue (not to mention the cost and legitimacy of such
an organisation). This is a situation that is often of great surprise to
those coming from countries with official language control. I can't imagine
even just the USA and the UK agreeing to a common orthography, never mind
Ireland, Australia, NZ, India, South Africa, and all the others. We don't
even agree on the changes suggested by Noah Webster 200+ years ago.

This isn't to say there will not be small changes here and there (and no
doubt differing by country), as has always been the case in the "evolution"
of English spelling. I have little doubt that in less than 100 years "thru"
will be a perfectly correct spelling of "through", at least in the USA and
Canada, just as "plow" (vs. "plough") is now. "Lite" and "miniscule" are
becoming more common in print (miniscule is even in my spell checker), while
"shew" (for "show") and "gaol" (for "jail"), common just over a century ago,
have all but disappeared.

This is of course a far cry from what these protesters are advocating. BTW,
here is the website of the picketers:

http://www.spellingsociety.org/

With respect,

Troy

----------

From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: Dutch Spelling Reform

Hello all,

With regard to spelling reform in English, I am curious to know if native
speakers of Dutch find reading 19th century literature written in Dutch
difficult given the number of spelling reforms that have taken place since
then. Being a foreigner (I live in Flanders), I really have no idea.

I think it safe to say that native Anglophones can read 19th literature in
English with little problem since the orthography is almost identical today;
changes in word meanings are the major problem. 18th century English is
perhaps not as easy, but still manageable by most native speakers.
Conversely, Shakespeare is usually a challenge.

Cheers,

Troy

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Orthography

Welcome to the List, Troy, and thanks for sharing your views!

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 15:21:47 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:21:47 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.05 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.082147.0700.>

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From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Low Saxon & Lombard

Newbie here.  Do any studies exist on similarities,
etc. between low saxon & lombard?

Much appreciated...

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Language varieties

Hi, John!

Although you have posted once before, I bid you welcome.

I'm not aware of any such studies, by the way.

Regards,

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 15:23:34 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:23:34 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Names" 2004.06.05 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.082334.0700.>

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From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Germanic placename studies

Greetings again.

Do any placename studies exist for medieval/ancient
towns/settlements in the Elbe-Weser region?

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Much appreciated!!

John Nelson

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 19:20:19 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 12:20:19 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.122019.0700.>

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From: jkrause <jkrause at old-sod-shanty.com>
Subject: Orthography

Regarding Englisch othografie, Ai think wie ott tuh yuhs sum sort ov Low
Sachsen  beyst spelling sistem.  After all, Englisch is a Loh German
dereiv'd languidge, not?  Abolisch the X, Q, and in mohst keyses, the C,
eksept for the ck kombineyschon, and Ai think wie wudd hav a verie gudd
orthografick sistem.

Yers with mei tung firmlie in mei tschieck,
Jim Krause

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Orthography" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> Higher than the cost of maintaining an outmoded system that requires
> lifelong learning and enormous educational resources, and which
(allegedly)
> exacerbates the types of economic and educational problems and missed
> opportunities that result from functional illiteracy, even among native
> speakers of the language?

It's interesting that you need to prefix "allegedly" to this statement. So
far you have these allegations and you've quoted a newspaper article. It's
not really a scientific debate is it?

I feel that a lot of the debate in English spelling reform is based on what
amounts to no more than language myths. Some myths are:

"English speakers resist spelling reform."

It's true, but on the other hand radical reformists often take this to mean
that English spelling reform doesn't happen. English spelling isn't
standardised and reform is a gradual but continuing process. Ultimately it's
the people who use English who decide whether a particular innovation (by
the Chicago Tribune and other reforming publications) is accepted. It's hard
to see why the preferences of people who use it every day should be
overridden by those who use it only when international communication is
necessary.

"English literacy takes at least an extra year to learn in schools."

This myth arises because people forget that English is a two-tiered (or
three-tiered) language: there's the "perceived-Saxon" lexicon (I say
"perceived" because many Latin words in English are perceived by speakers to
be "Saxon" because they're short, everyday words lacking in Latin affixes)
and the "perceived-Latin" - and also a third tier of borrowings whose
original spellings or transcriptions are preserved. In English-speaking
countries a child learns to read before they have much in the way of
"perceived-Latin" vocabulary. Then the "latinate" spellings are absorbed in
later years as the child's vocabulary increases to embrace them. I suspect
that perpetrators of the myth are adding on years when a child is already
competent at reading and writing his own vocabulry because they haven't yet
learned spelling rules for a layer of vocabulary they're only beginning to
acquire.

"English belongs to everybody."

I'd be prepared to accept that English belongs to the Lowland Scots because
we're only taught in English in spite of going to school speaking a
different   language. I'm less prepared to accept that countries where
English is taught as a second language can lay equal claim to it.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 19:38:25 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 12:38:25 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.05 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.123825.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language contacts" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language contacts
>
> Thanks a lot, Sandy.  This is really interesting.  (And nice to know that
> I'm not suddenly alone on this list.)
>
> For the benefit of everyone (including myself), below are a few
> finger-spelling-related links:

Some comments on these:

By far the best British fingerspelling site I've seen is at:

http://www.jimcromwell.mcmail.com/BSL/spell.htm

Click on "Expressive Fingerspelling" or "Receptive Fingerspelling" to see
two viewpoints.

> Scottish (?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/schottisch.htm

This is just British fingerspelling - perhaps a little archaic. The "C" is
spelled with the wrong hand - a common beginners' mistake! It may be that it
once was done like that, though. Certainly the "D" used to be spelled the
other way round.

> Irish (?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/irland.htm

No need for the question mark, Ron! It is indeed Irish fingerspelling, used
all over Catholic Ireland to sign English words within Irish Sign Language.

> Australian:
> http://www.wadeaf.org.au/auslan.shtml#fingerspelling
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faaustral.htm
>
> New Zealand:
> http://www.deaf.co.nz/fingerspelling.html
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/neuseeland.htm

Both the same as the British system, then.

> American (including Anglo-Canadian?):
> http://where.com/scott.net/asl/abc.html
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fausa.htm

Yes, the "American" in "American Sign Language" refers to all of the
English-speaking areas of North America.

> German:
> http://www.kidsweb.de/schule/zeichen/fingerz.htm
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/deutschland.htm

I believe fingerspelling isn't very popular in Germany - German signers are
much more likely to sign a German word by making a lip pattern and
supporting sign, (such as a classifier, I imagine) to indicate it.

> Alternative, after Hironymus Lorm ("Lormenalfabet"),
> apparently with similarities to the British and Scandinavian systems:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/lorm.htm

Interesting! This looks like it may have been developed from the original
Dalgrano's Glove. It might be a clue to my question about Norwegian
"alternative" fingerspelling.

> Dutch (Netherlands):
> http://www.dovenschap.nl/main.php?sid=27&cat=vingerspelling

This, and French, Savoyarde and American fignerspelling I've seen, are
clearly variations of the same alphabet, probably originating in the school
for the deaf in Paris.

> hand-on-hand method:
> http://www.dovenschap.nl/main.php?sid=27&cat=vingerspelling%20op%20hand
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~hverdonk/vingerspellen.html

This looks rather like the one-handed system but using the other hand as a
base. What puzzles me is that the left hand is the active hand in these
diagrams. Are they based on a diagram drawn by a left-hander??

> Belgian (Non-Romance?):
> http://gebaren.ugent.be/
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fabelgien.htm

Again, very much like the French alphabet.

> Danish:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fadanemark.htm

Also modelled on the French.

> Norwegian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fanorwe.htm

This one is also basically the French - indeed, I've seen wider variation
within France! Neither the Norwegians nor the Danes fingerspell much - they
make up new signs as soon as possible, to avoid it. This may be because the
French system fails to cater for their vowels properly.

> Swedish:
> http://student.educ.umu.se/~anaflk00/udt16h02/handalfabetet.htm

The Swedish is very different - and indeed looks very different from the
other systems in it's general execution. It's much smoother and prettier to
watch (whereas American fingerspelling is just a blur to the uninitiated!).

> Icelandic:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/island.htm

A much-altered version of the French?

> French (including Belgian and French-Canadian?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fafrankr.htm

I don't know whether American or French fignerspelling is used in Quebecois
Sign Language but the French and American alphabets are similar anyway.

> Tanzanian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/tansania.htm

French again!

> Italian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/italien.htm

Slightly modified French.

> Spanish (Spain, including Catalan and Galician?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faspanien.htm

Again, modified French - strange because the Portuguese fingerpelling I've
seen gave French signers a lot of difficulty.

> Mexican:
> Costa-Rican:
> Paraguayan:
> Uruguayan:
> Venezuelan:
> Chilean:
> Argentinian:

Modified French again!

> Portuguese (Portugal):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/portugal.htm

Yes, I knew Portugeuse was somewhat different, though still based on the
French (unless the letters of the Roman alphabet suggest identical
handshapes sometimes?).

> Portuguese (Brazil):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fabrasil.htm

But this is again much closer to the French, so perhaps the South American
systems came from North America?

> Romanian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/romanisch.htm

Modified French.

> Serbo-Croatian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/yugoslawien.htm

Even their Cyrillic seems based on the French!

> Polish:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/polen.htm

Very heavily modified French.

> Russian:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/russisch.htm
> Greek:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fagreece.htm

Well, the basic idea seems to be French!

> Finnish:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fafinland.htm

French!

> Arabic (Egypt):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faagypten.htm

Not much French left there!

> Hebrew:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/israel.htm

Seems like modified French again - Roman alphabet shapes for the Hebrew
letters.

> Ethiopian (only Amharic? Also for Tigrinya?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faatiop.htm

Something completely different at last! Has Israeli fingerpelling borrowed
from this alphabet as well as the French?

> Indian (all languages?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/faindien.htm

Indians, like Portuguese, seem to have very flexible hands!

> Indonesian (only Bahasa Indonesia?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/indonesien.htm

This looks like very old British fingerspelling, since modified in random
ways and also by the influence of the French (say, Dutch?) alphabet. It's a
mixture of old two-handed and one handed alphabets!

> Filipino (only for Tagalog, or others as well?):
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/philipinen.htm

French!

> Thai:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fathai.htm

That's an alphabet and a half!

> Korean:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fakorea.htm

Not French at all!

> Japanese:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/japan.htm

I bet they don't use that much!

> Chinese:
> Mainland: http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fachina.htm

French with many additions.

> Elsewhere: http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/fahongkong.htm

French.

> Phonemic System:
> http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/PMS.htm

Cued speech?

> International Sign Lingua Franca:
> http://www.innerspace.be/vingerspelling/index_off_line_en.htm

So you're OK there, if you know the French!  :)

> This seems like a nice selection for some comparison and research.

Indeed!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Sandy,

> > This seems like a nice selection for some comparison and research.
>
> Indeed!

> > Alternative, after Hironymus Lorm ("Lormenalfabet"),
> > apparently with similarities to the British and Scandinavian systems:
> > http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/lorm.htm
>
> Interesting! This looks like it may have been developed from the original
> Dalgrano's Glove. It might be a clue to my question about Norwegian
> "alternative" fingerspelling.

Great! I'm pleased to have been of service.  BTW, the correct spelling is
"Hieronymus."

> > Icelandic:
> > http://www.michaelszczepanski.de/island.htm
>
> A much-altered version of the French?

Probably an adaptation (to the larger number of letters) of the Danish
system, which, as you said, is based on the French system.  This would make
sense given that Iceland (like Norway) used to be a Danish colony and used
to use Danish (and Danish education) as its link with the rest of the world.

> By far the best British fingerspelling site I've seen is at:
>
> http://www.jimcromwell.mcmail.com/BSL/spell.htm
>
> Click on "Expressive Fingerspelling" or "Receptive Fingerspelling" to see
> two viewpoints.

Granted: the two viewpoints are nice.  But isn't the somewhat gothic-looking
design another reason why you particularly like this site?  ;-)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 20:37:21 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 13:37:21 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.133721.0700.>

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From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]

"And then there is the widespread use of 'learn'
meaning 'to teach'.  I would say this is more of a
working class usage than a particular dialect (it has
a nice history, too)."

Would venture a guess this is more prominent in the
former Danelaw region.  The root "l??re" in Danish
means "to teach."

----------

From: Gaidheal <gaidheal at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]

Latha math, a Lowlanders;

Pat said:
"And then there is the widespread use of 'learn' meaning 'to teach'.  I
would say this is more of a working class usage than a particular
dialect (it has a nice history, too)."

Is it possible that this difference comes from French "apprendre" and
"apprendre ?  quelqu'un"? That is, "to learn" and literally, "to learn to
someone", "to teach". Or is this just a coincidence?

Beannachdan,
Uilleam ??g mhic Sheumais

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]

John Duckworth wanted to know whether there are "false friends" between
Lower Saxon and German... I can think of one, namely "Schiet", which is the
equivalent for "Schei??e" in High German. While the latter (unless used as a
curse word, in which case it can mean anything) strictly means "excrement",
"Schiet" is often nothing worse than mud or dirt.

As for "gift": my two older daughters, then four and six, first met their
American step-grandmother shortly after Christmas. They knew very little
English at that time. She gave them nice wrapped presents; my oldest asked,
"What is that?", and she was told "It's a gift". She promptly replied, "No,
thank you" and handed it back - thoroughly shocked at the notion that this
nice lady was trying to poison here and her sister.

Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

John Duckworth wrote:

> I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
> between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them,
like
> 'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
> 'poison'

You can imagine the bemusement of people who know German when on Seattle's
1st Avenue by Pike Place Market they see the sign "Gift House" above a
souvenir shop with "German" decor ...

By the way, the word _gift_ (<Gift>) for 'poison' is now taking over in
Lowlands Saxon (Low German) of Germany, probably due to German influence.
However, _gift_ (<Gift>) also has the same meaning as English "gift."  I
suspect there used to be a case of false friends there originally.  Well, in
both meanings, the word is related to the verb "to give;" thus, poison is
something you give, administer ... unwelcome a gift though it may be.
Another word for 'poison' in LS is _venyn_ (<Venien> [fe'ni:n]), a Romance
loan related to English "venom."  It is also used to denote 'rage' (~
_raas(ch)_ [<Raas(ch)>]), 'fury', 'spite' (~ _spyt_ [<Spiet>]), etc.
Likewise, the derivation _venynsch_ (<veniensch> [fe'ni:nS]) means
'poisonous' or 'venomous' and also 'in a rage', 'furious', 'spiteful' (~
_spytsch_ [<spietsch>]), etc., depending on the context.

Our John further wrote:

> What I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts?

Good question, John.  I have to admit that I rarely think about it, don't
usually look out for false friends between the two languages.  However, I
will now and will share them with you if I find any.

My feeling is that, generally speaking, the number of false friends may not
be all that great.  I suspect it is greater in writing than in speaking,
because LS of Germany has been forced into a German-based orthographic mold,
but the pronunciation tends to be pretty different, such as differentiation
between monophthong [o:] and [ou] ~ [au] ~ [eu] for what in writing looks
like a long "o", differentiation between monophthong [e:] and [eI] ~ [aI]
for what in writing looks like a long "e", etc.  Furthermore, LS has
extensive lengthening of short vowels before nasals and liquids, also
nasalization before nasals, all of which acts in a "distorting" fashion,
though the LS pronunciation predominates in the Missingsch dialects of
German as well (e.g., Standard German [vEn] vs LS/Missingsch [vE~.n] for
what is written <wenn> 'when', 'if').

A glaring false friend is LS _vik_ (<Fick> [fIk]) 'pocket' (especially
'trouser pocket'), raising "High" German eyebrows even higher.  (Just change
the vowel for the English equivalent, and you'll know the German meaning
...).  Another one of this ilk is _vikker_ (<Ficker> ['fIk3]) 'piglet',
often used as a term of endearment, e.g., _l??t(ten) vikker_ (<l??tt(en)
Ficker>), for a child, especially a dirty, little child, the equivalent of
German _kleiner Dreckspatz_ or _kleiner Dreckfink_ (i.e., English 'mucky
pup', 'filthy little beggar', etc., depending on dialect and context).  And
then there is the somewhat uncomfortable-sounding "semi-friend" _vikvakken_
(<fickfacken>) 'to talk silly', 'to perform flim-flam'.  (I think this and
the preceding are related to English "to fidget," because _vikkerig_
[<fickerig> ['fIkerIC])] means 'fidgety', 'clumsy', besides 'dirty'.)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 20:41:34 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 13:41:34 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.05 (08) [D/F]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.134134.0700.>

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From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.04 (03) [D/E/V]

> From: Kris Denhaerynck <krisdenhaerynck at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> Heeringa ontleende zijn data-materiaal aan de Reeks Nederlandse
> Dialectatlassen (RND), die werd samengesteld in de periode 1925 tot 1975.
> Hieruit selecteerde hij 360 Vlaamse en Nederlandse dialecten. Vervolgens
> bekeek hij de uitspraak van 125 alledaagse woorden, die voor al deze
> dialecten zijn opgetekend.

. Deze kaart maakt trouwens
> ook korte metten met het idee dat er een duidelijk verband zou zijn tussen
> de Friese en de Noord-Hollandse ('West-Friese') dialecten - iets wat
vroeger
> nog wel eens werd aangenomen op grond van de historische banden die er
> tussen deze gebieden zijn.

Tsja, dat is wol tige maklik om jin der sa fan ?f te meitsjen! At dizze
?ndersiker ris de muoite dien hie om de literatuer oer dit ?nderwerp nei te
l?zen, hied er sjen kind dat dizze oerienkomsten krekt op it m?d fan 'e
syntaksis, morfology en wurdskat lizze, en mar tige deels op it m?d fan 'e
l?ding: wat dat oangiet is it dialekt "Frankisearre", mar de "djippere" ,
mear grammatikale oerienkomsten binne bewarre bleaun. Der binne noch wol in
pear l?doerienkomsten ("bien" foar "been" en in sterke tindins ta twjil?den
foar toskl?den (dintalen), bewarjen fan "sk-" en in r?ljende tosk-r, mar de
syntaktyske oerienkomsten binne opfallender, neffens my. It is wat te
ienf?ldich it dialekt allinnich as in samling l?den te sjen....

Foar it oare is it in nijsgjirrich ?ndersyk, en ik haw syn proefskrift ek
mar fan syn webside ophelle, en in pear fan syn artikels. Mar in st?dzje
dy't wurdskat en soks meinimt soe wer wat oare ferbannen oan it ljocht
bringe kinne..

Mei freonlike groetnis,

Henno Brandsma

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun  5 22:09:52 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 15:09:52 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (09) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.150952.0700.>

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From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
> between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them,
like
> 'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
> 'poison' -a totally false friend, while others are partially false - thus,
> French 'voyage' is any journey, while the English 'voyage' is only a
journey
> by sea.
>
> Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this
carefully:
> do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
> thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples,
and
> I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.
>
> John Duckworth
> Preston, UK

(Westerlauwer) Frisian and Dutch have quite a few, among which:
slim (F) (bad, serious) vs slim (D) (clever) vs slim (Eng).
BTW this "slim" in the Frisian meaning alos occurs in Low Saxon dialects
(both in Dutch and German parts) and correspond to German "schlimm" of
course.

lucht in Dutch means both sky and smell, while in Frisian "lucht" only means
smell.
faaks in Frisian means "maybe" while in Dutch "vaak" (not quite identical
but almost) means "often".
One that occurred with an ex-girlfriend visiting my grandmother, who
remarked "wat moast no mei sokken?" (=what is one to do with such (people),
when someone had an opinion she disagreed with) on which the ex said
"aantrekken" (put them on) (in Dutch), because she confused it with Dutch
"sokken" (socks). In fact sokken [sOk at n] (socks) and sokken [sok at n] (such
people) form a minimal pair in Frisian for the phonemes [o] and [O], but
this distinction is not heard by most Dutch (there these too do not
constitute separate phonemes).
Similarly we have bolle [bol@] which means "bull" which sounds to Dutch as
bolle (round, inflected form), which in Frisian would be bolle [bOl@] with
the other phoneme...
A classic is "net" which in Frisian means "not" and in Dutch "just about",
giving rise to jokes about Dutch people trying to sail under a bridge with a
Frisian saying "it kin net" (it is impossible, literally "it cannot"), which
the Dutch interpreting wrongly ...

Henno Brandsma

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Henno (above):

> A classic is "net" which in Frisian means "not" and in Dutch "just about",
> giving rise to jokes about Dutch people trying to sail under a bridge with
a
> Frisian saying "it kin net" (it is impossible, literally "it cannot"),
which
> the Dutch interpreting wrongly ...

These are false friends within Lowlands Saxon (Low German), between
dialects.  _Net_ (<nett>) is 'just about' in Eastern Friesland dialects,
'nice', 'friendly', etc., in other dialects (as in German, related to
"neat," French _net_, Italian _netto_, etc., 'pure').  (It is also a
homophone in German dialects in which _net_ means 'not'.)

Talking about "false friends" ...  This reminds me of an Australian friend
trying to learn Hebrew, her first (and unsuccessful) non-Indo-European
language learning attempt, feeling very frustrated and exclaiming, "What a
silly language in which 'me' is 'who', 'who' is 'he', and 'he' is 'she'!"

NB: Hebrew _mi_ (< _miy_) ?????? 'who?', _hu_ (< _huw???_) ???????? 'he', _hi_ (< hiy
???_) ???????? 'she'
(cf. respectively: Arabic _m??_ ?????? ~ _man_ ????????, _huwa_ ????????, _hiya_ ????? ??;
Maltese _min_, _huwa_ [u'wa], _hiya_ [i'ja])

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun  6 01:42:37 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 18:42:37 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (10) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.5.JUN.2004.184237.0700.>

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From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (02) [E]

Hello All,

Ron wrote:

  ....
> the core issue, which is that, in comparison with the vast
> majority of the world's languages, way too much time and effort goes into
> learning to spell and read English (and to learn to correctly pronounce
each
> word newly encountered while reading, which in the case of non-native
> speakers is a very large number).  This level of deficient orthographic
> predictability (which is similar in other extremely historical systems
such
> as Tibetan and vertically written Mongolian, as I had mentioned) is
> surpassed only by wholly or partly non-sound-based systems such as those
of
> Chinese, Japanese and precontemporary (mixed-script) Korean.  It is
similar
> in Arabic and Hebrew (and to a lesser degree also in Farsi) in which
vowels
> (at least short vowels) are usually not represented.

My experience is with English as a second language learners. They mostly
pick up the language by exposure to reading texts and spelling is not a
big problem for them. In fact they spell English better than their
native Spanish or Catalan which have a much more sound based
orthography. This is probably true because they read very little in
their native languages and trust their ear when spelling.

...
> In an ideal case (namely where a system is truly phonemic) all you have to
do is learn the
> *system* (once, perhaps even in just a few hours, reinforced by reading
and
> writing practice) rather than the spelling of individual words (which goes
> on for the rest of your life).  Furthermore, this type of system is by its
> very nature interdialectal, because phonological differences (in the
> phonetic output) between dialects do not even enter the equasion in
reading
> and writing.

This is fine when talking of consonants but surely vowel sounds are
extraordinarily different. In a western culture I doubt that you could
rely on the consonants for spelling and leave vowels to the speaker to
fill in at will. Who would finally choose the written form of the
vowels? The economically powerful?

> However, as an American friend of mine said about this issue yesterday,
the
> attitude of the majority of English speakers (namely Americans) is such
that
> even otherwise universally applying metric standards will not be accepted
by
> the general public and their representatives, leave alone a "scary" thing
> like spelling reform, no matter how compelling arguments in favor of it
may
> be.  And who cares about all those poor people and foreigners anyway?

I agree that uniformity has not been seen as a virtue in English
speaking countries. However I don't see that as an argument for asking
foreigners how to speak or write your native language. (The next thing
they might set up an "Acad?mie Royale" in Paris or Brussels to decide
what English spelling is acceptable and what not.) This kind of
prescriptive uniformity, accepted as the norm in many countries, is
decidedly unscientific.

Regards,

Tom

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (06) [E]

Dear Gabrielle Kahn.

    Would you say, with Mae West (was it Mae West) "A hard Language is good
to find?"

Yrs,

Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun  6 16:38:40 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 09:38:40 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E/German]
Message-ID: <SUN.6.JUN.2004.093840.0700.>

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From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.04 (07) [E]

Hi,
Isn?t this a quite common thing? E.g. "buck" can mean two different things
depending on the socio-linguistic context. Or is this not what you mean,
John?
Greetings to all, Mike Wintzer

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
> between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them,
like
> 'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
> 'poison' -a totally false friend, while others are partially false - thus,
> French 'voyage' is any journey, while the English 'voyage' is only a
journey
> by sea.
>
> Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this
carefully:
> do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
> thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples,
and
> I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.
>
> John Duckworth
> Preston, UK

----------

From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (07) [E]

Hi,
I have noticed in a number of  languages that have different words for teach
and learn (some don?t) that the word for learn is used for teach. My
impression is that it tends to be a question of social stratum. Maybe you
haven?t heard this one yet:
Teacher in note to parents of little-Erna: Sie m?ssen Klein-Erna besser
waschen, sie riecht.
Answer note from Mother: Sie sollen ihr nicht riechen, sie sollen ihr
lernen.
Nichts f?r ungut, tsch??,
Mike Wintzer

----------

From: yasuji <yasuji at amber.plala.or.jp>
Subject: False friend

Hallo friends,

English wors "learn" is in German "lernen". But, when I started to learn
Plattdeutsch (Low Saxon), I found that High German words "lernen" and
"lehren" can be translated into only one Low Saxon word "lehren". Maybe I
must check
the situation of the sentence to know if it means "lernen"(to learn) or
"lehren" (to teach).
Regards,

Yasuji Waki

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Dear Lowlanders,

Indeed, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _leyren_ (<lehr(e)n> ~ <liehr(e)n>,
which to German ears sounds like 'to teach') can be used for both 'to teach'
and 'to learn'.  In most cases the meaning is clear within a given context.
If it is not, you can alternatively use _by-bringen_ (<bibringen>, cf.
German _beibringen_), _by-b?ygen_ (<bib?gen> ~ <bibeugen>) or _an-leyren_
(<anlehr(e)n> ~ <an-liehr(e)n>, cf. German _anlernen_ 'to train') for 'to
teach' and _af-leyren_ (<aflehr(e)n> ~ <afliehr(e)n>) for 'to learn'.   You
can also use _studeyren_ (<studeern> ~ <studiern>) for 'to learn', as well
as for 'to try', 'to have a go at' (while in German _studieren_ only means
'to study (at a tertiary institution)').

Again, _tou-leyren_ (<tolehr(e)n> ~ <toliehr(e)n>), which carries the
connotation of 'to add knowledge', can be either 'to teach', 'to educate'
(for instance as performed by a governess or a trade master) or 'to learn
(in addition)', depending on the context.

Interestingly, in Missingsch (German dialects on Lowlands Saxon substrates)
it is _lernen_ (cf. German _lernen_ 'to learn') that tends to be used for
both 'to teach' and 'to learn' ...

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun  6 16:39:56 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 09:39:56 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language contacts" 2004.06.05 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.6.JUN.2004.093956.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language contacts" [E]

Ron wrote:

> Granted: the two viewpoints are nice.  But isn't the somewhat
gothic-looking
> design another reason why you particularly like this site?  ;-)

It takes more than a black background to make something gothic - it has to
be a bit batty, too  :)

No, it's really that the illustration is clear and there's animation - this
is much better than simply having an arrow to show movement, as in most
diagrams. Moreover, it's photographic - most hand-drawn diagrams tend to
miss subtle but important points.

This brings me (in a way which will become clear!) to another aspect of Deaf
culture (it's the done thing to write "Deaf" for cultural deafness and
"deaf" for audiological deafness) - the use of "sign names".

(Incidentally, I'll say "BSL" rather than "signed languages" and "English"
rather than "oral languages", especially since what I'm talking about here
won't necessarily apply in other deaf/hearing cultures).

Sign names are signs used to indicate a person when speaking about them, but
their derivation and usage is quite different from that of names in oral
languages.

Of course, Deaf people can just fingerspell a name if required, but this is
annoying, except sometimes when the name is only three letters and can be
fingerspelled almost like a single sign. On the other hand, a sign name
might be derived partly using fingerspelling and partly using a sign
language pun. For example, the well-known Deaf TV presenter Clive Mason's
sign name is fignerspelled "C" plus the BSL sign for "live".

On the other hand, sign names might just be a personal characteristic - for
example, Prince Charles has a sign name which means "Big Ears", and I've
seen Clive Mason using this on the BBC TV programme "See Hear". However, it
would be inappropriate (even if you're Deaf) to call anyone "Big Ears" in
English - sign names just aren't translated, except possibly when explaining
their origins.

Another aspect of this is that a person's sign name isn't used when signing
to them, the way their English name might be used periodically when speaking
to them in English. Nor is a sign name used to attract a person's attention,
the way you say a person's name in English to get their attention - deaf
people attract each other's attention by various methods (which I explained
in a mailing on Lowlands-L some time ago:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0212B&L=lowlands-l&P=R538 ),
but signing a name isn't going to get the attention of someone who's not
looking! And again, when talking about a person who's actually present, a
BSL user normally indicates them by pointing, so sign names are used when a
person is absent rather than present, and although nobody is expected to
have a sign name they don't like, a sign name like "Big Ears" or "Half-Pint"
doesn't continually grate on a person until they get sick of it, the way it
might in English.

Often Deaf people only know each other by their sign name and it can come as
a surprise when after some years they see them referred as "Brian" or
"Charlotte".  And there's a running joke in the BSL community which goes,
"Yes, I know them really well, in fact I'm on last-name terms with them."
But in the past (at least, I hope it's in the past) teachers used to give
children in Deaf schools numbers, so that you sometimes see an older person
reminiscing about his schooldays and referring to a particular classmate by
a sign name which is really a number - this being the only name they know
them by.

One of the fun things about going to a sign language class is keeping an eye
out for possible sign names for the other students. Sometimes there's a
period over which several are suggested before one finally becomes common
usage - ie the person accepts it, and it's easy and clear to sign.

Signs are often personal characteristics, and since these can change, sign
names can change too. The shaving of long-standing beards or cutting of long
hair can herald a change of name, too!

Sometimes sign names are quite general in nature. Someone from another
country might be given a sign name meaning "French" or "American" if these
are unusual enough in the community. So when I lived in Wales I used to be
called "Scottish", but now that I'm here in this very rural part of England
I stand out in a different way and signers call me "Goth"  :)

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun  6 16:50:20 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 09:50:20 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.6.JUN.2004.095020.0700.>

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From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (05) [E]

It would really be nice to see us mark stress in a new spelling system. I
want to learn the Slavic languages, but they're bears as to how to pronounce
things if you don't have pronunciation to back you up. Who would refuse
refuse?

---------

From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (10) [E]

Tom Maguire wrote:
>
> My experience is with English as a second language learners. They mostly
> pick up the language by exposure to reading texts and spelling is not a
> big problem for them. In fact they spell English better than their
> native Spanish or Catalan which have a much more sound based
> orthography.
 >
That's what I've always said too. I'm a native Dutch speaker, yet I
spell English better than Dutch. I don't know why, all I know is I just
do. Same goes for a number of other Dutch people.

Henry Pijffers

PS: For those of you who don't know me; I've been subscribed to this
list before, but decided to leave due to circumstances. However, things
have changed now, and I decided to return. I'm a native Saxon and Dutch
speaker, and a strong supporter of a common Saxon spelling system.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Orthography

Welcome back, Henry!  Great to have you back.  You are one among several
that have rejoined us during the past week or so.  Apparently, hardcore
Lowlanders cannot stay away forever.

Also nice to have some orthographic support for a change.  Just watch them
lashing out at poor little me, just for playing the devil's advocate and
challenging them to make them think ...  ;-)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Orthography" [E]

> From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.04 (02) [E]
>
> My experience is with English as a second language learners. They mostly
> pick up the language by exposure to reading texts and spelling is not a
> big problem for them. In fact they spell English better than their
> native Spanish or Catalan which have a much more sound based
> orthography. This is probably true because they read very little in
> their native languages and trust their ear when spelling.

I think this accords with my experience of communicating with Welsh
speakers. Being deaf, I often (many times a day) have to ask someone to
write down what they're saying for me. In spite of the fact that Welsh
orthography is almost as phonemic as the structure of the language will
allow, and in spite of the fact that many of the younger people boasted of
having been educated in Welsh as much as in English, their level of
illiteracy was clearly much higher in Welsh than in English. Typists in
English and people who wrote technical documents in English as part of their
everyday work spelled Welsh words wrongly as a rule and were sometimes
completely stuck for how to write a word.

A few years ago I wrote a short poem in Welsh and asked a new graduate from
Aberystwyth university to help me to make the Welsh good. This involved him
editing it to correct grammar and locate the mots justes, after which I had
to edit it again to correct his numerous misspellings. He has no such
problems with English!

I think it's as Tom says - these people are educated in Welsh but they don't
read much in Welsh. Most of what they needed for their studies is in English
(in spite of some lectures Welsh and exams optionally Welsh or English if
the tutor can read Welsh), all the best novels are in English, and they'd
rather read The Mirror than Y Cymro!

But it does give the lie to Ron's idea that, "In an ideal case (namely where
a system is truly phonemic) all you have to do is learn the *system* (once,
perhaps even in just a few hours, reinforced by reading and writing
practice) rather than the spelling of individual words (which goes on for
the rest of your life)." I think what we have here is a professional
linguist speaking. Ron may be able to learn a writing system in a few hours,
but most people can't!

I also question the value of being able to learn a system in a few hours. As
Tom's and my own experience seems to show, there's not much point in
learning a writing system unless you're going to do plenty reading in it. So
a gradually absorbed system isn't necessarily worse than a logically compact
system, especially when many people aren't trained to think logically or
mathematically in the first place. I think the idea of a pure phonemic
system is a fantasy that's only occasionally played out (with some
approximations) when a language happens to have a sufficiently logical
phonemic structure, and is either restricted to a unified (probably also
small) area so that dialectical differences are restricted, or (as in the
case of Italian) an official form of the language is created and minority
dialects are just trampled over.

Ron also wrote:

"Furthermore, this type of system is by its very nature interdialectal,
because phonological differences (in the phonetic output) between dialects
do not even enter the equasion in reading and writing."

This statement puzzles me - surely dialects are the bane of a phonemic
system? I don't think it can be done without diaphonemics, and even that's
just a compromise.

Tom again:

> This is fine when talking of consonants but surely vowel sounds are
> extraordinarily different. In a western culture I doubt that you could
> rely on the consonants for spelling and leave vowels to the speaker to
> fill in at will. Who would finally choose the written form of the
> vowels? The economically powerful?

This is particularly true of English and Scots, where most unstressed vowels
are simply a schwa. I've tried devising (dia)phonemic systems for both
languages but it tends to fill up with the letter "i". When I first joined
Lowlands-L one of the Lowlanders here directed me to his web pages for a
reformed English spelling system but, apart from the fact that I could see
it was American pronunciation (he had thought it was universal), it suffered
from what I call "The Solicitor Effect" in English, ie, that different
people have different ideas about the vowels in words like "solicitor".
Where I would write "solisitir" or possibly "solisiter", others would write
"slistr" or "slicty" (where I've used "y" at random to represent the vowel
the English use for "-er" endings - I, of course, pronounce the "r"). IN
other words, he often dropped vowels were I felt they were necessary.

I've also tried to learn the prize-winning "Shavian" script for English, and
failed. My conclusion is that you simply can't write Scottish English in
Shavian script. Even ignoring the difference between "w" and "wh", there's
no letter for "r" and the whole vowel system simply doesn't map - even if
people could determine which vowel is appropriate. Yet Shavian script
(perhaps sensibly re-mapped back onto the Roman alphabet rather than written
in its current "symmetrical" form) is more or less exactly what's required
for a phonemic representation of certain kinds of English.

Shavian has also been designed to be particularly easy to learn - in its
symmetric form it actually reflects some phonemes at the feature level
(voicings), so theoretically helps the learner to remember the shape of "b"
from the shape of related sounds like "p". But my dialect of English
prevented me from learning it - I would have actually have to have learned a
whole new way of pronouncing English (say, BBC English) to be able to write.

So much for Ron's assertion that a phonemic script can be learned in a few
hours, or that it solves interdialectical problems.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Tom Maguire <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (05) [E]

> From: jkrause <jkrause at old-sod-shanty.com>

> Regarding Englisch othografie, Ai think wie ott tuh yuhs sum sort ov Low
> Sachsen  beyst spelling sistem.  After all, Englisch is a Loh German
> dereiv'd languidge, not?  Abolisch the X, Q, and in mohst keyses, the C,
> eksept for the ck kombineyschon, and Ai think wie wudd hav a verie gudd
> orthografick sistem.
>
> Yers with mei tung firmlie in mei tschieck,
> Jim Krause

Flolgwoni Jim I wuold jsut say taht slpelnig ralely in'ts an isuse
bceasue, as eyervnoe kwnos, ayonen can raed waht you witre if you are
caerluf to srart and end wrdos wtih the crorect lterter.

Regards,

Tom

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (10) [E]

Mark wrote:

> Would you say, with Mae West (was it Mae West) "A hard Language is good
> to find?"

Hey, finally someone who takes me seriously! :-))

I knew that Troy could and would state the same much more scientifically, so
I decided to go for the surreal approach, just for the heck of it...

Is that a diphthong you're carrying, or are you just happy to see me?
Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 16:20:17 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:20:17 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.092017.0700.>

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From: Kevin Caldwell <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (03) [E]

> From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
> Subject: "Orthography" [E]
> Ron also wrote:
>
> "Furthermore, this type of system is by its very nature interdialectal,
> because phonological differences (in the phonetic output) between dialects
> do not even enter the equasion in reading and writing."
>
> This statement puzzles me - surely dialects are the bane of a phonemic
> system? I don't think it can be done without diaphonemics, and even that's
> just a compromise.
>
> Tom again:
>
> > This is fine when talking of consonants but surely vowel sounds are
> > extraordinarily different. In a western culture I doubt that you could
> > rely on the consonants for spelling and leave vowels to the speaker to
> > fill in at will. Who would finally choose the written form of the
> > vowels? The economically powerful?
>
> This is particularly true of English and Scots, where most unstressed
> vowels
> are simply a schwa. I've tried devising (dia)phonemic systems for both
> languages but it tends to fill up with the letter "i". When I first joined
> Lowlands-L one of the Lowlanders here directed me to his web pages for a
> reformed English spelling system but, apart from the fact that I could see
> it was American pronunciation (he had thought it was universal), it
> suffered
> from what I call "The Solicitor Effect" in English, ie, that different
> people have different ideas about the vowels in words like "solicitor".
> Where I would write "solisitir" or possibly "solisiter", others would
> write
> "slistr" or "slicty" (where I've used "y" at random to represent the vowel
> the English use for "-er" endings - I, of course, pronounce the "r"). IN
> other words, he often dropped vowels were I felt they were necessary.

I too do not understand how a phonemic spelling system for English could be
devised without regard to dialectal differences.  I remember how surprised I
was when I ran across a list of words with "silent letters" - it was a list
of the English alphabet and words for each letter in which that letter is
silent.  For the letter "L", they listed words like "walk" and "talk."  I
thought, "The 'L' in 'walk' and 'talk' isn't silent!"  Then I started to
listen carefully to other people's pronunciation of those words and began to
notice for the first time in my life that most people do _not_ pronounce the
'L' in those words!  As though the words were actually "wock" and "tock"!
It was a revelation to me, as I have always pronounced the "L" in those
words (or at least it "colors" the preceding vowel to some extent).  But I
would expect that a phonemic spelling system would drop the "L" from those
words, and where would that leave me and others who pronounce the "L"?  The
same might go for the "h" in "wh-" words (I pronounce "wh" differently from
"w", as do a lot of US Southerners).

Kevin Caldwell
Kcaldwell31 at comcast.net

---------

From: Peter Snepvangers <snepvangers at optushome.com.au>
Subject: Orthography

Tom Maguire jmaguire at pie.xtec. wrote....
I agree that uniformity has not been seen as a virtue in English
speaking countries. However I don't see that as an argument for asking
foreigners how to speak or write your native language. (The next thing
they might set up an "Acad?mie Royale" in Paris or Brussels to decide
what English spelling is acceptable and what not.) This kind of
prescriptive uniformity, accepted as the norm in many countries, is
decidedly unscientific.

Hello Tom,
you might end up with something like this
If GH   can stand for P  as in  Hiccough
If OUGH stands for    O  as in  Dough
If PHTH stands for    T  as in  Phthisis
If EIGH stands for    A  as in  Neighbour
If TTE  stands for    T  as in  Gazette
If EAU  stands for    O  as in  Plateau
 The right way to spell POTATO should be: GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU
Cheers
Peter Snepvangers
snepvangers at optushome.com.au

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 16:21:43 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:21:43 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Levity" 2004.06.07 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.092143.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (03) [E]

Hi, Gabriele,

> Is that a diphthong you're carrying, or are you just happy to see me?

I can't cap that or match it, but I rather think you'll enjoy this:

Do you know that a Scottish man has a pibroch; & he is supposed to keep it
in his oxter?

Yrs,
Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 17:19:28 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 10:19:28 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.101928.0700.>

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From: Holger Weigelt <platt at holger-weigelt.de>
Subject: "False friends"

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> I was writing something the other day about 'False Friends' (Faux Amis)
> between different languages; you must all be aware of so many of them,
like
> 'gift' in English, meaning 'a present', and 'Gift' in German, meaning
> 'poison' -a totally false friend, while others are partially false - thus,
> French 'voyage' is any journey, while the English 'voyage' is only a
journey
> by sea.
>
> Now, I began to wonder about something, and I need to phrase this
carefully:
> do False Friends also commonly occur between contiguous speech forms? What
I
> mean are there False Friends, for instance, between Standard German and
Low
> Saxon - two speech forms that will be spoken in the same place by the same
> person in different social contexts? The curious thing is that after some
> thought about this, I have not been able to come up with many examples,
and
> I have thought of none in the Germanic languages.
>
> John Duckworth
> Preston, UK
>
Hello John !
Yes, there are some between German and Low Saxon. One of them is the same as
is between English and German: gift (gift)/ Gift (poison). An other that
comes into mind at once is fleddern (eldertree which would be Holunder in
G.) / Flieder (bot. Syringa which would be fl??ren in LS).
There will be other more striking examples, too.
Recently I read a report in LS about a journey where in one passage the
writer wanted to explain that he entered a hotel and wrote: "wi betrukken 'n
hotel". In German this would sound: Wir bezogen ein Hotel. "bezogen" is past
tense of "beziehen" (to move into, to enter into a house) - G. "beziehen" is
derived from "ziehen" which in LS is "trekken" to which past tense is
"trukken". What the writer obviously didn't know is that LS "betrekken" or
"b?trekken"  means "to beat, to knock, to hit, to belabour.
Greetings
Holger

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends

Greetings to one and all!

Mike Winzer said: "Hi,Isn??t this a quite common thing? E.g. "buck" can mean
two different things depending on the socio-linguistic context. Or is this
not what you mean,John?"

No, Mike it isn't what I mean. The example of 'buck' or 'jack' or 'spring'
is one of homonyms (and homophones) in the same language. By 'False Friends'
I mean words in one language (or dialect - though for politically correct
reasons I was trying to avoid the use of this word) which sound / are spelt
the same (or very similarly) in another language (or dialect), but which
mean something different. Thus the word _Erik_ in German is a man's name,
but in Turkish _erik_ is the word for 'a plum'; the word _book_ in English
does mean the same as the word _boek_ (pronounced almost th same) in Dutch,
but does not mean the same as the Russian 'False Friend' _buk_ , which means
'beech tree'. Similarly, the Danish _bog_ is not synonymous with the English
word _bog_, meaning 'marsh', but rather means 'book'.

There are many instances of False Friends between one language and another,
but what suddenly began to interest me was whether they existed between
literary languages and the forms of speech that are often considered to be
dialects of those languages; in other words between two forms of speech
spoken in different social contexts by the same person. What I think is that
the literary language will exert such a powerful influence that False
Friends would disappear after a time, but that is just a theory and it may
be different in practice.

Sandy said: "Also, sometimes a word is not only the false friend of a word
in another language, but because of the closeness and historical contacts
between the languages, the words falsely befriended also exist with the same
meanings in the other language. For example Scots "fit" (foot) is a false
friend to the English "fit" (eg "the shoe fit" or even in the sense of
"seizure"), but the English meanings of the word exist in Scots too. "

This is a very good point, and it seems that we must split false friends
into a number of categories. Am I not right in saying though, Sandy, that
there is a slight difference of pronunciation between Scots _fit_ in the
sense of 'foot', and _fit_ in the other senses? Whatever the case though, we
have a homonym here, and the sense could be misunderstood if taken out of
context.

The other words that Sandy gives, do however seem to be true False Friends,
as do the others given by Ron and Gabriele and others. This gives food for
thought as it appears to show that False Friends can be tolerated between
Scots and English, or between Low Saxon and Standard German, and are not
eradicated by the strength of the more dominant speech-form.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Of course, I agree with your observations and conclusions, John

I wonder if we could go a step farther by perhaps saying that false friends
can be seen as some sort of test of language familiarity or proficiency.
Surely, false friends are striking only to those who are not or are only
superficially acquainted with one or both of the languages involved, while
those who are very familiar with and proficient in both do not normally
think about false friends, not even about the "gems" among them.

Incidentally, all this is reminiscent of the fine art and science of
"shoecabbaging" a friend of mine has developed:
http://www.ucomics.com/shoecabbage/
http://www.ucomics.com/shoecabbage/bio.phtml
http://home.epix.net/~hce/shoecabbage.html
http://thewvsr.com/shoecabbage.htm
http://www.amuniversal.com/ups/newsrelease/?view=82

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Peter Snepvangers <snepvangers at optushome.com.au>
Subject: False friends

Mike <botas at club-internet.fr> wrote:
Hi,
Isn?t this a quite common thing? E.g. "buck" can mean two different things
depending on the socio-linguistic context. Or is this not what you mean,
John?
Greetings to all, Mike Wintzer

Hello Mike,
I was reading your posting and was reminded of a joke so I thought I would
share it with you.
SMOKE RINGS

A Dutch immigrant travelling through the prairies of the USA stopped at a
small town and went to a bar. He stood at the end of the bar, ordered a
drink, and lit up a cigar. As he sipped his drink, he stood there quietly
blowing smoke rings.

After he blew nine or ten smoke rings into the air, an angry American Indian
stomped up to him and said,

"One more remark like that and I'll smash your face in!"
The meaning of words (or in this case actions) is not always clear. I am not
a linguist and have made many fox paws when I have tried to write in Dutch
and Limburgs because I have assumed the correct meanings of words. What
annoys me most is when people do not correct you and let you continue with
the poor grammatical useage.
Cheers
Peter Snepvangers
snepvangers at optushome.com.au

----------

From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (07) [E]

> From: John Nelson <onlinelearning2 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.05 (01) [E]
>
> "And then there is the widespread use of 'learn'
> meaning 'to teach'.  I would say this is more of a
> working class usage than a particular dialect (it has
> a nice history, too)."
>
> Would venture a guess this is more prominent in the
> former Danelaw region.  The root "l?re" in Danish
> means "to teach."

or 'to teach' = 'at l?re (fra sig)'

> By the way, the word _gift_ (<Gift>) for 'poison' is now taking over in
> Lowlands Saxon (Low German) of Germany, probably due to German influence.
> However, _gift_ (<Gift>) also has the same meaning as English "gift."

It is more funny in Danish:

gift = poison
gift = being married :)

Kenneth

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 18:53:06 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 11:53:06 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (04) [E]
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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (01) [E]

Kevin wrote:

> I too do not understand how a phonemic spelling system for English could
be
> devised without regard to dialectal differences.  I remember how surprised
I
> was when I ran across a list of words with "silent letters" - it was a
list
> of the English alphabet and words for each letter in which that letter is
> silent.  For the letter "L", they listed words like "walk" and "talk."  I
> thought, "The 'L' in 'walk' and 'talk' isn't silent!"  Then I started to
> listen carefully to other people's pronunciation of those words and began
to
> notice for the first time in my life that most people do _not_ pronounce
the
> 'L' in those words!

That reminds me of an argument I sometimes have with my (US-American)
husband; he thinks it's hilarious that I put a little "r" sound at the end
of the word "idea". Well, that's how I learned it in school (British
English, in a German school), and that's how I remember people pronouncing
it in England and Scotland. So,do they or don't they?

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 19:12:42 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 12:12:42 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.121242.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: ***SPAM*** Re:      LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (03) [E]

Ron wrote:

> Surely, false friends are striking only to those who are not or are only
> superficially acquainted with one or both of the languages involved, while
> those who are very familiar with and proficient in both do not normally
> think about false friends, not even about the "gems" among them.

My daughter came home with such a gem today... one of her German college
friends had gone to Holland and saw a purse there which she would have liked
to buy, but it had a big sticker on it saying, "Bijzonder nuttig", which
means "Especially useful". Well, she figured out the "bijzonder" part
(German "besonders"), but then she took "nuttig" to be the same as the
German word "nuttig", which means "prostitute-like". The real German
equivalent would have been "n?tzlich"; I suppose that German "Nutte",
"whore", has the same root - someone who is used. So she didn't buy the
purse because she thought it was a favourite among Dutch prostitutes and she
didn't want to give the wrong impression.

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 19:29:36 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 12:29:36 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.122936.0700.>

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From: Szelog, Mike <Mike.Szelog at citizensbank.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (04) [E]

Up here in New England, that's the ONLY way to pronounce it - got in trouble
way back in grammar school for actually writing "idear" - the 'r' on the end
is that pronounced/noticeable here in New England!!

'Course, we get rid of it in "othah" (other) places!

Mike S
Manchester, NH - USA

----------

From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (04) [E]

Gabrielle asked:  "So,do they or don't they?"
Yes, they do.  When I was in college taking my linguistics courses, I was
told that the added "r" on idea was an example of overcorrection.  So many
words ending in "r" orthographically are pronounced schwa by New Englanders
and the British.  So, on words that really end in schwa, there's a tendency
to add an "r".  Go figure.

Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 19:45:30 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 12:45:30 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.07 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.124530.0700.>

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

Gabriele (under "False friends" today):

> The real German
> equivalent would have been "n?tzlich"; I suppose that German "Nutte",
> "whore", has the same root - someone who is used.

I'm afraid that, according to etymological sources, the origin appears to be
even more demeaning: it is a variant of Middle German _nuot_ > Modern German
_Nut_ ~ _Nute_ 'joint', 'chase', 'gap', 'groove', 'crack' ... 'nough said
...

Lowlands Saxon (Low German) has _nuut_ (<Nuut> < _nute_, f.) for the above
(i.e., the technical term), but apparently it has the demeaning variant only
as a probably recent loan from German, though German may have originally
borrowed it from LS (or else I would expect *_Nutze_).  The traditional LS
words for both the professional and "hobby" varieties are (_houre_ >) _hour_
(<Hoor> ~ <Huur> [hoU3] ~ [hu:3]) and the neuter gender derivation
_houren-minsch_ (<Horenminsch> ~ <Hoornminsch> ~ <Hurenminsch> ~
<Huurnminsch> ['hoU3nmInS] ~ ['hu:3nmInS]),* related to English (_h?re_ >)
_whore_, German (_huora_ >) _Hure_, Dutch/Afrikaans _hoer_, Danish _hore_,
Swedish _hora_, Icelandic _h?ra_, etc. (< Germanic *_h?r?n_ < Indo-European
*_karo-s_ 'beloved', 'desired' < _ka-_ 'to desire', cf. Latvian _k?rs_
'lusting').

* _Minsch_ in the sense of 'human being' or 'person' (of either sex) has
masculine gender (thus takes the article _dey_ (<de> and the pronoun _hey_
(<he>)), while _minsch_ with neuter gender (taking the article _dat_ and the
pronoun _it_ ~ _et_ ~ _dat_) expresses 'woman' with contempt; e.g., _Dat
minsch dayt d'n heylen dag niks as ekstern_ 'That (dreadful) woman does
nothing all day but nag and yell' (literally "magpie-ing?).

Another word for "whore" or "prostitute" is _vouse_ ~ _vous'_ (_vose_ ~
_voos'_? <Fose> ~ <Foos>).  I do not use it, and I do not know its origin,
but I have the sneaking suspicion it's something nasty.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 23:05:58 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 16:05:58 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.160558.0700.>

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From: Kevin Caldwell <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (04) [E]

> That reminds me of an argument I sometimes have with my (US-American)
> husband; he thinks it's hilarious that I put a little "r" sound at the end
> of the word "idea". Well, that's how I learned it in school (British
> English, in a German school), and that's how I remember people pronouncing
> it in England and Scotland. So,do they or don't they?
>
> Gabriele Kahn

In the US, that would make you sound like you were from New England or, if
spoken with a drawl, from the South.

Reminds me of a joke I heard the other day (told with a heavy Southern
accent):

What do you call a deer with no eyes?  I have no idear.

Kevin Caldwell (kcaldwell31 at comcast.net)

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Orthography" [E]

> From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (01) [E]
>
> That reminds me of an argument I sometimes have with my (US-American)
> husband; he thinks it's hilarious that I put a little "r" sound at the end
> of the word "idea". Well, that's how I learned it in school (British
> English, in a German school), and that's how I remember people pronouncing
> it in England and Scotland. So,do they or don't they?

I'll let Englanders speak for themselves on this, but in Scotland,
absolutely not. In Scots and Scottish English the "r" is pronounced (as a
single flap or sometimes a few more) wherver it's written, and never
anywhere else.

If we're talking about pronunciation (rather than writing) then there's
really no such thing as British English - the Scottish varieties are
pronounced in a way completely foreign to any of the English varieties.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun  7 23:07:19 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 16:07:19 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (09) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.7.JUN.2004.160719.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: False Friends
>
> This is a very good point, and it seems that we must split false friends
> into a number of categories. Am I not right in saying though, Sandy, that
> there is a slight difference of pronunciation between Scots _fit_ in the
> sense of 'foot', and _fit_ in the other senses?

No, they're pronounced the same.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 14:36:38 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 07:36:38 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.08 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.073638.0700.>

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From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.07 (03) [E]

One can never pass by the word bless. In English, it is what God does. In
French, Satan blesse les gens. Blesser in French means to wound. Que Dieu
vous blesse!
Ben

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Ben, Lowlanders,

And then there is Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _bless_ (<Bless> [blEs], f.,
pl. _-en_) 'blaze' (as e.g. on a horse's forehead).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 14:38:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 07:38:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.08 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.073833.0700.>

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From: sam s claire <gamlhs at juno.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.03 (02) [E]

LLs: Spelling reform will never happen as long as Spelling Bees go on.
It's a conspiracy!

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 15:14:00 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 08:14:00 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2004.06.08 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.081400.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography

Dear Lowlanders,

I have been listening to some recordings of famous Britons to see if they
are using the extra -r (as in _idea-r_ ) in their speech.

Winston Churchill in 1941 does not seem to use it; he refers to _Africa_,
and does not seem to pronunce the word _Africa-r_.This is the URL for the
so-called 'Chicken Speech' :
http://archives.cbc.ca/400d.asp?id=1-71-149-778-21

I have listened to a number of other speeches by Churchill, and son't seem
to have come across any examples.

The famous early BBC newsreader Alvar Lidell, giving the news in 1945,
clearly adds an extra -r to the word _area_. THe URL is:
http://www.islandfarm.fsnet.co.uk/BBC%20News%20Recording%20Read%20By%20Alvar%20Lidell.htm

Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, while still a queen in her own right adressing
the women of the Empire in 1939, does not seem to add an extra -r in
_Canada_ and _America_. The speech may be found under the URL:
http://www.soundsofhistory.com/main.html

John Duckworth
Preston, Lancashire

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography


Gabriele, and other Lowlanders,

I just came across a short article on the internet that states that "Some
people blanch at intrusive r,but most RP speakers now use it."

I am not sure that this is correct, and genuinely think that the usage is
waning, but this is the URL of the article:
http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ/mifrhtcvsnnrhtcntr.shtml

I will have to listen to the pronunciation of a few RP (Received
Pronunciation) speakers to determine if it really is as common as the writer
of the article maintains!

John Duckworth
Preston, Lancashire

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Orthography


Hello, Lowlanders one and all!

Gabriele asked: "Well, that's how I learned it in school (British English,
in a German school), and that's how I remember people pronouncing it in
England and Scotland. So,do they or don't they?"

As an Englishman I would regard this intrusive final -r as an affectation,
and it probably did originate as a hypercorrection, though I have generally
heard it from well-educated individuals who should have known better. It
used to be much more common than it is today, though it is still to be heard
occasionally.

In the case of at least one word, however, its use is relatively common,
even in individuals who do not use it in other words, and that is the word
_law_, which they pronounce the same as _lore_.

John Duckworth
Preston, Lancashire


----------

From: jkrause <jkrause at old-sod-shanty.com.flexwebhosting.nl>
Subject: Orthography

Gabriele,
There are places in the USA where that r is inserted after the final vowel.
I remember my mother used to giggle over how President Kennedy (who was from
Massachusetts) used to say "Cubar."   Growing up on the Pacific Coast of the
US, I thought that treatment of words like Cuba, and  idea
rather--um--interesting.
Jim Krause

----------

From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Orthography

Hi All

Mark wrote

"Gabrielle asked:  "So,do they or don't they?"
Yes, they do.  When I was in college taking my
linguistics courses, I
was
told that the added "r" on idea was an example of
overcorrection.  So
many
words ending in "r" orthographically are pronounced
schwa by New
Englanders
and the British.  So, on words that really end in
schwa, there's a
tendency
to add an "r".  Go figure."

This is half true. In the case of American English,
because the prestige form contains 'r' the adding of
'r' in dialects where it does not exist is very
possibly a case of over- (or hyper-) correction.
However in England the prestige form does not have 'r'
and the adding of 'r' - which only occurs at the end
of a word when followed by a vowel, is a case of
analogy. Thus 'idea' said on it's own or before a
consonant, in areas of England where the 'r' has been
lost, does NOT have an 'r' but a phrase like 'the
idea(r) is' does. In the same way as 'deer' said on
it's own or before a consonant does not have an 'r'
but the phrase 'the deer is' does.

I think the case in America is often that 'idea' will
have an 'r' in all positions - this then is
overcorrection and not analogy.

I hypercorrect myself on occasion. In London English
we have lost the 'l' in the same position as the lost
'r' (and also add it in the same way as 'r' is added
i.e. before a vowel). When I'm trying to speak posh
(doesn't often happen - but sometimes when teaching
English it's necessary) I tend to add an 'l' when it's
written. Thus I will say words like 'talk' and 'half'
with an 'l' - I now always have to check in a
dictionary with words with 'l' to see whether it's
pronounced or not. I constantly have to look up words
like 'salt' and 'talk' (said by me as 'suwt' and
'tuwk' - it's very annoying - get rid of all 'l's in
this position, they only clutter things up... ;-)

Gary

----------

From: Cr?ost?ir ? Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.07 (08) [E]


Sandy wrote:
"If we're talking about pronunciation (rather than writing) then there's
really no such thing as British English - the Scottish varieties are
pronounced in a way completely foreign to any of the English varieties."

Then there's the phonemic difference within English Englishes too. With
regard to orthography I must counter Sandy and suggest that 'British
English' is a little inappropriate a term - even though I've used it myself.
The last time I checked, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South
Africa were not a part of Britain. 'Commonwealth English' as an alternative
falls flat because Ireland isn't a member. Any ideas?

Go raibh maith agat

Criost?ir.

----------

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

Folks,

I've always thought of "intrusive r" in non-rhotic* English in terms of
explainable phonological rules, namely as placing an epenthetic "r" -- which
surfaces as a result of liaison before an initial vowel in the next word.
The "r" is placed there because a word-final unstressed vowel is not
permissible in those English varieties, occurs only in foreign words and
names.  In other words, word-final unstressed vowels in foreign words and
names are processed like native _-er_ ([?(r)]/[@(r)], which can also be
spelled _-or_ or _-ar_ in loanwords).  You say "neveragain" for "never
again;" analogously you say "Africarorasia" for "Africa or Asia," as though
it were "Afriker or Asier."

I've written about this in a couple of articles:
(1991) Diachronic aspects of regular disharmony in Modern Uyghur. In: W.G.
Boltz and M.C. Shapiro, eds., _Studies in the Historical Phonology of Asian
Languages_, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 68-101.
 (1991) Modern Uyghur _y~r_-insertion: nativization through analogical
extension. _Acta linguistica hafniensia_ 24:77-96.

In those articles I compare the English phenomenon with a very similar one
in Uyghur (a Turkic language used mostly in what is now Western China, also
als a minority language in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Usbekistan).  Uyghur
is also a non-rhotic language (which is rather atypical for the Turkic group
of languages).  An "r" or a "y" (dialect-dependent) is inserted after a
word-final long syllable in foreign (mostly Arabic, Persian, Russian and
Chinese) words and names when these words and names undergo suffixing.  A
long vowel at the end of a word is foreign to the language and creates a
predicament when suffixes are added in this Altaic, thus agglutinating,
language.  Insertion of "r" or "y" solves this problem because this type of
sequence can occur in native words.  I think of English intrusive "r" as a
similar process.  In other words, it is a part of phonological loan
adaptation.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

* P.S.: For those of you who aren't already aware of this, "non-rhotic"
varieties are those in which final "r" is "deleted," actually assimilated to
the preceding vowel; e.g., _never_ pronounced as "nevva" or "nevvuh" rather
than as "nevver".

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 16:37:41 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 09:37:41 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Literature" 2004.06.08 (04) [E/German]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.093741.0700.>

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

Folks,

I received a request in German (below), apparently in response to my
Lowlands Saxon (Low German) translation of "Auld Lang Syne"
(http://www.sassisch.net/auld_lang_syne.htm).  The question is if Robert
Burns' songs had been translated into LS earlier and have been published in
book form.  If so, I would be surprised, especially if it had been in the
18th century, as surmised.  I am aware only of Friedrich Freudenthal (one of
the two Freudenthal Brothers, the Scholars and Bards of the Lunenburg Heath,
http://freudenthal-gesellschaft.de/) having translated one of Burns'
Scottish English love poems in 1873.

I have also translated Burns' monumental ballad "Tam O' Shanter" into LS,
but so far I have shared it only with close friends because it is not yet
published.

Any information would be appreciated and would be forwarded.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***

Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 11:43:28 +0100 (BST)
From: "Anita Sikora" nitaeva75_si at yahoo.co.uk
To: sassisch at yahoo.com
Subject: Burns-Gedichte in Platt


Sehr geehrter Herr Hahn,

Da ich gerade meine Abschlussarbeit in einem Uebersetzerstudiengang hier in
Grossbritannien schreibe, und gerade nach Uebersetzungen von
Robert-Burns-Gedichten ins Plattdeutsche recherchiere, bin ich auf Ihre
Webseite gestossen. Ich habe da eine Frage und wuerde mich freuen, wenn Sie
sie mir beantworten koennten. Ich habe in einem Buch mit plattdeutschen
Gedichten (das hier fuer mich nicht zugaenglich ist) gelesen, dass es im
18.Jahrhundert schon mal eine niederdeutsche Uebersetzung seiner Gedichte
gegeben hat. Wissen Sie vielleicht von wem?
Ich hoffe, von Ihnen zu hoeren. Ich wuerde mich auch  gerne ueber die
plattdeutsche Sprache mit Ihnen austauschen.

Mit freundlichen Gruessen,

Anita Sikora

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 16:42:15 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 09:42:15 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.08 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.094215.0700.>

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From: burgdal32admin <burgdal32 at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.05 (02) [E]

> From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
> Subject: Dutch Spelling Reform
>
> Hello all,
>
> With regard to spelling reform in English, I am curious to know if
> native
> speakers of Dutch find reading 19th century literature written in Dutch
> difficult given the number of spelling reforms that have taken place
> since
> then. Being a foreigner (I live in Flanders), I really have no idea.
>
> I think it safe to say that native Anglophones can read 19th
> literature in
> English with little problem since the orthography is almost identical
> today;
> changes in word meanings are the major problem. 18th century English is
> perhaps not as easy, but still manageable by most native speakers.
> Conversely, Shakespeare is usually a challenge.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Troy
Hi Troy,
It gives me no trouble at all to read 19th century Dutch. Even older
literature is rather easy because it tends to move slowly to my more
archaic West-Flemish.  Even Shakespeare is sometimes more easy to
understand than some difficult modern English book, for the same reason.
Groetjes
luc vanbrabant
oekene

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 19:16:20 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 12:16:20 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.08 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.121620.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.08 (05) [E]

Dear Luc, Troy & All,

Subject: LL-L "Orthography"

    I, personally, find Vondelen easier to manage than Modern Hollands, at
any rate. I won't presume to guess why, it just flows better. Also the terms
& names as such are easier to follow in the earlier language than in the
later.

    As far as English goes, a bilingual S.African, & even more, a native
Afrikaans speaker has a serious advantage with the older forms of English.
Even in A. Conan Doyle you find English usages more amiable to Afrikaans
practice than modern English e.g. a merchant quoting the cost of an article
at "five-and-twenty Shillings!". There are many other examples.
    In Shakespeare the advantage is more marked. In High School we studied
two to four plays of Shakespeare every year, & we country-boys used the
annotations to the text a lot less than the British immigrant kids studying
with us. One cute example is from 'Macbeth' where a witch uses the word
'paddock' for frog. The Pommies (pardon, fellows) didn't have a clue, but we
still use the word 'padda'.
    Getting to Chaucer, the advantage is serious. I never studied it in
University (which is probably why I still enjoy it), but friends who did say
their English speaking fellow students were all at sea. A few of the local
'Dutchmen' planted some serious obligations with the occasional tutoring.
    Coming to Caxton's 'Reynarde' it is manifest how much more carries over
into the English from the 'Flemish' of his time than any continental
language does with the English of today. I wont pretend they were closely
related at that time, or even dialectically related, but there were many
parallels.

    Yrs Sincerely,
Mark

---------

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

Mark, Folks,

Sorry I'm crossing this thread over to "Language varieties," even though
there is an orthographic component to it.  I think what we are starting to
talk about here now is degrees of mutual comprehension among Lowlands
language varieties (albeit only in writing so far).

Let me add that I, too, had relatively few problems with Chaucer's and other
folks' Middle English writings, approaching them from a German and Lowlands
Saxon background with then added smatterings of Modern English, Danish,
Dutch and Afrikaans, well before I started on the path down into the murky
depths of linguistics and acquired analytical skills that come with it.
Already then did I seem to have far fewer problems understanding Middle
English than did or do monlingual native English speakers or English
speakers with non-Germanic foreign language background.  Nowadays I read
Middle English (mostly poetry) with relative ease, referring to glossaries
and notes only rarely.

I used to have serious beginners' problems reading Old English but gradually
acquired fair reading skills, mostly by just reading and reading, looking up
vocabulary (less and less) and occasionally referring to grammar notes.  The
other day I read a short Old English story "cold," about one third into a
textbook I picked up at a store, and I understood the entire thing without
having to look up anything.  My reading skills in Old English and Old Saxon
are on similar levels.  All in all, I would say that I started off with a
distinct advantage over native English speakers who have no knowledge of
other Germanic languages and are not familiar with Germanic alternatives of
what in Modern English are Latinate words, and who are thrown off by the
relatively complex Old English morphology (which is a piece of cake to
speakers of German and Icelandic for example).

I cannot stress enough the importance of exposure to languages that are
closely related to one's own.  Not only does it train one in understanding
other language varieties but it also enhances one's understanding of one's
own language variety and its ancestors.  Here on Lowlands-L we have
opportunities to practise this.  Particularly those bi- or trilingual
postings are no doubt very useful and are lapped up by many on this list.
So keep them coming, folks!

(Of course, I cannot stress enough the importance of learning languages that
are "unrelated" or are distantly related to one's own, for that teaches one
even more about one's own.  But that's a second step, another trip and
another story ...)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun  8 22:43:27 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 15:43:27 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.08 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.8.JUN.2004.154327.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Platt sample"

Dear Lowlanders,

I have mentioned before that I was born in the Harz/Solling region in
Southern Lower Saxony; my mother hailed from Mecklenburg, and my father's
parents came from the Harz and the L?neburger Heide northeast of Hannover,
respectively. So, as a child, I was exposed to different varieties of Lower
Saxon. Also, I had seen the language written in three varieties, namely by
Fritz Reuter, "the" poet from Mecklenburg, Wilhelm Busch, "the" poet from
Lower Saxony, and the Brothers Grimm (a number of their fairy tales were
originally written in Platt, including the famous race between the hedgehog
and the hare).

When I was almost 14, we moved to the city of Hameln on the Weser river
(i.e. Hamelin of Pied Piper fame), some 50 km to the north-east, and I was
amazed to find how much their flavour of "Platt" was different from what I
was used to (and certainly very different from the Lower Saxon spoken on the
German coast); it is probably quite heavily influenced by Westphalian Platt
(just a guess). This was also reflected in the spelling. "Dewezet", the
local newspaper, used to run a humourous column every day called "Die
plattdeutsche Ecke". They discontinued it around twenty years ago, and
although I had been trying to get my hands on a sample for this forum, I had
no luck. Last weekend, while going through the last of my late stepfather's
papers, I finally found a booklet called "Dat Hamelnsche ABC", which
contains a collection of little essays and anecdotes, possibly by the same
author who ran the column.

So here's a little story as a sample. Please forgive me if, at the moment, I
am too busy to provide a translation. maybe I'll have time later this week,
or maybe someone else would like to try his hand. Enjoy!


Erinnerungen, St?kker drai!

Minsche, secht miene Fruu, dien Ged?chtnis weert aberst j?mmer slechter, as
se ?hren Braif an Schenettentante naa veer Dagen ut miener Manteltasche
fische. "Dien Ged?chtnis is jaa as'n Rathuus: luter lege Stoben! Getze
n?mmste den Braif we'er mee." Un se bunt mek uppe Seele: "Vergett dat aberst
nich nochmaal! Et gaiht d?ttmaal umme Geld. Verspr?keste mek dat?" - Ek
hebbe et hoch un hailich versproken un doch we'er verg?ten. Doch wat
passeere allet an d?ssen Daage:

Gaiht doch ne Fruu an mek vorbi, kiekt mek an un secht mee so'n Plinkern
?mme de Ogen: "Na, d?tmaal verg?tet Sai den Braif aberst bestimmt nich!"
"Wat", segge ek, "wat schall ek nich verg?ten?" De fremde Fruu lache un s?e:
"Den Braif, den Braif!" Ek wolle se fraagen, woher weetet Sai denne, dat ek
en Br?if inst?ken mott, da was se al weege. En bet'n laater tippe mek so'n
Keerl uppe Schuller: "Junge, vergett den Braif nich, is'n wichtigen Braif,
gah naa'n Braifkasten, s?ss weerste tohuus we'er anefratset!"

Ek wusste nu gaanich mehr, wat ek darup seggen scholle. Denne ook d?sse
Slaumaier griene kort un weege was hai.

Annen Braifkasten lache mek denne so'n drallet M?ken an un secht: "Dat is
aberst fain, dat Sai den Braif h?te inst?ket!" Ek segge: "Het miene Fruu Sai
uppekregen oder kennet Sai mek?" "Nee", gnikkere dat M?ken, "ek kenne ?hre
Fruu nich un de kennt mek ook nich. Aberst ?hre Fruu maaket sek doch Sorgen
?mme Sai un ?mme den Braif!"

"So", segge ek, "nu rekket et mek aberst, verklaart Sai mek mal akkeraat,
wat is dat for dummet T?gs mee d?ssen Braif?" Da kamm dat M?ken ganss dichte
an mek ran, packe mek anne Schuller, harre upstunns en Zeetel inner Hand un
s?e: "?hre Fruu hett Sai d?ssen Zeetel annen Mantel espendelt!" "Wat staiht
denn da upp'n Pupaier?" fraage ek hibbelich.

Dat M?ken prusche los un hett mek denne vorel?sen, wat miene Fruu
uppeschreeben hett:
"Bitte erinnern Sai ?hne. Hai schall en wichtigen Braif inst?ken. Hai
vergett j?mmerst allet. Un veelen Dank in voruut!"

Gabriele Kahn

---------

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

Thanks for the interesting language sample (above), Gabriele!

The Hamlin variety seems to me to be transitional between the Westphalian
and Eastphalian groups of Lowlands Saxon (Low German) dialects.  Certainly,
past participial _e-_ for _ge-_ (Eastern _je-_, Northern zero; Dutch _ge-_,
Old English _ge-_ ~ _(y)e-_) in conjunction with the diphthong [a.I]
(Northern [e.I] ~ [a.I], e.g., _Braif_ 'letter', Northern _breyv_ (<Breef> ~
<Breif>)) seems rather Eastphalian, also 2nd personal familiar verbal suffix
_-est du_ > _-este_ (e.g., _verspr?keste_ 'you promise').

Most definitely Eastphalian is _mek_ for 'me' (~ _mik_, also _dek_ ~ _dik_
'thee', consistent with reflexive _sek_ ~ _sik_), where other dialect groups
have _mi_ (and _di_, but _sik_) respectively.  So, this striking
characteristic would put this dialect into the Eastphalian category in a
world in which everything is neatly and clearly categorized.

However, it seems to me to be farwestern Eastphalian transitioning to
Westphalian in the west and North Saxon in the north.  It is rather
conservative, preserving many _-e_ suffixes (e.g., _ek segge_ [Ek 'zEg@],
cf. Northern _ik segg_ [Ik zEC] 'I say'), including the old 3rd person
preterite _-e_ (e.g., _hai tippe_ 'he tapped', cf. Northern _hey tip an_).

Unlike "hardcore" Eastphalian dialects, it has long _?_ [y:] (like North
Saxon) rather than Eastphalian-type _iu_ ~ _ui_ (e.g., _h?te_ 'today', cf.
E. _hiute_ ~ _huite_, N. _h?te_ ~ _h??t_).

Isn't Hamlin in the area of Engria (German _Engern_) of the Old Saxons
times?  That region was indeed wedged between Westphalia and Eastphalia, all
of them situated south of Northern Albingia (which was north of the Elbe
river, pretty much today's Holstein, south of Anglia).  Engria ceased to
exist and came to be disregarded.  However, perhaps transitional dialects
like this one could still be considered remnants of its heritage.

The dialect of Hanover (_Hannover_) is definitely Eastphalian, albeit
Western Eastphalian, I think.  Hamlin isn't far from there.

The Harz Mountains region is linguistically highly complex, because it was
at one time a mining area and attracted people from far and wide, not only
Saxon speakers.  As far as I know, it is only along its northern foothills
that sizeable Saxon language communities are found, but I am not sure about
this.

I am curious to know what others think about this.

Thanks again!

The translation of the piece is below.

Reinhard/Ron

***


Memories, Three Times!

"Goodness," said my wife as she pulled her letter to Auntie Jean out of my
coat pocket, "you memory keeps getting worse all the time! Why, your memory
is like a town-hall: full of bad steps (? empty rooms?). You go and take the
letter with you again." And she insisted, "But don't you forget it yet
again! This time it's about money. Will you promise me that?" ? I promised
by my honor, and yet I forgot it again. Well, you know ... all those things
going on these days ...

A woman passes me, looks at me and says with some sort of twinkle in her
eyes, "Well, make sure you don't forget the letter this time!" "What," said
I, "what am I not supposed to forget?" The stranger laughed and said, "The
letter! The letter!" I wanted to ask how she knew I was supposed to mail the
letter, but by that time she had gone. A little later, some guy tapped me on
the shoulder, "Buddy, don't forget the letter; it's an important letter.
Head for the mailbox, or else you'll get yelled at back home."

I was lost for words. And that wise guy grins at me, and off he goes.

At the mailbox, a strapping girl smiles at me and says, "Now that's nice of
you to mail the letter!" I say, "Has my wife gotten hold of you, and do you
know me?" "No," the girl giggles, "I don't know your wife, and she doesn't
know me either. But your wife is worried about you and that letter!"

"All right," I said, "I've had enough of this. Please, exactly explain to me
what all this nonsense with the letter is about." The girl came up to me
really closely, got hold of my shoulder, then held a piece of paper in her
hand and said, "Your wife has pinned this note to your coat!" "What does it
say?" I asked impatiently.

The girl burst out laughing and read to me what my wife had written:
"Please remind him. He is supposed to mail an important letter. He keeps
forgetting things. And many thanks in beforehand!"

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 14:24:38 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 07:24:38 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.09 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.072438.0700.>

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From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: Orthography

Regarding some of the gentle amusement/criticism of English "Spelling Bees",
non-Dutch speakers may be interested to known there is a Dutch equivalent.
Every year the Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal [oops, I almost typed "van
de Nederlandse Taal"...] is held on television. Competitors from the
Netherlands, Flanders, and (sometimes) former Dutch colonies write down a
series of texts (some word lists, some full paragraphs) that are read aloud,
like the dictations/spelling tests Anglophones do in school (or used to).
The person with the fewest spelling (or other) errors wins. See:

http://www.omroep.nl/nps/grootdictee/

There are some sample texts as well (click "oefendictees")

Typically the errors made have to do with using the reformed spelling vs.
the old reformed spelling, which was a bit more liberal in its acceptance of
variant spellings. As with all events of this sort, there is often an
element of national boasting rights between Belgium and the Netherlands,
which is one of the reasons it is actually televised at prime time
(something not done with the US national spelling bee).

Cheers all,

Troy

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 14:27:41 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 07:27:41 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2004.06.09 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.072741.0700.>

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From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Hi All

John, you wrote:

"As an Englishman I would regard this intrusive final -r as an affectation,
and it probably did originate as a hypercorrection, though I have generally
heard it from well-educated individuals who should have known better."

As I said in my previous mail - in England it's definitely not a form of
hypercorrection. I'm fairly
well educated (now studying for my doctorate) and I would use it after the
vowels of 'spa', 'law' and 'idea' when they occur before a following vowel.
These 'r's have been commonly - and I think rather unfairly - called
intrusive 'r's as if they shouldn't be there; but this smacks of
prescriptive grammar, which as we all know is the ultimate evil.

There's a universal tendency in languages towards a syllabic structure of
C(+)V(C+) (i.e. syllables starting with consonants). This is always the case
in German for example, where words beginning orthographically with a vowel
actually start with a glottal stop - which is a consonant. This is also the
case in many varieties of English. This glottal stop before a vowel only
occurs in my English when the vowel-initial syllable in question is at the
start of a phrase, as in 'It's raining'. Elsewhere I always have some form
of glide between vowels to preserve the CV structure, so 'me' on its own is
[mi:] and 'you' is [ju:], but I have 'me[j]and you' and 'you[w]and me'.
In the same way 'battle' is [b?to] but 'Battle of...' is [b?t at l@v...], and
thus also law is [lO:] but I have 'law[r]is'. I wouldn't say that it is
intrusive, I would regard it more as a phonemically determined linking-r.

Ok, historically there was no 'r' in this position, but historically there
was no 't' pronounced in
'often', but the pronunciation with 't' is increasingly becoming the
standard pronunciation, with
'offen' becoming increasingly dated - or at least to my youngish English
ears.

"As an Englishman I would regard this intrusive final -r as an affectation"

It's definitely NOT an affectation - an affectation is when an Englishman
pronounces 'witch' and 'which' differently. This difference died out during
the last century in all parts of England (with the possible exception of
Northumberland), however lives on in Scotland, Ireland, Canada and America.

Who am I meant to be copying when I use this 'intrusive' r? It's not
something that I started to
add later on in life because I thought it sounded nice. I didn't even know I
added an 'r' in this
position until it was pointed out to me, in much the same way as I would
have always denied vocalising my 'l's before I started studying linguistics
and heard recordings of my own speech.

"though I have generally heard it from well-educated individuals who should
have known better."

As said, I'm fairly well educated, and I do know better :)

Gary

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 14:29:28 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 07:29:28 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.09 (03) [E/German]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.072928.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.08 (07) [E]

Thanks for the translation, Ron. But shouldn't the header be "Reminders,
three times"?

I found a little note in the back of the booklet:

"Zum Sprachraum
Unsere Mundart geh?rt zum ostf?lischen Sprachgebiet, siehe die Karte. Hameln
liegt im Westen dieses Gebietes, fast an der Grenze. Spracheinfl?sse aus dem
Westf?lischen, das ostf?lische Grundgut der Sprache mit den Einfl?ssen des
Umlandes und die Eigenart des st?dtischen Lebens schufen die typische
Hamelner Mundart."

"About the language area
Our idiom belongs to the Eastphalian language area, see the map. Hamelin
lies in the west of this area, almost on the border. Linguistic influences
from Westphalian, the Eastphalian basics of the language together with the
influence of the surrounding countryside and the idiosyncrasies of city life
have formed the typical idiom of Hamelin."

I can post some more examples if you're interested.

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 17:47:51 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 10:47:51 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.09 (04) [E/S]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.104751.0700.>

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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: "LanguagePolitics" [S/E]

This airticle wis prentit in the Aiberdeen Press & Journal. Micht be o
interest tae fowk that's thinkin on veesitin Scotland for tae enjoy the
linguistic heritage. It seems the tourist buird wad prefer ye didna.
Andy Eagle
______
      TOURIST OFFICES STAFF TOLD TO TONE DOWN THEIR LOCAL SLANG

      IAN ABERNETHY

      09:00 - 04 June 2004

      Excuse me, what's a brae?

      Is there a difference between a loch - a lock and a lake?

      Such queries by non-Scottish visitors to tourist information centres
in the Highlands are standard, and usually answered helpfully and humorously
by the counter staff.

      Yet they have now been issued with a VisitScotland edict to "haud
their wheesht" when it comes to using their own local dialect.

      The high heid yins in Edinburgh have drawn up new guidelines for TIC
assistants.

      Included are instructions to avoid using local dialects, "jargon or
slang".

      So visitors to Fort William Tourist Information Centre, the busiest in
the Highlands, will not be hearing the weather described as "dreich ? with
the rain persisting in pouring down".

      They won't be directed to an evening "ceilidh" for the "craic".

      Nor will they be allowed to hear any other short, sharp and
descriptive Gaelic phrases which are part of Fort William's everyday
conversation.

      VisitScotland's newly introduced "Quality Service Standards" are aimed
at providing clarity of explanation during customer contact ? in person or
by phone.

      One staff member in the Highland area responded by saying: "This is
having the opposite effect to that which was intended ? by making all of us
pretty crabbit.

      "Here we are - Highlanders employed by VisitScotland to promote
Scotland ? and we are being denied the basic right of speaking as we were
brung up!"

      He went on: "So, if a bed and breakfast is up a brae, do we have to
tell the customer it is on a steep hillside? The visitors have enough
problems in distinguishing between a loch, a lock and a lake ? so do we not
now emphasise the ch sound to help them

      understand the difference?"

      A VisitScotland spokeswoman said yesterday : "Revised guidelines have
been drawn up by people responsible for TIC staff throughout Scotland, and
they have had wide consultation.

      "It's to provide clarity of explanation to visitors of all
nationalities, avoiding local slang, and letting them understand us."

      But Highland MSP, Mary Scanlon was well scunnered.

      She said: "This shows that VisitScotland fails to value local culture.
Who are they going to employ who does not have the dialect of the area ?
people from outwith it? "

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 19:06:31 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 12:06:31 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.09 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.120631.0700.>

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Language varieties

Beste li?glanners,

I'd like to bring under your attention a very interesting paper that
Wilbert Heeringa has published together with Charlotte Gooskens, titled
"The Position of Frisian in the Germanic Language Area". The languages
that are compared with Frisian are Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian,
Swedish, Danish, English, Dutch and German. Linguistic distances are
calculated and related to mutual intelligibility. You can find it here:
http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/tdg03.pdf
More can be found under
http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/

Greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

----------

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

Thanks for the reference (above), Luc.

This is an interesting article.  Unfortunately, there are some omissions.
It does not include Scots, but in my opinion more serious still is the
omission of Saterland (East) Frisian and the North Frisian varieties of
Germany.  It gets tiresome when people write about "Frisian" and only refer
to Westerlauwer Frisian of the Netherlands.  Also serious is the omission of
Lowlands Saxon (Low German), given that Frisian, Dutch and German are
included.  LS is a missing linkthere, so to speak.  Hopefully, all these
will be included in future studies.

Thanks again.

Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 19:08:20 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 12:08:20 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.09 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.120820.0700.>

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From: Ansgar Fehnker <ansgar at ece.cmu.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.09 (01) [E]

> From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> There are some sample texts as well (click "oefendictees")
>
> Typically the errors made have to do with using the reformed spelling vs.
> the old reformed spelling, which was a bit more liberal in its acceptance
of
> variant spellings.

Although I agree that the Groot Dictee is big fun, at least the few time
that I watched it, my impression was that most errors were regardless of
old or new spelling. They were just uncommon words, before and after the
reform. I can still remember the infamous "guichelheil" and
"antimakassartje".  And it is said that Flemish participants do
typically better than Dutch ones.

Regards

Ansgar

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 21:07:12 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 14:07:12 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.09 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.140712.0700.>

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From: Gustaaf Van Moorsel <gvanmoor at aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: Orthography

Ansgar Fehnker <ansgar at ece.cmu.edu> writes:

 >Although I agree that the Groot Dictee is big fun, at least the few time
 >that I watched it, my impression was that most errors were regardless of
 >old or new spelling. They were just uncommon words, before and after the
 >reform. I can still remember the infamous "guichelheil" and
 >"antimakassartje".  And it is said that Flemish participants do
 >typically better than Dutch ones.

I have seen only a few examples of words in the Groot Dictee
but enough to admit I probably would have done pretty badly
(though I consider myself a good speller).  For the record,
I would have gotten the two words above right, but that is
because I don't think they are particularly difficult.

Gustaaf

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 21:22:43 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 14:22:43 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.09 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.142243.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language varieties" [E/S]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> I cannot stress enough the importance of exposure to languages that are
> closely related to one's own.  Not only does it train one in understanding
> other language varieties but it also enhances one's understanding of one's
> own language variety and its ancestors.  Here on Lowlands-L we have
> opportunities to practise this.  Particularly those bi- or trilingual
> postings are no doubt very useful and are lapped up by many on this list.
> So keep them coming, folks!

Michty me, my havers in twae langages, like ane's no eneuch?

Well, you asked for it...

> (Of course, I cannot stress enough the importance of learning languages
that
> are "unrelated" or are distantly related to one's own, for that teaches
one
> even more about one's own.  But that's a second step, another trip and
> another story ...)

[English below]

I dout ye'v a road yit afore ye'r a marrae for me thare, Ron! Hiv ye tried a
langage wi nae phones ava?  :)

Ye'll ken, bein linguists aa, that the smaaer the langage (in terms o the
wirds intil't) the mair productive the lexicon haes tae be. In a muckle
langage like English, for example, the stechie lexicon's gey an lairge, an
the productive lexicon's gey smaa. Scots, on the ither haun, haes a smaaer
stechie lexicon (at least it dis whan it comes tae the wirds fowk uizes),
but's mair productive. For example, whaur in English ye micht spaek aboot a
langage haein a "vocabulary", in Scots a body's mair like juist caa this
"the wird's intil" the langage. Fowk maks up mair in Scots, whaur wirds in
English is creat aforehaun.

But BSL daes this a lot mair than aither Scots or English. Bi English or
even Scots, the arna mony wirds (signs) in BSL ava. Mair like, the'r a
muckle rowth o signs for things that's juist made up as ye gaun alang. Sae
we'r aye rinnin intae lairners that spiers, "What's the sign for
'skateboard'?" or "What's the sign for 'tin can'"? an nae maiter what guid
ye micht be at the BSL, this haes got ye ficklt. Syne ye think, "What wad ye
_want_ a sign for 'skateboard' for?" Gin ye ken BSL fine it's obvious hou
tae produce the richt sign for it athoot kennin it!

I dout if oor Scots writers kent the BSL they'd lairn better thair ain
langage an aa. Insteed o greetin that the'r nae wird for this, that an the
ither in Scots, an makkin up rideeclous "inkhorn" terms, thay'd lift the
idea o some langages haein less wirds and mair o thair ain weys o makkin new
wirds nor ithers, an mak better uise o the productive featurs o the langage.

[English]

I reckon you've some way to go before you can impress me with the range of
languages you know, Ron! Have you tried any with no phones at all?  :)

Being linguists, you'll know that the smaller a langage (in terms of
vocabulary) the more productive the lexicon has to be. In a big language
like English, for example, the fixed lexicon's very large, and the
productive lexicon quite small. Scots, on the other hand, has a smaller
fixed lexicon (at least Scots speakers' active vocabulary is small), but
there's a lot more language production involved in the act of speaking or
writing Scots. For example, where in English you might say a language has a
"vocabulary", in Scots it's more likely one would talk of "the wirds in" the
language. Scots speakers make up more phrases as they go along, in place of
what in English would be part of the fixed lexicon.

But BSL carries this to extremes. Compared to English or even Scots, there
are very few words (signs) in BSL. Rather, many signs are just made up on
the spot. So we're always meeting learners who ask, "What's the sign for
'skateboard'?"  or "What's the sign for 'tin can'"? and however accomplished
you might be in BSL, you're stumped. Then you find yourself thinking, "Why
would you _want_ a sign for 'skateboard'?" If you know your BSL you'll know
how easy it is to produce the correct sign without prior knowledge!

I suppose if our Scots writers knew BSL they'd understand their own language
better. Instead of complaining that there's no word for such and such in
Scots, and making up ridiculous "inkhorn" terms, they'd appreciate that some
langages have a smaller vocabulary and a wider range of native production
techniques than others, and make better use of the productive features of
the language itself.

(But as always, I don't think I can keep up these bilingual texts - I'd have
said a lot more in this post if I didn't have to say it all twice!  :)

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Sandy:

[English below]

> I dout ye'v a road yit afore ye'r a marrae for me thare, Ron! Hiv ye tried
a
> langage wi nae phones ava?  :)

Dang! Whit a gunk! Pleasin ye is ower sair, Sandy! Bit it's guid advisement,
gien that ma ears 's gittin iller.

> I reckon you've some way to go before you can impress me with the
> range of languages you know, Ron! Have you tried any with no phones
> at all?  :)

Darn! What a let-down! It's too hard pleasing you, Sandy! But it's good
advice, given that my ears are steadily going downhill.

Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun  9 23:51:29 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 16:51:29 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.09 (09) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.9.JUN.2004.165129.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
> Subject: "False friends" [E]
>
> grape (in Scots this means "garden fork").
> greet (in Scots this means "weep").
> fit (in Scots this means "foot").
> gate (in Scots this means "road, way").
> soup (in Scots this means "sweep").
> girdle (in Scots this means "griddle").
> shiver (in Scots this means "cold sore" - Scots for "shiver" would be
> "chitter").
> law (in Scots this means an isolated or dominant conical hill).
> steer (in Scots this means "stir").
> clap (in Scots this means "to pet").
> canny (in Scots this means "calm, easy, laid back" - different from
> Northumbrian).
> braid (in Scots this means "broad").
> lie (in Scots this means "a pool of stagnant water in a field").

I just thought of some more "first class" false friends between English and
Scots (as opposed to "second class" such as "bather" that are written the
same but pronounced differently or "flyte -> flight" that are pronounced the
same but written differently):

chap (in Scots this means "to knock").
knock (in Scots this means "clock").
clock (in Scots this means "beetle").
slider (in Scots this means "ice-cream wafer").
slap (in Scots this means "a gap in a dyke or hedge" - while a "slap" is a
"skelp" in Scots).
rift (in Scots this means "to burp").
flee (in Scots this means "a fly" - while a "flea" is a "flech" [flE:x] in
Scots).

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 14:24:34 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 07:24:34 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2004.06.10 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.072434.0700.>

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From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2004.06.09 [E]

Dear all,

I haven't been following this debate that closely, so
this may have been said already, but to my
Northumbrian and layman's ear, the insertion of the
'r' is primarily, although I guess, not exclusively an
RP/polite/educated speech affectation that has been
educated into people through the education system, the
media and it has to be said through class. I have even
seen this in Northumberland and up north. However, I
have mates all over England in all professions, and
they don't use this 'r'. It is confined mainly to
certain social stratas from my experience.

gan canny,

Glenn Simpson
Northumbrian Language Society

----------

From: sam s claire <gamlhs at juno.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.05.03 (03) [E]

I am not skilled in phonetics, phonology, et al, but I do believe my
ears.  One late night I was aroused by the TV with a fellow speaking with
(I thought) a decided British accent.  As I awoke though, I realized that
he really was speaking in a U.S. southern drawl.   Sam

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 15:38:40 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 08:38:40 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.083840.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
> Subject: "False friends" [E]
>
> > grape (in Scots this means "garden fork").
> > greet (in Scots this means "weep").
> > fit (in Scots this means "foot").
> > gate (in Scots this means "road, way").
> > soup (in Scots this means "sweep").
> > girdle (in Scots this means "griddle").
> > shiver (in Scots this means "cold sore" - Scots for "shiver" would be
> > "chitter").
> > law (in Scots this means an isolated or dominant conical hill).
> > steer (in Scots this means "stir").
> > clap (in Scots this means "to pet").
> > canny (in Scots this means "calm, easy, laid back" - different from
> > Northumbrian).
> > braid (in Scots this means "broad").
> > lie (in Scots this means "a pool of stagnant water in a field").
>
> chap (in Scots this means "to knock").
> knock (in Scots this means "clock").
> clock (in Scots this means "beetle").
> slider (in Scots this means "ice-cream wafer").
> slap (in Scots this means "a gap in a dyke or hedge" - while a "slap" is a
> "skelp" in Scots).
> rift (in Scots this means "to burp").
> flee (in Scots this means "a fly" - while a "flea" is a "flech" [flE:x] in
> Scots).

I also just realised that there are a lot of English-Scots false friends of
the type commonly found between English and French, ie not necessarily
spelled or pronounce the same but cleary cognates and so causing learners to
guess the meaning wrongly:

mince pie: in English, a Christmas pie with sweet filling, in Scots an
everyday savoury pie filled with minced beef.

pancakes: in English, large thin pancakes made by frying and tossing, in
Scots small thick pancakes made by dropping batter on a griddle.

teacakes: in English, a kind of currant bun, in Scots, biscuit with a
marshmallow on top covered in chocolate.

brummles (brambles): in Scots, refers to the fruit (blackberry) as well as
the plant.

glammer (glamour): in Scots, means "magic".

fear: in Scots, means "to frighten", (eg "dinna fear the horse", "I'm no
feared fae you.")

feel: in Scots means "to smell" (but this usage is unusual these days).

finnd (find): in Scots means "to feel" (but again, this usage is unusual
these days).

man: in Scots means "husband" as well as "man".

wife: in Scots means "woman" as well as "wife".

We also have words whose usage is like some other language, rather than the
English usage, eg:

"dout" [du?]: used like the French "doute" rather than English "doubt".

"seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".

Talking about false friends between closely related languages, there are
surely false friends between different forms of English? Eg British
English/American English "bum", "alternate", "fag", "vest", "pants",
"rubber", etc.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Thanks, Sandy!

The following for North Saxon dialects of Lowlands Saxon (Low German, < > =
German-style spelling):

> brummles (brambles): in Scots, refers to the fruit (blackberry) as well as
the plant.

generic, berries or plant: brummel(s) ~ brommel(s) ~ brammel(s)
berries: brummelbeer ~ brommelbeer ~ brammelbeer (pl. ...beren)
plant: brummeldourn ~ brommeldourn ~ brammeldourn (<...doorn>, pl. ...d?yrn
<...d??rn>), dourn 'thorn')

> > > grape (in Scots this means "garden fork").
greep [gre:p]  'handle'

> man: in Scots means "husband" as well as "man".
man 'man', 'husband'

> wife: in Scots means "woman" as well as "wife".
wyv (<Wief> [vi:f], pl. wyver <Wiever> ['vi:v3]) 'woman' (now archaic, under
German influence derogatory), 'wife'

> "seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".
s?yk ~ syk (<s??k> ~ <siek> [zy:k] ~ [zi:k]) 'ill', 'unwell'
-> s(?)ykenhuus (['zy:kNhu:s] ~ [zi:kNhu:s]) 'hospital' (huus 'house')

syk (<Siek> [zi:k], pl. syken <Sieken> ['zi:kN]) '(small) valley', 'dell',
'dip' ,'hollow'

Of course, there are lots of false friends between LS and English
(especially dialects of Southeastern England and of Australia and New
Zealand).  The following barely scratches the surface.

schyt (<Schiet>, like "sheet") 'excrement', 'dirt'
poul (<Pool>, like "pole") 'pool'
baar ([bQ:], like "bar") 'bare', 'naked'; 'bear' (animal)
kop (<Kopp>, like "cop") 'head'
steyn (<Steen>, like "stain") 'stone', 'rock'
beyn (Been>, like "bane") 'leg'
bark (<Bark>, like 'bark') 'birch' (but also 'bark of a tree'), 'barge'
beer (<Beer>, like 'bear') 'berry'; 'bore' (pig); 'beer'; 'pear'
byt! (<biet!>, like "beat!") 'bite!'
blyd' (<blied>, like 'bleed') 'happy', 'glad', 'friendly'
buk (<Buck>, like "book") 'buck'
schuut (<Schuut>, like "shoot", "chute") 'barge'
put (<Putt>, like "put") 'pot'
sch?rt (<Sch?rt>, like "shirt") 'apron'
schoul (<School>, like "shoal") 'school'
ryk (<riek>, like "reek") 'rich'
ryk (<Riek>, like "reek") 'realm'
ney (<nee>, like "nay") 'new'
kok (<Kock>, like "cock") 'cook' (worker)
hil (<hill>, like "hill>) 'urgent', 'in a hurry', 'busy'
hil (<Hill>, like "hill") 'storage room in a barn'
heyl (<heel>, like "hail") 'whole'; 'quite', 'very'
deyl (<Deel>, like 'dale') 'deal', 'part'
moud (<Moot>, like "moat") 'mood'; 'courage'
spittel (<Spittel>, like "spittle") 'puny guy'
kark (<Kark>, like "cark") 'church'
luun (<Luun>, like "loon") 'mood'
lok (<Lock>, like "lock") 'hole'
lyv (<Lief>, like "leaf") 'body'
lyk (<Liek>, like "leak", "leek") 'corpse', 'cadaver'
lid (<Lidd>, like "lid") 'member', 'link'
klot (<Klott>, like "clot") 'cap'
gil (<Gill>, like "gill") 'guild'
bloud (<Bloot>, like "bloat") 'blood'
luus (<Luus>, like "loose") 'louse'
pyl (<Piel>, like "peel") 'arrow'
pyr (<Pier>, like "peer", "pier") '(sand) worm', 'earthworm'
Pyp (<Piep>, like "peep") 'pipe', 'flute'
vyr (<Fier>, like "fear") 'party', 'festivity'
viddel (<Fiddel>, like "fiddle") 'loose woman', 'messy woman'

Etc. ...

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 16:06:22 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:06:22 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology

Folks,

I wonder about the origin of the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) verb
_schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) 'to bitch' ('to complain
loudly'); 'to scold', 'to shame'; 'to spoil', 'to vandalize'.  It is
constructed like a Romance loan (/-eir-/), but I wonder if it is made up to
seem like one, perhaps a blend of German _schimpfen_ (Missingsch [SImfm], LS
_schimpen_) 'to scold' and native _schaam_ 'shame' and _(sik) schamen_ 'to
be ashamed'.  Does anyone know?

There is also this group:
schafuder ~ schafuter (neuter) 'reprimand', 'scolding'
schafudern ~ schafutern 'to reprimand', 'to scold'

What might the origin of this one be?  Could it by any chance be linked with
_schafot_ ~ _schafut_ (<Schafott> ~ <Schafutt>) 'scaffold (for public
execution or humiliation)'?

Thanks for thinking about it.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 16:12:25 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:12:25 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (04) [E]
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

I wrote:

> beer (<Beer>, like 'bear') 'berry'; 'bore' (pig); 'beer'; 'pear'

Obviously that was supposed to be spelled <boar> for the male pig.  Sorry.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]

Ron quoted some false friends:

> klot (<Klott>, like "clot") 'cap'

Oh dear,that reminds me... When I first learned Dutch, talking to family and
friends, I often frivolously replaced words I didn't know with the German
equivalent and the ending "-tje", which in some cases makes perfectly good
Dutch; more often, it doesn't, but then at least it's good for a laugh.

So I was looking for the toilet in a restaurant, and couldn't come up with
the Dutch word for "loo", which is "plee" - I used the German word "Klo"
instead and modified it to sound more Dutch. So I told my somewhat
bewildered father-in law: "Ik ga even het klootje zoeken", which means
something like "Excuse me while I go look for the testicle".

Older and wiser,
Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 17:02:25 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 10:02:25 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.100225.0700.>

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From: Wim <wkv at home.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]

>>From wkv at home.nl
Wim verdoold

Hi,

The word in dutch,  schamper comes to my mind, as in  "een schampere
opmerking"  a mocking like remark.  It has to do with the german word
schimpfen I think,

Hope this is of any help...

Wim.

----------

From: Gustaaf Van Moorsel <gvanmoor at aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: false friends

Gabriele Kahn <globalmoose at t-online.de> wrote:

(...)

 > So I was looking for the toilet in a restaurant, and couldn't come up
with
 > the Dutch word for "loo", which is "plee" - I used the German word "Klo"
 > instead and modified it to sound more Dutch. So I told my somewhat
 > bewildered father-in law: "Ik ga even het klootje zoeken", which means
 > something like "Excuse me while I go look for the testicle".

A great story to start off the morning!  It made me curious about
the etymology of the word 'plee' (which, by the way, I think is a
coarser term than 'loo').  I found the following link, though I
cannot vouch for its veracity:

http://www.wiedenhof.nl/ul/tk/pbl/mssm/stellg11.htm

Gustaaf

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Thanks, Wim.

Again, I wrote:

> I wonder about the origin of the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) verb
> _schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) 'to bitch' ('to complain
> loudly'); 'to scold', 'to shame'; 'to spoil', 'to vandalize'.  It is
> constructed like a Romance loan (/-eir-/), but I wonder if it is made up
to
> seem like one, perhaps a blend of German _schimpfen_ (Missingsch [SImfm],
LS
> _schimpen_) 'to scold' and native _schaam_ 'shame' and _(sik) schamen_ 'to
> be ashamed'.  Does anyone know?

I should have said that _schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) is
especially used in many of the dialects of Mecklenburg (Mekelborg).

I am particularly puzzled by the "f", which seems very non-native.

Elsewhere, this equivalent is prevalent: _schandeyren_ (<schandeern> ~
<schanneern>), obviously related to _schande_ ~ _schanne_ (<Schanne>)
'shame', 'disgrace', originally also 'destruction', 'ruin', preserved in
_tou schannen maken_ (<toschannen maken>) 'to destroy', 'to ruin'.  Perhaps
_schandeyren_ (<schandeern> ~ <schanneern>), too, plays a role in the
creation of _schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>)?

Hoi, Gabriele and Gustaaf!

> I used the German word "Klo"

As you probably already know, German _Klo_ ([klo:]) comes from
(_Wasserklosett_ > W.C. ?) _Klosett_ < Old French diminutive _closet_ or
from its base form _clot_ (< Latin _clausum_ > German _Klause_ 'hermitage',
'(monk's/nun's) cell', 'retreat (for solitude)'; '(mountain) defile').
_Closet_ originally denoted a small room for privacy, hence also English
"closet," nowadays (certainly in North America) mostly used for a built-in
storage space, especially for clothing (or a "broom closet" for cleaning
supplies, etc.).  So, you'd better not ask your host for the _Klosett_ if
you want the "loo" or "bathroom" in an English-speaking home.

Interestingly, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) one of the many words for
"loo" or "bathroom" is _paddemang_ ~ _partemang_, assumedly from French
_appartement_ (< Latin _appart?mentum_), from which also English _apartment_
is derived.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 19:32:08 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 12:32:08 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.123208.0700.>

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From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]

We use 'skamfere in Danish (don't know if the spelling is correct). For
instance you can become very 'skamferet' if you are in an accident...ie.
get a lot of wounds.

Kenneth

> Folks,
>
> I wonder about the origin of the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) verb
> _schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) 'to bitch' ('to complain
> loudly'); 'to scold', 'to shame'; 'to spoil', 'to vandalize'.  It is
> constructed like a Romance loan (/-eir-/), but I wonder if it is made up
to
> seem like one, perhaps a blend of German _schimpfen_ (Missingsch [SImfm],
LS
> _schimpen_) 'to scold' and native _schaam_ 'shame' and _(sik) schamen_ 'to
> be ashamed'.  Does anyone know?

----------

From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]

from my dictionary:

skam'fere. Middledanish from Low Saxon schamferen, not related to skam
(schaam). Meaning 'tilrede slemt' fx 'han fik ansigtet skamferet.

Kenneth

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 19:50:02 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 12:50:02 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.125002.0700.>

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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]

Sandy wrote:

> "seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".

As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.
It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in any
way mentally deranged.
They are simply ill ;-)

Andy Eagle

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Andy (above):

> It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in any
> way mentally deranged.
> They are simply ill ;-)

But doesn't English use "sick" in this sense as well?  Surely, "sick" in the
sense of "deranged," "twisted" etc. is a relatively recent semantic
derivation.  I suppose in American English  "mad" has undergone a similar
specialized shift fairly recently to mean "angry," which is why many
Americans made jokes about the term "mad cow disease," imagining herds of
infuriated cattle.

> As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.

And the one in Toronto, Canada (whose website http://www.sickkids.on.ca/,
incidentally, seems to treat the location as a secret. You have to dig to
find it ... Good website planning! "Hospital for Sick Children"?! Duh!
*Everyone* in the world knows where *that* is!).

Anyway, this name has always puzzled me.  "Hospital for *Sick* Children?"
Is there one for healthy children as well?  How about "Children's Hospital"
or "Pediatric Hospital" like elsewhere?  Or is there something I'm missing?
Might "hospital" once have had other meanings as well, such as that of
"hostel"?  Perhaps in Scots, transferred to Scottish English?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 20:26:10 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 13:26:10 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Request" 2004.06.10 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.132610.0700.>

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From: Szelog, Mike <Mike.Szelog at citizensbank.com>
Subject: Off Topic Request - Quick Translation Request - Old Script

Hello all,

Sorry to bother the list with an off-topic request, but I'm a bit stumped
with this one.

I'm translating some old journal entries from the 1800's for an acquaintance
and I'm stuck on the last page (of course!). I have most of it, but there's
just a few words I really can't seem to make out.

I was wondering if anyone might be willing to take a quick look at the
passage and offer a transliteration into German along with a translation?

I'd have to e-mail you the passage as an attachment - it was sent to me
sideways, so I have to bring it up in something like
 "Imaging " and turn it the right way to read it.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated - anyone want to try their hand
at the old style script?

I can send along my attempt at transliteration if it would be helpful.

Thanks very much!

Mike S
Manchester, NH - USA

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 20:28:32 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 13:28:32 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (09) [E]
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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (07) [E]

> Sandy wrote:
>
> > "seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".
>
> As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.
> It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in any
> way mentally deranged.
> They are simply ill ;-)
>
> Andy Eagle
>
> ----------
>
R. F. Hahn wrote:
>
> Andy (above):
>
> > It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in
any
> > way mentally deranged.
> > They are simply ill ;-)
>
> But doesn't English use "sick" in this sense as well?  Surely, "sick" in
the
> sense of "deranged," "twisted" etc. is a relatively recent semantic
> derivation.  I suppose in American English  "mad" has undergone a similar
> specialized shift fairly recently to mean "angry," which is why many
> Americans made jokes about the term "mad cow disease," imagining herds of
> infuriated cattle.
>
> > As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.
>
> And the one in Toronto, Canada (whose website http://www.sickkids.on.ca/,
> incidentally, seems to treat the location as a secret. You have to dig to
> find it ... Good website planning! "Hospital for Sick Children"?! Duh!
> *Everyone* in the world knows where *that* is!).
>
> Anyway, this name has always puzzled me.  "Hospital for *Sick* Children?"
> Is there one for healthy children as well?  How about "Children's
Hospital"
> or "Pediatric Hospital" like elsewhere?  Or is there something I'm
missing?
> Might "hospital" once have had other meanings as well, such as that of
> "hostel"?  Perhaps in Scots, transferred to Scottish English?

I don't think you're missing anything. A friend of mine used to live near
the aforementioned hospital.
I could never walkpast without grinning an thinking of it being full of
disgusting, gruesome, macabre, mentally deranged children. Even though this
interpretation is based on a relatively recent semantic change. Maybe just
my 'sick' sense of humour. But as you ask 'why sick children'? There are no
doubt many institutions called X Children's Hospital. This is possibly the
start of a new thread Institutions where the obvious is stated in the title.

Andy Eagle

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 10 22:03:22 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 15:03:22 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (10) [E/LS]
Message-ID: <THU.10.JUN.2004.150322.0700.>

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From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.10 (03) [E]

>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Etymology
>
>Folks,
>
>I wonder about the origin of the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) verb
>_schamfeyren_ (<schamferen> ~ <schamfeern>) 'to bitch' ('to complain
>loudly'); 'to scold', 'to shame'; 'to spoil', 'to vandalize'.  It is
>constructed like a Romance loan (/-eir-/), but I wonder if it is made up to
>seem like one, perhaps a blend of German _schimpfen_ (Missingsch [SImfm],
LS
>_schimpen_) 'to scold' and native _schaam_ 'shame' and _(sik) schamen_ 'to
>be ashamed'.  Does anyone know?
>
>There is also this group:
>schafuder ~ schafuter (neuter) 'reprimand', 'scolding'
>schafudern ~ schafutern 'to reprimand', 'to scold'
>
>What might the origin of this one be?  Could it by any chance be linked
with
>_schafot_ ~ _schafut_ (<Schafott> ~ <Schafutt>) 'scaffold (for public
>execution or humiliation)'?

Moin Ron,

hest dor maal an dacht, dat dat ok vun de franz????schen W????r
"chahuter" = larmen, spektakeln, st??ren, r??mjachtern un
"chambarder" = d??rnannerbringen, tokehr gahn, krakeeln
herkamen mag.

Inne Franzozentied hebbt se bannig veel W????r  in??t Neddersassische
inb??rgert, to??n Bispill Fiesematenten, perdu oder ok Etepetete.

Kumpelmenten
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

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

Moin, Utz!

[English below]

Aha!!! Treffer! Dat is up'n Prick, wat ik wull.  Wees' bedankt!  Ik was mi
al moden west, dat dat ut't Franz????ssche keem.

Ik maak so p??-a-p?? (!) Listen vun Lehnw????rd' ut't Ingelsche, Franz????ssche,
Hollandsche, Slaawsche un villicht Skandinaawsche.  De wies' ik Jo denn
later.

Bingo! Utz gave me just what I had hoped for: _schamfeyren_ is a French loan
in Lowlands Saxon (Low German), from _chahuter_ 'to create an uproar',
perhaps "cross-fertilized" by _chambarder_ 'to turn upside down'.

Utz reminded me that LS took on a lot of French loans, especially during
Napoleonic occupation in the early 19th century.  I was aware of this and am
currently _p??-a-p??_ (< French _peu-? -peu_ 'bit-by-bit') putting together a
list of French loans in LS, also one each of loans from English, Dutch and
Slavonic, perhaps also from Scandinavian.*

*Scandinavian loans are found in the dialects of regions that used to belong
to Denmark and Sweden.  For example, in some dialects of Pomerania, once
under Swedish power (for nearly 200 years, beginning with 1630), the word
for 'cranberry' (elsewhere _kraansbeer_) are called _linjong_, from Swedish
_lingon_ (> English "lingonberry," _Vaccinium vitis-idaea_, apparently a
type of cranberry, _Vaccinium macrocarpon_).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

P.S.: Here is a nice wensite about the Swedish heritage of Pomerania:
http://www.gutshaeuser.de/stiftung.html

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 14:30:53 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 07:30:53 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.073053.0700.>

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From: Tom <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (09) [E]

> <>R. F. Hahn wrote:
>
> Anyway, this name has always puzzled me. "Hospital for *Sick* Children?"
> Is there one for healthy children as well? How about "Children's Hospital"
>
>>or "Pediatric Hospital" like elsewhere?  Or is there something I'm
>missing?
>
>>Might "hospital" once have had other meanings as well, such as that of
>>"hostel"?  Perhaps in Scots, transferred to Scottish English?

Hello All,

"Hospital" were originally places where guests were received, like
hospices, hostels and hotels. The word comes via Old French "hospital"
from the medieval Latin "hospitale" which was the noun form of
"hospitalis", an adjective meaning 'of a guest'. The semantic shift
belongs in the 15th. cent. where it began to mean a place for the infirm
and down-and-outs.
'Hospitality/hospitable' in modern English still have the original
meaning of 'receiving guests'.

As for Andy Eagle's remark about sick children, 'gruesome' is not an
appropriate description in my opinion. 'Poignant' or 'tragic' might be
words that spring to mind when thinking of the guests these hospitals
harbour.

Regards,

Tom

----------

From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: Sick vs. Ill

on 10.06.2004 10.28 PM, Lowlands-L wrote:

> From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>

>> Sandy wrote:
>>
>>> "seek": used like the Dutch "ziek" rather than the English "sick".
>>
>> As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.
>> It is not full of children who are disgusting, gruesome, macabre or in
any
>> way mentally deranged.
>> They are simply ill ;-)

> R. F. Hahn wrote:

>> But doesn't English use "sick" in this sense as well?  Surely, "sick" in
the
>> sense of "deranged," "twisted" etc. is a relatively recent semantic
>> derivation.  I suppose in American English  "mad" has undergone a similar
>> specialized shift fairly recently to mean "angry," which is why many
>> Americans made jokes about the term "mad cow disease," imagining herds of
>> infuriated cattle.

The "sick" vs. "ill" issue in English has to do with US vs. British
varieties. In North American English "sick" *primarily* means "suffering
from or affected with an illness", so it is completely normally to say
"doctor, I feel sick" or "I am sick; I can't come to work to day". It can
also mean "mentally ill or disturbed" (informally in "one sick puppy"
meaning "crazy person"), but this is a secondary usage.

In my Dutch class, the instructor (who is more familiar with British
English) went out of his way to explain that Dutch "ziek" means "ill" not
"sick", much to the confusion of his American and Canadian students...

Cheers,

Troy

----------

From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]

Dear Sandy Fleming/Lowlanders,'

You said:

'glammer (glamour): in Scots, means "magic".'

But also English 'glamour' comes from Scots 'glammer', which itself comes
from the Scots for 'grammar' because in those days a magician was also a
scholar.

Jorge Potter

----------

From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
Subject: "False friends"

Hello all !
When I look onto Ron's list I experience that there are false friends at
least between different Low Saxon variants:
> poul (<Pool>, like "pole") 'pool'
Eastern Friesland: p?l = cap / pauel = pool
> baar ([bQ:], like "bar") 'bare', 'naked'; 'bear' (animal)
EF: boer = bear
> kop (<Kopp>, like "cop") 'head'
EF: kop = head, cup
> beer (<Beer>, like 'bear') 'berry'; 'bore' (pig); 'beer'; 'pear'
EF: b?r [be:@] = barley / b?j [bE:I]= berry /p?r = pear / b??r [b?:@] = beer
> sch?rt (<Sch?rt>, like "shirt") 'apron'
EF: s???er = crack / s??d = apron
> ney (<nee>, like "nay") 'new'
EF: n? [ne:] = no / n?j [nE:I] = new
> hil (<hill>, like "hill>) 'urgent', 'in a hurry', 'busy'
EF: hiel [hI:l] = storing place beneath the roof of a farm-house's barn
> deyl (<Deel>, like 'dale') 'deal', 'part'
EF: d?l [de:`el] = floor, plank / d?il [d?Il] = part
> lyv (<Lief>, like "leaf") 'body'
EF: l?f = belly, abdomen / l?cham = body
> lyk (<Liek>, like "leak", "leek") 'corpse', 'cadaver'
EF: l?k = straight / l?k = corpse
> lid (<Lidd>, like "lid") 'member', 'link'
EF: lid = member / lid = joint
> bloud (<Bloot>, like "bloat") 'blood'
EF: bl?t = only / blaud = blood
> pyl (<Piel>, like "peel") 'arrow'
EF: p?l [pi:`il] = streamlet / p?l [pi:l] = arrow / p?ddel [pi.l:] = penis
> Pyp (<Piep>, like "peep") 'pipe', 'flute'
EF: p?p = pipe, flute, stove-pipe, leg-part of trousers
> Etc. ...
Greetings
Holger

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 14:57:45 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 07:57:45 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.11 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.075745.0700.>

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Etymology

Hi Ron (en andere lui),

When I read your list of false friends between Low Saxon and English,
the word "luun" (LS) ("whim', "mood" in English) triggered my mind
somewhat. Surely it must be a cognate of German "Laune", of which Duden
claims that it has been derived from Middle High German "l?ne", denoting
"lunar phase". According to medieval astrology, human moods were
apparently strongly correlated with the moon ("luna" in Latin). There's
also Dutch "luim" for the same kind of emotion.

In Brabantish we have the words "striel(e)n" and "loet(e)n" (always in
plural) for any quirky behavior: "Ze kra?gt wal eul loetn", "A ei wal
z?n strieln". A "loete" is also a sort of shovel with which bread can be
shoved into an oven, maybe there's a connection with this tool, but I
can't imagine how the meaning must have shifted. Frisian and Middle Low
German knew the word "lote" too, but for a "rake". Maybe "lo(e)te" is
some kind of nominalization of the verb "laden" (D) (G), "to load" (E)?
This would explain "loeten" (B) as a burden that was loaded on a
person's mind.

At the same time this Saxon word "luun" is a false friend of Brabantish
"loejnig", said of anything that grows profusely. The latter stems from
Middle Dutch "ludich", which in turn is related to Gothic "liudan" (to
grow) and "Leute" (G)...and ultimately "lieden, lui" (D).

Greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 16:18:01 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 09:18:01 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Member news" 2004.06.11 (03) [E/LS]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.091801.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Member news

Lowlanders,

[Mennonite Lowlands Saxon (Low German) -- English below]


En Tiet trigj hab ekj berechtet, daut onsa Frint Reuben App (Kelowna,
Kaunadau) krank wea, on daut hee noh?a wada jesunt woat. Nu es hee
onverhoffs al wada krank jewoade, on de Doktasch habbe am aum Buck
oppereart. Daut es en Nootfaul jeweese. Jlekjeljawies es aules good jegone,
on em Uagenblekj es onsa Reuben tuss aum Vepuste on aum Jesuntwoare. Sien
Berecht finje Jie unje.
     Lewe Reuben, em Nome von aula Lied, dee Die leew habbe on Die bewundre
wensch ekj Die on Dien lewe Irmgard daut Baste.  Komm boolt wada trigj!

[Northern Lowlands Saxon (Low German) -- English below]

Een Tied tr?gg harr ik Ju k?nnig maakt, dat us Fr?nd Reuben Epp (Kelowna,
Kanada) s??k was, un dat he dunn wedder uprappel. Nu is he mitmaal wedder
s??k worrn, un de Dokters hebbt an em an'n Buuk oppereert. Dat is 'n
Noodfall west. To'n Gl?ck is allens good gaan, un upst?nds is us Reuben
tohuus' an't Versnuven un B?terwarrn. Sien Bericht findt Ji ?nnen.
     Leve Reuben, in'n Naam vun all de L??d', de Di leev hebben un bewunnern
doot w?nsch ik Di un Dien leve Irmgard vun't Gode dat Best. Kaam gau wedder
tr?gg!

[English]

You may remember that a while ago I informed you that our friend Reuben Epp
(Kelowna, Canada) had fallen ill and had recovered. This week he fell ill
again and had to undergo abdominal surgery as a case of emergency.
Fortunately, everything worked out fine, and our Reuben is currently resting
and recovering at home. You will find his report below.
     Dear Reuben, on behalf of everyone who loves and admires you, I wish
you and your dear Irmgard the best. Make sure you'll return to us soon!

Reinhard/Ron

***

From: "Reuben Epp" reuben at silk.net
To: "R. F. Hahn" sassisch at yahoo.com
Subject: Emergency Operation
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 19:25:56 -0700

Dear Ron and Dianna,

I wish to confirm to you and our dear friends in Germany, that I had major,
emergency abdominal surgery late Wednesday evening, 3rd June 2004. Today,
Thursday, 10th of June, I am at home since yesterday and resting fairly
comfortably.

The response to my very severe and sudden pain was astonishingly swift and
thorough in the emergency ward of our hospital. And completely successful.

My personal physician (not the surgeon), who happened to be in the hall of
the hospital when we left, remarked, "Do you realize that you just dodged
the bullet?"

Irmgard and I both realize all too well, that this is the second time in
about half a year that the Good Lord has seen fit to allow me to sidestep
the bullet.

All the best! Must get back to rest!

Ron: Would you please pass this on to our mutual friends? I have not the
energy to translate nor to write any more today.

Reuben

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 17:36:44 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 10:36:44 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.103644.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (01) [E]

Ron wondered whether they are also hospitals for healthy children... well,
of course there are! They are called birthing clinics...

My oldest daughter spent four weeks in a hospital although she was in
perfect health, and so do many other children who were born prematurely...

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 11 19:37:42 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 12:37:42 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (05) [D/E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.123742.0700.>

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From: Ed Alexander <edsells at cogeco.ca>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (01) [E]

At 07:30 AM 06/11/04 -0700, Troy Sagrillo wrote:
>The "sick" vs. "ill" issue in English has to do with US vs. British
>varieties. In North American English "sick" *primarily* means "suffering
>from or affected with an illness", so it is completely normally to say
>"doctor, I feel sick" or "I am sick; I can't come to work to day". It can
>also mean "mentally ill or disturbed" (informally in "one sick puppy"
>meaning "crazy person"), but this is a secondary usage.
>
>In my Dutch class, the instructor (who is more familiar with British
>English) went out of his way to explain that Dutch "ziek" means "ill" not
>"sick", much to the confusion of his American and Canadian students...

Then we have the famous seemingly contradictory senses of "homesick" and
"seasick", as well as the somewhat confusing sentence one sometimes sees in
church bulletins, requesting prayers for "the sick of this parish."

Finally, perhaps under False Friends as well, "Ile de France" does not mean
"Sick of France."

Ed Alexander, Hamilton, Ontario

----------

From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (01) [E]

>From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
>Subject: "False friends"
>
>Hello all !
>When I look onto Ron's list I experience that there are false friends at
>least between different Low Saxon variants:

Moin alltohoop,

today I read in the webedition of the "Leeuwarder Courant" the following
headline:
"Koeien alleen naar buiten voor Slachte"

I translated it for myself to LS as "Keuh  alleen na buten to?n  Slachten"

That was a "false friend".  The text furthermore was:
"KUBAARD - Langs de Slachtedyk lopen morgen veel koeien speciaal voor
deze dag buiten voor de deelnemers van het wandelfestijn. De organisatie
heeft de veehouders gevraagd hun koppels de wei in te sturen om het
landschap te verfraaien. Veel agrari?rs houden hun koeien normaal op
stal...."

That reminded me to a place in Bremen which is called "Schlachte" or
"Slachte". That was the first harbour of Bremen and nothing more like a
wall at the waterfront where ships were bound and loaded. I think this
"Slachte" is more related to this Dutch "Slachte" as it is "Slachter",
"slachten", Slachtk?st" or even "Slacht".

I know from Dutch another word which contains "slacht"; it is
"slachtoffer". That seems to be more related to the LS "Slacht",
isn?t it? I wonder what is the origin and connection between them.
Does anybody know?

Best regards
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Utz,

In the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) dialects of the Bremen and Oldenburg
(Ollenborg) regions, _Slacht(e)_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_) means or
used to mean 'bank reinforcement (wall)'.  It still occurs in street names
in that region.

The other _Slacht_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_), used in all dialects,
means battle, is thus related to Dutch and Afrikaans _slag_ and to English
"slaught" (formerly "slaucht" < Middle English _sla?t_ ~ _slaht_ < Old
English _sleaht_) and "slaughter."  Cf. Old English _slaga_ 'murderer', thus
"slayer" (< "slay" < _sl?-a_, cf. LS _slagen_ ~ _slaan_ 'beat', 'slay',
etc.).  The _-t(e)_ or _-d(e)_ is a deverbal noun suffix.  So it should
really be spelled _slagd(e)_, _Schlagt_, etc.

LS _Slachter_ (lit. "slayer" or "slaughterer") for 'butcher' survived in
North German _Schlachter_, one of those words that shows up a North German
speakers as opposed to Southerners who use words like _Metzger_ (lit.
"slaughterer"), _Fleischer_ ("flesh-er," "meat-er") or _Fleischhauer_
("flesh-/meat-chopper").

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "False friends" [E]

> From: Tom <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
> Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (09) [E]
>
> > <>R. F. Hahn wrote:
> >
> > Anyway, this name has always puzzled me. "Hospital for *Sick* Children?"
> > Is there one for healthy children as well? How about "Children's
Hospital"
>
> As for Andy Eagle's remark about sick children, 'gruesome' is not an
> appropriate description in my opinion. 'Poignant' or 'tragic' might be
> words that spring to mind when thinking of the guests these hospitals
> harbour.

When I said the Scots use of "sick" was like the Dutch "ziek", gruesomeness
never crossed my mind. It's just that in Scots it's more usual to use "seek"
where in English one might rather say "ill" (though I see from other
submissions that this isn't true of American English after all).

I agree with Tom that "Hospital for Sick Children" is one of the few
examples of a phrase where a euphemism is really necessary.

> From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
> Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (02) [E]
>
> Dear Sandy Fleming/Lowlanders,'
>
> You said:
>
> 'glammer (glamour): in Scots, means "magic".'
>
> But also English 'glamour' comes from Scots 'glammer', which itself comes
> from the Scots for 'grammar' because in those days a magician was also a
> scholar.

Yes, that's the point - the words in my most recent list are cognates, so
you would expect them to be borrowings or have a common ancestry

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.10 (09) [E]

Dear Sandy Andy & All,

    How old is the Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children?
I ask because it is comparatively recently that the word 'hospital' applied
only to accommodation for the sick. The word is cognate with 'Hotel' from
the French, in which language it used to mean 'dwelling' - unspecified. What
about Child's Hospital?

> > As in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun 12 00:02:32 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 17:02:32 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.11.JUN.2004.170232.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends


Greetings Lowlanders,

I am a little bit confused by the inference in the discussion that there is
a semantic difference between _sick_ and _ill_ in British English. I am
originally from Lancashire in the North-West of England, and I can remember
using the words almost synonymously since I was young. I say 'almost'
synonymously, because maybe in the word _sick_ there is a sense of feeling
nauseous, as well as just being off colour. I have lived in various parts of
the UK and have never noticed them being used differently anywhere else; I
start to wonder if I have just overlooked the difference.

In our local English _Are you feeling sick?_ would more or less mean _Are
you feeling nauseous?_ or perhaps _Have you got a stomach ache?_. _To be
sick_, on the other hand was used of vomiting: _I have just been sick_ would
mean _I have just vomited_. _Sick_ is also used as a noun for 'vomit'.

We had another adjective (in the form of an adverb) too for sick/ill,
_poorly_, as in: _She was feeling poorly, so she didn't go into work._

_Sick_ in the sense of 'obnoxious', etc., seems to me to be a secondary
meaning imported from the States (though sometimes this impression later
turns out to be erroneous), we would however have said:'You're sick in the
head, you are!'

Interestinly enough I have a Pakistani friend who lived most of his life in
England, and speaks English fluently, who for some reason thinks that _ill_
means 'having a high temperature', and would say _not well_ or _sick_  to
describe having any other complaint.

John Duckworth
Preston, Lancashire

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

John,

Whatever it's worth, all you said above -- with the exception of the
linguistic peculiarity of the Pakistani friend (though I have a Pakistani
friend too) -- is what I had thought also, having spent considerable amounts
of time in English-speaking countries such as the England, Australia, Canada
and the US, as well as Singapore and Hong Kong.  I was beginning to doubt my
perception, but now I know that I am not alone.  Thanks for the boost!

> _Sick_ is also used as a noun for 'vomit'.

I haven't come across this one, though, but I take your word for it.

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun 12 16:20:31 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 09:20:31 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.12 (01) [D/E/LS/German]
Message-ID: <SAT.12.JUN.2004.092031.0700.>

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From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (05) [D/E]

>I know from Dutch another word which contains "slacht"; it is
>"slachtoffer". That seems to be more related to the LS "Slacht",
>isn?t it? I wonder what is the origin and connection between them.
>Does anybody know?
>
>Best regards
>Utz H. Woltmann
>
>----------
>
>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: False friends
>
>Utz,
>
>In the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) dialects of the Bremen and Oldenburg
>(Ollenborg) regions, _Slacht(e)_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_) means or
>used to mean 'bank reinforcement (wall)'.  It still occurs in street names
>in that region.
>
>The other _Slacht_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_), used in all dialects,
>means battle, is thus related to Dutch and Afrikaans _slag_ and to English
>"slaught" (formerly "slaucht" < Middle English _sla?t_ ~ _slaht_ < Old
>English _sleaht_) and "slaughter."  Cf. Old English _slaga_ 'murderer',
thus
>"slayer" (< "slay" < _sl?-a_, cf. LS _slagen_ ~ _slaan_ 'beat', 'slay',
>etc.).  The _-t(e)_ or _-d(e)_ is a deverbal noun suffix.  So it should
>really be spelled _slagd(e)_, _Schlagt_, etc.
>
>LS _Slachter_ (lit. "slayer" or "slaughterer") for 'butcher' survived in
>North German _Schlachter_, one of those words that shows up a North German
>speakers as opposed to Southerners who use words like _Metzger_ (lit.
>"slaughterer"), _Fleischer_ ("flesh-er," "meat-er") or _Fleischhauer_
>("flesh-/meat-chopper").
>
>Regards,
>Reinhard/Ron

Moin Ron,

ik heff noch wat funnen in de webeditie vun dat "Leidsch Dagblad":

"Welke verouderde woorden leven er nog in het Leids? Een ervan is
slachte. 'Slachte', zegt u, 'dat is toch gewoon Nederlands?' Ja, wel als
je denkt aan vee en aan een slager. Maar dat slachten bedoel ik niet. Er
is een ander slachte dat voorkomt in de betekenis 'lijken op'. In het
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal staat een mooi citaat uit de
dichtbundel 'Makamen en Ghazelen' van de Vlaming J.A. van Droogenbroeck
uit 1806: ,,Soms aard ik den wilden ramme, soms slacht ik den stillen
lamme! - Ik zeil bij allerlei winden.'' Vertaald luidt dat: nu eens heb
ik de aard van een woeste, wilde ram, dan weer lijk ik op een stil
onschuldig lammetje. Ik waai met alle winden mee.

In de Leidse taal kun je zeggen dan slacht je mij wat. Letterlijk
betekent dat 'dan lijk je wat op mij'. Maar je gebruikt het meestal
wanneer je met iets instemt wat een ander zegt. Je lijkt op mij, dus ben
ik het volledig met je eens. Slachten is verwant aan geslacht, je
voorvaderen en je nazaten. Daar lijk je meestal ook wat op."

Kumpelmenten
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (05) [D/E]

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

>Subject: False friends
>
>Utz,
>
>In the Lowlands Saxon (Low German) dialects of the Bremen and Oldenburg
>(Ollenborg) regions, _Slacht(e)_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_) means or
>used to mean 'bank reinforcement (wall)'.  It still occurs in street names
>in that region.
>
>The other _Slacht_ [slaxt(@)] (f., pl. _Slachten_), used in all dialects,
>means battle, is thus related to Dutch and Afrikaans _slag_ and to English
>"slaught" (formerly "slaucht" < Middle English _sla?t_ ~ _slaht_ < Old
>English _sleaht_) and "slaughter."  Cf. Old English _slaga_ 'murderer',
thus
>"slayer" (< "slay" < _sl?-a_, cf. LS _slagen_ ~ _slaan_ 'beat', 'slay',
>etc.).  The _-t(e)_ or _-d(e)_ is a deverbal noun suffix.  So it should
>really be spelled _slagd(e)_, _Schlagt_, etc.

Hello Ron,

you are right, I have found an explanation in www.bremen-tourism.de:

"Die Schlachte... Ihr Name leitet sich ab vom niederdeutschen Wort
?slait?, was soviel wie schlagen bedeutet. Damit Schiffe anlegen konnten
und das Weserufer vor Eis und Sturmflut gesch?tzt war, wurden Holzpf?hle
in den Boden geschlagen."

"...Schlachte Promenade...Its name originates from Low German slait,
meaning to ?slam? and recalls the days when wooden stakes were used to
protect the quayside from icing and tidal storms."

Best regards
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: False friends

Dank ook, Utz!

> Maar dat slachten bedoel ik niet. Er
> is een ander slachte dat voorkomt in de betekenis 'lijken op'.

Och, ja!  Dat hebbt wi in 't Neddersassische (Nedderd??tsche) ook:
_slachten_ ~ _slechten_, vun _Slag_ 'Aard', schull daarwegen beter <slagten>
or <slegten> schreven warrn.

Utz mentioned archaic Dutch _slachten_ in the sense of 'to resemble
(something)'.  I mentioned that we have that word in Lowlands Saxon (Low
German) as well: _slachten_ ~ _slechten_ 'to take after', 'to resemble',
from _Slag_ 'kind', 'sort', should thus be spelled _slagten_.

Examples:

Hey slagtt/slegtt an/up/op syn vadder.
He slacht/slecht an/up/op sien Vadder.
He takes after/resembles his father.

Den slag kraam weett he niks vun af.
Den Slag Kraam weet he nix vun af.
He doesn't know anything about that sort of stuff.

It's apparently also related to _geslegt_ (<Geslecht>) 'kin(ship)', 'seed',
'extraction', 'house', 'sex', 'gender'

In somewhat archaic German, _Schlag_ and _(ein)schlagen_ have similar
meanings.

It all seems to go back to the same source as that of "slay."

Danish and Norwegian have borrowed _slag_ in this sense.

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun 13 16:18:17 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:18:17 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.13 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.091817.0700.>

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From: Cr?ost?ir ? Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.11 (06) [E]

Ron wrote:
"I haven't come across this one (i.e., "sick" to mean "vomit"), though, but
I take your word for it.

This is the usual meaning of "sick" in Nottingham English, e.g., "there's
sick all over the floor." "E's just gone en bin sick everywhere." We use
"ill" where everyone else on this list seems to use "sick", e.g., "I feel
ill". "He's not here's because he's off ill". Then of course we use the term
"poorly" as well, which describes a mild illness, especially that of
children - it's a little condescending, I suppose. "Are yeh feelin poorly,
duck?" "Are yeh a bit poorly? <patronising coo> Arr."

Whenever I hear the word "sick" used to mean "ill" it grates as an
Americanism.

Criost?ir.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun 13 16:20:45 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:20:45 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.13 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.092045.0700.>

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From: Dan Prohaska <daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Dear All,

Unfortunately I was unable to open the below link - but then again I have
been having some computer difficulties lately...

In reference to what Reinhard said below I can only agree that the languages
most closely related to West Frisian ought to be included in a comparative
study of the kind.

Among West Frisians I have noted a tendency to stress and over-emphasise an
affiliation with the Scandinavian languages, Danish in particular. I don't
know why this is but the similarities to Scandinavian are few (except for
the features shared by all Germanic languages) compared to the connections
with English, Low Saxon and not to mention the other varieties of Frisian.
I've always found West Frisian to be very similar to Low Saxon and have also
heard West Frisians saying that they find Frisian has many expressions
'closer to German than to Dutch'. Such subjective remarks are very
interesting when trying to ascertain certain attitudes.

Best wishes to all,
Dan

=============

From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Language varieties

Beste li?glanners,

I'd like to bring under your attention a very interesting paper that
Wilbert Heeringa has published together with Charlotte Gooskens, titled
"The Position of Frisian in the Germanic Language Area". The languages
that are compared with Frisian are Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian,
Swedish, Danish, English, Dutch and German. Linguistic distances are
calculated and related to mutual intelligibility. You can find it here:
http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/tdg03.pdf
More can be found under
http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/

Greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

----------

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

Thanks for the reference (above), Luc.

This is an interesting article.  Unfortunately, there are some omissions.
It does not include Scots, but in my opinion more serious still is the
omission of Saterland (East) Frisian and the North Frisian varieties of
Germany.  It gets tiresome when people write about "Frisian" and only refer
to Westerlauwer Frisian of the Netherlands.  Also serious is the omission of
Lowlands Saxon (Low German), given that Frisian, Dutch and German are
included.  LS is a missing linkthere, so to speak.  Hopefully, all these
will be included in future studies.

Thanks again.

Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 02:38:41 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 19:38:41 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.13 (02) [D/E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.193841.0700.>

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From: Roger Hondshoven <roger.hondshoven at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.12 (01) [D/E/LS/German]

Utz,

Je moet heel waarschijnlijk uitgaan van de betekenis: "een dier dat als
offer geslacht wordt";

Beste groeten,

Roger

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends

Greetings Lowlanders!

Considering all the hullaballoo about _sick_ versus _ill_, I decided to take
a look in some dictionaries.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Ninth Edition) gives the primary meaning of
ILL as: "Out of health; sick (is ill; was taken ill with pneumonia;mentally
ill people)." It also points out :"The use of ILL to mean 'vomiting' or
'tending to vomit' is non-standard."

The Concise Oxford Thesaurus, A Dictionary of Synonyms, gives SICK, and
SICKLY as synonums of ILL. Similarly it gives ILL as a synonym of SICK.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, gives the 6th meaning of the word ILL
as 'not in good health; sick.' It states that this is the predominant modern
usage, and that it dates back to Late Middle English.

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary states:

SICK :1 "Feeling ill as if you are going to vomit."
          Lucy felt sick the morning after the party.
          If you eat any more of that cake, you'll make yourself sick
          2 be sick to vomit:
          She was sick after she ate too much chocolate."

It also gives:

"SICK : noun [U] UK INFORMAL vomit:a pool of sick on the floor".

The same dictionary gives:

"ILL (NOT WELL) : adjective : not feeling well, or suffering from a disease:
I felt ill so I went home.
He's been ill with meningitis.
Sophia fell ill/was taken ill (= became ill) while on holiday.
He is critically (= very badly) ill in hospital."

The same dictionary even lists POORLY as meaning 'ill', without any
criticism of the usage.

The Merriam-Webster (Online edition) is a little confusing in the way it
sets the entries out, but it appears to accept the sense "not in good
health" as one of the secondary meanings.

The same dictionary is clearer when it comes to SICK:

"1 a (1) : affected with disease or ill health " (2) : "of, relating to, or
intended for use in sickness <sick pay> <a sick ward>" b : Queasy,
nauseated: <sick to one's stomach> <was sick in the car> "

POORLY is also given in the adjectival sense of "somewhat ill; indisposed."

Since SICK is of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) origin (OE sEoc, cf. Old High
German seoh), and ILL is from Old Norse (ON illr, of unknown origin), could
the reason for the disagreement, in the British Isles at any rate, be a
tribal one, between Anglo-Saxons and Norse.ILL in the older sense of
'immoral', 'vicious' is said by at least one dictinary to be chiefly
Scottish; is it possible that the older meaning of ILL survived in Scotland,
 so they used the Anglo-Saxon word SICK in the sense of 'not well'? A quick
glance at a map of settlements of the Angles,Saxons and Jutes in 600 AD,
seems to show that Nottingham was probably in the Anglian territory, which
would explain why SICK is more prevalent there. In my area of Lancashire
(which at that time was still British [i.e. Celtic]) both SICK and ILL are
probably equally distributed, and POORLY was very common too a few decades
ago.

John Duckworth

Preston, Lancashire

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 03:11:29 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 20:11:29 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.13 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.201129.0700.>

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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Etymology

Ron and other Lowlanders,

While we are on the subject of being ill, has anyone any idea where the
Australian slang word _crook_ meaning 'not well in health' came from. It
also seems to have the meaning of 'not working properly' (of machinery and
so on), and even just 'bad'. Since you spent some time in Australia, Ron,
perhaps you have given some thought to its etymology?

I started wondering about why High German replaced the Old High German word
_sieh_ (sick) with New High German _krank.I looked at the history of the
word _krank_ given by Jakub and Wilhelm Grimm in Das Deutsche Woerterbuch
( http://www.dwb.uni-trier.de/index.html ), and there I found an inference
that Scots has a word _crank_, also meaning 'unwell' (and not in the sense
of 'a cranky person' ). I wonder if Sandy or someone else can confirm that.

Also, Ron, is _krank_ used in Low Saxon alongside cognates of _sick_ ?

John Duckworth
Preston, UK

----------

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

Hi, John, Lowlanders!

Happy Father's Day (or what remains of it) to those of you who celebrate(d)
it today!  (Or did I get the date wrong again?)

> Since you spent some time in Australia, Ron, perhaps you have given
> some thought to its etymology?

I have lived there for quite some years, am a naturalized Australian and am
likely, at the very latest, to experience my last sunset there, John.
However, this does not mean that I am an expert in the area of Australian
English, although I often do "research" it and, yes, I *have* given "crook"
in this sense some thought.  Having said this, I hasten to add that others
on the List, Australians and non-Australians alike, may well know more about
this.

In Australian and New Zealand English dialects, "crook" can mean several
things: 'unsatisfactory', 'unpleasant', 'dishonest', 'bad-tempered',
'angry', 'unwell', 'injured', sometimes even 'broken' in the sense of 'out
of order'.  If someone "goes crook" it usually means that he or she gets
angry, disgruntled or ill-tempered, but if he of she "is crook" it tends to
mean that he of she is unwell, ill or sick.  So, all in all, the meaning is
something like "out of sorts" or, more basic, "wrong," "not as it should
be," "abnormal."

In other English dialects, this comes through in the noun "crook" in the
sense of 'rogue', 'swindler', 'criminal', so 'dishonest (person)', "someone
who acts wrongly, thus is (socially) abnormal."

Apparently, in the senses of the above, there used to be dialectal variation
between "crooked" and "crook."  "Crook" came to predominate in Australasia,
while "crooked" came to predominate elsewhere.  In American English you
talk, for instance, about "crooked cops," namely about corrupt police
officers, or about something "crooked" someone (a "crook") has been up to,
namely something illegal or otherwise contrary to regulations or
expectations.

I have a hunch that this "crook(ed)" started off in the sense of "bent."
(Remember the noun "crook" for the bent shepherd's staff, later the bishop's
staff.)  So, something "bent" or "crook(ed)" is not "straight," is thus not
right or normal according to this line of cultural imagery.

Why "crook" instead of "crooked"?  Whatever the reason, I think it's the
same morphological phenomenon as "broken" and "broke."  In most English
dialects, you can say that someone is "broke" if he or she is out of money.
In American dialects you can, to a degree, interchange "broken" and "broke."
Thus, a table leg, for instance, can be "broken" or "broke."

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 03:20:59 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 20:20:59 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.13 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.13.JUN.2004.202059.0700.>

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

[Sorry! This one got away before I was finished.  So here we go again ...]

Hi, John, Lowlanders!

Happy Father's Day (or what remains of it) to those of you who celebrate(d)
it today!  (Or did I get the date wrong again?)

> Since you spent some time in Australia, Ron, perhaps you have given
> some thought to its etymology?

I have lived there for quite some years, am a naturalized Australian and am
likely, at the very latest, to experience my last sunset there, John.
However, this does not mean that I am an expert in the area of Australian
English, although I often do "research" it and, yes, I *have* given "crook"
in this sense some thought.  Having said this, I hasten to add that others
on the List, Australians and non-Australians alike, may well know more about
this.

In Australian and New Zealand English dialects, "crook" can mean several
things: 'unsatisfactory', 'unpleasant', 'dishonest', 'bad-tempered',
'angry', 'unwell', 'injured', sometimes even 'broken' in the sense of 'out
of order'.  If someone "goes crook" it usually means that he or she gets
angry, disgruntled or ill-tempered, but if he of she "is crook" it tends to
mean that he of she is unwell, ill or sick.  So, all in all, the meaning is
something like "out of sorts" or, more basic, "wrong," "not as it should
be," "abnormal."

In other English dialects, this comes through in the noun "crook" in the
sense of 'rogue', 'swindler', 'criminal', so 'dishonest (person)', "someone
who acts wrongly, thus is (socially) abnormal."

Apparently, in the senses of the above, there used to be dialectal variation
between "crooked" and "crook."  "Crook" came to predominate in Australasia,
while "crooked" came to predominate elsewhere.  In American English you
talk, for instance, about "crooked cops," namely about corrupt police
officers, or about something "crooked" someone (a "crook") has been up to,
namely something illegal or otherwise contrary to regulations or
expectations.

I have a hunch that this "crook(ed)" started off in the sense of "bent."
(Remember the noun "crook" for the bent shepherd's staff, later the bishop's
staff.)  So, something "bent" or "crook(ed)" is not "straight," is thus not
right or normal according to this line of cultural imagery.

Apparently, all this goes back to Old Norse word _kr?kr_ 'hook' borrowed by
Middle English.

Why "crook" instead of "crooked"?  Whatever the reason, I think it's the
same morphological phenomenon as "broken" and "broke."  In most English
dialects, you can say that someone is "broke" if he or she is out of money.
In American dialects you can, to a degree, interchange "broken" and "broke."
Thus, a table leg, for instance, can be "broken" or "broke."

German _krank_ 'ill', 'unwell', too, originally meant "bent" or "crooked,"
or simply "not straight," is related to words like _Kringel_ 'squiggle',
'(edible) ring', and Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _kring_ (<Kring> ~ <Krink>
[krI.N(k)]) 'circle' (> 'club', 'association').

I hope this was of help.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 14:47:56 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 07:47:56 -0700
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.14 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.14.JUN.2004.074756.0700.>

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From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.12 (01) [D/E/LS/German]

Hi,
In our family "schlagen" is very commonly used in this sense.
"Er schl?gt nach seinem Vater" COULD mean "he is hitting out at his father",
but more frequently it would be used in the sense, mostly negative, critical
"He displays the (bad) attitudes, (bad) manners of his father", but it can
also refer to phyical features, both positive and negative (and neutral).
Whether this comes from the LS substrate, I don?t know.
Mike Wintzer

----------

From: Peter Snepvangers <snepvangers at optushome.com.au>
Subject: False Friends

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Greetings Lowlanders!
Considering all the hullaballoo about _sick_ versus _ill_, I decided to take
a look in some dictionaries.

Hello John, Ron et al...
The use of sick for vomit is very prevalent here in Australia and is also
commonly used to mean ill. One of the new usages for sick now is for sick
meaning "totally cool". Not in the usual sense meaning as hip, up to the
minute, exciting, new but in a tangental sense, a clever sense of cool. It
is used by the teenagers and ethnic (middle eastern, asian, lebanese)
Aussies originally but is gaining acceptance with all mainstream kids. It
has even been used on television here on our SBS tv station on a program
called Fat Pizza. Now when you see someone do a cool drawing or a great
stunt you would say" that was totally sick, man!!!"
I wonder if we are unique down under here with this usage?
Cheers
Peter Snepvangers
snepvangers at optushome.com.au

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 14:59:52 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 07:59:52 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.14.JUN.2004.075952.0700.>

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From: Andrys Onsman <Andrys.Onsman at CeLTS.monash.edu.au>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.13 (03) [E]

To: Ron and John
Re: Being crook.

> .  In American English you talk, for instance, about "crooked cops,"
namely
> about corrupt police officers, or about something "crooked" someone (a
> "crook") has been up to, namely something illegal or otherwise contrary to
> regulations or expectations.
>
> I have a hunch that this "crook(ed)" started off in the sense of "bent."
> (Remember the noun "crook" for the bent shepherd's staff, later the
bishop's
> staff.)  So, something "bent" or "crook(ed)" is not "straight," is thus
not
> right or normal according to this line of cultural imagery.

Whilst agreeing with most of what Ron has to say about "crook", I think that
Australians too mostly use crooked when speaking of bent cops. A crook cop
is a
sick policeman, a crooked cop is a corrupt policeman. As a current resident
in
Melbourne, I read daily reports in the media about the latter. A quick
Google
search for crook cops gives 4 results, for crooked cops 796. Perhaps
dishonest
policemen rarely get ill.

Apparently there are a number of possible sources for crook(ed): the Old
Norse
"krokr" hook, corner, the Norman "crique", meaning creek, the French "croc"
for
Shepherd's crook  and the O.H.G. "krapmhe" cramp, spasm, related to "kramph"
bent, crooked" amongst others. They all seem to relate to bent or unwell.

But I have no idea why "going crook at" means getting angry with in
Australian
English.

Best wishes
Andrys Onsman

----------

From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: Etymology

> From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Etymology
>
> Also, Ron, is _krank_ used in Low Saxon alongside cognates of _sick_ ?
>
In my Low Saxon dialect the word krank is sometimes used to mean ill.
But usually the word seyk (sik, with superlength i) is used.

Also, the Dutch dictionary Van Dale lists krank as meaning ill.

regards,
Henry

----------

From: Peter Snepvangers <snepvangers at optushome.com.au>
Subject: Etymology

>From John Duckworth and Ron Hahn:
While we are on the subject of being ill, has anyone any idea where the
Australian slang word _crook_ meaning 'not well in health' came from.

Hello Ron and John,
Ron you seemed to answer the original question on crook very well. It has
had all the meanings and connotations you described. The only thing I would
add is the change in usage over time. Crook was very commonly used in the
1960's, to the 1980's and Bent started to be used more generally after this
time. The usage of bent seemed to me to be used by the drug using sub
culture which was very prevalent in the 1980's here in Australia after the
initial Hippie sub culture (post Vietnam war ) of the 1970's. A bit of a
generalisation I know but an observation none the less. I think it was more
of a generational thing ( the oldies and yobbos used crook while the kids
used bent) but both had the meaning of "off the straight and narrow" to use
a colloquial term.
Cheers
Peter Snepvangers
snepvangers at optushome.com.au

----------

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

Thanks for the very interesting responses (above), guys!  And great to have
you back, Henry!

I wrote:

> German _krank_ 'ill', 'unwell', too, originally meant "bent" or "crooked,"
> or simply "not straight," is related to words like _Kringel_ 'squiggle',
> '(edible) ring', and Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _kring_ (<Kring> ~
<Krink>
> [krI.N(k)]) 'circle' (> 'club', 'association').

I should add that English _cranc_ > "crank" is suspected to have been
derived from the Old English verb _crincan_ (thus morphophonemically
/krink-/) 'to fall in battle', originally meaning 'to curl up'.  Also note
the specialized nautical meaning of the adjective "crank": 'liable to
capsize', suspected to be derived from the earlier meaning 'weak', 'shaky',
'unstable'.  So "crook(ed)" and "crank(y)" seem to have a lot in common.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 21:06:00 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 14:06:00 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.14.JUN.2004.140600.0700.>

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From: Cr?ost?ir ? Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.13 (02) [D/E]

John Duckworth wrote describing the Anglo-Saxon and Norse origins of "sick"
and "ill" respectively. I'd go along with his assessment, except to point
out as strongly as I can that "ill" is predominant around Nottingham (John
suggested "sick" was, perhaps in a confused misreading of my original post).
This is hardly surprising as Nottingham was long a part of the Danelaw.

With regard to Peter Snepvangers contribution about "sick" meaning "cool" in
Australia - this is certainly an innovation, but it may be confined to the
eastern states. I never once heard it when I lived in Western Australia, and
I worked at a school there.

Criost?ir.

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: False Friends

Peter Snepvangers said:

"One of the new usages for sick now is for sick meaning "totally cool". Not
in the usual sense meaning as hip, up to the minute, exciting, new but in a
tangental sense, a clever sense of cool. It is used by the teenagers and
ethnic (middle eastern, asian, lebanese)
Aussies originally but is gaining acceptance with all mainstream kids."

It is used in the same context by teenagers here; 'Wow! That's sick, man!'
Or just an exclamated,'Sick!' There are one or two other apparent reversals
of meaning used to show various levels of approval among teenagers on the
street; unfortunately I can only remember 'wicked!' and 'Evil!' both of
which are a little dated now.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK.

----------

From: Wim <wkv at home.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (02) [E]

From: wim verdoold. wkv at home.nl

Hi,  about crooked...  the dutch words verkreukeld, gekreukt, en
gekrookt  are coming to my mind, all meaning the same.    ( crumple,
what you do to paper , or a reed that you try to break).

Hope this was any help..

Wim.

http://members.home.nl/wkv/index.html

----------

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

Henry Pijffers:

> > Also, Ron, is _krank_ used in Low Saxon alongside cognates of _sick_ ?
> >
> In my Low Saxon dialect the word krank is sometimes used to mean ill.
> But usually the word seyk (sik, with superlength i) is used.

What Netherlands group of Lowlands Saxon does your dialect belong to again,
Henry?  Twente?

Again, in North Saxon dialects of the German side of the border, too, you
can say both _s?yk_ ~ _syk_ (German spelling <s??k> ~ <siek>, Dutch spelling
<zuuk> ~ <ziek>) or _krank_.  Also, 'hospital' can be _s?ykenhuus_ ~
_sykenhuus_ (German spelling <S?kenhuus> ~ <Siekenhuus>, Dutch spelling
<zuuknhoes> ~ <zieknhoes>) or _krankenhuus_ (German spelling <Krankenhuus>,
Dutch spelling <kraanknhoes>).  I have a feeling that the use of _krank_ and
derivations thereof is on the increase due to German influence (_krank_,
_Krankenhaus_).

Andrys Onsman:

> Whilst agreeing with most of what Ron has to say about "crook", I think
that
> Australians too mostly use crooked when speaking of bent cops. A crook cop
> is a
> sick policeman, a crooked cop is a corrupt policeman. As a current
resident
> in
> Melbourne, I read daily reports in the media about the latter. A quick
> Google
> search for crook cops gives 4 results, for crooked cops 796. Perhaps
> dishonest
> policemen rarely get ill.

I wonder if this is because of American media influence offering a way out
of a potentially ambiguous construction.

By the way, note also the use of _bent_ (past participle of "to bend") in
the sense of "illicit" or "twisted."  In American slang I have come across
the slang phrase "the cop is bent" or "bent cop," denoting the same as
"crooked cop" (Has anyone else?), namely a police officer that has gone
"bad" (hence the alternative "bad cop").  So there is definitely a common
theme; all the loose ends seem to meet: "crook(ed)," "crank(y)" and "bent"
all start off with the idea of "not straight" and end up being used to mean
"not right," "out of the ordinary," "out of sorts," etc., physically,
morally or psychologically.

I wrote:

> I should add that English _cranc_ > "crank" is suspected to have been
> derived from the Old English verb _crincan_ (thus morphophonemically
> /krink-/) 'to fall in battle', originally meaning 'to curl up'.

This may be a clue to the semantic origin of the three adjectives mentioned
above.  You are all right ("normal") if you walk or stand upright, and
especially if you are upright in battle.  If you double over (bend over) or
curl up, you are assumed to be physically injured, ill, or whatever, i.e.,
"abnormal," "not as it should be."

Andrys further wrote:

> But I have no idea why "going crook at" means getting angry with in
> Australian

Well, it kind of makes sense to me.  If you look at my previous paragraph it
might make sense to you too.  "Not right," "not as usual," might also be
applied to mood.  If someone suddenly displays anger toward you ("having a
go at you," as they say in Britain) and this is unusual, he or she is
turning "weird," "different from usual," "not as it should be," almost like
mentally ill.  Hence also American English "mad" for "angry," probably
originally in the sense of "mad with anger."

John Duckworth:

> It is used in the same context by teenagers here; 'Wow! That's sick, man!'
> Or just an exclamated,'Sick!' There are one or two other apparent
reversals
> of meaning used to show various levels of approval among teenagers on
> the street; unfortunately I can only remember 'wicked!' and 'Evil!' both
of
> which are a little dated now.

I assume that's along the same lines as "bad" at one (short) time being used
to mean "good," at least in American slang.  I furthermore assume that
things of this sort are flashes in the pan, here today and gone tomorrow,
products of folks in a rebellious phase in which values are shifted, twisted
and turned around in-your-face fashion, a phase in which "being bad" is
"being good," "cool," "sweet," etc.  So, if someone deliberately does
something "sick" (i.e., something perverse, seemingly mentally twisted,
offensive to those "old farts" who value traditional norms) it may be
considered "good," "cool," "right on," "bad," "awesome," or whatever the
current term may be, among his or her equally rebellion-obsessed peers.

Wim Verdoold:

> Hi,  about crooked...  the dutch words verkreukeld, gekreukt, en
> gekrookt  are coming to my mind, all meaning the same.    ( crumple,
> what you do to paper , or a reed that you try to break).

North Saxon dialects of Lowlands Saxon (Low German):

kr?k (<Kr?ck>) 'crook', 'crique', 'bent walking stick'
kr?kel (<Kr?kel> ~ <Kr?kel>) 'wrinkle', '(tight) curl'
kr?kelig (<kr?kelig> ~ <kr?kelig>) 'wrinkled', 'crumpled', '(very) curly',
'frizzy'
kr?keln (<kr?keln> ~ <kr?keln>) 'cause to be wrinkled,crumpled or tightly
curled'

I assume the _-l(-)_ here is a diminutive marker, thus "small bend/curl."

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 22:44:53 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 15:44:53 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.14.JUN.2004.154453.0700.>

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From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.14 (03) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Etymology
>
> Henry Pijffers:
>
>>In my Low Saxon dialect the word krank is sometimes used to mean ill.
>>But usually the word seyk (sik, with superlength i) is used.
>
> What Netherlands group of Lowlands Saxon does your dialect belong to
again,
> Henry?  Twente?
>
Yes, from Twente (one could call that western West Phalian I guess).

> Again, in North Saxon dialects of the German side of the border, too, you
> can say both _s?yk_ ~ _syk_ (German spelling <s??k> ~ <siek>, Dutch
spelling
> <zuuk> ~ <ziek>) or _krank_.  Also, 'hospital' can be _s?ykenhuus_ ~
> _sykenhuus_ (German spelling <S?kenhuus> ~ <Siekenhuus>, Dutch spelling
> <zuuknhoes> ~ <zieknhoes>) or _krankenhuus_ (German spelling
<Krankenhuus>,
> Dutch spelling <kraanknhoes>).

 > I have a feeling that the use of _krank_ and
> derivations thereof is on the increase due to German influence (_krank_,
> _Krankenhaus_).
>
But how do you explain _krank_ appearing in a Dutch dictionary, with the
meaning of ill? And the use of _krank_ in Twente Low Saxon? Those
languages aren't influenced by German that much (at least not as much as
the Saxon varieties in Northern Germany)

> North Saxon dialects of Lowlands Saxon (Low German):
>
> kr?kel (<Kr?kel> ~ <Kr?kel>) 'wrinkle', '(tight) curl'
> kr?kelig (<kr?kelig> ~ <kr?kelig>) 'wrinkled', 'crumpled', '(very) curly',
> 'frizzy'
> kr?keln (<kr?keln> ~ <kr?keln>) 'cause to be wrinkled,crumpled or tightly
> curled'
>
It's the same in Twente.

regards,
Henry

----------

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

Henry (above):

> Yes, from Twente (one could call that western West Phalian I guess).

Nice to see that you and I see it alike, that there is someone else willing
to look across the political border.

> > I have a feeling that the use of _krank_ and
> > derivations thereof is on the increase due to German influence (_krank_,
> > _Krankenhaus_).
> >
> But how do you explain _krank_ appearing in a Dutch dictionary, with the
> meaning of ill? And the use of _krank_ in Twente Low Saxon? Those
> languages aren't influenced by German that much (at least not as much as
> the Saxon varieties in Northern Germany)

I'm not talking about existence but about prevalence.  I take it as a given
that both words already existed in Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but that on
the German side of the border people may now avail themselves more and more
of the _krank_ choice because of German influence.  (Modern German has only
_krank_, besides words like _unwohl_ "unwell," but no cognate of the
adjective _s?yk_ ~ _syk_.)  I believe that _s?yk_ ~ _syk_ used to be
predominant (as in Dutch and Netherlands LS) but is now gradually losing
ground to _krank_ in Germany under German influence, at least in certain
dialects.  A couple of speakers in the greater Hamburg area have told me
that they preferred _krank_ because _s?yk_ ~ _syk_ reminded them too much of
German _Seuche_ 'epidemic', 'scourge'.  One thought of _s?ykenhuus_ for
'hospital' as "silly" because it sounded to her like a place in which people
a quaranteened.  I guess this would be an example of a special type of
language interference, one in which native speaker competence is being
eroded due to foreign cognate associations.  (I wonder if this has been the
subject of academic investigation.)

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 14 23:13:49 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 16:13:49 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language news" 2004.06.14 (05) [E]
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language news

Dear Lowlanders,

Just now I caught a small soundbyte bundle of language news on the CNN TV
news channel.  It contained no satisfactory detail and was obviously a
filler, was rather interesting anyway.

According to a recent study (no details), older adults that knew more than
one language did significantly better in memory tests than did those that
were monolingual.  I don't know if with "people with only one language" they
really meant actually monolingual people or included those that learned a
foreign language in school but didn't really use it outside the classroom
and for long periods of time.  Also, there was talk of "people with more
than one language" and "people who grew up with two languages," apparently
used interchangeably.  So that's rather ambiguous.  At the end they said
something like "Two languages is good, more languages is better."

So far, no elaboration has been posted at the CNN site (http://www.cnn.com).

There you have it: the health benefits of language learning!  If you haven't
started yet, this is the time to jump on the bandwagon.  (Picture all those
folks on treadmills and exercise bikes, "hydration bottles" hanging from
belts, staring into language textbooks, listening to language CDs rather
than to music ones ...)

This makes me realize that by now I'd be in even worse shape memory-wise had
I lived monolingually ...  Maybe our Sandy is right and I do need a new
challenge: a phone-less language like sign language.  That'd do it: "extend
the life of the brain's elasticity," as mentioned on CNN.

It's official now.  Keep learning and using your languages, folks!
(Doesn't this merely confirm a hunch we've had for a long time?)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 15 19:50:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 12:50:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.15.JUN.2004.125033.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "False friends" 2004.06.13 (02) [D/E]

Dear All,

May I toss a stone in the bush?

So very little note is taken of the use of euphemism & its place in the
development of terminology. I, now, imagined everybody KNEW the expression
'He's "sick!" ' or 'That is so 'sick!" ' or (for Californians) 'He's a "sick
puppy"!' meaning mentally deranged in a nasty way, was the last stage of an
Americanism, using 'sick' as a tactful euphemism for 'insane'.

 I have no quarrel with that, as long as South Africans still understand me
when I say I feel sick. But we should beware of euphemism's destructive
propensities in language too.

Take for example the euphemism 'gay', which before Victorian Times, I find,
referred to any brand of licenciousness whatever ('Gaying instrument' - the
penis: 1811 DICTIONARY of the Vulgar Tongue). But subsequently restricted to
'the vice that dared not speak its name', 'Gay' became the euphemism for
'Homosexual' & with the gradual erosion of social reticence is now a
generally accepted term for the same.

This is in my opinion a great pity. The 'orientation' in question is no
longer a matter for the Law, or even Social Propriety, but 'Homosexual ' has
fallen out of use! The word 'Gay' meaning 'lively, bright, sportive, merry'
can no longer be used as such without misunderstanding. The mood appropriate
to that usage in older literary works is needlessly destroyed, & we can't
teach the same application to our young.

A small digression - how's this for a false friend? 'gay = merry' (Gay
fellow) English as opposed to 'gey = serious' (Gey Gordon) Scottish!

& still euphemism marches on. There are still contexts, even in that
fraternity, in which euphemism is preferable to the less subtle truth, &
what word is falling into that use? 'Fey!' ("I was approached by a fey young
man ---.").

What happens when we have to refer to something that IS fey?

Yrs Sincerely,
Mark

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.13 (03) [E]

Dear John Duckworth, & All,

This usage must go back very far in Germanic, or else be a very persuasive
loan. In Afrikaans, 'krank' also means 'sick, unwell, ill, but for 'insane,
you must specify, e.g. 'kranksinnig'.

On the other hand, 'kronkel means 'twisted, coiled, crinkled, or with a
kink.

Once again, has anybody else raised the issue of euphemism?

Yrs, Mark.

> I started wondering about why High German replaced the Old High German
word
> _sieh_ (sick) with New High German _krank. I looked at the history of the
> word _krank_ given by Jakub and Wilhelm Grimm in Das Deutsche Woerterbuch
> ( http://www.dwb.uni-trier.de/index.html ), and there I found an inference
> that Scots has a word _crank_, also meaning 'unwell' (and not in the sense
> of 'a cranky person' ). I wonder if Sandy or someone else can confirm
that.
>
> Also, Ron, is _krank_ used in Low Saxon alongside cognates of _sick_ ?

----------

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

> May I toss a stone in the bush?

Sure!  Toss away!  We can probably catch them in mid-flight.  :)  Not that
*I* necessarily will, mind you.

>  I have no quarrel with that, as long as South Africans still understand
me
> when I say I feel sick. But we should beware of euphemism's destructive
> propensities in language too.

Sure, Mark, but how can you stop it?  It's awfully hard, if not impossible,
to regulate language, including semantic shifts.

We have indeed talked about euphemisms many times, within various contexts.
It is true that euphemisms tend to cause all sorts of semantic shifts and
replacements.

By the way, Lowlands Saxon (Low German) refers to 'insane', 'mentally ill',
as _mal_ (<mall> [ma.l]), derived from French _mal_ 'bad', 'wrong', 'hurt',
'ill'.  It can also mean 'silly' or 'excentric' if used within certain
contexts.

Derivations are the following:
mallerig 'silly', 'excentric', 'crazy'
mallen 'to behave in a silly or crazy way', 'to fool around'
malm??l (<Mallm?hl> "crazy/silly mill") 'carousel'
mal-aap ~ mayaap (<Mallaap> ~ <Maiaap> "silly/May ape/monkey") 'silly
person', 'idiot'

There *are* native words and other loanwords for "crazy" and similar words;
e.g., ...

verdrayd (<verdreiht> "twisted")
verr?kt (<verr?ckt> "deranged")
bregen-kl?terig (<bregen-kl?terig> "brain-clotted," "lumpy-brained")
beklopt (<bekloppt> "hit-on")
dul (<dull> "crazed")
narsch (<narrsch> "foolish" from _nar_ <Narr> "fool")
t?yterig (<t?terig> from _t?yter_ "twist," "tangle")
t?ytelig (<t?telig> from _t?ytel_ "twist," "tangle")
vimmelig (<fimmelig> from _vimmel_ (<Fimmel>) 'foible')
unwys' (<unwies> "unwise")
bl??d' (<bl??d> ~ <bleud> originally "deaf and dumb")
bl??dsinnig (<bl??dsinnig> ~ <bleudsinnig> < "deaf-and-dumb-sensed")
splynig (<splienig> from _splyn_ (<Splien>) "excentricity")
maschukken (<maschucken> < Rothwelsch _meschugge_
   < Yiddish _meshuge_ ???? < Hebrew _m at shug?`_ ????????? 'insane')
vagelig (from _vagel_ "foible" < "bird")

The rest consists mostly of idiomatic phrases ... lots of them.

Talking about words for "deaf"[1] and "dumb"[2] as replacements for "insane"
or "unintelligent," this would be another set of examples of the semantic
shifts you are talking about, Mark, where it is (nearly) impossible to use
the words with their original meaning.

[1] LS _douv_ (<doof>) 'deaf' > 'stupid' > German _doof_ 'stupid' vs native
_taub_ 'deaf'

[2] English "dumb" 'unable to speak' > 'stupid'

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 15 20:40:47 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 13:40:47 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.15.JUN.2004.134047.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (01) [E]

Mark mentioned various euphemisms... so what do you call the opposite of a
euphemism? There are former four-letter or taboo words which nowadays have
come to mean something completely harmless. For example, in German, "geil"
used to mean "randy, horny", and now, within two short generations, it has
come to also (and even predominantly) mean " really great, cool, phat". When
my teenage daughter's friend wanted to pay me a compliment recently, she
called me "affengeil", and I was truly flattered - much more so than my
mother would have been if one of my friends had called her "horny as a
monkey"! That would have been absolutely unthinkable!!!

Looks like most areas where euphemisms are applied either lie below the
belt, or they have to do with the last big taboo in most western cultures -
passing away, buying the farm, going west, kicking the bucket, departing,
expiring, pushing up the daisies, being no longer among us!

Wait, there are more issues among politicians, of course... hundreds of
euphemisms for telling lies and, lately, even for torture... er, I mean,
specialized gentle persuasion!

Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Semantics" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Semantics
>
> [1] LS _douv_ (<doof>) 'deaf' > 'stupid' > German _doof_ 'stupid' vs
native
> _taub_ 'deaf'

This is interesting - in current Scots usage we have the noun "duif" [dIf]
meaning "a stupid person", and "dowf" [dauf] meaning "listless,
unresponsive", as well as "deif" [dif] meaning "deaf".
I'm assuming "duif" is the correct spelling - I've only given the
pronunciations in my own dialect, but seem to remember concluding from
reading some Scotstext text that this is the "ui" diaphoneme as in "guid"
&c.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Sandy (above):

> This is interesting - in current Scots usage we have the noun "duif" [dIf]
> meaning "a stupid person", and "dowf" [dauf] meaning "listless,
> unresponsive", as well as "deif" [dif] meaning "deaf".

Interesting indeed!  I wonder if _duif_ is a loanword.  Given the
construction of the Scots form, the most obvious source seems to be
Scandinavian: Danish _d?v_ [d?w], Dano-Norwegian (Bokm?l) Norwegian _d?v_
[d?v], Neo-Norwegian (Nynorsk) _dauv_ [da?v] ~ _d?v_ [d?v], Icelandic
_dauf-_ [da?f...] ~ [da?v...], Old Norse _dauf-_.  I am not so sure about
the modern languages, but Old Norse _dauf-_ can mean 'numb' or
'unresponsive' besides 'deaf', as can Lowlands Saxon (Low German) _douv_
(<doof>), German _taub_ and Yiddish _toyb_ ???.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 15 22:28:14 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 15:28:14 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.15.JUN.2004.152814.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Semantics" [E]

> From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (01) [E]
>
> Mark mentioned various euphemisms... so what do you call the opposite of a
> euphemism? There are former four-letter or taboo words which nowadays have

Strangely enough, I discovered this only yesterday while reading - the word
is "dysphemism".

It was defined as meaning a word used to be deliberately more shocking than
the usual word. Since it was a book on BSL linguistics, example given was
the dysphemistic sign for "abortion" that really means "stab in the
stomach". I suppose an English equivalent would be the way some
anti-abortionists call it "murder".

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 15 23:27:58 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 16:27:58 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.15.JUN.2004.162758.0700.>

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From: Gustaaf Van Moorsel <gvanmoor at aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: semantics

Gabriele ( Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>) wrote:

 > For example, in German, "geil"
 > used to mean "randy, horny", and now, within two short generations, it
has
 > come to also (and even predominantly) mean " really great, cool, phat".

Of course, in Dutch, 'geil' only has its original meaning, and the new
German meaning can indeed create confusion.

 > Wait, there are more issues among politicians, of course... hundreds of
 > euphemisms for telling lies and, lately, even for torture... er, I mean,
 > specialized gentle persuasion!

In his Daily Show, John Stewart called it 'Freedom Tickling'.

Gustaaf

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 16 15:22:12 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 08:22:12 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Administrativia" 2004.06.16 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.16.JUN.2004.082212.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-L.net>
Subject: Administrativia

Dear Lowlanders,

This is another administrative message. I sent the last one out on June 1,
2004.

First of all, I would like to welcome those who have joined us since then.
You will find their places of residence listed below.

I am very happy that a few people have rejoined us, several of them of the
"vocal" type.  It is great to have them back (and to know that they weren't
able to stay away for good).

There are no quota of any kind on this list.  Nevertheless, I would like to
particularly encourage our female subscribers to come forth and post.  There
are too few of you that do.  Furthermore, it is up to each subscriber to
choose to stay silently in the background "lurking" or to come forward to
participate in information exchange.  Yet, I would like to take this
opportunity to encourage everyone who has not firmly made up his or her mind
to try participating.  Please bear in mind that nothing horrible will happen
if you do.  No one will ridicule you, you are not expected to be experts in
anything, and your language proficiency (whichever language) does not need
to be perfect.  If you have burning questions that are relevant to this
list, or if you feel very tempted to share something relevant, please have a
go.  If you have any prior questions and/or are worried you do the wrong
thing, please read the rules (see below), and ask me
(lowlands-l at lowlands-L.net) if you are still unsure then.

Rules and Guidelines:
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Russian: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules-ru

There are four types of things that are often wrong even in more experienced
subscribers' posting submissions:

(1) Keep subjects separate
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Please pay particular attention to these on the Rules and Guideline pages.

Please also bear in mind that the list server stips all messages of special
formatting and attachments.  So please do not bother with those.

Please also pay attention to the following:

TEMPORARY ABSENCE
Before you take a trip or for some other reason need to stop LL-L mail
arriving for a given length of time, please write to us
(lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net) to let us know the date you want mail to be
stopped and the date you want mail to be resumed. As some of our members can
attest, this has been working really well, certainly beats the old, crude
method of signing off and on again. Once in a while people find themselves
unsubscribed without notice. Some of them immediately suspect the worst:
that I have "booted them out" for some infraction or other. (I know this for
sure only about those that contact me.) Please do not jump to this
conclusion unless you have received prior reprimands and warnings (which has
occurred very rarely, not at all for well over one year). If you find
yourself disconnected from Lowlands-L, the reason is most likely that the
automated server has unsubscribed your address because of repeated
"bouncing," i.e., because your mail servers keep informing the list server
that you cannot be reached or is filled above quota. Most of the time this
is due to temporary disconnection. Sometimes the reason is that a
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exempt Lowlands-L mail, which is why our mailings do not arrive in your
inboxes. So, if Lowlands-L mail stops coming, please first check your "spam"
filters and adjust them if necessary, and only contact me about the problem
if all of the above fails. Should you indeed be disconnected, please write
to me or resubmit an application
(http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=subscription). I'll be more than
happy to bring you swiftly back to the fold.

USE OF LANGUAGE
Preferably, you should submit postings in any one of the Lowlands language
varieties (including English). No language variety is considered better or
worse than others on this list. However, you need not limit yourselves to
Lowlands varieties, because *any* language or language variety is
permissible and welcome. Just bear in mind that the more "exotic" your
language choice the fewer members will understand you. If you use a language
that is foreign to you (including English, of course), please do not worry
about making mistakes. Once in a while I dabble in Afrikaans, Dutch,
Frisian, Scots and other languages, knowing full well that my proficiency is
wanting. One of the reasons I do this is to signal an invitation for you to
pluck up the courage to use the languages you are learning. Those of you who
use language varieties that are less commonly encountered and are of
interest to folks on this list may want to consider writing a translation
into one of the more common languages. Learners and researchers will thank
you. If you wonder what languages we are being used, please look for clues
in the subject line ([ ]).

TOPICS
You are quite welcome to mention interests that are not directly
Lowlands-related. Since hardly anything in this world of ours is completely
irrelevant and unrelated to other things, we often strike out beyond our
garden fence. However, we always want to keep an eye on our main area and
want to explore in what ways those "external" matters apply to or impact our
Lowlands area and what we can learn from them. Please also bear in mind that
you need not limit yourselves to language matters. Anything about culture,
history, geography, belief systems and especially interethnic, interregional
and international relations is welcome, as long as the Lowlands remain our
main focus. (We have members with specific interests, such as architecture,
music, genealogy or poetry, and their contributions are just as well
received as any.) If you have any questions, please let us know. Don't wait
and get all frustrated! As far as I know, there are no mind readers among
us. If you fear that your questions or comments would be too basic, and that
the "experts" on the List would laugh at you, please rest assured that any
relevant question is perfectly permitted, while derisive behavior is not,
would not slip by me (unless I'm on automatic pilot, in which case I would
shoulder the blame). We have been an exceptionally well-behaved group with a
familial and friendly atmosphere for over nine years now. It is very
important to us that everyone feels welcome and valued, irrespective of
knowledge, education, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual
orientation and any other background facets.  We are all here to learn,
learn together and from each other.

Lowlands-L is now well into its tenth year. Let's keep it going strong!
Thanks for your support!

Regards,
Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

***

Places of Residence of New Lowlanders since June 1, 2004:

   Australia:
        New South Wales:
             Sydney [1]
   Belgium:
        Western Flanders (West-Vlaanderen):
             Wevelgen [1]
   Canada:
        British Columbia:
             Abbotsford [1]
   Denmark:
        Copenhagen (K?benhavn):
             Copenhagen (K?benhavn) [1]
   Germany:
        Lower Saxony (Neddersassen/Niedersachsen):
             Hanover (Hannover) [1]
   Malaysia:
        Butterworth:
             Butterworth [1]

Netherlands:
        Drenthe:
             Emmen [1]
        Overijssel (Oaveriessel):
             Deaventer/Deventer [1]
        Tweante/Twente:
             Rysem/Risum [1]
   Pakistan:
        Sindh:
             Saddar Town, Karachi [1]
   Philippines:
        Camarines Sur:
             Ocampo [1]
   Poland:
        Lublin:
             Lublin [1]
   Romania:
        D?mbovi?a:
             T?rgovi?te [1]
   United States of America:
        California:
             San Mateo [1]
        Florida:
             Tampa [1]
        Illinois:
             Chicago [1]

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 16 19:18:55 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 12:18:55 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.16 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.16.JUN.2004.121855.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.15 (01) [E]

Dear Ron, Gabriele, & Sandy.

    First of all, thanks Sandy for 'dysphemism'. Actually, I must confess I
was being lazy. I should have come up with that one myself. I have maybe
just enough Greek.

    These are no longer euphemisms, those that ever were: The Afrikaans
synonyms for 'Mad'; mal, dwaas, gek, sot, dol, kranksinnig, dof, dom,
verspot, onnosel, laf.

    I appreciate learning that 'mal ' comes from the French. I suppose it
came to us via the Low Saxon. I wish I had the means to trace up the others
as well.

    Verdrayd we would follow, thinking it was Yiddish. Dul too, though we
would say dol. Also narsch, though the Afrikaans is naars. Unwys would be
seriously misunderstood; there being generally a big difference between the
unwisdom of a sane man & the stupidity (if any) of a madman.

> Talking about words for "deaf"[1] and "dumb"[2] as replacements for
"insane"
> or "unintelligent," this would be another set of examples of the semantic
> shifts you are talking about, Mark, where it is (nearly) impossible to use
> the words with their original meaning.

    Conceded, Ron (sadly).

    Thanks for all that,
Yrs sincerely,
Mark.

----------

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

Haai, Mark!

> Dul too, though we would say dol.

You can say that in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) also (spelled <doll>
according to German-based rules).

One way of classifying the dialects of that language is by vowel height.
Some dialects have high short vowels (e.g., dul, vun, vinster, dinken, mist,
etc.) where others have mid-level short vowels (e.g., dol, von, venster,
denken, mest, etc.), though this does not work consistently.

The German cognate of _dul_ ~ _dol_ is, predictably, _toll_ 'crazed',
'crazy'.  It can also be used to mean 'great', 'fantastic', etc. (which LS
_dul_ ~ _dol_ can not).  In Northern German dialects (which have been
variously influenced by LS), _doll_ has been borrowed in the specialized
sense of 'very (much)', 'greatly', etc.  For example, _Sie hat sich (ganz)
doll gefreut_ 'She was terribly glad'.  So there is a difference between
native _toll_ and loaned _doll_ (though so far I have never come across the
combination _doll toll_ 'terribly crazy').

>     I appreciate learning that 'mal ' comes from the French. I suppose it
> came to us via the Low Saxon.

Unless it comes from Zealandic.

> gek

This is a noun in LS (spelled <Geck> in Germany), meaning 'fool' and
pronounced with a "hard G" ([gEk]) in most dialects, except the farwestern
dialects in which it is fricative ([GEk] ~ [xEk]).

>    Verdrayd we would follow, thinking it was Yiddish.

I can understand that, considering that the LS and Yiddish forms of 'turn'
and 'twist' coincide: LS _drayen_ and _verdrayen_ vs. Yiddish _drayn_ and
_fardrayn_ respectively (vs German _drehen_ and _verdrehen_ respectively).

Groete,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 16 21:45:30 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 14:45:30 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.16 (03) [E/LS/German]
Message-ID: <WED.16.JUN.2004.144530.0700.>

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From: Utz H. Woltmann <uwoltmann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.16 (02) [E]

>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Semantics
>
>
>
>
>The German cognate of _dul_ ~ _dol_ is, predictably, _toll_ 'crazed',
>'crazy'.  It can also be used to mean 'great', 'fantastic', etc. (which LS
>_dul_ ~ _dol_ can not).  In Northern German dialects (which have been
>variously influenced by LS), _doll_ has been borrowed in the specialized
>sense of 'very (much)', 'greatly', etc.  For example, _Sie hat sich (ganz)
>doll gefreut_ 'She was terribly glad'.  So there is a difference between
>native _toll_ and loaned _doll_ (though so far I have never come across the
>combination _doll toll_ 'terribly crazy').

Moin Ron,

in Bremen seggt se ok in Missingsch: "Dascha doll, is dascha man" orrer
"Dascha?n dolles Ding, is dascha man".

Kumpelmenten
Utz H. Woltmann

----------

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

Moin, Utz!

> in Bremen seggt se ok in Missingsch: "Dascha doll, is dascha man" orrer
> "Dascha?n dolles Ding, is dascha man".

Dange, dassu mich daran erinnast, Utz.  Genaauso sacht man dasscha auch in
Hambugg? Missingsch!  Dscha, weischa: i?gnkwas muss man imm? v?gessn.

Wees' bedankt, dat Du my daar up anst?ten hest, Utz.  Lyk so segt 'n dat in
't Hamborger Missingsch!  Tjer, weetst ja, wo dat so gayt: eyn saak mutt 'n
altyd vergeten.

Folks, Utz reminded me that in Bremen Missingsch (German dialect with
Lowlands Saxon [Low German] substrate) you can use _doll_ to mean 'great',
'fantastic', etc., also.  I thanked him and told him that this applies in
Hamburg Missingsch as well.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 17 17:37:56 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 10:37:56 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2004.06.17 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.17.JUN.2004.103756.0700.>

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

Dear Lowlanders,

For all of us who are learning Dutch, here are two little online
dictionaries of children's Dutch:

http://www.pinkelotje.nl/woordenboek.html
http://www.ouders-online.nl/xwb_kin1.htm

Enjoy!

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sat Jun 19 23:14:17 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 16:14:17 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Holidays" 2004.06.19 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <SAT.19.JUN.2004.161417.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Holidays

Dear Lowlanders,

Happy Father's Day tomorrow (June 20) to our subscribers in or from Canada,
Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States!  I
hope I haven't forgotten any countries, and sorry I was a week ahead in my
mind last time.

On Monday (June 21), happy Midsummer (Summer Solstice) to everyone in the
Northern Hemisphere, and happy Midwinter (Winter Solstice) in the Southern
Hemisphere!  This means Alban Heruin and Litha for those in the North, Alban
Arthuan and Yule in the South, as well as the beginning of Bjelyje no?i
(????? ???? "White Nights") for our Russian subscribers.

Furthermore, it will be the national day of our friends in Kalaallit Nunaat
(Greenland) who will also hopefully enjoy the longest night of the year.
Inuugujoq, kutta!

   Nangmineq erinllik
   nunarput, utorqarssu?ngoravit
   ni ar qutuligsimavoq q?nik!
   q?tornatit kivssumi?inarpatit,
   tunivdlugitsineriavit p?nik!

   Our land
   Which has now grown so old -
   Your head is crowned with white -
   Have held us, your children, to your breasts,
   Providing the treasures of your coasts.

          (National anthem, 1st verse)

Regards,

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun 20 18:43:19 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004 11:43:19 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Holidays" 2004.06.20 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.20.JUN.2004.114319.0700.>

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From: Gaidheal <gaidheal at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Holidays" 2004.06.19 (01) [E]

Feasgar math, a Lowlanders:

Ron said:
Happy Father's Day tomorrow (June 20) to our subscribers in or from Canada,
Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States!  I
hope I haven't forgotten any countries, and sorry I was a week ahead in my
mind last time.

Something I find semantically interesting: Is it Father's Day, or is it
Fathers' Day? I think Fathers', because it's celebrating all fathers, not
just one. Any other ideas, comments?

Beannachdan,

Uilleam ?g mhic Sheumais

------------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Holidays" 2004.06.19 (01) [E]

Ron wrote:
> ...and sorry I was a week ahead in my mind last time.

and then:
> Furthermore, it will be the national day of our friends in Kalaallit
Nunaat
> (Greenland) who will also hopefully enjoy the longest night of the year.

Don't worry, Ron, a week ahead is quite forgivable. But what are we to do
with someone who is a whole SIX MONTHS ahead??? :-)

Just wondering,
Gabriele Kahn

-----------

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

Uilleam:

> Something I find semantically interesting: Is it Father's Day, or is it
Fathers' Day?
> I think Fathers', because it's celebrating all fathers, not just one. Any
other ideas,
> comments?

I was following predominant spelling, though I often think what you said,
also in the case of Mother's Day = Mothers' Day.

> Don't worry, Ron, a week ahead is quite forgivable. But what are we to do
> with someone who is a whole SIX MONTHS ahead??? :-)

Hah!  Of course it was supposed to be "longest day"!  I was just checking if
anyone paid attention (or was alive).  ;-)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Sun Jun 20 18:54:49 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004 11:54:49 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.20 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <SUN.20.JUN.2004.115449.0700.>

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From: Dan Prohaska <Daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" [E]

Reinhard,

Low Saxon (LS) seems to be following the High German (HG) trend to replace
the etyma that gives LS <s?yk> and HG <siech> with krank. HG replaced it in
the later mediaeval period.

Though literary or dialectal it cannot be said that the adjective cognate
does not survive, albeit with a slightly different meaning (usually
"suffering heavily" or even "terminally ill").

Derivations from the verb <siechen> and the verb itself are very much alive
in HG.

Reinhard/Ron wrote:

<I take it as a given that both words already existed in Lowlands Saxon (Low
<German), but that on the German side of the border people may now avail
<themselves more and more of the _krank_ choice because of German influence.

<(Modern German has only _krank_, besides words like _unwohl_ "unwell," but
<no cognate of the adjective _s?yk_ ~ _syk_.)  I believe that _s?yk_ ~ _syk_
<used to be predominant (as in Dutch and Netherlands LS) but is now
<gradually losing ground to _krank_ in Germany under German influence, at
<least in certain dialects.  A couple of speakers in the greater Hamburg
<area have told me that they preferred _krank_ because _s?yk_ ~ _syk_
<reminded them too much of German _Seuche_ 'epidemic', 'scourge'.  One
<thought of _s?ykenhuus_ for 'hospital' as "silly" because it sounded to her
<like a place in which people a quaranteened.  I guess this would be an
<example of a special type of language interference, one in which native
<speaker competence is being eroded due to foreign cognate associations.  (I
<wonder if this has been the subject of academic investigation.)

<Kumpelmenten,
<Reinhard/Ron

----------

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

Good one, Dan!

Few people seem to make this connection with _siechen_ ['zi:C at n], at least
in the LS dialects that have a rounded vowel (_s?yk_ [zy:k]), but they do
tend to make a connection with _Seuche_ ['zOIC@], assumedly because of a
more obvious LS /??/ = German /oi/ relationship (e.g. t?yg [t_hy:C] = Zeug
[ts_hOIk] 'stuff', l?yd' [ly:.d] = Leute ['lOIt_h@] 'people', 'folk', d?yr
[dy:3] = teuer ['t_hOI@`] 'dear', 'expensive').

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 17:10:39 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 10:10:39 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.101039.0700.>

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


Dear Lowlanders,

Should any of you be alive/awake, I would like to revisit the topic of
plural morphology and invite you to give me (us) some input from the point
of view of various Lowlands language varieties.  In particular, I am
currently interested in apparently irregular plural marking of nouns.

As for double plural marking, so far I can come up with a few examples from
Dutch, Afrikaans and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but I am sure that there
are other varieties with this type of phenomenon as well.

Dutch:
schoen [sxu??n] 'shoe'
schoenen [sxu??n??(n)] 'shoes'

It appears that the old plural form (with /+??n/ was turned into a singular
form, and, etymologically speaking, the new plural form contains another
plural-marking suffix (/+??(n)).

Similarly, Afrikaans:
skoen [sku??n] 'shoe'
skoene [sku??n??] 'shoes'

Theoretically (*), this ought to have been as follows:
Dutch:
   *schoe [sxu??] 'shoe'
   *schoe??n [sxu????(n)] or schoen [sxu??n] 'shoes'
Afrikaans:
   *skoe [sku??] 'shoe'
   *skoe?? [sku????] 'shoes' (or perhaps *skoes [sku??s])

Cf. "regular"
Englisch: shoe -> shoes
Scots: shae -> shuin (originally regular with /+n/ plural)
German: Schuh -> Schuhe
Yiddish: ???? ??u [??u] ~ [??i] -> ?????? ??ux [??ux] ~ [??ix]

Lowlands Saxon (Low German) has the same pattern as that of German, but the
main vowel underwent umlauting, and in most dialects the final vowel has
been dropped:
schou (<Schoh>) [s??????? ] ~ [sx????? ] ~ [??????? ] ~ [??a??? ] 'shoe'
sch??y (<Sch??h>) [s????????] ~ [sx??????] ~ [????????] ~ [????????] 'shoes'
derived from sch??ye ['s????????e] ~ ['sx??????e] ~ ['????????e] ~ ['????????e] 'shoes'

Another example:
Dutch:
   kind [k??nt] 'child'
   kinderen ['k??nd??r??(n)] 'children'
Afrikaans:
   kind [k????nt] 'child'
   kinders ['k????n(d)??rs] 'children'

In this case, the singular form is etymologically predictable, while the
plural form receives two plural suffixes (Dutch /+??r+??n/, Afrikaans
/+??r+s/).|

The Afrikaans case is like that in Lowlands Saxon, but double-marking is
optional or varies from dialect to dialects:
kind (<Kind>) [k??????nt] 'child'
kinder (<Kinner>) ['k??????n??] ~ kinders (<Kinners>) ['k??????n??s] 'children'

Some speakers use _kinders_ only as a vocative: 'children!', 'kids!'

The opposite of this, I suppose, is apparent "non-marking" of plural forms,
namely zero marking (/+0/).  In English, this tends to occur where plurality
denotes (or denoted) uncountable or uncounted mass.  (Examples of mass nouns
would be "sand," "water," "people," and "cattle.") E.g.,

English:
fish | fish (not *"fishes," at least not in this sense)
herring | herring (not *"herrings," at least not in this sense)
sheep | sheep (never *"sheeps")

Lowlands Saxon has the same:
visch (<Fisch>) [f????] 'fish' (sg. & pl.)
heyrn (<Heern> ~ <Hiern>) [h????????n] ~ [hi????n] 'herring' (sg. & pl.)
schaap (<Schaap> ~ <Schoop>) [s??????p] ~ [sx????p] ~ [??????p] 'sheep' (sg. & pl.)

In Lowlands Saxon, the plural for "sheep" can be regular (_schapen_
(<Schapen> ~ <Schopen>) ['s??????pm??] ~ ['sx????pm??] ~ ['??????pm]), in some
dialects either consistently or as an alternative to mass marking.  This
does not apply to "fish," and I am not sure about "herring."

Lately, I have been noticing a trend among Lowlands Saxon writers toward
orthographic non-marking of plurals where the plural marker /+n/ directly
follows a nasal consonant (to which it assimilates).  Such instances are
particularly numerous in dialects in which final /-nd/ is pronounced not
[-nt] but just [-n] and in German-based spelling (< >) is written <-n>;
e.g.,

leen (<Lehn>) [le??n] ~ [l????n] 'back (of a chair or sofa)'
lenen (<Lehnen> ~ <Lehn>) [le??n??] ~ [le??n] ~ [l????n??] ~ [l????n] 'backs (of
chairs or sofas)'

hand (<Hand> ~ <Hann>) [ha??nt] ~ [ha??n] 'land', 'country'
handen (Hannen ~ <Hann>) [ha??n??] ~ [ha??n] 'lands', 'countries'

plum (<Plumm>) [pl? ??m] 'plum'
plummen (<Plummen> ~ <Plumm>) [pl? ??m??] ~ [pl? ??m] 'plums'

lung (<Lung>) [l? ????] 'lung'
lungen (<Lungen> ~ <Lung>) [l? ??????] ~ [l? ????] 'lungs'
     (~ lungs (<Lungs>) [l? ????s] 'lungs')

Incidentally, this also occurs with verbs ending with stem-final nasals when
the infinitive marker /+n/ _-en_ ought to be written; e.g.,

ik leen (<ik lehn>) [????k le??n] ~ [????k l????n] 'I lean'
lenen (<lehnen> ~ <lehn>) [le??n??] ~ [le??n] ~ [l????n??] ~ [l????n] 'to lean'

ik vind (<ik find> ~ <ik finn>) [????k f????nt] ~ [????k f????n] 'I find'
vinden (<finnen> ~ <finn>) [f????n??] ~ [f????n] 'to find'

ik kaam (<ik kaam> ~ <ik koom>) [????k k??????m] 'I come'
kamen (<kamen> ~ <komen> ~ <kaam> ~ <koom>) [k??????m??] ~ [k??????m] 'to come'

ik sing (<ik sing>) [????k z??????] 'I sing'
singen (<singen> ~ <sing>) [z????????] ~ [z??????] 'to sing'

Anyway, hopefully this will resurrect or wake up some of you and will get
you thinking.  Any thoughts and relevant information would be appreciated.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 19:13:43 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 12:13:43 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.121343.0700.>

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From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]

Just a bit of random info that might prove helpful

Kenneth

> Dutch:
> schoen [sxu?n] 'shoe'
> schoenen [sxu?n?(n)] 'shoes'
>
> It appears that the old plural form (with /+?n/ was turned into a singular
> form, and, etymologically speaking, the new plural form contains another
> plural-marking suffix (/+?(n)).

This is also what all dutch etymology dictionaries tell

> Similarly, Afrikaans:
> skoen [sku?n] 'shoe'
> skoene [sku?n?] 'shoes'
>
> Theoretically (*), this ought to have been as follows:
> Dutch:
>    *schoe [sxu?] 'shoe'
>    *schoe?n [sxu??(n)] or schoen [sxu?n] 'shoes'
> Afrikaans:
>    *skoe [sku?] 'shoe'
>    *skoe? [sku??] 'shoes' (or perhaps *skoes [sku?s])

skoen is a loan from Hollandic Dutch. You cannot compare the plural
ending in Afrikaans to Dutch (just like you cannot compare the adjective
system with Dutch either) as Afrikaans probably has developed as a Cape
dialect mixed with two Dutch based Pidgins spoken by the Hottentot. The
-s after -er etc is kept, but -e is used for plural for almost
everything else. Non-mother tongue speakers will guess that -e was the
plural ending of skoen.

> Lowlands Saxon (Low German) has the same pattern as that of German, but
the
> main vowel underwent umlauting, and in most dialects the final vowel has
> been dropped:
> schou (<Schoh>) [s??? ] ~ [sx?? ] ~ [??? ] ~ [?a? ] 'shoe'
> sch?y (<Sch?h>) [s????] ~ [sx???] ~ [????] ~ [????] 'shoes'
> derived from sch?ye ['s????e] ~ ['sx???e] ~ ['????e] ~ ['????e] 'shoes'

In Danish sko is both used in singularis and pluralis

> Another example:
> Dutch:
>    kind [k?nt] 'child'
>    kinderen ['k?nd?r?(n)] 'children'

Dutch has double plural for all words originally having plural with -er.
Maybe these are all loanwords from Low Saxon [?] or -er became a foreign
plural form at some point

> Afrikaans:
>    kind [k??nt] 'child'
>    kinders ['k??n(d)?rs] 'children'

Kinders is also a known Hollantic dialect form, as well as a Low Saxon
dialect form

> In this case, the singular form is etymologically predictable, while the
> plural form receives two plural suffixes (Dutch /+?r+?n/, Afrikaans
> /+?r+s/).|

-s probably from South Hollandic dialect.

> The Afrikaans case is like that in Lowlands Saxon, but double-marking is
> optional or varies from dialect to dialects:
> kind (<Kind>) [k???nt] 'child'
> kinder (<Kinner>) ['k???n?] ~ kinders (<Kinners>) ['k???n?s] 'children'

Was kinder used before the standardization of the language? And what is
used in Orange River Afrikaans?

> Some speakers use _kinders_ only as a vocative: 'children!', 'kids!'
>
> The opposite of this, I suppose, is apparent "non-marking" of plural
forms,
> namely zero marking (/+0/).  In English, this tends to occur where
plurality
> denotes (or denoted) uncountable or uncounted mass.  (Examples of mass
nouns
> would be "sand," "water," "people," and "cattle.") E.g.,

Danish: Sand (uncountable), slim (uncountable...It is also said today
that Latin virus (originally slime) is actually both singularis and
pluralis; virii and vira are invented forms), vand, f?r, sko, lort,
folk, fisk, sild etc

> English:
> fish | fish (not *"fishes," at least not in this sense)
> herring | herring (not *"herrings," at least not in this sense)
> sheep | sheep (never *"sheeps")

danish
fisk fisk
sild sild
f?r f?r

Kenneth

----------

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

Thank for the response (above), Kenneth.

> You cannot compare the plural
> ending in Afrikaans to Dutch (just like you cannot compare the adjective
> system with Dutch either)

I don't think I was doing that.  Or does it look as though I did?  I was
merely noting that both languages have what etymologically are double plural
markers, just as I pointed out that Lowlands Saxon does too.  None of this
should be seen as amounting to stating or implying that one was derived from
or influenced by the other.

> Dutch has double plural for all words originally having plural with -er.

Apparently, as in ...
Dutch:
   ei 'egg' -> eieren 'eggs'
   hoen 'chicken' -> hoenderen ~ hoenders (?) 'chickens' [1]
Afrikaans:
   ei 'egg' -> eiers 'eggs'
   hoender [2] 'chicken' -> hoenders 'chickens'

[1] hoenderen seems to have predominated in Middle Dutch (e.g., _Om te
stouen hoenderen metten vercken vleesce_ 'to stew chickens with pork', 1510,
http://users.pandora.be/willy.vancammeren/NBC/, _ses en veertich gebraeden
Hoenderen_ 'forty-six roasted chickens'
http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_vee001veel01/Veelder_022.htm, _het kaeckelen van
de Hoenderen_ 'the chickens' cackling', 1614
http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/joris/sinnepoppen/html/em2.45.html)
[2] old plural form -> modern singular?

> Maybe these are all loanwords from Low Saxon [?] or -er became a foreign
> plural form at some point

I hazard the guess that the latter is the case.

However, even then it is somewhat remarkable that the relic suffix survived.
Would it not be similar to English adding plural _-s_ to "children" and
"brethren" (thus, child -> *childrens, brother -> *brethrens)?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 20:16:39 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:16:39 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Deaf cultures" 2004.06.22 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.131639.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Deaf Culture" [E]

Since it's quiet I thought I'd say a bit more about sign language and deaf
culture, which isn't to say that I necessarily disturb the silence when I
speak :)

This time I'm writing about how poetry is performed (or, these days, even
written) in sign languages.

As with oral poetry, there's nothing terribly clever about signed prosody,
it's how you put things together that make the poem.

While there are effects like rhythm in signed poetry, it seems to me that
fluidity is often considered more important. There are a few ways in which a
poet can make their signing more fluid and continuous.

One is by using signs such that the second starts with the hands in the same
position as the first ended. For example, the sign for "darkness falls" is
two flat hands raised in front of the face being brought in and down to
horizontal, while the sign for "bat" is two flat hands used as wings flying
diagonally upwards. So in her poem "Evening", we see Dot Miles using the
line, "...darkness falls, a bat..." with no repositioning between the signs.

Another way of increasing fluidity is to keep all the signing moving in one
direction. For example, "flower" is normally signed as a left-to-right
movement under the nose. If a poet wants start a line on her right side and
end it on the left, and the sign "flower" occurs in the middle, you might
find she signs "flower" in the wrong direction, just to keep all the
movement connected.

It's not hard to see how rhyme can be done in sign - just as some words have
a minimal phnoneme difference, so some signs have minimal feature
differences (there's a certain difference of level between signed and oral
languages in my opinion - in signed languages the "feature" level is more
obvious than in oral languages). Thus the signs for "nervousness" and
"heartbeat" are exactly the same, other than being made on slightly
different parts of the body.

While spoken languages are mostly confined to one channel (the mouth, unless
you also include gestural information), signed languages use three
channels - two hands and the face. This doesn't mean you can speak about
three different things at the same time, because the "left" or non-dominant
hand is usually much less active than the dominant hand, and the face is
also used mostly for supplementary information.

However, sign language poets tend to make better use of the three channels,
sometimes developing special classifiers (cf Navajo?) such as for flying
birds, swimming octopuses and suchlike, so that they can sign about one
character in their narrative with one hand, another with another, and a
third with the face. An example is a poem by Dot Miles where she describes
taking her dog for a walk and a bird joins them in the park. There are
places where all three are spoken about at the same time.

There's a sense in which translating poetry between any two languages could
be said to be a lost cause - not that it's not worth doing but that
languages, especially in poetic forms, don't map easily onto one another.
The way sign language poetry can make use of three channels (even in
writing) shows one very difficult translation problem, but I think even more
problematic is the fact that in oral language, vocabulary tends to be
discrete, where as in signed languages it tends to be continuous.

For example, in English an angry person might be described as "annoyed",
"angry" or "furious", but in BSL there's only one sign for all these, and
the intensity of the emotion is shown by the intensity of the movement,
handshape and facial expression, amongst other things. This sort of
continuity applies to all sorts of things - facial expression being used not
literally but in a more abstract way.

An example of this in poetry is the famous BSL poem "Loss" (at least, I
think it's a poem - it's certainly inspiring!) where at the start we see an
aeroplane accelerating down a runway. It's hard to think how you could put
the idea of the plane _gradually_ moving faster and faster (the trick to
doing this while standing still is to use the active hand as the runway and
the passive hand as the plane) into an oral language without either using
music or just completely losing the original effect. And then again, we see
the plane soaring _gradually_ though higher and higher layers of cirrus. And
then we see a multi-channel dogfight...!

I think we need translators who really like a challenge - though I'm not
saying it couldn't be done!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Deaf culture

Thanks for sharing the interesting information about signing, Sandy!

I am particularly fascinated by signed poetry and song.  The few times I
watched the Seattle Men's Chorus (http://www.seattlemenschorus.org/) perform
I was more focused on the choir's sign language interpreter than on the
choir itself.  He seemed to be doing just what you described: creating
fluidity of signs, and at the same time marked the songs' rhythms with his
arms and torso.  I thought that was a formidable feat.

> However, sign language poets tend to make better use of the three
channels,
> sometimes developing special classifiers (cf Navajo?)

This is something I've long thought offered itself to sign language, as to
non-phonal written languages like Chinese.  In Chinese, there is a certain
set of classifying glyphs (214 in most systems), known as "radicals," that
can be used as characters in their own right but in conjunction with other
glyphs (denoting sound or semantic hints) can make up new characters.  For
example, the character for 'fish' (?) may serve as a classifier for all
names of fish and other aquatic animals (e.g., ? 'squid', ? 'abalone', ?
'eel', ? 'cod') and also things associated with these (e.g., ? 'fin') or are
considered similar (e.g., ? 'crocodile').  All the above have phonological
information added to the radical, though the right-hand part of the
character for 'abalone' may be both phonological and semantic, denoting
'envelop' or 'encapsule', as does ? for 'flounder': an ancient phone as well
as the meaning 'leaf' (= 'flat').  Using this method, you can create some
sort of visual semantic theme that strikes the reader right away and sets
the tone, so to speak.  I can imagine that this would lend itself
excellently to signing.

The linguistic term "classifier" tends to be used more with regard to
numeral classifiers that are used with numbers and are determined by groups
and types of nouns, similar to "14 head of cattle," "three sheets of paper,"
"a pride of lions," "a piece of fruit," etc., except that their consistent
use is mandatory in some languages, such as those of Eastern Asia and many
of the Americas.

The closest I can think of that is similar to written Chinese radicals and
the type of classifier/radical I thought of in the case of sign languages is
the prefix system in Bantu languages; e.g., Swahili m-/wa- for humans (e.g.,
mtu 'man', watu 'men' <- -tu), m-/mi- for plants (e.g., mgomba 'banana
plant', migomba 'banana plants' <- -gomba), n- for fruit, animals and
foreign loans (e.g., ndege 'bird' <- dege), and ki- for objects (e.g., kisu
'knife' <- -su).

In Germanic languages, as in all Indo-European languages, the closest
related thing might be noun compounds in which the modified second part is
the "primitive," "radical" or "classifier" component; e.g., lime-tree,
birchtree, oaktree, pinetree, mapletree, palmtree; hedgehog, wart-hog;
codfish, jelly-fish, shellfish, cuttle-fish.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 20:20:46 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:20:46 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.132046.0700.>

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]

Dear Reinhard,
Subject: Morphology

    Just a quick one while I think about it.
In Afrikaans we still say ( where an Englishman says 'sold it for a song')
'Vir 'n appel en 'n ei' - 'For an apple & an egg', the Afrikaans singular &
plural is 'eier' (singular), & 'eiers' (plural).
I believed it to be hypercorrection.

    Was it once 'skoe - skoen'? like Middle English 'shoe - shoen'?
The Afrikaans is skoen - skoene
    Ditto 'kind - kinder'?
Afrikaans 'kind - kinders'

> Dutch:
>    kind [k?nt] 'child'
>    kinderen ['k?nd?r?(n)] 'children'
> Afrikaans:
>    kind [k??nt] 'child'
>    kinders ['k??n(d)?rs] 'children'

Afrikaans wanders furthest, in my opinion, from analytic to idiosyncratic in
the matter of plurals specifically, though not so bad as in English
muis - muise & huis - huise (mouse & house)
leeu - leeus & leuen - leuens (lion & lie)
Here is vowel mutation, with '-s' & with '-e' suffix
karba - karba:s & vat - va:te (both mean barrel, like 'carboy' & 'vat')
((the colon after the vowel isn't how we spell it, that's the phonetic way.
You just have to know)).
ou - ouens & nooi - nooiens (lads & lasses)
& alternatives
kat - kattens of katte & lam - lammers of lamme (cat & lamb)

Yrs sincerely,
Mark

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (02) [E]

Dear Kenneth  & Reinhard,
Subject: LL-L "Morphology"

My pennyworth:
    I don't see that the word 'loan' applies here: The artifact & the name
is native to the culture & language. I aver that the Taal evolved initially
'tween decks in the VOC packets, & there was a mengelmoes enough of tongues
to 'borrow', if that happened, plural forms familiar to speakers of other
West Netherfrankish dialects than the native tongue of the Hollandse Seeman.
    What is the Zeeus form? skoe - skoen, skoen - skoene, skoen - skoenen,
or something else?

    To to offer  the Hottentot's guess of the appropriate form for a plural
is not useful. 'He' would have to have 'guessed' the appropriate form from a
selection of related Indo-Germanic dialects he heard using the term. There
is no disputing that the plurals, howsoever idosyncratic, are nonetheless
Germanic. Now - now, which were these dialects? His own Khoikhoi languages
would be no help, & the Hottentot 'dialects', I know about, among them
Grikwa & Koranna, developed from an already substantially established
language.

    Please elaborate on the thesis that the Cape Hottentots spoke ?two?
Dutch-based pidgins.

    Unfortunately, Afrikaans just hasn't been around long enough to develop
much more than 'styles'. There are a few variable forms such as I have noted
in a previous letter, all mutually intelligible, & available to any speaker,
dependant mostly on how formally he wishes to speak. Adam Small makes the
point that it was not until the political alienation between the races that
came into being in the Last Century, that any notable racially distinctive
forms of Afrikaans developed.

> > The Afrikaans case is like that in Lowlands Saxon, but double-marking is
> > optional or varies from dialect to dialects:

    Please explain further.

> Was kinder used before the standardization of the language? And what is
> used in Orange River Afrikaans?

    Are you referring to the Afrikaans spoken by the Poet & President of the
O.F.S. Reitz, or to that of the denizens of Kanoneiland, or to the Grikwa
dialect of Afrikaans, which was nonetheles to them only an alternative to
their own Khoikhoi language, according to G.F. Selous?

Yrs sincerely,
Mark

----------

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

Thanks a lot for your input, Mark.

> > > The Afrikaans case is like that in Lowlands Saxon, but double-marking
is
> > > optional or varies from dialect to dialects:
>
>     Please explain further.

It was poorly phrased on my part.  Sorry.

I meant to say that double-marking is optional or varies from dialect to
dialects in *Lowlands Saxon*, not in Afrikaans.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 21:39:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 14:39:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.22 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.143933.0700.>

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From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (04) [E]

The following might be wrong, but it is what I have understood from
reading various articles about Afrikaans...

> Dear Kenneth  & Reinhard,
> Subject: LL-L "Morphology"
>
> My pennyworth:
>     I don't see that the word 'loan' applies here: The artifact & the name
> is native to the culture & language. I aver that the Taal evolved
initially
> 'tween decks in the VOC packets, & there was a mengelmoes enough of
tongues
> to 'borrow', if that happened, plural forms familiar to speakers of other
> West Netherfrankish dialects than the native tongue of the Hollandse
Seeman.
>     What is the Zeeus form? skoe - skoen, skoen - skoene, skoen - skoenen,
> or something else?

The VOC spoke a southern Hollandic dialect (look at the Kroeke dialect
maps)

>     To to offer  the Hottentot's guess of the appropriate form for a
plural
> is not useful. 'He' would have to have 'guessed' the appropriate form from
a
> selection of related Indo-Germanic dialects he heard using the term. There
> is no disputing that the plurals, howsoever idosyncratic, are nonetheless
> Germanic. Now - now, which were these dialects? His own Khoikhoi languages
> would be no help, & the Hottentot 'dialects', I know about, among them
> Grikwa & Koranna, developed from an already substantially established
> language.

Well it is a lot more complicated and I am not competent to explain
this. Please read 'Hans den Besten 'From Khoekhoe Foreignertalk via
Hottentot Dutch to Afrikaans: the Creation of a Novel Grammar, from:
Martin P?tz, REn? Dirven (eds.), Wheels within wheels. Papers of the
Duisburg Symposium on Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1989, p. 207-249

It explain pretty well what could have happened and attacks the opinion
of the Afrikaanse Skole.

Thomas L. Markey, 'Afrikaans: Creole of Non-Creole', Zeitschrift f?r
Dialektologie un Linguistik 49 (1982), p. 169-207 is also very
interesting, but highly technical.

What I was saying is that though the mengelmoes the Dutch system has
often disappeared, like what for instance is the case with the
attributive adjectives (if you can read Danish, I can send you my paper
- which unfortunately contains a few mistakes :))

>     Please elaborate on the thesis that the Cape Hottentots spoke ?two?
> Dutch-based pidgins.

There are signs of pidgins being developed before 1652 based on English
and Dutch...and later this led to a Dutch based pidgin/creole spoken by
the Khoi and another Dutch-based creole spoken by the slaves of which
many already spoke a creole language based on Malay-Portuguese (that is
where they think the vir construction comes from - direct object marker
- related to Malay-Portuguese per)

>     Unfortunately, Afrikaans just hasn't been around long enough to
develop
> much more than 'styles'. There are a few variable forms such as I have
noted
> in a previous letter, all mutually intelligible, & available to any
speaker,
> dependant mostly on how formally he wishes to speak. Adam Small makes the
> point that it was not until the political alienation between the races
that
> came into being in the Last Century, that any notable racially distinctive
> forms of Afrikaans developed.

Well Afrikaans (when not looking at the standardized language) is a
group of dialects, with West Cape Afrikaans being closest to Dutch and
Standard Afrikaans, and Orange River Afrikaans (mostly spoken by the
Oorlaam - Khoikhoi who learned "Dutch" and became christen to gane
social status) being furthest from Dutch - and a lot more creolized.

> > Was kinder used before the standardization of the language? And what is
> > used in Orange River Afrikaans?
>
>     Are you referring to the Afrikaans spoken by the Poet & President of
the
> O.F.S. Reitz, or to that of the denizens of Kanoneiland, or to the Grikwa
> dialect of Afrikaans, which was nonetheles to them only an alternative to
> their own Khoikhoi language, according to G.F. Selous?

Orange River Afrikaans (mostly spoken in Namibia) is the 'Dutch' spoken
by the Khoikhoi which later has been influence by the Dutch spoken by
the rest...all these various dialects and pidgins based on Dutch has
influenced eachother and are today considered one language called
Afrikaans consisting of various dialects.

Cheers,
Kenneth

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 22 21:51:12 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 14:51:12 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.22.JUN.2004.145112.0700.>

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From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (02) [E]

> I don't think I was doing that.  Or does it look as though I did?  I was
> merely noting that both languages have what etymologically are double
plural
> markers, just as I pointed out that Lowlands Saxon does too.  None of this
> should be seen as amounting to stating or implying that one was derived
from
> or influenced by the other.

It looked like you thought the Afrikaans form developed independently
from the Dutch one. Anyway, I was just checking.

> Apparently, as in ...
> Dutch:
>    ei 'egg' -> eieren 'eggs'

(Danish: et ?g -> flere ?g)

This seems to have happened to all -er plurals in Dutch.

> > Maybe these are all loanwords from Low Saxon [?] or -er became a foreign
> > plural form at some point
>
> I hazard the guess that the latter is the case.
>
> However, even then it is somewhat remarkable that the relic suffix
survived.
> Would it not be similar to English adding plural _-s_ to "children" and
> "brethren" (thus, child -> *childrens, brother -> *brethrens)?

I think it would.

Kenneth

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]

Ron wrote:
> As for double plural marking, so far I can come up with a few examples
from
> Dutch, Afrikaans and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but I am sure that there
> are other varieties with this type of phenomenon as well.

Well, certainly, especially in American English:

"one visum" has become "one visa", and "several visas";
"one criterion" has become "one criteria", and "several criterias" (more
than 52,000 hits in Google!!)

There must be more of these, but I must admit that they hurt my sense of
grammar so much that I'd rather not think about them...

Gabriele Kahn

P.S. Ron, you'll probably find that posts from Europe will pick up again
once the European football championship is over...

----------

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

Gabriele:

> Well, certainly, especially in American English:
>
> "one visum" has become "one visa", and "several visas";
> "one criterion" has become "one criteria", and "several criterias"

Sure, and there are cases like interpreting Greek-derived "kudos" and
"gyros" as plural forms and deriving from them supposedly singular "kudo"
and "gyro" respectively.

However, this subject of more "exotic" specialized loan morphology (which at
least originally was outside the sphere of ordinary speakers, still is in
many spheres of society) is somewhat marginal to this topic.  What I meant
us to deal with is seemingly or actually irregular morphology of *native*
words.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

> P.S. Ron, you'll probably find that posts from Europe will pick up again
> once the European football championship is over...

Ah, thanks for reminding me!  I knew about it but didn't make the
connection.  Don't folks have a *real* life, like Lowlanding?  ;-)

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 14:29:21 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 07:29:21 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.23 (01) [E]
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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.22 (05) [E]

Dear Kenneth,

 Subject: LL-L "Morphology"

> The VOC spoke a southern Hollandic dialect (look at the Kroeke dialect
> maps)

    Sorry, The VOC spoke several dialects. Even the Heeren XVII spoke their
local dialects on business. I have read that the Representative for the
Middelburg House complained of a headache from trying to follow his
collegues in council of the Amsterdam House. Jan Alleman in his Diary shows
that the overwhelming majority of the VOC's employees came from outside the
Hollands speaking area, so much so that it was good business to be an agent,
for said would-be recruits!

    But you are correct, in respect of 'official' language policy, which
could not, of course be enforced across the board. This was a lasting
problem according to the Cape Company Administration & ultimately
unmanageable. They tried to suppress Afrikaans.
Now the effect of this policy was that compliance or fluency became a matter
for promotion & advancement. Remember, the Cape was only a way-station on
the VOC Books. Fluent Hollands speakers got promoted out, to Maritius, even,
& ultimately to Batavia. Those left behind were with rare exceptions not
dialect compliant.

> Well it is a lot more complicated and I am not competent to explain
> this. Please read 'Hans den Besten 'From Khoekhoe Foreignertalk via
> Hottentot Dutch to Afrikaans: the Creation of a Novel Grammar, from:
> Martin P?tz, REn? Dirven (eds.), Wheels within wheels. Papers of the
> Duisburg Symposium on Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1989, p. 207-249

    Well, That which you have passed on to me is not convincing. The little
Nama I have invites me to look for indications in Afrikaans of Khoikhoi
speech patterns, terminology, & pronunciation, even sounds. & with the
single exception, the 'Eina!' expression, I find none. The conclusion is
that native Hottentot speakers were not the medium of transmission from
Dutch to Afrikaans. Tell me, this Hans den Besten: Does he speak Nama?
Between you & me & the gatepost, Afrikaans Grammar is not really novel. The
analytic form has its roots in the usages of many West Netherfrankish
dialects, & Inglis, or Lowlands Scots, could make a better case for being
the medium of transmission from Dutch to Afrikaans than the Capoid tongues.
See D.F. Bleek, 'BUSHMAN LANGUAGES'. By the way, the VOC was chockful of
Scots. The Last VOC Governer of the Cape was even an ethnic Scot, by the
name of Gordon.

> It explain pretty well what could have happened and attacks the opinion
> of the Afrikaanse Skole.

I distrust theories based on what 'could have happened'.
What is the opinion of the Afrikaanse Skole?,

> Thomas L. Markey, 'Afrikaans: Creole of Non-Creole', Zeitschrift f?r
> Dialektologie un Linguistik 49 (1982), p. 169-207 is also very
> interesting, but highly technical.

I also distrust linguistic use of the term 'Creole' The difficulty is to
define it in a way that any two scholars working in the same field agree, &
find it useful.

> What I was saying is that though the mengelmoes the Dutch system has
> often disappeared, like what for instance is the case with the
> attributive adjectives (if you can read Danish, I can send you my paper
> - which unfortunately contains a few mistakes :))

Well, an Afrikaans speaker might [think] he can follow written Danish (I
do), I am well aware I couldn't do it justice in any scientific sense. If
it's any consolation, I would almost certainly miss the mistakes.
there is a simpler way, though.
Give us a brief list of the attributive adjective in Hollands, but Hollands,
& in parallel with the attributive form in Afrikaans. How did it look in
Zeeus? Ron might help here.

> >     Please elaborate on the thesis that the Cape Hottentots spoke ?two?
> > Dutch-based pidgins.
>
> There are signs of pidgins being developed before 1652 based on English
> and Dutch...and later this led to a Dutch based pidgin/creole spoken by
> the Khoi and another Dutch-based creole spoken by the slaves of which
> many already spoke a creole language based on Malay-Portuguese (that is
> where they think the vir construction comes from - direct object marker
> - related to Malay-Portuguese per)

    This is correct, but I would call the one Malay-Portuguese based & the
other English based (Harry the Hottentot, the interpreter for Van Riebeek's
colony, had shipped on an English vessel, & learned his English there). When
Jan Van Riebeek's party came ashore at the Cape, the Hottentots there
greeted them, brought them the post, & asked in English & in French for Rum.
VOC language policy differed from the English & the Portuguese. They were
hostile to 'pidgins' across the board, & promoted their employees who
studied the languages of their customers & colonies. They also established
schools for their servants & slaves to inculcate fluency & literacy in
Hollands. English traders were content to make themselves understood in a
simple way. They borrowed freely from the lingo of their 'customers' & their
previous trading contacts, & as a result, there are Colonial British pidgins
with a non-English substrate all over the world e.g. Creole, Beche le Mar, &
even Pidgin.
The Portuguese were equally casual, thus contributing magnificantly to the
richness of Afrikaans (as well as our cuisene). However, the usage you have
quoted is not Hottentot, but Cape Malay, an influental  linguistic heritage
still open to deep study.
Some things that may be called dialects later developed among the
Hottentots, based  on a Cape Dutch substrate, but they did not communicate
with their Dietsman neighbours or employers in that tongue, but Afrikaans.
So much so that they even resorted to it as 'private speech' in the company
of strangers.

> Well Afrikaans (when not looking at the standardized language) is a
> group of dialects, with West Cape Afrikaans being closest to Dutch and
> Standard Afrikaans, and Orange River Afrikaans (mostly spoken by the
> Oorlaam - Khoikhoi who learned "Dutch" and became christen to gane
> social status) being furthest from Dutch - and a lot more creolized.

    Ja, well I dislike the notion of any 'standardised language' don't you?
I differ - I differ, but first let us clear some ground. Dutch is not a
language, but a language group. Are we speaking of Algemeen Beskaafde
Nederlands - Hollands? Afrikaans grew from a body of 17th Century Dutch
dialects, of which the Hollands [of that day] was only one. Modern
Afrikaans, Modern Hollands & even the A.G. Nederlands have evolved from
there. Three & a half centuries have passed.
The scholars of Stellenbosch have long lost their hold, & Standard
Afrikaans, alas, is much closer to the Transvaal form than the Cape form
(klankbreek). It is the arrested development of klankbreek in Cape Afrikaans
alone, to my mind, that gives Cape Afrikaans any degree of proximity to
modern Dutch dialects.
Klankbreek is also, along with the RRRiebeek Wes BRRRei, or the Platkops
Dorp practise of pronouncing the 'J' the English way (Cape Coloureds do it
too), one of the three significant 'dialectic' features of local Afrikaans.
This, in my opinion, doesn't rate 'Dialect'.
I will only say - ask, in respect of Grikwa, to what extent is their
language a product of the agglommaration of Afrikaans & Khoikhoi; & to what
extent is it the product of ablation of Dutch & Khoikhoi dialects? These two
considerations give useful information. To call something 'creolized',
doesn't contribute to understanding a Tongue's relationships or the  process
of development. Nobody would differ that Grikwa is some distance from
Hollands, but a Grikwa in conversation with a stranger, or the Dominee, will
speak 'standard' Arikaans.

> > > Was kinder used before the standardization of the language? And what
is
> > > used in Orange River Afrikaans?

'Kinders', to both, according to my reading.

This is Fun! Thanks, Kenneth

Cheers,
Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 14:48:59 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 07:48:59 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.074859.0700.>

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From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Phrases

Dear all,

I've been doing some transcription of tapes & have
become aware of a phrase used by a number of people in
the Northumberland area of England. They 'for-to-get'
as in "you needs lots of money 'for-to-get' that car".
Its doesn't mean 'forgotten'. Is this used anywhere
else around the globe.

Gan canny,

Glenn Simpson
Northumbrian Language Society

----------

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

Hi, Glenn!

It's good to hear from you, as always.

Isn't the phrase "for to get" related to the older "for to"-type of phrases
denoting "in order to" or "with the purpose of"?

   Oh, I went down South
   FOR TO SEE my Sal
   ...
                    (Polly Wolly Doodle)

   ...
   She's lying at the quay
   FOR TO TAKE our Pat with a shovel on his back
   To the shores of Botany Bay
   ...
                    (Botany Bay)

I have a feeling this type of phrase is not unusual in Germanic language
varieties.  In German you use the construction _um ({object}) zu
{infinitive}_, thus _um den Wagen zu kaufen_ 'in order to (be able to) buy
that car'.  Likewise, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) you can us the
construction _?m ({object}) tou {infinitive}_, thus _?m den wagen tou
k?ypen_ for the same thing (though this sounds somewhat _geel_ "yellow,"
i.e., German, more colloquial being conditional _wen den wagen k?ypen wult_
"if you want to buy that car").

Might this type of phrase have been petrified in the set phrase "for to get"
in Northumbrian?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 14:52:50 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 07:52:50 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (03) [D/E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.075250.0700.>

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From: marco [evenhuiscommunicatie] <marco at evenhuiscommunicatie.nl>
Subject: language politics

Dear all,

Today I received a message by someone from the administration of the
province of Zeeland I'd like to pass on. It is in Dutch:

<quote>

Beste mensen,

Helaas hebben wij vanmorgen een brief van het ministerie van Binnenlandse
Zaken ontvangen, waarin ons advies (van 3 jaar geleden) het Zeeuws te
erkennen van de hand gewezen wordt. Het Zeeuws zal niet worden erkend, want
volgens het ministerie is er geen sprake van eenzelfde situatie als bij het
Limburgs en Nedersaksisch.
Volgens het ministerie dient de vraag beantwoord te worden in hoeverre het
Zeeuws moet worden gezien als dialect van het Nederlands dan wel als een
zelfstandige regionale taal.

De redenering is dan als volgt:

Het Nedersaksisch is een variant van het Nederduits, vanouds gesproken in
het noorden van Duitsland en het noordoosten van Nederland.
Aan weerszijden van de Neder-Duitse grens worden dezelfde dialecten
gesproken, zodat het moeilijk vast te stellen is waar in dat grensgebied de
dialecten van het Nederlands ophouden  en die van het Nederlands beginnen
Zeeuwse dialecten zijn echter van oudsher dialecten van het Nederlands
taalgebied.
Er is dus geen sprake van gelijke gevallen. Het Zeeuws wordt niet erkend.

Onze portefeuillehouder de heer Van Waveren zal op korte termijn in overleg
treden met de consulent streektalen en andere belanghebbenden om na te gaan
op welke wijze gereageerd richting ministerie en/of het zinvol is tegen het
besluit van de minister in beroep te gaan.

Het leek mij goed jullie van deze stand van zaken op de hoogte te stellen.

Met spijtige groet,
Conny Boersma

<unquote>

As anyone can see, the reasons for the Dutch government not to recognize
Zeeuws/Zeelandic as a regional language, have nothing to do with the
European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Therefore, a lot of
people here in Zeeland want the provincial administration of Zeeland to
appeal to this decission.
Reactions to this letter, e.g. to convince her and the Zeeland deputy of
culture Van Waveren to appeal to this decission of the Netherlands
government, can be send to Conny Boersma:

Provincie Zeeland
Afd. Welzijn
t.a.v. Conny Boersma
Postbus 153
4330 AD Middelburg
tel. +31(0)118 63 14 79
fax +31(0)118 62 78 39
email: cj.boersma at zeeland.nl

All help will be much appreciated!

Regards,

Marco

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 15:02:48 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:02:48 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.080248.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (06) [E]

Ron wrote:

> Sure, and there are cases like interpreting Greek-derived "kudos" and
> "gyros" as plural forms and deriving from them supposedly singular "kudo"
> and "gyro" respectively.
>
> However, this subject of more "exotic" specialized loan morphology (which
at
> least originally was outside the sphere of ordinary speakers, still is in
> many spheres of society) is somewhat marginal to this topic.  What I meant
> us to deal with is seemingly or actually irregular morphology of *native*
> words.

Fine, be that way - although it seems that most modern English words were
"exotic" at some point.

Still, I've got a "native" "kudo/gyro" example for you: the word "pease",
from which the supposedly singular form "pea" was derived a long time ago.
And then they eventually gave it a new plural form: "peas".

Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: Holger Weigelt <platt at holger-weigelt.de>
Subject: "Morphology"

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Morphology
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> Should any of you be alive/awake, I would like to revisit the topic of
> plural morphology and invite you to give me (us) some input from the point
> of view of various Lowlands language varieties.  In particular, I am
> currently interested in apparently irregular plural marking of nouns.
>
> As for double plural marking, so far I can come up with a few examples
from
> Dutch, Afrikaans and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but I am sure that there
> are other varieties with this type of phenomenon as well.
>
> Dutch:
> schoen [sxu?n] 'shoe'
> schoenen [sxu?n?(n)] 'shoes'

Hello Ron !

Because it's late just in brief:
In Eastern Friesland Low Saxon we have a lot of words with double plurals
like the following few examples:
h?s / h?sen / h?s  (house)
b?m / b?men / b??em  (tree)
land / lannen / l?n  (country)
Sometimes the use of either of them is ruled by context. That means they are
not freely interchangeable.
Greetings
Holger

----------

From: Andy Eagle <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: "Morphology"

Gabriele Kahn wrote:

>P.S. Ron, you'll probably find that posts from Europe will pick up
>again
>once the European football championship is over...

>From: R. F. Hahn wrote:

>Ah, thanks for reminding me!  I knew about it but didn't make the
>connection.  Don't folks have a *real* life, like Lowlanding?  ;-)

I Haven't watched any football games. So back to *real* life;-)

Aren't Children and kyne/kine examples of (double plurals) what
you're after?

child + er + en - children
Cow - kye + en - kyne

Andy Eagle

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Morphology


Greetings Lowlanders!

Ron said:

"In particular, I am currently interested in apparently irregular plural
marking of nouns."

I remember that when I was young all the older generation of people in
Lancashire (at least in the Preston area where I lived) used to use the
world _childer_ (with short /i/ ) as the plural of _child_ (which they
pronounced approximately as in modern Standard English, with /ai/ ). I
hardly ever heard _children_ from the older generation, unless it was from a
non-Lancastrian or someone educated outside the area.These days this plural
might still be heard occasionally, but it has more or less died out.

The plural _childer_ does also occur in MIddle English, though when I did a
search through a corpus of Chaucer's works I didn't come across it.
Surprisingly, it seems to occur quite a lot on the Internet, maybe as a sort
of preudo-Archaic form. The word also occurs in Scots (which I am sure Sandy
will confirm), and I am sure I have heard it in some of the American
dialects.

Ron also goes on to mention:

"Dutch:schoen [sxu??n] 'shoe'
schoenen [sxu??n??(n)] 'shoes'

This reminds me of the fact that the older people in Lancashire also
occasionally used the plural _shoon_ for what we now call _shoes_.
(Reminding me of the Scots _shuin_.)

Ron, you also mention the fact that Standard English _fish_ has no separate
plural form, but again in the Lancashire dialect _fishes_ was quite common,
as in: _Theres loads o little fishes in' river_ (the apostrophe representing
a glottal stop).

I have been trying to rack my brains to see if I could remember any more
such plurals, but I can't for the moment.

Incidentally, Ron, I had trouble reading your phonetics and Hebrew
characters today even though I set my computer for unicode; did you use some
other encoding?

John Duckworth
Preston, UK.

----------

From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Morphology


I just remembered another example of an archaic plural preserved in
Lancashire. The older generation used to use two plurals for _eye_, one was
the regular _eyes_, but another was the more unusual _een_.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK

----------

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

Thanks for the interesting input, everyone!

John (above):

> Incidentally, Ron, I had trouble reading your phonetics and Hebrew
> characters today even though I set my computer for unicode;
> did you use some other encoding?

Not that I know of, John.  I just looked at that posting again and could
read everything, and, yes, encoding mode is UTF-8.  Could it be that the IPA
symbols don't show with the font you load for UTF-8?  I could (should) use
SAMPA versions (http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/home.htm) as well, I
guess.  If you use Arial Unicode you should be able to read all symbols I
use.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 15:13:14 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:13:14 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.23 (05) [E/German]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.081314.0700.>

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Performing arts

Folks,

There is now a Lowlands Saxon (Low German) version of Shakespeare's "A
Midsummer Night's Dream" (> _Mitsommernachtsdr??men_) to be performed on
stage and as a radio play.

Below are announcements in German, courtesy of Volker Holm, Plattnet.de
(www.plattnet.de).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***


SHAKESPEARES MITSOMMERNACHTSTRAUM AUF PLATT
als H?rspiel der NDR 1 Welle Nord
Termin: Sonntag, 27. Juni | 19.00 Uhr | Molfsee, Drathenhof

Shakespeare mal ganz anders gibt es am Sonntag, 27. Juni, im Drathenhof in
Molfsee zu erleben. ?Mitsommernachtsdr??men" hei?t die plattdeutsche Fassung
der weltbekannten Kom?die, die die NDR 1 Welle Nord als Live-H?rspiel auf
die B?hne bringt. Gleichzeitig wird Shakespeares Mitsommernachtstraum auf
Platt auch als H?rspiel f?r die Radioprogramme des Norddeutschen Rundfunks
produziert. Hauptdarsteller des Abends ist Wilfried Dziallas, bekannt aus
der ARD-Vorabendserie ?Gro?stadtrevier" und aus dem Ohnsorg-Theater.
Karten f?r den ?Mitsommernachtsdr??men" gibt es f?r 10 Euro zzgl. VVK-Geb?hr
in der Kieler Buchhandlung Erichsen und Niehrenheim und unter der Hotline
0431-98 30 50.
Die NDR 1 Welle Nord sendet die Aufzeichnung von ?Mitsommernachtsdr??men"
aus dem Drathenhof am Freitag, 2. Juli, um 21.00 Uhr.
15. Juni 2004/TK (Pressestelle des NDR Landesfunkhaus Kiel) -
presse.kiel at ndr.de

***

H?rspiel-Tournee

SHAKESPEARE PLATT UND BEKIFFT:
MITTSOMMERNACHTSDR??MEN
Niederdeutsches Live-H?rspiel von Holger Janssen

Das ?B?hnen-H?rspiel? ist eine Adaption von Shakespeares A Midsummernight?s
Dream. Nur der Umstand, dass Oberon hier Tetje Obermann und Lysander Lothar
hei?en und alles im Wald von Albernhusen spielt, lassen den kundigen
H?rspielfreund hellh?rig werden: Sollte hier wieder ein Beispiel f?r diese
hinrei?end albernen niederdeutschen ?Klamotten? vorliegen, die schon seit
den 50er-Jahren regelm??ig auf die H?rer losgelassen werden? Genau so ist
es.

?Mittsommernachtsdr??men? ist aber nicht nur ein H?rspiel, sondern auch eine
B?hnenshow mit Live-Musik, bei der die Schauspieler wie im H?rspielstudio
agieren ? ein manchmal Zwerchfell ersch?tternder Anblick! Nat?rlich muss das
Publikum beim Herstellen der Ger?usche t?chtig mithelfen, denn die
Schauspieler sind dieser wahrhaft titanischen Aufgabe allein gar nicht
gewachsen!

In Kiel wird das Spektakel  als Kooperation von Radio Bremen und dem NDR
uraufgef?hrt und tourt dann in Kooperation mit dem Ohnsorg-Theater durch
Niedersachsen, Hamburg und Bremen - m?glicherweise die weltweit erste
H?rspieltournee!

Eine Aufzeichnung der Veranstaltung wird am unten bezeichneten Termin in
Ihrem Sendegebiet ausgestrahlt.

Darsteller:

Tetje Obermann (Oberon)   Wilfried Dziallas   ?Girlfriends?,
?Gro?stadtrevier?
Hilde (Titania)   Ursula Hinrichs   Ohnsorg-Theater
Egon Wisch (Zettel)   Jens Scheiblich   Ohnsorg-Theater
Mine, seine Tochter (Hermia)   Birthe Kretschmer   Ohnsorg-Theater
Lene, Mines Freundin (Helena)   Svenja Pages   versch. Fernsehserien
Lothar (Lysander)   Peter Kaempfe   Gr?ndungsmitglied Shakespeare Companie,
TAB ? Theater aus Bremen
Detelf (Demetrius)   Frank Grupe   Oberspielleiter Ohnsorg Theater
Kalli (Puck)   Benjamin Utzerath   Schauspieler Thalia-Theater Hamburg
Staatssekret?r, Pizzabote, Musiker   Jan Christoph   Musiker und Komponist
aus Bremen  u. a. Lyrik-Performances

Regieassistenz   Eva Garthe
Regie   Hans Helge Ott

Auff?hrungsorte:
Kiel-Molfsee, Drathenhof            So. 27. Juni 2004
Hamburg, Ohnsorg-Theater            Mo. 28. Juni 2004
Peine   Mi. 30. Juni 2004
Bremen, Radio Bremen Sendesaal            Do. 1. Juli 2004

Sendedaten:
Nordwestradio:   Sa. 24. Juli ?04, 19.05 Uhr
NDR1 Welle Nord (Kiel):   Fr. 2. Juli ?04, 21.05 Uhr
NDR 90,3 (Hamburg):   Sa. 3. Juli ?04, 20.05 Uhr
NDR - Radio MV:   Sa. 3. Juli ?04, 19.05 Uhr
NDR1 - Radio Niedersachsen:   Mo. 5. Juli ?04, 19.05 Uhr

NDR / Radio Bremen - hans-helge.ott at rb



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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 16:45:04 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 09:45:04 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.094504.0700.>

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From: Henry Pijffers <henry.pijffers at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

Lowlands-L wrote:
 >
> I've been doing some transcription of tapes & have
> become aware of a phrase used by a number of people in
> the Northumberland area of England. They 'for-to-get'
> as in "you needs lots of money 'for-to-get' that car".
> Its doesn't mean 'forgotten'. Is this used anywhere
> else around the globe.
>
It's used in Dutch by some people, and by analogy to Dutch in
Netherlands Saxon perhaps. In Dutch some people say "Je hebt veel geld
nodig voor een auto te krijgen".

regards,
Henry

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Syntax

Henry, the person you quoted above was Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
(not Lowlands-L).

Regards,
Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands-L
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

----------

From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

> From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Phrases
>
> Dear all,
>
> I've been doing some transcription of tapes & have
> become aware of a phrase used by a number of people in
> the Northumberland area of England. They 'for-to-get'
> as in "you needs lots of money 'for-to-get' that car".
> Its doesn't mean 'forgotten'. Is this used anywhere
> else around the globe.
>
> Gan canny,
>
> Glenn Simpson
> Northumbrian Language Society
>
> ----------
>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Syntax
>
> Hi, Glenn!
>
> It's good to hear from you, as always.
>
> Isn't the phrase "for to get" related to the older "for to"-type of
phrases
> denoting "in order to" or "with the purpose of"?
>
>    Oh, I went down South
>    FOR TO SEE my Sal
>    ...
>                     (Polly Wolly Doodle)
>
>    ...
>    She's lying at the quay
>    FOR TO TAKE our Pat with a shovel on his back
>    To the shores of Botany Bay
>    ...
>                     (Botany Bay)
>
> I have a feeling this type of phrase is not unusual in Germanic language
> varieties.  In German you use the construction _um ({object}) zu
> {infinitive}_, thus _um den Wagen zu kaufen_ 'in order to (be able to) buy
> that car'.  Likewise, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) you can us the
> construction _?m ({object}) tou {infinitive}_, thus _?m den wagen tou
> k?ypen_ for the same thing (though this sounds somewhat _geel_ "yellow,"
> i.e., German, more colloquial being conditional _wen den wagen k?ypen
wult_
> "if you want to buy that car").

It is not uncommon to hear it in colloquial (some would say "plat" =
uncouth) speach:

Ik ga naar de winkel voor een brood te kopen.
(I go to the shop for a bread to buy, literally)
instead of standard Dutch
Ik ga naar de winkel om een brood te kopen.
Or the equally correct (but without the verb)
Ik ga naar de winkel voor (een) brood.
(Or slightly unusual, but correct IMHO;  my wife disagrees though)
Ik ga naar de winkel om brood.

The incorrect form seems some sort of contamination between the correct ones
> Might this type of phrase have been petrified in the set phrase "for to
get"
> in Northumbrian?
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron

Regards

Henno Brandsma

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 17:02:47 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 10:02:47 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.100247.0700.>

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From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (01) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Morphology
>
>
> Dear Lowlanders,
>
> Should any of you be alive/awake, I would like to revisit the topic of
> plural morphology and invite you to give me (us) some input from the point
> of view of various Lowlands language varieties.  In particular, I am
> currently interested in apparently irregular plural marking of nouns.
>
> As for double plural marking, so far I can come up with a few examples
from
> Dutch, Afrikaans and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), but I am sure that there
> are other varieties with this type of phenomenon as well.
>
> Dutch:
> schoen [sxu?n] 'shoe'
> schoenen [sxu?n?(n)] 'shoes'
>
> It appears that the old plural form (with /+?n/ was turned into a singular
> form, and, etymologically speaking, the new plural form contains another
> plural-marking suffix (/+?(n)).
>
> Similarly, Afrikaans:
> skoen [sku?n] 'shoe'
> skoene [sku?n?] 'shoes'
>
> Theoretically (*), this ought to have been as follows:
> Dutch:
>    *schoe [sxu?] 'shoe'
>    *schoe?n [sxu??(n)] or schoen [sxu?n] 'shoes'
> Afrikaans:
>    *skoe [sku?] 'shoe'
>    *skoe? [sku??] 'shoes' (or perhaps *skoes [sku?s])

In Westerlauwer Frisian this is
singular "skoech" [sku:x] (note the archaic [x]-sound, which is suggested by
German Schuh
(which also indeed (in Old German) had a guttural soud here; is there
another non-Frisian
Germanic variety that preserves the guttural here? Also, eg., W-Frisian has
"( hy) sjocht" for "(he)sees", also preserving an old guttural most
varieties seem to have lost..)
plural "skuon" [skwon] (< *skoen = [sku. at n] with breaking).

> Cf. "regular"
> Englisch: shoe -> shoes
> Scots: shae -> shuin (originally regular with /+n/ plural)
Is this change merely orthographic or does it reflect an old umlauting (as
below)?

> German: Schuh -> Schuhe
> Yiddish: ?? ?u [?u] ~ [?i] -> ??? ?ux [?ux] ~ [?ix]
>
> Lowlands Saxon (Low German) has the same pattern as that of German, but
the
> main vowel underwent umlauting, and in most dialects the final vowel has
> been dropped:
> schou (<Schoh>) [s??? ] ~ [sx ? ] ~ [ ?? ] ~ [ a? ] 'shoe'
> sch y (<Sch?h>) [s????] ~ [sx???] ~ [????] ~ [????] 'shoes'
> derived from sch?ye ['s????e] ~ ['sx???e] ~ ['????e] ~ ['????e] 'shoes'
>
The "child", children (also a double one in English) is not present in
W-Frisian
as the word here is "bern" [bE:n], which has "non-marking", i.e. also the
plural is
bern. The same happens with the word "skiep" [ski. at p] = sheep.
Also (with numbers, as in Dutch) with "jier" ([i. at r]): "twa jier" (but the
plural
"jierren" [jIr at n] does exist: eg. "yn dy jierren gie dat sa" (= in those
years it was like that ).
Dutch has the same "twee jaar" eg.

> The opposite of this, I suppose, is apparent "non-marking" of plural
forms,
> namely zero marking (/+0/).  In English, this tends to occur where
plurality
> denotes (or denoted) uncountable or uncounted mass.  (Examples of mass
nouns
> would be "sand," "water," "people," and "cattle.") E.g.,
>
> English:
> fish | fish (not *"fishes," at least not in this sense)
> herring | herring (not *"herrings," at least not in this sense)
W-Frisian does have "fisken" en "hjerringen" or "hjerrings" (a mostly
West-East difference)
> sheep | sheep (never *"sheeps")
[snip]
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron

Groetenis,

Henno Brandsma

----------

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

Henno:

> Also (with numbers, as in Dutch) with "jier" ([i. at r]): "twa jier" (but the
> plural
> "jierren" [jIr at n] does exist: eg. "yn dy jierren gie dat sa" (= in those
> years it was like that ).
> Dutch has the same "twee jaar" eg.

Also In Lowlands Saxon (Low German):

eyn jaar (one year)
twey jaar (two years)
etc.

But I feel that with 100, 1000, etc., you could say either:

hunnerd jaar ~ hunnerd jaren (100 years)
dusend jaar ~ dusend jaren (1000 years)

Otherwise you use the plural form:

In dey (daar) jaren is dat so west.
'In those years (= days) it was like that.'

In dey (daar) jaren g?ng dat so.
This, literally translated from Henno's Westerlauwer Frisian example ("In
those (there) years went it/that so"), could mean the same, but to me the
primary meaning is "In those days is was all right (= passable,
acceptable)."

This applies to measures also; e.g., _vyv pund meel_ 'two pounds of flour',
_Hest v?ftayn mark by dy?_ 'Do you have fifteen marks on you?' (not _punds_
and _marks_).

Isn't there a thing like this in some English and in Scots dialects also,
something like "two year ago," "five pound of flour," "Do you have fifteen
pound on you?"?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 19:52:06 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 12:52:06 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Deaf culture" 2004.06.23 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.125206.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Deaf cultures" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Deaf culture
>
> I am particularly fascinated by signed poetry and song.  The few times I
> watched the Seattle Men's Chorus (http://www.seattlemenschorus.org/)
perform
> I was more focused on the choir's sign language interpreter than on the

Hmmm, well...! This is a very "hearing" thing, I would say. Since the
structure of sign languages are quite foreign to the structure of the
singing language, you can't really sign along with a song without mangling
the language.

On the deaf programmes on British TV, particularly around Christmas when
some carol singing is in order, we sometimes see a "deaf choir" where the
signers sign along with the words of the carol. The signing tends to follow
the order of the English words, making it very linear or "flat" and
grammarless, and I generally find the whole performance as dull as
dishwater, and quite often rather annoying, I mean:

"Hark the herald angels sing"?

Surely this should be:

"Behold, the herald angels sign"?

Of course after the performance the deaf TV presenters say things like,
"Thanks to the Humbugton Christmas Choir. I really enjoyed that." I once
asked a deaf BBC presenter what she really thought of signing choirs. She
said, "I don't see the point." Then next Christmas she was on TV, "Thanks to
the..."

In my experience deaf choirs often have a hearing person as the driving
force behind them, either a hearing churchgoer who signs, or a minister who
is determined to get deaf people involved. I think hearing people who find
this sort of thing wonderful do so partly because they're enjoying the
music, and partly because they don't realise that the signing isn't really
doing anything meaningful.

As for the "Behold, the herald angels sign" kind of translation, I don't
think you see this in signed song, but you do see deaf people borrowing
idiom from English in this way, eg, "In one eye and out the other", "My
hands are sealed", and "Wash your hands with soap!"

> > However, sign language poets tend to make better use of the three
> channels,
> > sometimes developing special classifiers (cf Navajo?)
>
> This is something I've long thought offered itself to sign language, as to
> non-phonal written languages like Chinese.  In Chinese, there is a certain
> set of classifying glyphs (214 in most systems), known as "radicals," that
> can be used as characters in their own right but in conjunction with other
> glyphs (denoting sound or semantic hints) can make up new characters.  For
> example, the character for 'fish' (?) may serve as a classifier for all
> names of fish and other aquatic animals (e.g., ? 'squid', ? 'abalone', ?
> 'eel', ? 'cod') and also things associated with these (e.g., ? 'fin') or a
re
> considered similar (e.g., ? 'crocodile').  All the above have phonological
> information added to the radical, though the right-hand part of the

I don't think this is the same as classifiers in signed languages, although
signed languages do use a technique like this for borrowing from spoken
languages. For example, because there's no written tradition is sign
languages, people don't generally know signs for distant towns and cities.
While fingerspelling is often considered the "correct" way of using an
English word in BSL, this is not popular for long words and rather than
fingerspelling "Edinburgh", say, a deaf person in the south of England might
instead sign "Scotland" while mouthing the word "Edinburgh". Classifying it
as something to do with Scotland gives the lipreader the necessary context
to guess the word.

This technique is particularly widespread in German Sign Language. Perhaps
because many German words take so long to spell?

> character for 'abalone' may be both phonological and semantic, denoting
> 'envelop' or 'encapsule', as does ? for 'flounder': an ancient phone as
well
> as the meaning 'leaf' (= 'flat').  Using this method, you can create some
> sort of visual semantic theme that strikes the reader right away and sets
> the tone, so to speak.  I can imagine that this would lend itself
> excellently to signing.

This is beginning to sound more like sign language classifiers. Classifiers
in sign languages arise from the use of proforms. Proforms, as I've
explained, are handshapes that stand in place of other signs, just as
pronouns stand in place of nouns. Thus a flat hand with fingers together in
BSL is a proform standing for something flat, or useful to think of as flat,
such as a car, lorry, van, wall, ceiling, sheet of paper or book.

Classifiers are subsets of these: this proform when used to represent a car,
lorry, van &c is called the "vehicle classifier" but when it's used to
represent sheets of paper or books it might be called the "page classifier"
and so on.

In this way you might sign "I was driving along with a lorry behind me" by
signing "My car" and then using the flat left hand as the vehicle classifier
to represent the car, and then signing "lorry" and positioning the flat
right hand behind the left hand to show both vehicles as classifiers. You
can then describe the further adventures of the lorry and car using the
classifiers alone.

Often an object has such a distinctive classifier that you don't need a sign
for it at all. For example, the fist with thumb and pinkie sticking out is a
proform for things with two sticky-out bits, but in practice it's mostly
used for the aeroplane classifier and the telephone classifier, so actual
signs the nouns "aeroplane" and "telephone" don't really exist because you
can't really confuse an aeroplane with a telephone, so the classifiers alone
are sufficient. However, things like the vehicle classifier can also be used
alone, because the motion of the sign is often sufficient when you're not
worried about describing the exact type of vehicle.

It's the use of classifiers like this (plus facial expression and body
movement) that often puzzle non-signers with the sheer amount of information
that's sometimes given with a single sign. Phrases like "the aeroplane crash
landed upside down and slid along the runway", "could you two shift over a
bit?" and "the tree snapped, shivered and crashed to the ground"  each only
take a single sign to express.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Deaf culture

Thanks for your interesting clarifications, Sandy.

Just to P.S. the Chinese "radical" thing again, I ought to add that the
apparently earliest way they were put together to form new characters was
without sound indication and without categorization.  This type of character
can be found in the earliest unearthed artifacts, especially on cow bones
used for Shamanist devination.  Examples are ? (< ? woman + ? child) 'good',
'love', ? (< ? door + ? person) 'glimpse', 'dodge', 'flash by', and ? (< ?
water + ? weak) 'drown'.  I wonder if this is similar to some signing
methods.  It seems to me that it may be, given what you said above.

This also leads me to ask how spoken- and written-language-influenced sign
languages are.  Do those in English-speaking communities have English
slants, etc.?  It would seem logical to me that those in Chinese-,
Japanese-, Korean- and Vietnamese-speaking communities would utilize methods
similar to Chinese writing (although Chinese characters are no longer
officially used in Korea and Vietnam).

Are there ever any sound clues outside of finger spelling (like "sounds like
'fish' but is a container" = "dish" in charade fashion), or would that make
signing too spoken-language-dependent?

Just wondering.

Another question (not only for Sandy):

What about signing among minority language speakers.  For example, is or was
there any sign language specific to Lowlands Saxon (Low German) speakers?  I
expect there is not, if there ever was one, which would mean that deaf
people of that language region are split apart by the Dutch-German political
border, using Dutch sign language in the west and German sign language in
the east.  Do speakers of Westerlauwer Frisian use only Dutch sign language
also, or do they have their own variant?  What about Limburgish people?  I
understand that there is only one sign language in the UK now, the Old
Kentish one being extinct (though its derivative Matha's Vineyard Sign
Language of Massachussetts is apparently still used, as is Hawaiian Pidgin
Signing besides American Sign Language in the US.)  So I take it this means
that in England, Wales, Scotland, The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands
only one sign language is used despite diversity in spoken language.  I
furthermore wonder if it is right to assume that both Irish and British Sign
Language are used in Northern Ireland.

Thanks and regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 20:03:05 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:03:05 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (09) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.130305.0700.>

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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

Glenn Simpson wrote: Subject: Phrases

> I've been doing some transcription of tapes & have
> become aware of a phrase used by a number of people in
> the Northumberland area of England. They 'for-to-get'
> as in "you needs lots of money 'for-to-get' that car".
> Its doesn't mean 'forgotten'. Is this used anywhere
> else around the globe.

Its used in Scots meaning 'in order to'.

see http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/verbs.htm

Caw cannie,

Andy Eagle

----------

From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: syntax[E]

Ron,

On the 'for-to-get' phrase, I think that you're right
that it may have become 'petrified' in certain
localities. Actually I should have written it in
Northumbrian 'fo'-tu-get' as it tends to be used that
way most often. I think a lot of Northumbrian is
language that has remained in use but died out
elsewhere.

Interesting to see that other lowlands languages are
similar.

Keep ahaad,

Glenn

----------

From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

Dear Glenn Simpson & Reinhard

 Subject: Phrases

> I have a feeling this type of phrase is not unusual in Germanic language
> varieties.  In German you use the construction _um ({object}) zu
> {infinitive}_, thus _um den Wagen zu kaufen_ 'in order to (be able to) buy
> that car'.  Likewise, in Lowlands Saxon (Low German) you can us the
> construction _?m ({object}) tou {infinitive}_, thus _?m den wagen tou
> k?ypen_ for the same thing (though this sounds somewhat _geel_ "yellow,"
> i.e., German, more colloquial being conditional _wen den wagen k?ypen
wult_
> "if you want to buy that car").

Yes. In Afrikaans we also use the 'om te'
as in, "Om te gaan swem moet jy v?r loop."
"In order to go swimming you must walk far."

Yrs,
Mark

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 20:04:21 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:04:21 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Travel" 2004.06.23 (10) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.130421.0700.>

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From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Travel[E]

Dear Lowlanders,

I'm going on holiday during the first week of August &
will be travelling around Flanders (Belgium and
France). Just wondering if there are locations,
events, festivals etc where I can hear some of the
various dialects/languages spoken? I may also take a
trip into Holland. Any information would be
appreciated.

Gan Canny,

Glenn Simpson
Northumbrian Language Society

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 20:36:52 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:36:52 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (11) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.133652.0700.>

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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (07) [E]

R. F. Hahn wrote:

> Isn't there a thing like this in some English and in Scots dialects also,
> something like "two year ago," "five pound of flour," "Do you have fifteen
> pound on you?"?

In Scots , nouns of measure usually remain singular directly after cardinal
numbers.

This system is breaking down due to the influence of standard English.

Andy Eagle

----------

From: Glenn Simpson <westwylam at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Morphology [E]

Ron

You're right about English/Scots using the singular
'Five pound of flour'. I often hear it in
Northumberland such as 'he was driving at 100 mile an
hour' (North'd - He wes drivin et ih hundrid mile an
oo-wah), rather than 100 miles an hour.

cheers,

Glenn

----------

From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (04) [E]

> From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (06) [E]
>
> Ron wrote:
>
> > Sure, and there are cases like interpreting Greek-derived "kudos" and
> > "gyros" as plural forms and deriving from them supposedly singular
"kudo"
> > and "gyro" respectively.

What means "gyros?"

Jorge Potter

----------

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

Jorge:

> What means "gyros?"

A sandwich made usually of sliced roasted lamb, onion, and tomato on pita
bread.

Best pronounced like "YEE-ross" (from Modern Greek ????? <g?ros> ['jirOs]
'circle' (from the turning of the meat on a spit)

It's the Greek version of the Arabic _shawarma_.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 23:13:06 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:13:06 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Deaf culture" 2004.06.23 (12) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.161306.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Deaf culture" [E]

>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Deaf culture
>
> used for Shamanist devination.  Examples are ? (< ? woman + ? child)
'good',
> 'love', ? (< ? door + ? person) 'glimpse', 'dodge', 'flash by', and ? (< ?
> water + ? weak) 'drown'.  I wonder if this is similar to some signing
> methods.  It seems to me that it may be, given what you said above.

Not sure - I can't seem to relate these examples to anything I know.

> This also leads me to ask how spoken- and written-language-influenced sign
> languages are.  Do those in English-speaking communities have English
> slants, etc.?  It would seem logical to me that those in Chinese-,
> Japanese-, Korean- and Vietnamese-speaking communities would utilize
methods
> similar to Chinese writing (although Chinese characters are no longer
> officially used in Korea and Vietnam).

One example is that although BSL seems to be the sort of language where
adjectives follow the noun, it's not unusual to see people signing
adjectives before the noun. This seems to be influence from English syntax,
but you also have to take into account the fact that some deafened people
use SSE (Sign Supported English) which is just English glossed with BSL
signs really, and the existence of English structures in signed conversation
with people who haven't mastered BSL conversation doesn't mean that English
is having such an influence on BSL itself. Most deaf people use a fairly
pure form of BSL simply because mixed forms are genuinely tedious and
sometimes vague, and yet can be seen using more English-like forms when
speaking with unskilled signers.

It's not unusual to see people using English idiom in BSL as a sort of
literal translation, however. I'd say this tends to consist of the English
itself mouthed, with sign glosses to allow for the fact that the "listener"
can't hear the English words.

Having said that, BSL idiom tends to consist of single signs. For example,
phrases like "Not my problem", "I'm bored stiff", "There's none left",
"That's put me in my place" and "Long time no see" are single, conventional
and mostly abstract signs in BSL. So a knowledgable signer is hardly likely
to resort to English much for everyday idiom, because it would be relatively
tedious.

You would of course use sign-glossed English when, for example, quoting
films and books and expecting the listener to recognise the source: "Me love
you long time", "Make my day, punk" &c.

> Are there ever any sound clues outside of finger spelling (like "sounds
like
> 'fish' but is a container" = "dish" in charade fashion), or would that
make
> signing too spoken-language-dependent?

Firstly, you have to realise that deaf people can't hear - a concept that
I've noticed a lot of hearing people have difficulty grasping! Any such puns
will normally be based on lip patterns, not sounds, or they can hardly enter
into general deaf culture (though I can think of one exception - "Tesco"
which is signed as "sneeze" - is this something only a hearing person would
think of? - but "Tesco" isn't _really_ like "atchoo" - so is it something
only a deaf person would think of?).

There are some English lip-pattern based sign constructions, usually
intentionally humorous, eg "M-Spider" for "Marks and Spencer", because
"Spencer" is apt to be lipread as "spider" if there's no context.

["Marks and Spencer" and "Tesco" are Brtiish chain stores]

> What about signing among minority language speakers.  For example, is or
was
> there any sign language specific to Lowlands Saxon (Low German) speakers?
I
> expect there is not, if there ever was one, which would mean that deaf
> people of that language region are split apart by the Dutch-German
political
> border, using Dutch sign language in the west and German sign language in
> the east.

I think, historically, deaf people were overseen by the church, and sign
language boundaries have tended to be religious (eg Catholic vs Protestant)
rather than political.

> that in England, Wales, Scotland, The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands
> only one sign language is used despite diversity in spoken language.  I

Seems so. However, I wonder if Old Kentish Sign Language is only known as a
result of the large amount of research into Martha's Vineyard? Many regions
of England used to have isolated clusters of parishes like the Kentish
Weald, we maybe just didn't (or don't) hear about them.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 23:49:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:49:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (13) [D/E]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.164933.0700.>

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From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: Zeeuws


Hoi Marco,
Ik zie een ideale kans voor LLs om te laten zien dat we niet alleen een
babbel- en zeurklupje zijn maar ook in staat  om tot actie over te gaan. Ik
stel voor, Marco, dat je een text opstelt die iedereen die daarvoor voelt
naar de Provincie stuurt. Ik denk wel dat dat honderden berichten zal
opleveren. Indien ik me vergis...tant pis.
Vriendelijke groeten, Mike Wintzer

----------

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

Hi, Marco!

Thanks for sharing the sad news about the withholding of language status for
Zeelandic in the Netherlands.  I suppose quite a few of us would like to
help.

I agree with Mike (ondanks zijn niet bijzonder flatteuze beschrijving van
onse lijst) that we need some type of appeal letter template (in Dutch and
English?), if for no other reason then to tell us what we should and should
not write, possibly using our own words to avoid cookie-cutter letter.

Mike:

> Ik zie een ideale kans voor LLs om te laten zien dat we niet
> alleen een babbel- en zeurklupje zijn

Well, "babbling" and "boring" is what we do here.  I suppose that's within
the sphere of our first and foremost purpose:

<quote>
Lowlands-L is dedicated to discussion, exchange and dissemination of
information as well as to networking among persons who have certain
interests in common
<unquote>

While it *is* mentioned that we equally respect and are willing to be
equally supportive of *all* language and culture varieties within our focus
area, and while we have quite frequently used the List to appeal for
support, this is not and will never be a political action organization.

Lowlands-L is a "home" for *all* the Lowlands languages and cultures, not
only for those of minorities.  In fact, we are in the interesting position
of dealing both with some of the world's smallest and most endangered
language varieties (Frisian varieties of Germany) and with English, *the*
most powerful language in today's world.  We are not in the business of
taking sides and of spending all our time sticking up for the supposed
underdog, laudable such a pursuit and your preoccupation with it may be.

Mike, I very much respect the place in which you have your heart.  By the
same token, I would be pleased if you would afford our information exchange
the same degree of respect.  You may not have meant to come across so hard,
but some of us may take exception to the depiction _babbel- en zeurklupje_
"little babble and bore club."

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 23 23:55:04 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:55:04 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Events" 2004.06.23 (14) [E/LS]
Message-ID: <WED.23.JUN.2004.165504.0700.>

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

Dear Lowlanders,

Below please find an announcement of a Lowlands Saxon (Low German)
children's summer camp in Northern Germany, courtesy of Plattnet.de.

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron

***


De Lutherische Heimvolkshochschool Harmsb?rg un de Arbeitsgemeinschaft
"Plattd??tsch in de Kark" Neddersassen / Bremen laden in:


Kumm mit nah Plattd?tschland!

9. PLATTD?TSCHE KINNERFREETIED

 in BORCHELSMOOR bei Rotenburg/W?mme

16. Juli bis 24. Juli 2004



Hallo Kinner! Dat is sowiet! Nu k?nnt ji jau to de Plattd?tsche
Kinnerfreetied anmelln. Wi hebt in uns Huus Platz f?r 22 Jungs und Deerns.
In Borchelsmoor steiht allens parat: Dat Huus, Dischtennisplatten, de
Backoben, Wisch un Wald. Veel Platz is dor to'n Speelen und Toben. Wi hebbt
veel v?r in us Tiet in ,Plattd?tschland': Kanu fohrn, Basteln, Baden,
Geschichten vertellen un speelen. Gottsdeenst fieern un Jesusgeschichten
h?rt dar nat?rlich ok tau. Un dat allens op Platt! Wenn dat ok noch nich so
gl?ckt - Dat lehrst du fix! Wi freit us op jau! Jaune Holger Lehmberg
(BerufspraktikantIDiakon), Birgit Frese (Studentin), Insa Dammann
(Sch?lerin), Elfie G?nther (Huusfrau), Ingrid Sch?tt un Peter Voigt (Pastor
i.R.). K?sten deit dat 110 ?, f?r Geschwister 100 ?.



Anmelln kann'n sik bi de: HeimVolkshochschule, Postfach 1280, 29315
Hermannsburg, Fax (0 50 52) 9899-55;

Fragen kann'n stelln bi: Holger Lehmberg, Lutterweg 16, 29315 Hermannsburg,
Privat Tel. 05052/ 9899 -59, B?ro Tel. 05052/ 9899-0


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:30:19 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:30:19 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.073019.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (13) [D/E]

Ron wrote:
> the same degree of respect.  You may not have meant to come across so
hard,
> but some of us may take exception to the depiction _babbel- en zeurklupje_
> "little babble and bore club."

Actually, this translates to "babble and whine"... he never claimed we were
boring!

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:32:13 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:32:13 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.073213.0700.>

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Semantics

Beste li?glanners,

Sandy's remark about choirs signing "Hark the herald angels sing" made
me think about this interesting verb "to hark", as it also exists in
both Flemish ("horken", "?rkt e ki?r", "listen to this"), Frisian and
Saxon.
On the other hand, Brabantish doesn't have it at all, and even though
German has "horchen", according to Duden this must have been a "recent"
development, variations on "to listen" being the norm in southeastern
Germanic lands during the Middle Ages. That's why I wonder if there's
any semantic difference between "to listen" and "to hark" in either
Flemish, English, Frisian or Saxon.
On a side-note I'd like to add that Brabantish vocabulary does have the
noun "(h)ork" though, but it denotes a callous, heartless man, something
entirely different. Maybe fear of homonymy played a role here???

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:33:54 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:33:54 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.073354.0700.>

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at pandora.be>
Subject: Syntax

Beste Glenn en Ron,

We always use 'voor te + verb' in Brabantish instead of 'om te + verb'
like Dutch does, when we want to express a certain goal.

"V? te traave m?rre m? twi? za?n" (B) ~ "Om te trouwen moet je met twee
zijn" (D) ~ "It takes two to marry" (E)
"'t ?s naa te kaat v? m? de vloo te raan" (B) ~ "Het is nu te koud om
met de fiets te rijden" (D) ~ "It's too cold now to ride a bike"

Off the record, French (and Italian too?) uses "pour" (and "per"?) in a
similar way but maybe this merely reflects Germanic influence?

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:39:38 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:39:38 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Delectables" 2004.06.23 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.073938.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.23 (11) [E]

> > What means "gyros?"
>
> A sandwich made usually of sliced roasted lamb, onion, and tomato on pita
> bread.
>
> It's the Greek version of the Arabic _shawarma_.

It is also the Greek version of the Turkish "d?ner", and traditionally
served with tsatsiki, a sort of dressing made of yogurt, garlic, cucumbers,
dill and varying other ingredients. In Germany, Turkish d?ner stands are the
most popular fast food providers these days. It has a lot less fat and
calories than burgers, for example, and a lot more fresh veggies.

Unfortunately, what they serve as "gyros" in restaurants in America is
usually not the "real stuff", but made of ground meat and therefore more
sausage-like.

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:42:08 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:42:08 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.074208.0700.>

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From: Kevin Caldwell <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.06.23 (02) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Syntax
>
> Hi, Glenn!
>
> It's good to hear from you, as always.
>
> Isn't the phrase "for to get" related to the older "for to"-type of
> phrases
> denoting "in order to" or "with the purpose of"?
>
>    Oh, I went down South
>    FOR TO SEE my Sal
>    ...
>                     (Polly Wolly Doodle)
>
>    ...
>    She's lying at the quay
>    FOR TO TAKE our Pat with a shovel on his back
>    To the shores of Botany Bay
>    ...
>                     (Botany Bay)

And here in the US, there is the song "Oh Susanna", by Stephen Foster:

I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee.
I'm goin' to Lou'siana
My true love for to see.

Kevin Caldwell (kcaldwell31 at comcast.net)

----------

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

Thanks, Kevin.  But isn't "Polly Wolly Doodle" from the US also?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 14:50:49 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:50:49 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.23 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.075049.0700.>

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From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.23 (05) [E/German]

R. F. Hahn quoted:

>H?rspiel-Tournee
>
> SHAKESPEARE PLATT UND BEKIFFT:
> MITTSOMMERNACHTSDR??MEN
> Niederdeutsches Live-H?rspiel von Holger Janssen
>
That BEKIFFT bit surely can't be what I'm thinking?
Shakespeare flat(out) and stoned?

Andy Eagle

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Performing arts

Search *me*, Andy.  Of course we know what they mean by _platt_ (Lowlands
Saxon/Low German).  But _bekifft_ (stoned, high)?  Maybe the LS version is
so bad and/weird that Shakespeare could have only written that sort of stuff
if he had had a smoke or sniff or two ...  My hunch is that it's a spoof and
that claiming its a spoof is the only way they were able to pull it off ...

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 16:19:42 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 09:19:42 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.23 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.091942.0700.>

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From: Pyt Berg <pytbergy at YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Romance family words in Lowlands lanaguages


My request resent from 18/6/04

In Dutch & German there are some French words like, Muir, platform, egal,
etc

English uses an awful lot of special French words and expressions, like
Grand Prix, savoir faire, vaux pas, volte face, c'est la vie, etc, etc

Can anybody tell me whether the lowlands lanaguages like Frisian and Low
Saxon use
these kind of words and expressions or would they be considered taboo?

Pieter Bergman.

----------

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

Hi, Pyt!

Sorry, I didn't get your request before today, when I got it in triplicate.

There are tons of French loanwords in Lowlands Saxon (Low German), partly
borrowed via Dutch and German (especially in the 18th century when French
was all the rage) and partly borrowed directly during French occupation in
the early 19th century.  Some of them are quite distorted due to most people
not knowing and reading French (at the time), and some are blends of LS or
German words with French loans (e.g., _vutteraasch_ <Futteraasch>
'provisions' < German _Futter_ 'feed' + French _fourrage_ 'feed').  Also,
there appear to be a few pseudo-French words; they seem like French loans,
but so far there is no satisfactory etymological explanation.  Two example
are _etepetete_ 'fussy', 'finicky', 'hoity-toity', 'niminy-piminy',
'pernickety', and _Schisslaweng_ '(overly/excentrically) grandiose
flourish'.

I have started compiling a (not exhaustive) list of such loans (also lists
of English, Dutch and Slavonic loans).  I can only give you a few tidbits of
the French loan inventory here:

schosen (<Schosen>) 'things', 'stories', 'matters', 'happening(s)' (<
choses)
tuur (<Tuur>) 'tour', 'trip', 'outing', 'way (of doing)', 'mood', 'rut' (<
tour)
paslatant (<Pa??latant>) 'activity for passing one's time', 'entertainer' (<
pour passer le temp)
perd?? 'lost', 'gone' (< perdu)
partu 'in any case', 'by all/no means', 'absolutly' (< partout)
musche (<Musche>) 'mister' (usually jocular) (<monsieur>)
mamsell (<Mamsell>) '(female) housekeeper' (< mademoiselle)
raasch (<Raasch>) 'rage', 'anger' (< rage)
ambraasch ~ ambraass (<Ambraasch> ~ <Ambraas>) 'to-do', 'fuss' (< embarras)
schenant 'embarrassed', 'embarrassing' (< g??nant)
schemisett (<Schemisett>) 'chemise', 'undershirt' (< chemisette)
p??-a-p?? 'bit-by-bit', 'gradually' (< peu-? -peu)
momang (<Momang>) 'moment' (< moment)
priwee (<Privee>) 'privy', 'toilet' (< priv??(e))
maless ~ malesch (<Maless> ~ <Malesch>) 'problem', 'trouble' (< malaise)
profoss 'forcefully' (< par force)
schossee (<Schossee>) 'causeway' (< chauss??e)
visaasch (<Visaasch>) 'face', 'mug' (< visage)
schangs (<Schangs>) 'chance' (< chance)
sch??y (<Sch??>) 'sauce' (< jus)
assamblee (<Assamblee>) 'assembly', 'meeting' (< assembl??e)
eksk??ys (<Exk????s>) 'excuse' (< excuse)
kuntreer (<kuntr??r>) 'contrary' (< contraire)
durabel ~ d??rabel 'durable' (< durable)
vigilant (<figilant> ~ <vigilant>) 'vigilant' (< vigilant(e))
bredulj(e) (<Bredulje> ~ <Bredulch>) 'tense situation', 'jam' (< bredouille)
(ver)deffendeyren (<(ver)deffendeern>) 'defend' (< d??fendre)
eklepaasch (<Eklepaasch>) 'equipage' (< ??quipage)
entfamig(t) ~ entfaamt 'infamous', 'dastardly', 'mean' (< inf??me)
kalmeyren (<kalmeern>) 'to calm down' (< calmer)
kamsool (<Kamsol>) 'sort jacket' (< camisole)
kaprytsch (<kaprietsch>) 'capricious' (< capricieux/se)
kontant ~ kuntant 'content' (< content(e))
j??st(emang) 'just (now)' (< juste(ment))
kastrull (<Kastrull>) 'casserole dish', 'saucepan' (< casserole)
alert 'alert (< alerte)
biljett (<Billet> ~ <Biljett>) 'ticket' (< billet)
awekk (<Aweck>) 'flourish', 'emphasis', 'belaboring addition' (< avec)
kumpabel 'capable', 'able' (< compable)
k(u)raasch (<K(u)raasch>) 'courage', 'daring' (< courage)
kumpelment (<Kumpelment>) 'compliment', 'regard', 'greeting' (< compliment)

Etc., etc. ...

Kumpelmenten!
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Thu Jun 24 23:20:49 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:20:49 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Call for papers" 2004.06.23 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <THU.24.JUN.2004.162049.0700.>

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From: Horst Simon <horst.simon at univie.ac.at>
Subject: workshop on 'exceptions in grammar' - call for papers

Call for Papers:

EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED: EXCEPTIONS IN GRAMMAR

Workshop as part of the 26th Annual Meeting of the German Society for
Linguistics (DGfS)
University of Cologne, Germany
23rd-25th February, 2005
Organizers: Horst Simon & Heike Wiese (Humboldt-University Berlin)

Keynote speakers: Frans Plank (University of Konstanz)
Marga Reis (University of Tuebingen)
Tom Wasow (Stanford University)

A general goal of scientific theories is to systematise data from a
particular field as completely and as elegantly as possible; ideally,
all phenomena should be accounted for within a simple system.
Is such a methodological aim also adequate for human language? In the
analysis of linguistic data, one frequently faces phenomena that pose
a problem for systematisation because they do not follow the standard
patterns one observes otherwise. There are various ways to deal with
this problem; possible options, as realised in different frameworks,
include:

- ignoring special cases and concentrating on abstract model building
instead,
- reserving a specialised part of the model (the 'lexicon') for
idiosyncrasies,
- dispensing with generalisations altogether and concentrating on
in-depth analyses of case studies.

In addition, some approaches favour 'softer' grammatical models (such
as Prototype Theory or Stochastic Optimality Theory) that can
integrate 'exceptions' without bestowing them a special theoretical
status.  Finally, for some models of language change (e.g. those
based on evolutionary theory), the existence of exceptions is an
integral and constitutive part of the theory.

Exceptions can be defined both inter- and intra-linguistically.
First, typologically, exceptions can represent counter-examples to
cross-linguistically formulated general regularities, while they
might constitute a systematic phenomenon in the individual language
in which they occur (cf. e.g. the cases collected in the Constance
Rarit?tenkabinett). Second, in a particular language, exceptions can
represent an idiosyncratic phenomenon that cannot be captured by
intra-linguistic grammatical generalisations and therefore requires
special descriptive efforts.

In the workshop, we want to explore the theoretical and practical
problems that such intra- and inter-linguistic exceptions pose for
grammatical modelling. In particular, the workshop will be dedicated
to the following questions:

- How can exceptions be identified? In how far is their special
status tied to the particular grammatical model used?
- Do exceptions constitute sub-systems? Are there special areas in
grammar where exceptions abound?
- How do exceptions emerge diachronically? How are they levelled out again?
- Are there special acquisitional patterns for exceptions? How are
they affected in situations of language loss? What is their status in
language processing?
- Are exceptions also a part of communication systems of other
species, or are they a species-specific characteristic of the human
language faculty? Do they play a role in language evolution?

We invite linguists from all persuasions who work on grammatic
modelling and who reflect on methodological issues, in particular
those working in the fields of grammatical theory, typology,
historical linguistics, psycho- and neurolinguistics, and computer
linguistics. General theoretical discussions and analyses of case
studies are equally welcome.

Talks will be 20 minutes each, with 10 minutes of discussion.
Please send an anonymous abstract of max. 500 words, as a text file
or Word file,
to exceptions at staff.hu-berlin.de

DEADLINE: August 15th, 2004

Notification of acceptance will be sent by email in September.

For further enquiries please contact:

Horst Simon or Heike Wiese,
Institut f?r deutsche Sprache und Linguistik
Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin, Germany

horst.simon at univie.ac.at (until Sept 20th) /
horst.simon at rz.hu-berlin.de (from Oct 1st)
heike.wiese at rz.hu-berlin.de

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:37:02 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:37:02 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.25 (01) [E]
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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Performing arts" 2004.06.23 (06) [E]

Andy wrote:
> > SHAKESPEARE PLATT UND BEKIFFT:
> > MITTSOMMERNACHTSDR??MEN
> > Niederdeutsches Live-H?rspiel von Holger Janssen
> >
> That BEKIFFT bit surely can't be what I'm thinking?
> Shakespeare flat(out) and stoned?

I guess they're trying to reach a wider, younger audience by adding this
intriguing concept...

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:38:46 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:38:46 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.25 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.073846.0700.>

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From: Fr?d?ric Baert <baert_frederic at CARAMAIL.COM>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.22 (02) [E]

Kenneth wrote :

>Just a bit of random info that might prove helpful
>
>Kenneth
>
>> Dutch:
>> schoen [sxu?n] 'shoe'
>> schoenen [sxu?n?(n)] 'shoes'
>>
>> It appears that the old plural form (with /+?n/ was turned into a
singular
>> form, and, etymologically speaking, the new plural form contains another
>> plural-marking suffix (/+?(n)).
>
>This is also what all dutch etymology dictionaries tell
>
>> Similarly, Afrikaans:
>> skoen [sku?n] 'shoe'
>> skoene [sku?n?] 'shoes'
>>
>> Theoretically (*), this ought to have been as follows:
>> Dutch:
>>    *schoe [sxu?] 'shoe'
>>    *schoe?n [sxu??(n)] or schoen [sxu?n] 'shoes'
>> Afrikaans:
>>    *skoe [sku?] 'shoe'
>>    *skoe? [sku??] 'shoes' (or perhaps *skoes [sku?s])
>
>skoen is a loan from Hollandic Dutch. You cannot compare the plural
>ending in Afrikaans to Dutch (just like you cannot compare the adjective
>system with Dutch either) as Afrikaans probably has developed as a Cape
>dialect mixed with two Dutch based Pidgins spoken by the Hottentot. The
>-s after -er etc is kept, but -e is used for plural for almost
>everything else. Non-mother tongue speakers will guess that -e was the
>plural ending of skoen.

Hi,

Comparisons can be interesting sometimes : indeed, unlike dutch, west
flemish (at least in France) has conserved "schoe" for "shoe" and "schoen"
for "shoes". However, french west flemish has numerous irregularities in
plural formation of nouns and I'm not sure they have always good
explanations. i.e., plural of "katte" is "kats" that J.L. Marteel explains
by an intermediary form in "kattens" with dissapearance of "en". But the
alternance of plural forms of noun in "-s" and in "-en" is characteristic.
Best regards

Fr?d?ric Baert

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:46:38 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:46:38 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.25 (03) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.074638.0700.>

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From: Pyt Berg <pytbergy at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.06.23 (07) [E]


> From: Pyt Berg
> Subject: Romance family words in Lowlands lanaguages
>
> My request resent from 18/6/04
>
> In Dutch & German there are some French words like, Muir, platform, egal,
> etc
>
> English uses an awful lot of special French words and expressions, like
> Grand Prix, savoir faire, vaux pas, volte face, c'est la vie, etc, etc
>
> Can anybody tell me whether the lowlands lanaguages like Frisian and Low
> Saxon use
> these kind of words and expressions or would they be considered taboo?
>
> Pieter Bergman.
>
> ----------
>
> From: R. F. Hahn
> Subject: Etymology
>
> Hi, Pyt!
>
> Sorry, I didn't get your request before today, when I got it in
triplicate.
>
> There are tons of French loanwords in Lowlands Saxon (Low German), partly
> borrowed via Dutch and German (especially in the 18th century when French
> was all the rage) and partly borrowed directly during French occupation in
> the early 19th century. Some of them are quite distorted due to most
people
> not knowing and reading French (at the time), and some are blends of LS or
> German words with French loans (e.g., _vutteraasch_
> 'provisions' < German _Futter_ 'feed' + French _fourrage_ 'feed'). Also,
> there appear to be a few pseudo-French words; they seem like French loans,
> but so far there is no satisfactory etymological explanation. Two example
> are _etepetete_ 'fussy', 'finicky', 'hoity-toity', 'niminy-piminy',
> 'pernickety', and _Schissl aweng_ '(overly/excentrically) grandiose
> flourish'.
>
> I have started compiling a (not exhaustive) list of such loans (also lists
> of English, Dutch and Slavonic loans). I can only give you a few tidbits
of
> the French loan inventory here:
>
> schosen () 'things', 'stories', 'matters', 'happening(s)' (<
> choses)
> tuur () 'tour', 'trip', 'outing', 'way (of doing)', 'mood', 'rut' (<
> tour)
> paslatant () 'activity for passing one's time', 'entertainer' (<
> pour passer le temp)
> perd?? 'lost', 'gone' (< perdu)
> partu 'in any case', 'by all/no means', 'absolutly' (< partout)
> musche () 'mister' (usually jocular) ()
> mamsell () '(female) housekeeper' (< mademoiselle)
> raasch () 'rage', 'anger' (< rage)
> ambraasch ~ ambraass ( ~ ) 'to-do', 'fuss' (< embarras)
> schenant 'embarrassed', 'embarrassing' (< g??nant)
> schemisett () 'chem ise', 'undershirt' (< chemisette)
> p??-a-p?? 'bit-by-bit', 'gradually' (< peu-? -peu)
> momang () 'moment' (< moment)
> priwee () 'privy', 'toilet' (< priv??(e))
> maless ~ malesch ( ~ ) 'problem', 'trouble' (< malaise)
> profoss 'forcefully' (< par force)
> schossee () 'causeway' (< chauss??e)
> visaasch () 'face', 'mug' (< visage)
> schangs () 'chance' (< chance)
> sch??y () 'sauce' (< jus)
> assamblee () 'assembly', 'meeting' (< assembl??e)
> eksk??ys () 'excuse' (< excuse)
> kuntreer () 'contrary' (< contraire)
> durabel ~ d??rabel 'durable' (< durable)
> vigilant ( ~ ) 'vigilant' (< vigilant(e))
> bredulj(e) ( ~ ) 'tense situation', 'jam' (< bredouille)
> (ver)deffendeyren (<(ver)deffendeern>) 'defend' (< d??fendre)
> eklepaasch () 'equipage' (< ??quipage)
> entfamig(t) ~ entfaamt 'infamous', 'dastardly', 'mean' (< inf??me)
> kalmeyren () 'to calm down' (< calmer)
> kamsool () 'sort jacket' (< camisole)
> kaprytsch () 'capricious' (< capricieux/se)
> kontant ~ kuntant 'content' (< content(e))
> j??st(emang) 'just (now)' (< juste(ment))
> kastrull () 'casserole dish', 'saucepan' (< casserole)
> alert 'alert (< alerte)
> biljett ( ~ ) 'ticket' (< billet)
> awekk () 'flourish', 'emphasis', 'belaboring addition' (< avec)
> kumpabel 'capable', 'able' (< compable)
> k(u)raasch () 'courage', 'daring' (< courage)
> kumpelment () 'compliment', 'regard', 'greeting' (< compliment)
>
> Etc., etc. ...
>
> Kumpelmenten!
> Reinhard/Ron



That's Great thanks,

What about those special expressions like "deju vu", savoirfaire etc etc?

Pieter.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn
Subject: Etymology

Hoi again, Pieter!

> What about those special expressions like "deju vu", savoirfaire etc etc?

Wouldn't the following fall into that category?

p??-a-p?? 'bit-by-bit', 'gradually' (< peu-? -peu)

paslatant () 'activity for passing one's time', 'entertainer' (< pour passer
le temp)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:49:21 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:49:21 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.25 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.074921.0700.>

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From: Mike <botas at club-internet.fr>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.06.23 (13) [D/E]

Ron wrote:
> but some of us may take exception to the depiction _babbel- en zeurklupje_
> "little babble and bore club."

I sincerely apologise for letting myself being carried away
and expressing it in such a pointed way. I wanted to highlight
the difference between what we  normally do and what
I propose we could do for once.
Nichts f?r ungut!
Mike Wintzer

----------

From: R. F. Hahn
Subject: Language politics

That's all right, Mike.  Don't worry about it.  We love you anyway.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:51:02 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:51:02 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.25 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.075102.0700.>

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From: Lee Goldberg <leybl_goldberg at yahoo.com>
Subject: Deaf Culture (Korean and Chinese)

Actually, Chinese characters are still used in South Korea, mixed together
with the native Hangul alphabet (much as in Japan), but not in North Korea
(you're right about Vietnam).   According to Bernard Comrie, ed., "The
World's Major Languages" (1987), the South Korean government at that time
required students in secondary schools to learn 1,800 Chinese characters.
If you pick up a newspaper in a Korean restaurant in the U.S., you'll see
some Chinese characters (called "hamsa", I believe, in Korea, which is the
same word as standard Chinese "Han4 Zi4" and Japanese 'kanji') on each page
(but not nearly enough to represent all the words of Chinese origin, which
are said to make up more than half of the Korean vocabulary).

Lee

Ron wrote:
  > It would seem logical to me that those in Chinese-,
  > Japanese-, Korean- and Vietnamese-speaking communities would utilize
  methods
  > similar to Chinese writing (although Chinese characters are no longer
  > officially used in Korea and Vietnam).


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 14:59:23 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:59:23 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2004.06.25 (06) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.075923.0700.>

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=======================================================================


From: Dan Prohaska <daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>

Subject: Spelling Reform (E)



Dear All,



Recently an all-time reoccurring topic popped up again here: A reform of
English spelling. For just under a year now I?ve been a member of an e-mail
correspondence list called ?saundspel?. Never before have I seen so many
different spelling proposals for English. Of course that inspired me to
create my own ?reformed? English spelling. I had come up with several
spelling systems most of which found little favour with the list members.
Lately I?ve settled for a moderate approach which cuts redundant letters and
places diacritics on vowels to distinguish quality and/or quantity. Apart
from afore mentioned simplifications there is also a set of morphemes that
are distinguished. It is by no means a phonemic spelling system, but a
system that aims for high predictability and retention of legibility of
traditional spelling (TS) rather than an ideal phonemic representation of a
certain accent of world English. It allows variants for forms that are
incompatible but tries to minimise these to changes in diacritics. My system
is still very much under construction, it?s a cut and paste job of several
proposals that have been brought forth on the list. Some approaches I have
found, others I have plagiarised from other saundspellers.  Here?s a quick
guide to the general system:



Vowels:



The short vowels in stressed position generally stay the same:



<a>      as in TS <pat>, <mad>; generally there is no distinction made
between the vowel in <pat> and <pass>; this could from a UK perspective be
construed as a Northernism, though it is actually a compromise towards US
English, optionally southern UK English speakers can place <^> on the <a> to
distinguish it. In final position of polysyllabic words <a> represents
schwa, as in <sofa>, and in final position of monosyllabic words <a>
represents the diphthong /eI/ as in <tha> TS ?they? and <da> TS ?day?.



<e>       as in <pet>, <wed>; note that words such as ?any? and ?many? are
changed to <eny> and <meny>;



<i>       as in <pit>, <lid>;



<o>       as in <pot>, <cod>; when ?au? is short the spelling is changed to
<o> as in ?because? which becomes <becos>;



            In final position <o> stands for the diphthong /@U/ as in <go>,
<lo> ?low?, or <tho> ?though?.



<u>       stands for the vowels in <put> and <putt>. The vowel in <put>,
<gud> ?good? and <wud> ?would? can optionally be written <?>: <p?t>, <g?d>,
<w?d> if desired.



<y>       occurs in word final position as the unstressed high front vowel,
as in <t?ny> ?tiny?. Note that it does not change in the plural: <story> =>
<storys>.  Stressed <y> in final position is the diphthong /aI/ as in <hy>
?high?; <ly> ?lie?; <why>; <shy>; in cases of doubt <y> when /aI/ is written
<?> as in <simplif?>.



Accented vowels:



<?>      is the diphthong in ?made?, ?raid?, ?stayed?: <m?d>, <r?d>, <st?d>.
Note that <st?d> alternates with <sta> though <st?> is also permitted.



<?>      is the long vowel in ?father? <f?ther>. US speakers an
alternatively write words such as UK <bother> as US <bather>.



<?>       is the long vowel in ?leave?, ?keen?, ?speak?, ?speech?, ?detail?:
<l?v>, <k?n>, <sp?k>, <sp?ch>, <d?t?l>. Word finally <?> can also be written
without the acute accent if it leaves no room for doubt: ?be?, ?see?, ?thee?
, ?me? => <b?>, <s?>, <th?>, <m?>, or <be>, <se>, <me>, but not *the* ?thee?
because of <the> ?the?.



<?>       is the diphthong /aI/ in ?side?, ?white?, ?light?, ?write?: <s?d>,
<whit>, <l?t>, <r?t>. Words that have /aI/ in final position have <y>:
<hy> - <hyer> ?high? ? ?higher?; <ly> - <lyd> (or l?d) ?lie? ? ?lied?.



<?>       is used where traditional spelling has the Latin value as in
<cl?k> or <ant?c> ?antique? which can alternatively have the ?anglicised?
spelling <ant?k>.



<?>       is the diphthong /@U/ (except word finally), ?holy?, ?wholly?,
?both?, ?home?: <holy>, <holy>, <both>, <h?m>. <?> can alternate with <o> in
?flow? ? ?flowing? <flo> - <fl?ing> etc.



<?>       is /j/+/u:/, ?use?, ?few?, ?new?, ?music?, ?human?, ?duke?: <?s>,
<f?>, <n?>, <m?sic>, <h?man>, <d?k>. US can distinguish /ju:/ with <m?sic>
and /u:/ in <prod?s> by using <?> or <u> word finally in <nu>. ?You? is
written as the sight word <U> which contrasts with sight word <I>.



<?>       is the long /u:/ in ?group?, ?loose?, ?move?: <gr?p>, <l?s>,
<m?v>. In word final position the acute accent can be left out: ?who?, ?glue
?, ?blue?, ?to/two/too?, ?do? <hu>, <glu>, <blu>, <tu>, <du>.



<?>       this is the short /j/+/U/ combination in ?irregular? <ireg?lar>.
The original /j/ has often caused palatalisation either with or without
subsequent loss of the /U/ component as in ?usual? <?z?al>, ?educational?
<ed?c?znl>.



<au>     is the half open back vowel <O:>. Word finally <au> is spelt <aw>.
UK English continues to distinguish ?flaw? and ?floor? as <flaw> and <flor>,
as well as ?flawed? and ?floored? which are <flaud> and <flord>. In many
instanced US speakers can replace UK <au> with US <o> where in US
pronunciation /O:/ and /A/ have coalesced, as in UK <aul> vs. US <ol> ?all?;
UK <aut> vs. US <ot> for ?ought?.



<ou>     is the diphthong <aU> as in ?house?, ?louse?, ?out?, ?shout?:
<hous>, <lous>, <out>, <shout>. Word finally <ou> is spelt <ow>: ?now?, ?cow
?, ?how?: <now>, <cow>, <how>.



<oi>      as in traditional spelling: ?boil?, ?foil?, ?annoyed?, ?toyed?:
<boil>, <foil>, <anoid>, <toid>. Word finally <oi> is spelt <oy>: <boy>,
<anoy>, <toy>.



<ea>      constrasts with <?a> in <?dea> vs. <?d?al>.



<ia>       though generally <ia> is written for /I@/: <aria>; <Britania>.




Unstressed vowels:



/@/       schwa is probably the most complicated vowel to approach
systematically in English without inventing a separate symbol for it. I
would have agreed to the turned e of IPA, but most e-mail codes are not
compatible with this as yet. It would also destroy the visual link between
various derivations. Schwa can thus be as diversely spelt as in traditional
spelling. However I wanted to raise predictability. Word initially and
finally schwa is usually <a>: ?sofa?, ?ago?, ?along?, ?anew?: <s?fa>, <ago>,
<along>, <an?>. In checked position, i.e. when followed by a consonant schwa
is <e>: ?redundant? <redundent>,  ?society? <sos?ety>, ?appearance?
<ap?rens>. Concerning schwa are also the most morphemic generalisations such
as: ?-able/-ible? becomes <-abl>; schwa in ?pro-?, ?con-? and ?com-? remains
<o>; ?-er? is <-er> etc. Exceptions are when derivations show another vowel
such as <regular> with <?ar> because of <reg?larity> vs. <n?ber> and
<n?berhud>, <ability> because of <?bl>.



/I/ and /i/ is <y> word finally and <e> internally: ?because?, ?wanted?,
?believe?, ?enough?, ?sorry?, ?story?, ?foreign?, ?horrid?: <becos>,
<wonted>, <bel?v>, <enuf>, <sorry>, <story>, <forren>, <horred>.




Consonants:



Consonant are generally not doubled except where ambiguous and then only
<rr> as in <sorry>, <lurry>, <ocurens> vs. <ocur>.



b, d, f, h, l, m, n, p, qu, r, t, v, w, x are the same as in traditional
spelling:



<c>       has the value /k/ and is generally written before consonants <a>,
<o>, and <u>. Word initially <c> can also stand for /s/ before <e>, <i> and
<y>. It is part of the standardised suffix <-ic>.



<k>       has always got the value /k/. It is generally written before <e>
and <i>, as well as word finally in monosyllabic words.



<g>       always has the value /g/. Where TS has /dZ/ the reformed spelling
has <j>.



<j>        always has the value /dZ/.



<s>       RS (reformed spelling) does not distinguish between voiced /z/ and
voiceless /s/. Both are spelt <s>. Alternatively /s/ can be spelt <c> in
word initial position if TS has ?c? here. The voiced or voiceless character
of <s> can on occasion be seen in verbs where the past tense (and/or
participle) ending is <d> or <t>: ?pronounced> <pronounst> vs. ?caused?
<causd>. The suffixes such as?-tion?, ?-sion? /S at n/, ?-tial, -sial, -cial?
/S at l/ are standardised as <-sion> and <-sial>



<y>       is the semi-vowel /j/ in ?year?, ?yacht?, ?yellow?: <y?r> (US alt.
<yir>), <yot>, <yelo>.



<z>       word internally it stands for /Z/, especially before <-ion> and
<-?r>: ?measure?, ?treasure?, ?leisure?, ?vision?, ?occasion?: <mez?r>,
<trez?r>, <lez?r>, <vizion>, <oc?zion>.



            In initial position <z> stands for /z/ as in TS: ?zeal? <z?l>,
?zone? <z?n>, ?zillion? <zillion>.



<sh>     is /S/ in initial position as in <ship>, and word finally such as
<fish>, <Inglish>.



<th>      as in TS there is no distinction between voiced /D/ and voiceless
/T/. ?the?, ?they?, ?their?, ?bath? vs. ?bathe?, ?south? vs. ?southern?:

             <the>, <tha>, <th?r>, <bath> vs. <b?th>, <south> vs. <suthern>.



<wh>, <w>   the <wh> spelling is optional and can be written wherever TS has
<wh>. But alternatively <wh> can simply be spelt <w>.



Other sounds and their spelling:



/3:/        is generally written <er> except in a few words that alternate
with /V/ in derivatives such as ?occur? <ocur> vs. ?occurrence? <ocurens>.



/E@/     is <-?r->: ?bare?, ?pair?, ?where?, ?their?, ?there?: <b?r>, <p?r>,
<wh?r>, <th?r>, <th?r>.



/i@/       can be <-ior> in words such as ?inferior? <inferior>, because of
?inferiority? <inferiority>. Otherwise in r-combinations it is spelt <?r>:
?here?, ?hear? both <h?r>. ?Idea? is <?dea>.



RS allows all kinds of alternatives where regional difference of
pronunciation of a national standard variety is phonemically distinct. The
most examples will result from differences between UK and US pronunciation.
Here are a few examples:



UK                     US               TS

alumin?m                              al?minum

n?                                           nu

tu prod?s                                tu prod?s

?ther                                        ?ther

dans (opt. d?ns)                      dans

chans (opt. ch?ns)                   chans

clark                                        clerk

shed?l                                     sked?l

privasy                                    pr?vasy

tom?to                                    tom?to

got                                          gotn

advertisment                          advert?sment

anti-                                        ant?-

caps?l                                     capsl

cl?k                                          clik
(clique)

d?ta, d?ta                                d?ta, data

herb, erb                                 erb, herb

lez?r                                       l?z?r

l?ver                                        lever

leftenent                                  l?tenent

mis?l                                       misl

pr?gres                                    progres

r?t                                          rout, r?t

v?s                                          v?s

roth                                         rath
(wrath)

?ropl?n                                   ?rpl?n

darby                                      derby

gusbery                                   g?sbery



Here?s an example text in RS:



Cornish Launch F?t for Incl?zion on the Fr?mwerk Convension ov Nasionl
M?noritys: Grand Bard Sp?ks Out Agenst Asimil?sion



Brussels / Bruxelles 3/8/2004 , by Davyth Hicks



On Fr?d? Cornish camp?ners f?ting for the r?t tu be ofisially recogn?sd as
an ethnic m?nority launcht a l?gl chalenj agenst the British Guvernment in
the Hy Cort in Lunden.


The camp?ners from the civl r?ts NGO, Cornwall 2000, ch?s St Pyran's Da, the
p?tron s?nt ov Cornwall, to is? j?disial r?v? proc?dings agenst the H?m
Ofis.


P?rents hav b?n frustr?ted at the guvernments ref?sl tu extend the
provizions ov the Counsl ov Europ Fr?mewerk Convension for the Protecsion ov
Nasionl M?noritys tu Cornish p?pl.


Auther and civl r?ts camp?ner John Angarrack, from Bodmin, sed sc?ls had
mist out on milions ov pounds ov extra funding tu prom?t the Cornish langwej
and cult?r.



Th?r hav aulso b?n insidents ov Cornish children b?ing punisht at sc?l for
s?ing tha wer Cornish and not Inglish.



Mr Angarrack t?ld the pres that: "P?pl l?k the Ulster Scots and Gaels hav
had milions ov pounds aworded tu th?r cult?ral gr?ps and ed?c?sion sistm tu
develop th?r langwej, history and cult?r and we hav had nuthing.


"This is the ferst t?m the Cornish hav act?ally instig?ted acsion agenst the
guvernment. The Cornish p?pl hav b?n on the rec?ving end ov litig?sion from
central guvernment befor but this is the ferst t?m we hav gon doun this r?t
ourselvs." He sed the acsion wos b?ing braut under h?man r?ts lejisl?sion
and the R?s Rel?sions Act.



"The H?m Ofis is stil preventing the Cornish from benefiting from the meny
ed?c?sionl and cult?ral r?ts acorded tu nasionl m?noritys by the Fr?mwerk
Convension. Th?r is no l?gl justific?sion for this." he sed.


Solisiter Martin Pearce, hu is acting for the gr?p ov p?rents, t?ld the
Western Morning N?s that: "The Cornish wont recognision under the
convension. But representativs hav b?n t?ld that w?n't hapn becos the
Cornish hav not b?n recogn?sd as an ethnic gr?p by the British corts."


Camp?ners hav aulredy discust the merits ov the c?s with the Comision for
R?sial Equolity. Tha deb?ted discrimin?sion in the provizion ov ed?c?sion
and cult?ral funding as wel as conserns over housing and emploiment.



The l?gl acsion is l?kly tu be embaresing for the H?m Ofis in the very s?m
y?r that the guvernment is obl?jd tu submit its secnd Fr?mwerk Convension
Compl?ens Report tu the Counsl ov Europ.



The l?gl submision asks the H?m Ofis a number ov importent questsions
rel?ting tu the form?l?sion and implement?sion ov British r?s polisy.
Camp?ners sa th?r is cl?r evidens that l?ving the Cornish out ov the
convension is unlauful.



The acsion fol?s a sucsesful m?ting the w?k befor, wh?r p?rents and ofisials
from the Comision for R?sial Equolity resulted in the Comision promising tu
t?k im?diat acsion.



Tha sa tha wil combat discrimin?sion agenst the Cornish in the f?lds ov
ed?c?sionl provision and cult?ral funding.



P?rents f?ting for th?r childrens r?t tu hav the Cornish langwej, history
and cult?r taut in sc?ls atended the m?ting in Lunden at the end ov
February. The m?ting consentr?ted on the guvernments oblig?sions tuwords the
Cornish in respect ov laus des?nd tu end the marjinl?s?sion and forst
asimil?sion ov cult?ral m?noritys.



Spesific ?reas discust incl?ded public authority present?sion ov history,
m?nority langwej oport?nitys, and efectiv cult?ral partisip?sion. M?nwh?l
thru-out Cornwall celebr?sions wer held for Cornwalls p?tron s?nt, St Pyran,
and Grand Bard Rod Lyon ov the Cornish Gorseth, a cult?ral organ?s?sion, ?sd
the oc?zion tu sp?k out agenst the ong?ing cult?ral and politicl asimil?sion
ov Cornwall by her larjer n?ber Ingland.


"On this gr?t da a host ov St Pyran flags hav b?n proudly caryd thru the
str?ts ov Tr?r? by dedic?ted men and wimen h?s harts ar in Cornwal. Tha ar
p?pl from aul wauks ov l?f hu hav spent and ar spending a vast amount ov
th?r fre t?m tu ens?r the n?m ov Cornwall and its heritej ar not asimil?ted
intu larjer n?sions.



"In sp?t ov the Fr?mwerk Convension for the Protecsion ov Nasionl M?noritys,
s?nd by aul the m?jer pours in Europ, this pr?ses ov asimil?sion contin?s,
oftn (ofn) c?vertly. It is th?s proud p?pl ov Cornwal hu ar sacrif?sing so
much tu hault this. Luking around h?r tuda, I se meny ov them amung us.?



The tradisionl par?d in Tr?r? wos wun ov meny events tu t?k pl?s not just in
Cornwal but in Cornish com?nitys acros the werld in oner ov St Pyran.
(Eurolang)


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 16:00:09 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 09:00:09 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.25 (07) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.090009.0700.>

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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 (Ze?uws)
=======================================================================

From: R. F. Hahn
Subject: Language varieties

Folks,

I received a message from someone who contributes information about and in
the Low Franconian dialect of M?hlheim (M?lm) an der Ruhr, Germany.  As far
as I can tell, this dialect and related ones of farwestern Germany are
closest related to Limburgish, somewhat farther probably also to Brabantish,
Flemish and Dutch, but I leave this to our experts to decide.

First of all, here is the communication from Mr. Firla (whom I am copying
here):

<quote>

Hello Mr. Hahn,
I just discovered your net-contributions to questions of Low Franconian
dialects.
And the versions of "Sinter M?tes V?gelschen".
Would you please be so kind  to have a friendly look on my website, where I
have - under "M?lmsche Lieder" - some pages of "M?tes-Forschung"

http://moelmsch.muelheim-ruhr.de

Perhaps you understand German as well?

Best regards

Franz Firla
</quote>

Yes, I understand German as well, as do many others on our list.  And I
understand your local dialect pretty well also.

Below is my attempt at loosely assimilating the spelling of the poem "Us
D?rpke" ("Our Village") by Walter Ferschen
(http://www.muelheim-ruhr.de/ae4e7d31fdd16fce76f9d521adc3bb51.html) to the
orthography of the Limburgish varieties of the Netherlands and Belgium.
Corrections and suggestions would be welcome.  Note short /a/ realized as
"au" (e.g., _Laund_ 'land', 'country') like in Mennonite Lowlands Saxon (Low
German, Plautdietsch)!

The writer of the poem is quite right in saying that, despite the reputation
of the area as a dismal coal mining region, the area he loves is quite
beautiful and charming, very lush and green.  As a teen I once spent a few
summer weeks in M?hlheim (M?lm) and thought it and the people there were
just lovely.  Unfortunately, I was too young and inexperienced to appreciate
their language varieties at the time.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***


   ?S D?RPKE

   ?s haimaot ?s em Duutsjen laund
   eis kaolenpot m?r eis bekaunt.
   Mer, dat nou graad hie oeze gegend
   en stukse ?rd ?s, van Got gegeve,
   wat zich waal zene lote koos,
   dat wait bai oes der klainste poos.
   Wen boeterluud van aunderw?rts,
   die ?s d?rpke nei kenneliert,
   nou zich waal geve gr?te muhe
   ?s Roerlaund eis drekgat te versjrie?,
   do z?gge wai hat: "Haulent die sjnoete",
   wege dat wai op oes d?rp niks koemme lote.
   Dat w?rt oes haimaot nei ger?ch,
   oes Saan, dat ?s garnei z? sjl?ch.
   Jo, hie sjtond kain haoge berge er?m,
   op die me im zoemmer sjie vare kan.
   Et gif ouk kaine sjtraund met saund
   hie, in oezem Saansjen laund
   oen b?s no'm meir, dat waite git
   ?s et waal gans ordenlich wied.
   Wat mak nou graad in oezem d?rp
   dat leive mangs s? levensw?rt?
   Wor?m doon v?l, die erges v?rtgegange,
   ??r leve lang aan Saan me'm hatte hange,
   v??r die, mit welterfahrung m?r eis stief
   oes leiv d?rpke al ?mmer haimaot bliev?
   Dat l?t zich nei s? r?ch verkl??re,
   et ?s, s?lvs v??r die, die hie geb?re,
   al ?mmer wie?r en gr?t erbaue,
   dat oes Saan mit roeren oen aue
   wat wounebaore ?s op oeze w?lt
   oen oes Saansje mangs tezameh?it.
   Z? eis et hait in en aule kalleroot:
   "M?lm boven aan oen Saan boven drop!"


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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Fri Jun 25 21:08:20 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 14:08:20 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.25 (08) [E]
Message-ID: <FRI.25.JUN.2004.140820.0700.>

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.06.25 (02) [E]

Speaking of double plurals... here are two recent example from High German
that you hear a lot these days: "the pedal", as on a bicycle", is "das
Pedal"; plural is "die Pedale". Now quite a few people seem to think that
"die Pedale" is a female singular noun, and come up with the plural "die
Pedalen".

The other one is similar: "the hoof" = "der Huf", plural "die Hufe" - some
people think this is female singular and come up with the "plural" form "die
Hufen".

I hope this isn't catching...

Gabriele Kahn

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 28 18:07:33 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 11:07:33 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.28 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.28.JUN.2004.110733.0700.>

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

Dear Lowlanders,

A few things I have been hearing lately have provoked me to revisit in my
mind the issues of language survival and language spread.  Under "language
spread" I would like to include second-language learning, which, in my
opinion goes hand in hand with international attention, which strengthens
language prestige and confidence, thus increasing survival chances. I would
like to invite your input on these topics.

Let us take the example of Dutch.  Quite often we hear about people feeling
that the Dutch language is in one way or another being threatened, even
under siege.  There are those native speakers that feel there is too much
English influence on Dutch, oftentimes in the form of gratuitous adoption of
English terms where native ones are available or could easily be created.
Furthermore, the influential organization Onze Taal (Our Language) appears
to fear that official recognition of regional languages of the Netherlands
as separate from Dutch chips away at Dutch, reducing the number of native
speakers and national as well as international significance and prestige of
Dutch.  It regrets that Lowlands Saxon and Limburgish have been officially
recognized, and it may have played a role in the recent governmental refusal
to officially recognize Zeelandic.

It appears to me that the number of native speakers is not as important as
the attitude of native speakers.  As we have mentioned many times before,
Dutch speakers of the Netherlands have an international reputation for being
more than willing to use languages other than Dutch -- typically English,
German and/or French -- not only with foreigners who actually require the
help but more often than not with those that do not require or want the
help, including people who desparately try to learn Dutch.  Recently I have
bumped into a number of Americans and other nationals that have lived in the
Netherlands and now speak good or even excellent Dutch and that have a
continued interest in Dutch and Netherlands culture.  Each one told me that
it often felt like an exaspirating uphill battle, especially in Amsterdam,
because people would automatically address them in English, would sometimes
even answer in English when addressed in Dutch.

Dutch speakers in general seem to believe that they have to learn and use
"more significant" foreign languages because their own is insignificant
outside the Netherlands, Belgium and former Netherlands colonies.  This
appears to apply even to foreign residents  at home.  The impression this
gives the foreign visitor has an extreme in a snippet of conversation I
recently picked up at an airport, where an American woman told others, "Now
that the Dutch are changing over to English ..."  I had to eavesdrop to find
out if she really meant what I thought she meant, and she did!  It took all
I had to resist interfering in that conversation.

It occurred to me that rather than struggle with campaigns to halt the
influx of English and other foreign loanwords -- which may be futile,
especially among younger people with a need for rebellion -- it might be
more condusive to language survival to start a campaign urging Dutch
speakers to be helpful to foreign visitors who do not know Dutch but to
otherwise use Dutch with selfconfidence, though without chauvinism, while
expecting and helping foreign residents to learn and speak Dutch.  In my
opinion, this may well work because the Netherlands have an unusually high
percentage of foreign residents.  Going by what I see on Lowlands-L and from
applications for membership alone, there is a large number of people who
wish to learn Dutch, and many foreign residents returning home continue use
of and contacts with Dutch.  If the average Dutch speaker became really
aware of this level of intererest, perhaps this would increase their
confidence in their own language, and this would make them less uptight with
regard to granting official status to the regional languages of their
country.

What I am trying to suggest here is "Don't underestimate the power of
foreigners' interest, but take advantage of it!"

Furthermore, I wonder if the same applies to regional and minority
languages.  In the case of Lowlands Saxon (Low German) of Germany, for
example, the predominant assumption is that it is an internal, regional
affair, that no one outside the region and country would be interested in
it, that it is at best something some local German speakers want to learn
(which is why language courses are being offered mostly to adult German
speakers).  I have told some of the people on the "inside" that, judging by
the large number of email inquiries I get, there is a considerable number of
non-Germans who are interested in the language and wish to learn it but are
deterred by having to do it through the medium of German.  My argument that
there is demand for LS resources and courses in English tend to be dismissed
as based on aberrations, wishful thinking and overestimation.

Am I alone in assuming that international attention is potentially condusive
to strengthening the image and thus the survival chances of a language?

I would be interested in your thoughts on these matters.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 28 22:23:40 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:23:40 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Onomastica" 2004.06.28 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.28.JUN.2004.152340.0700.>

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From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at prtc.net>
Subject: Etymology

Dear Ron and other Lowland fans,

At the tender age of nine I moved into the New York Township of Mannheim.
Dad said that "Mann" was the German for "man" and "Heim" the German for
"home", but couldn't explain why the Township to the northeast was called
"Oppenheim".

Totally innocent of any language but third grade English, I convinced myself
it had to be Oppenheim because it was across the river from us. Also it
consisted of some marginal farms in the threshhold of my beloved Adirondack
mountains, while our side had a slipper factory, the "Hal Schumacher"
baseball bat factory, a lumber mill, churches, bars and other modern
conveniences.

I still wonder about those names. Can anybody help me?

Jorge Potter

----------

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

Hi, Jorge!

This _Oppen-_ in Central German place names (perhaps also _Offen-_, as in
_Offenbach_, farther south) tends to refer either to "upper" or to a
sacrificial cult center (cf. German _Opfer_ 'sacrifice' < _opfern_ 'to
sacrifice' < Old German _opfar?n_ < Late Church Latin _oper?r?_ 'to
work/operate').  I don't know which one it is.

German shift: -p- > -pp- > -pf- (> -ff-)

_Heim_ refers to 'settlement', 'village', and has numerous equivalent in
Germanic and indeed Indo-European, amongst others English _-ham_.

Strictly speaking, this does not fall into the Lowlands area, but I'll let
it slide.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 28 22:25:51 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:25:51 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.28 (03) [E]
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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.06.23 (01) [E]

Dear Kenneth, Reinhard & Gabriele & All,

Subject: Formal & Informal Language.

Reflecting on our last correspondence, Kenneth, I am moved to raise certain
points of interest.
Although I aver that Afrikaans is at present represented by only one
dialect, there are nonetheless significant differences between various kinds
of Afrikaans.

These differences are the product of Formal & Informal, Deferential &
Intimate. This is surely not peculiar to Afrikaans. I would rather believe
that English has lost most of what the Afrikaner takes for granted in this
regard. For those ( this probably excludes most of us) who wonder what I
mean, I would say this. Deferential Formal Speech uses 'U' in place of the
English 'You', Intimate Informal, 'Jou'  for the English 'Thee' (long gone),
& so on. The Deferential Informal abandons personal pronouns, using rather
constructions like this 'Will Mama do such-&-such' instead of 'Mama, will
you do such-&-such. Etc. There are a host of such differences.

& then there is the deliberate affectation of informal as opposed to formal
vocabulary. Much of this is slang known & used to a greater or lesser degree
across the whole language spectrum, in selected social contexts. It is a
universal phenomenon, I know. Some slang usages can be lasting, & come
gradually into formal use, but most is ephemeral, & changes from decade to
decade. We have the case that Grikwas of the older generation confess with
outrage that they don't understand the younger. On the other hand, the
features accredited to their grandparent's 'dialect' is as obscure to them
as it is to us, failing study. It isn't dialect lost, it is slang.

There is the inclination common to all polyglottal communities, to borrow
casual terminology from other language groups, but to abandon them in formal
context. Some Czech language students came over to S. Africa a while ago,
who had acquired fluency in Afrikaans, & I heard them speak; they had.
However, they complained that when conversation became casual, they lost the
thread - there was too much English in it, & they hadn't enough English.

When people accredit the Grikwa, or Koranna, or Nama, or Rehaboth Baster, or
Namakwalander, or Namibia Afrikaner, or Botswana Afrikaner, with a
'Dialect', I am moved to wonder to what extent the Scholars in question
augered in on Informal Speech & casual language, the ephemera, or borrowings
(just for the occasion)
from another tongue.

Certainly, these features will in the future lead to divergent dialects, but
I think not yet.

Here is something from R. K. Belcher:

DISTRICT SIX

Ma is dood
onder 'n trein.
Ons leef van brood
en Pa van wyn.

Hoit gamat, kappit kappit eit
want m?re is jy alles kwyt.
Spoeg in die lug en sing jong, sing
want die lewe is 'n bitter ding.

Georgie Peorgie pudding and pie -
hoe s? jy ek het God verraai?
Ou klong, you sommer make me cry.
Hoes daai?

Mary had
a little lamb,
its feets was white
like snow.
hul het hom toe
mos vasgenael,
en kyk
hoe lyk
hy
nou.

This is touted by some as dialect, but not by me. The party that would speak
this way in the intimacy of his drinking buddies could equally well speak
fluent Algemeen Beskaafde Afrikaans in the Magistrate's Court (for example).
All the language found here could with the same facility be used by a  white
Transvaaler, in the appropriate context.

'Hoit' is peculiar to the Boland, by any racial group, but a Freestater will
use it in a 'Cape' anecdote. 'Gamat' is a group nickname for a Cape Malay
(short for Muhammad), as 'Taffy' in England applies to a Welshman. 'Kappit
kappit' 'step it step it'  is slang; an urge to dance: These days though, a
ghoffel is more likely to say 'get down'. 'Eit' is 'casual' for 'uit'.
'Klong' is the term for a Cape Malay of the previous generations, & a
Transvaaler would know & use it too. 'You "sommer" make me cry.' is English,
with an Afrikaans interpolation: In both directions, it is common practice
across the board. Notice how much English there is? It might be another
language, though, like Nama. As with the rather more polyglottal Englishman
of previous generations, who used a lot of French in his common
conversation, this had no bearing on the English he spoke.

Yrs Sincerely
Mark.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Mon Jun 28 23:07:36 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:07:36 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.28 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <MON.28.JUN.2004.160736.0700.>

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language use" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language use
>
> Let us take the example of Dutch.  Quite often we hear about people
feeling
> that the Dutch language is in one way or another being threatened, even

I think the Dutch case is a good demonstration of the fact that just because
a language has the government's backing and an education system doesn't mean
it's future is guaranteed!

Ultimately, after history has ran it's course and you look back on dead
languages, the only thing that really matters in language survival is its
status in the eyes of its speakers. Official backing and a place in the
national curriculum certainly raises its status, but it's the raised status
that results in the language thriving, not the official backing itself. An
example worth considering is Latin and Greek, which remained well alive in
Britain until quite recently, simply on the strength of their status making
them seem important to include as part of a man's education. And yes, I do
mean a "man's" education - low-status languages like French and Spanish were
only taught to women!

A long time ago on Lowlands-L, John Magnus said that Shetlanders who went on
holiday to Wales considered the Welsh to be rude because they spoke Welsh
even when they (the Shetlanders) were present. Whereas Shetlanders are
polite, and only speak English in the presence of off-islanders.

It's no surprise though, that Shetlandic has been dying a dramatic death in
the past few decades, while Welsh continues to thrive. The real difference
is that the Welsh want to speak Welsh, and Shetlanders want to speak
English. The Welsh aren't rude, all they're doing is according their
language proper language status, while the Shetlanders call their language
"dialect". Yes, the Welsh language has a lot of official backing and a place
in the educational system, but this is only because Welsh speakers struggled
for it. I think that if Shetlanders had tried as hard, the language would
have the same recognition. But their "polite" image in front of visitors is
more important to them than their language.

It's very difficult getting even knowledgeable people to accept this idea.
For example, when I said that Cornish died out because Cornish speakers
wanted their children to speak English, the idea was dismissed as
"laughable". Activists keep saying that Welsh, Scots, Cornish &c are
"oppressed by the English". In fact, most English people never even think
about Scots, Cornish and Welsh, let alone attempt to oppress them. It's
entirely a question of the status the speakers of the language accord to it.

In the case of BSL it's a little different. There seems little chance of the
language dying out simply because many of it's best speakers simply _must_
use it. This automatically accords it a high status in the eyes of its
speakers. It's also different from other languages in that oral cultures
find the speakers living and using the language in their midst, and so
active attempts are made to suppress it. The ancient Greeks tried to supress
it by infanticide, Alexander Graham Bell tried to suppress it by eugenics,
the medical profession has tried to suppress it by finding cures, and the
teaching profession has tried to suppress it by brute force. But nothing
will wipe out a language that its speakers have decided they just have to
use.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Thanks for the thought-provoking input above, Sandy!

I totally agree with your statement that the speakers' attitudes, more than
institutionalization, are of paramount importance for the continued use of a
language.

I would go as far as including "heirs" along with speakers.  This follows
from your thread of speakers who "must" use a certain language.  This may no
longer seem that strange if you consider the fact that certain languages,
ancestral languages, even though technically extinct as native languages,
continue to be used and even thrive because they are inextricably connected
with and even basic to belief systems, religions.

You mentioned Latin, which is one example, representing Roman Catholicism,
still being used as a lingua franca, not only in writing but also verbally.

The roles of New Testament Greek and Old Church Slavonic are as important in
Eastern Orthodoxy, though they probably are not used in casual conversation.

Another example is Sanskrit, which "officially" changed from a living
language to a liturgical one in about the 4th century B.C.E., being still
widely studied, mostly in Hinduism and to a somewhat lesser degree also in
Mah?y?na Buddhism.  Similar to Latin in the Roman Catholic world, it is
still used as a literary language and is still spoken as a second language,
especially as a lingua franca.  To some Indians this is preferable to having
Hindi as a national language, since it does not favor a certain ethnic
group.  In fact, Sanskrit is one of India's official languages (with Hindi,
English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam,
Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri and Sindhi).  In India there are
even Sanskrit radio programs, outside of India only offered by Deutsche
Welle as a part of their Hindi programming (though it appears to be
discontinued now).  Many Sanskrit courses offered in India and elsewhere
include the teaching of conversational skills, using neologisms for which
native Sanskrit compounding has been utilized.

Classical Arabic enjoys the highest of prestige and is promised a rosy
future because it is basic to Islam, even though it is the native dialect of
virtually no one.

As I mentioned a while ago, Hebrew has never totally ceased to be a living
language.  It was still used in literature and in international Jewish
communication even prior to the birth of Zionism, though it was extinct as a
native language.

All of this is due to high prestige, sacred language status, among the
speakers' heirs.

The case of Hebrew shows us that on that basis a language can even regain
native language status.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 29 14:27:13 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 07:27:13 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.29 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <TUE.29.JUN.2004.072713.0700.>

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From: Cr?ost?ir ? Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.28 (04) [E]


Sandy wrote:
"But their "polite" image in front of visitors is more important to them
than their language. It's very difficult getting even knowledgeable people
to accept this idea. For example, when I said that Cornish died out because
Cornish speakers wanted their children to speak English, the idea was
dismissed as "laughable". Activists keep saying that Welsh, Scots, Cornish
&c are "oppressed by the English". In fact, most English people never even
think about Scots, Cornish and Welsh, let alone attempt to oppress them.
It's entirely a question of the status the speakers of the language accord
to it."

Sandy sets up two inter-related arguments here: 1) that the status of
languages is entirely the responsibility of their speakers and 2) that, in
the British context, the English State (for that is what it is) should
commensurably be absolved of any fault for the state of Welsh, Scots,
Cornish et al.

It is certainly the case that Welsh speakers are more proud of their
language and more pro-active about it, and that Welsh has secured a certain
prestige in Wales as a consequence of pride, refusal to bow to social mores
(unlike the Shetlanders), and civil disobedience. In that sense, Sandy is
correct. I have long said that language activists should stand up to
metropolitan language speakers in social situations (the pub clich? is
always a good one), vandalise or destroy public signage in 'imperial'
language, and respond to official forms in their own, rather than the
'imperial', language.

However, Sandy tendentiously omits the basic facts that, in Britain, the
State, which is dominated demographically by the English core, has always
been against local language promotion. The idea that the State can be
absolved of its continuing campaign against local languages is wrong-headed.
Firstly, it ignores the basic fact that the State is the main location of
linguistic prestige (e.g., public signage, courts, government, schools,
hospitals, etc.), and that a State refusing to concede linguistic rights is
therefore protecting the linguistic hegemony of the 'imperial' language*
and, quite frankly, short of replacing roadsigns with local language
equivalents (which will themselves be replaced by the State as a challenge
to its authority), setting up private schools, hospitals and shadow
governments that use the local language - and I cannot imagine any language
community can afford that - language activists find it almost impossible to
challenge the State. In thi s context, Sandy's absolution of the sins of the
State is puzzling.

*A good example of this is the way the British Government continues to
abrogate its obligation toward Irish (and Ulster Scots) under the Good
Friday Agreement - the banality of inaction.

Go raibh maith agat,

Criost?ir.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Tue Jun 29 21:34:27 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 14:34:27 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.29 (02) [D/E/French]
Message-ID: <TUE.29.JUN.2004.143427.0700.>

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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
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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.28 (01) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language use
> Furthermore, the influential organization Onze Taal (Our Language) appears
to fear that official recognition of regional languages of the Netherlands
as separate from Dutch chips away at Dutch, reducing the number of native
speakers and national as well as international significance and prestige
of Dutch.  It regrets that Lowlands Saxon and Limburgish have been
officially recognized, and it may have played a role in the recent
governmental refusal to officially recognize Zeelandic.

This battle is even going on in France, quotation below:

Regards,
Roger

From: Alliance R??gionale Flandre-Artois-Hainaut
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 10:16 AM
Subject: LETTRE OUVERTE / OPEN BRIEF

La Gorgue, Pays-Bas fran??ais, le 03 juin 2004.
De Gorgue, Franse-Nederlanden, 3 juni 2004

L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT
Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESI??-HENEGOUWEN

?  Monsieur Jean Pierre DECOOL,
maire de Brouckerque/Broekkerke, conseiller g??n??ral, d??put??

Aan mijnheer Jean-Pierre Decool,,
Burgemeester van Broekkerke, algemeen raadslid, afgevaardigde,

Monsieur le maire, Monsieur le d??put??,
Mijnheer de burgemeester, Mijnheer de afgevaardigde,

L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT vient d'apprendre par la presse
(Le Journal des Flandres du 27/05/04), la cr??ation d'une ?? Akademie Voor
Nuuze Vlaamsche Tale - Acad??mie pour notre langue flamande ??, ainsi que le
patronage que vous lui apportez.

Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESI??-HENEGOUWEN heeft zojuist vernomen
door de pers (Le Journal des Flandres du 27/05/04), de oprichting van een ??
Akademie Voor Nuuze Vlaamsche Tale ??, evenals het beschermheerschap dat u
het verleent.

Cette initiative, telle qu'elle a ??t?? rapport??e dans cet article, suscite de
notre part un certain nombre de r??flexions :

Dit initiatief, zoals het aangehaald werd in het artikel, verwekt bij ons
een aantal opmerkingen :

 1. Qui dit ?? Acad??mie ??, dit uniformisation, fixation de r??gles. Ceci est
possible pour une langue ??crite de large communication : la Taalunie a
entrepris cet effort avec succ??s pour les diff??rentes variantes flamande,
limbourgeoise, hollandaise, etc. du n??erlandais standard (AN ou Algemeen
Nederlands). Mais quel sens lui donner pour un dialecte , par d??finition non
??crit, connaissant des disparit??s d'un coin du Westhoek ?  l'autre ? Quel ??
vlaemsch ?? ou ?? vlaamsche ?? va l'emporter ? Celui de Bray-Dunes ? Celui de
Belle/Bailleul ? Faudra-t-il faire une synth??se g??n??rale ?... qui sera
parl??e par qui ? Probl??me de fond : comment fixer l'orthographe d'un...
dialecte ?
Sans pr??tendre que ces questions sont n??cessairement insurmontables, avouons
qu'elles sont de taille !

 1. Wie ?? academie ?? zegt, zegt gelijkvormigheid, vast gelegde regels. Dit
is mogelijk voor een geschreven taal met grote kennisgeving : De taalunie
heeft een grote inspanning met succes geleverd voor het Vlaams, het
Limburgs, het Hollands, enz., die gewijzigde vormen zijn van het Algemeen
Nederlands. Maar welke betekenis geef je een dialect, per definitie niet
geschreven, met de verschillen die gekend zijn van de ene uithoek van de
Westhoek naar de andere ? Welk ?? Vlaemsch ?? of ?? Vlaamsche ?? zal de overhand
behouden ? Het Vlaams uit Bray-Duinen of dat van Belle ? Of zou er een
algemene samenvatting moeten gemaakt worden ?...Dat gesproken zal worden
door wie ? Diepgaand probleem : Hoe een spelling vastleggen van een ...
dialect.
Zonder te beweren dat deze vragen noodzakelijk onoverkomelijk zijn, moet er
toegegeven worden dat ze zwaar doorwegen !

 2. La d??fense du flamand fait partie du programme ([lire]) de l'ALLIANCE
REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT.
Ce programme reprend les dispositions du
Manifeste des Flamands de France, co-sign?? par l'ensemble des associations
culturelles de Flandre fran??aise en 1982, et recommande ?? l'enseignement de
la langue populaire flamande... dans le cadre d'une p??dagogie adapt??e ??,
dans les ??coles maternelles et dans le primaire (c'est-? -dire, sous forme
orale de comptines, chansons, sayn??tes, po??sies, etc.), avec passage rapide,
voire simultan??, au n??erlandais ??crit. La cr??ation d'une ?? Akademie ?? doit
??uvrer pour ce type d'enseignement.

 2. De verdediging van het Vlaams maakt deel uit van het programma ([lezen])
van Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESI??-HENEGOUWEN.
Dit programma herneemt
de stellingen van het manifest van de Vlamingen uit Frankrijk, mede
ondertekend in1982 door het geheel van Vlaamse verenigingen in Frankrijk.
?? Het onderwijs van de volkse Vlaamse taal... in een aangepast pedagogisch
kader ??, in kleuter en lager onderwijs wordt aanbevolen, (Dit wil zeggen
onder mondelinge vorm van verhalen, liedjes, toneelstukken, gedichten,
enz.), met een vlugge of gelijklopende overgang naar het geschreven
Nederlands. De oprichting van een ?? academie ?? moet werken naar deze vorm
van onderwijs.

 3. L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT proteste contre toute
d??claration visant ?  pr??senter le n??erlandais comme langue ??trang??re. Qu'une
telle affirmation ??mane d'autorit??s parisiennes est une chose, qu'elle soit
reprise par certains Flamands d'ici n'est gu??re compr??hensible, et contribue
?  nous maintenir dans le ghetto linguistique et par cons??quent ??conomique
des fronti??res d'Etat, ceci ?  l'heure o?? la construction europ??enne
relativise partout ailleurs ces fronti??res ! La ?? schreve ?? n'est pas un
rideau de fer ??ternel ! Ne voudrait-on que l'Anglais comme seule langue nous
permettant de nous ouvrir vers le Nord, comme l'a d??nonc?? le s??nateur
Jacques Legendre dans son dernier rapport sur l'enseignement des langues
vivantes en France ?

 3. Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESI??-HENEGOUWEN
 is tegen elke verklaring
die het Nederlands afschildert als een vreemde taal. Dat deze bevestiging
voortvloeit uit de Parijse overheid is een punt, maar dat deze gedachtegang
overgenomen wordt door enkele Vlamingen is onverstaanbaar en houdt het
taalkundig getto in stand met gevolgen voor de economie op de grenzen van de
staat. En dit, vandaag, waar de Europese constructie al zijn grenzen
relativeert. De ?? schreve ?? is geen eeuwig durend ijzeren gordijn ! Zou men
willen dat het Engels de enige taal is om ons open te stellen naar het
noorden, zoals de senator Jacques Legendre aanklaagde in zijn laatste
verslag over het onderwijs van de levende talen in Frankrijk.

 4. L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUTd??fend une politique
d'ouverture culturelle et ??conomique passant par l'enseignement prioritaire
du n??erlandais, ainsi que la municipalit?? de BELLE/BAILLEUL l'a bien
compris. Le n??erlandais, forme litt??raire du flamand langue r??gionale, est
AUSSI une langue r??gionale et notre langue HISTORIQUE. C'est la seule langue
qui puisse nous donner acc??s ?  notre propre Histoire, dont nous r??clamons
aussi l'enseignement dans nos ??tablissements. Les ??crits des grands auteurs
issus du Westhoek, Michiel De Swaen, Andries Steven, Pieter Datheen (qui a
publi?? une traduction des psaumes encore utilis??e aux Pays-Bas), ou m??me
d'auteurs plus contemporains (JB Van Grevelinghe), les tonnes d'archives
inexploit??es, les cat??chismes, la toponymie, etc., tout cela est en
n??erlandais de l'??poque et du lieu, avec, certes, des graphies et des
tournures particuli??res, mais du n??erlandais , m??me si chacun s'accorde ?
l'appeler ?? flamand ?? !

 4. Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESI??-HENEGOUWENverdedigt een open
politiek inzake cultuur en economie met aandacht voor het prioritaire
onderwijs van de Nederlandse taal, dit heeft het gemeentebestuur van BELLE
goed verstaan. Het Nederlands, De literaire vorm van onze Vlaamse
streektaal, is OOK een streektaal en onze HISTORISCHE taal. Het is de enige
taal die ons toegang kan geven tot onze eigen geschiedenis, dat ook
onderwezen moet worden in onze instellingen. De geschriften van de grote
auteurs uit de Westhoek, Michiel De Swaen, Andries Steven, Pieter Datheen
(die een vertaling uitgegeven heeft van psalmen die nog gebruikt worden in
Nederland), of zelfs nog hedendaagsere auteurs (JB Van Grevelinghe), de
tonnen ongebruikte archieven, De catechismussen, de toponymie, enz, dit
alles is in het Nederlands van die tijd, met eigen uitzonderlijke
vervormingen en schrijfwijzen, maar toch Nederlands, zelfs al noemden ze het
?? Vlaams ?? !

 5. Qu'il y ait des correspondances ?  ??tablir entre le ?? vlaemsch ?? et le
n??erlandais, est ??vident. L'enrichissement sera r??ciproque ! C'est la
compl??mentarit?? langue de communion et langue de large communication...
encore faut-il r??habiliter le n??erlandais comme langue historique et ne pas
mener notre population dans l'impasse anti-n??erlandaise. C'est en effet ce
que pourrait laisser croire le choix d'une graphie volontairement (?) en
m??me temps que partiellement (!), diff??rente du n??erlandais : ex : ??
Akademie ?? s'??crit en n??erlandais avec un C et non un K. Pourquoi ??
Vlaamsch ?? et non pas ?? vlaemsch ?? admis par tous ? Mais alors, ?? Nuus ??
devrait faire ?? Nuze ?? et non ?? Nuuze ??. Pourquoi ?? tale ?? et non pas ??
taal ?? ? Ces quelques contradictions dans le titre de l' acad??mie nous
??tonnent : s'agit-il d'erreurs d'appr??ciations ou d'un nouveau ??
sectarisme ?? anti-langue n??erlandaise ?

 5. Het is evident dat de overeenkomst tussen het ?? Vlaemsch ?? en het
Nederlands moet hersteld worden. De verrijking zal wederzijds zijn ! Het is
de aanvulling tussen de gemeenschap taal en de taal van de communicatie...
men moet het Nederlands in eer herstellen als historische taal van de streek
en het volk niet in een doodlopend straatje leiden naar het anti-Nederlands.
De vrijwillige Vlaamse schrijfwijze komt in zekere mate geloofwaardig over
(?) en tegelijk maar gedeeltelijk (!) verschillend van het Nederlands: vb.:
?? Akademie ?? in het Nederlands ?? academie ??, waarom ?? nuuze ?? en niet ??
nuze ??. Waarom ?? tale ?? en niet ?? taal ??, zijn enkele tegenstellingen in de
titel van de academie die ons verbazen. Gaat het hier over onwetendheid of
over een nieuwe vorm van ?? sektarisme ?? tegen de Nederlandse taal?

 6. Comment enfin, faire acc??der des non flamandophones de plus en plus
nombreux (nos conjoints ou enfants parfois) ?  la culture flamande ? Par la
petite porte de ?? nuuze vlaamsche tale ?? ? Pour communiquer entre quelques
uns mais avec qui d'autre ? Pour lire quelques textes traduits, mais quels
autres grands textes ? Et pour r??diger quoi ? Nous avons l'avantage de
partager une langue parl??e par plus de 22 millions de voisins performants,
disposant de journaux, radio, TV, universit??s, enseignants, etc., langue qui
offre de formidables avantages au regard de l'emploi et des ??changes
??conomiques, ou encore de l'apprentissage de l'anglais ou de l'allemand. Le
n??erlandais, langue v??hiculaire, est notre langue de culture et un atout
essentiel ?  d??velopper pour notre avenir ??conomique, le tourisme, etc. Les
Flamands belges l'ont bien compris, et ont, ?  l'issue d'une d??marche
identique ?  celle que nous proposons, r??ussi ?  sauver ET leur langue de
large communication (le n??erlandais), ET leurs dialectes toujours bien
vivants !

 6. Hoe moeten we, eindelijk, toegang verlenen aan de niet Vlaamstaligen,
die steeds talrijker worden, tot de Vlaamse cultuur ? Langs het klein
deurtje van ?? Nuuze Vlaamsche Tale ?? ? Om te communiceren in een beperkt
groepje, en wie anders nog ? Om enkele reeds vertaalde teksten te lezen,
maar welke andere grote teksten? En om wat onder woorden te brengen ? Wij
hebben het voordeel om een taal te spreken die gesproken wordt door 22
miljoen bekwame buren, die kranten bezitten, radio, televisie,
universiteiten, onderwijzers, enz., een taal die ongelooflijke voordelen
bied op vlak van werk en economische uitwisselingen, of voor het leren van
Engels en Duits. Het Nederlands, voertaal, is de taal van onze cultuur en
een essenti??le troef voor de ontwikkeling van onze toekomst op economisch-,
toeristisch vlak, enz. . De Belgische Vlamingen hebben dit goed begrepen, na
een zelfde poging zoals wij voorstellen, geslaagd in het redden EN van hun
brede communicatie taal (Nederlands) EN van hun nog steeds levende
dialecten!

L'ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT d??nonce ?  la fois :

Het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESI??-HENEGOUWEN klaagt tegelijk aan :

- la discrimination faite par l'Etat fran??ais vis-? -vis du flamand comme
attentatoire ?  l'identit?? des Flamands de France.

- de discriminatie gemaakt door de Franse staat tegenover de Vlamingen met
schending van de identiteit van de Vlamingen uit Frankrijk.

- le repli frileux sur l'hexagone qu' entra??neraient la coupure avec le
n??erlandais et l'insuffisance d'efforts pour sa promotion.
 - Het kouwelijk terugtrekken naar het hexagone die de kloof met het
Nederlands groot houdt en onvoldoende inspanning levert voor de bevordering
ervan.

L'Etat a un devoir de r??paration vis-? -vis de la langue historique que
constitue le n??erlandais. Ce devoir doit se traduire par une action
volontariste qui n'existe pas actuellement et qu'il nous faut obtenir, par
nos actions coordonn??es, ici, dans notre R??gion des Pays-Bas fran??ais.

De staat heeft een plichtsherstel tegenover de historische taal waarvan het
Nederlands deel uit maakt. Deze plicht moet groeien uit de vrije wil, die
vandaag nog niet bestaat, maar die door ons kan bekomen worden. Dit door
samengaande acties, hier, in onze streek, de Franse-Nederlanden.

Nous vous invitons cordialement ?  en d??battre.

We nodigen u van harte uit voor een gedachten wisseling.

Restant ?  votre disposition, et au nom de l'ALLIANCE REGIONALE
FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT, je vous prie d'agr??er, Monsieur le maire, Monsieur
le d??put??, l'expression de mes sentiments flamands et europ??ens.

Blijvend tot uw beschikking, en in naam van het STREEK VERBOND
VLAANDEREN-ARTESI??-HENEGOUWEN, Mijnheer de burgemeester, Mijnheer de
afgevaardigde, Onze oprechte Vlaamse en Europese groeten.

Hoogachtend,

Pour l???ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT
R??gis DE MOL

Voor het STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESI??-HENEGOUWEN
R??gis DE MOL

ALLIANCE REGIONALE FLANDRE-ARTOIS-HAINAUT
STREEK VERBOND VLAANDEREN-ARTESI??-HENEGOUWEN
BP2 ??? 59253 LA GORGUE

http://www.streek-verbond.org
http://www.alliance-regionale.org

==============================END===================================
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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 14:29:27 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 07:29:27 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (01) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.072927.0700.>

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From: Troy Sagrillo <meshwesh at bigfoot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language use"

on 28.06.2004 8.07 PM, R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Quite often we hear about people feeling that the Dutch language is in one
way
> or another being threatened, even under siege.

[snip]

> Dutch speakers of the Netherlands have an international reputation for
being
> more than willing to use languages other than Dutch -- typically English,
> German and/or French -- not only with foreigners who actually require the
> help but more often than not with those that do not require or want the
> help, including people who desparately try to learn Dutch.  Recently I
have
> bumped into a number of Americans and other nationals that have lived in
the
> Netherlands and now speak good or even excellent Dutch and that have a
> continued interest in Dutch and Netherlands culture.  Each one told me
that
> it often felt like an exaspirating uphill battle, especially in Amsterdam,
> because people would automatically address them in English, would
sometimes
> even answer in English when addressed in Dutch.

I have had much the same experience in Flanders. I am only at the
"intermediate" learning level, but I have lived here in Vlaams-Brabant about
a year now, though I have had extended visits may times before. (I am
originally from the USA and am married to a Fleming.) I quite frequently
have absurd conversations in stores and restaurants where I speak Dutch
(which my wife tells me is perfectly fine) and the Fleming speaks English
(or worse, for me, French). And I have also had Flemings in the village I
live in (which is quite rural) express absolute disbelief that I am even
trying to learn Dutch at all. (Primarily they are under the impression that
it is much too difficult for foreigners to learn at all.) My "Spreek
Nederlands a.u.b., ik wil oefenen!" t-shirt helps :-)

Some of the non-Anglophones and non-Francophones in my Dutch course have
told me that they will often claim to not know English or French (they
usually know one or the other) when in public so as to force the native
speakers to use Dutch. As a Yank, I don't have that luxury :-\

Having said this, however, I do find that generally speaking Flemings do
appreciate the fact that I am learning, and once they realise I am serious,
they tend to switch to Dutch and put up with my mistake-ridden attempts with
diplomatic good humor. Some will even offer corrections (which I
appreciate). However, my experience in the Netherlands has been quite the
opposite. I have had Dutch professional colleagues tell me I shouldn't waste
my time since "English is an international language". When I have expressed
writing an article in my field (Egyptology) in Dutch for Dutch journals, I
was similarly told not to waste time with it and publish in a "scientific"
(i.e, English, French, or German) journal. It is my understanding that many
graduate university programs in both Flanders and the Netherlands teach only
or mainly in English (mainly in the sciences and medicine).

I have had two extended courses in Dutch now. It has been interesting to me
to compare the attitudes of the instructors (both Flemings). The first is a
Germanic philologist. He uses a text book and media series that is published
here in Belgium and teaches a "General Belgian Dutch". It isn't a Flemish
dialect of course, but does at least recognise there are often significant
differences in pronunciation and lexicon between the Flemish and Dutch
varieties of the language. He was also open to teaching some more dialect
terms, at least those that are used more generally in the Vlaams-Brabant and
Antwerpen provinces (i.e., the kind of thing you could likely hear on TV or
read in a national news paper). One thing he would not teach, however, was
how to conjugate verbs with "gij". This is, in my opinion, very unfortunate
as you *will* hear it everyday in Flanders, so it might be useful to know,
even if you don't actually use it yourself. (And if anyone knows of a book
or website with it, please contact me offlist.)

My second instructor was quite the opposite. While she used a "General
Belgian Dutch" pronunciation, she used texts and media published in the
Netherlands. She insisted that this and only this was appropriate for Dutch
as a second language instruction and everything else was mere "dialect".
(For other list memebers, this is about the equivalent of being taught
Standard *British* English as a second language in the *USA*.) It was really
absurd as we were quite frequently obligated to learn vocabulary that is
never used here (or rarely), as even the instructor admitted. (Example: she
would take off points if we referred to a a student's flat as a "kot" rather
than a "studentenkamer"; this is a problem when you are living in the
university town of Leuven and only "kots" are advertised for rent.) The
audio material was also quite difficult for a number of students who had
little experience with the pronunciation of Dutchmen; it can be quite
incomprehensible to a learner that only hears Flemings on a daily basis.
This sort of attitude is not helpful when the student actually wants to
communicate outside of the classroom. True, he will be understood (but will
be immediately marked as foreign), but the student will not necessarily
understand what is being said to him either.

(I should note that these courses are designed to give foreigners a working
knowledge of the language for everyday use, and not, for example, reading
literature.)

> The impression this gives the foreign visitor has an extreme in a snippet
of
> conversation I recently picked up at an airport, where an American woman
told
> others, "Now that the Dutch are changing over to English ..."  I had to
> eavesdrop to find out if she really meant what I thought she meant, and
she
> did!

I am not at all surprised. I have met both Yanks and Brits living in the
Netherlands for over 20 years that haven't made any attempt to learn Dutch.
Why not? Absolutely no practical need to do so. I suppose there are similar
examples in Brussel and the region, but I doubt you would find such a
foreigner in Antwerp and elsewhere in Flanders. Part of that attitude is
stubbornness or laziness on the part of the foreigners, but I lay blame for
accepting and facilitating that attitude on the natives.

Cheers,

Troy

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 18:37:23 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 11:37:23 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (02) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.113723.0700.>

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From: denis dujardin <dujardin at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (01) [E]

Great letter from Troy!
That really is the only attitude which we Flemish do appreciate, because we
had a history of fighting for our language. (The Dutch never had to do
this).
We still have to fight for it in the area around Brussels.
People like Troy are more than aware that this area is Flemish spoken,
whereas a big number of immigrants in that area seem to be too lazy to
wonder what the cultural context is, in which they live. So they just switch
to French, helping that part of the French spoken community in that area
(Flemish) who never tried to adapt to the native speakers and highhartedly
continue to speak their language, regardless of the social and historical
context they went to live in.
Congratulations Troy!

denis dujardin
kortrijk
west-flanders.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn
Subject: Language use

Thanks to everyone for their informative and thought-provoking input in this
thread so far.

In my last response I indicated that I agreed with Sandy's statements.
While I still basically agree with the general tenet of his message, I keep
waffling back and forth in my mind about the statement that language loyalty
and revival depend upon the speakers' desire for it.

I still basically agree with it.  However, I wonder if the speakers' desire
cannot be engendered by "activists."  After all, there are the frequently
encountered phenomena "linguistic inferiority complex" and "linguistic
defeatism" (the latter stemming from an underlying sense of powerlessness).
I am pretty sure that in our area of interest this applies particularly to
Scots and Lowlands Saxon (Low German), less so to Westerlauwer Frisian, and
I am not sure about Flemish, Zeelandic and Limburgish.  Outside our area of
interest, I have come across this sort of attitude among some Yiddish
speakers, where there is strong personal emotional attachment and on the
other hand a sense that the language is somehow inferior and/or is
reminiscent or symbolic of an era and of types of circumstances and
attitudes that are remembered as bitter-sweet and belong to the past.

In cases of non-power languages (i.e., minority and regional languages) it
is more often than not the case that privately speakers do have the desire
to see their languages gain or regain greater prestige and thus stand a
chance of being reinvigorated, but they feel defeatist in the current
climate.   Oftentimes, after decades or centuries of political and/or social
opression, they themselves have come to believe that their languages,
despite their love for them, are inferior and are bound to die without
anyone "out there" caring.  (I have heared such speakers refer to their own
native languages as "jargon" or "slang," even as "common" in the sense of
"vulgar.")

In such cases I can see "activists" (preferably many of which come from
various walks of life with which other speakers can identify) playing the
role not only of language assertion agents but also of moral support agents,
convincing the defeatist average speaker that the language *is* worthy of
status and preservation, and that its extinction is *not* inevitable.

I can furthermore see a degree of usefulness in international attention,
where non-locals and non-nationals study and use such languages, which would
signal to the average speaker that there *are* people that know and care,
not only at home.  Our own Yasuji Waki's recent visit from Japan to Northern
Germany and all the media attention his interest in "Platt" (i.e., Lowlands
Saxon) received there is a case in point.  Sure, many people's first
reaction may well have been that it was a case of "exotic aberration."
However, it may have at least made them think, and further cases of the sort
might reinforce the notion that outsiders do care.  Might this not serve as
a morale booster?  I remember visiting Denmark as a teenager.  People
thought it really peculiar that a German boy (who did not belong to the
German minority of Denmark) learned Danish and made a real effort.  I even
ended up on the radio!  At the same time even more fuss was being made about
a young Frenchman who spoke rather good Danish; he even ended up on TV.
Since that time, Danes have encountered loads of foreigners, not only
immigrants, that know Danish, and I have a feeling this is now far less
peculiar to them then at that time.

What do you think about this, folks?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 18:39:01 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 11:39:01 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2004.06.30 (03) [D/E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.113901.0700.>

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From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (01) [E]

Tony schreef:

> read in a national news paper). One thing he would not teach, however, was
> how to conjugate verbs with "gij". This is, in my opinion, very
unfortunate
> as you *will* hear it everyday in Flanders, so it might be useful to know,
> even if you don't actually use it yourself. (And if anyone knows of a book
> or website with it, please contact me offlist.)

Wel, ik reageer even op de lijst zelf, aangezien andere leerders er wellicht
baat bij hebben.
Ik heb er even de ANS (algemene Nederlandse spraakkunst) bijgehaald, en die
vermeldt (2de druk) de (regelmatige) vormen op pagina 83 en 84.
In de tegenwoordige tijd: de -t vorm als bij "hij" (de t verdwijnt niet in
de inversie):
ge loopt, loopt ge? (zowel enkelvoud als meervoud)
[as an historical aside: gij/ge is the same as English "ye", (and Northern
Dutch jij, Low Saxon ji etc.)
and originally a plural form (like "vous" in French); originally it also was
"jullie komt"..]
ge vindt, vindt ge? etc.
In de verleden tijd wordt zwak gewoon -te of -de gebruikt:
ge werkte, ge leefde.
Sterk behoudt men een -t, hetgeen er vreemd uitziet: gij vondt, gij liept,
gij kwaamt
(met een uit het meervoud afkomstige lange a, vergelijk wij kwamen).
Als enkelvoud en meervoud sterk zijn en een verschillende lengte hebben
geldt dit steeds,
dus ook "ge naamt" bijv. (nam - namen). Steeds geldt dit voor enkelvoud en
meervoud.

Groeten,

Henno Brandsma

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 21:40:54 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:40:54 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (04) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.144054.0700.>

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From: denis dujardin <dujardin at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (02) [E]

Joining this discussion I would like to point out that the Brussels-area
problem has nothing to do with defaitism or lack of interest in ones own
language.
This is due to immigration of a big number of other-spoken (French)
immigrants through several years, which refuse to speak the language of
the area.
If they get quite numerous they unite in a language-thematic political
party to claim the right to speak their language, aiming at the official
recognition as such.
This a sort of soft Trojan-horse invasion.
The other way up is unthinkable. If you as a Flemish spoken citizen go
and live and the French spoken part of Belgium. Do not dare to speak
your language. You might be treated as an descendant of Nazi-collaborator.
It will become a hot item in Belgian politics in the years to come.

denis dujardin
kortrijk
west-flanders.

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From lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net  Wed Jun 30 22:55:12 2004
From: lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net (Lowlands-L)
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 15:55:12 -0700
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (05) [E]
Message-ID: <WED.30.JUN.2004.155512.0700.>

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From: jean duvivier <duvassoc at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (04) [E]

Considering the problems of language divisiveness in Belgium as well as
Canada, it seems to me that excessive emphasis is being placed on variety of
languages and dialects. I learned Nederlandsch and Antwerpen flemish as a
child before WW2, but have forgotten most of it, because these are not used
anywhere else in the world. I do know Spanish , Portuguese and French
fluently and have been able to use them over many decades all over Latin
America and parts of Africa.
"English", whether the British or American or Canadian variety is understood
and used all over the world by educated people, even with words and accents
that vary widely (for instance Australian English).
French has lost the  international place it had in the 1700s and 1800s, and
German is only useful in Central Europe to a limited extent. I can well
appreciate local populations wanting to preserve their local usages and
dialects, but if they want to interact beyond their immediate surroundings,
they need English.
My grandparents and parents were Belgian, and still spoke some Walloon ,
which has local variants that vary from Hainault to Limburg and Luxemburg,
but anywhere else they spoke French.
There are vocabulary and usage variations in the Spanish (Castellano) spoken
in Mexico, Colombia or Argentina, but I have never encountered the kind of
extreme concern that I find expressed by some of your correspondents about
Vlaamsch or Nederlandsch. In fact in those countries, just like in Holland,
every one I dealt with spoke English.
The absurd extremes to which this concern about local languages can be
carried can be noticed when driving north to Brussels. For a while all road
signs are in French, then suddenly they are all in Flemish. Great help to
tourists and visitors ! In addition, for a small country like that having
two Parliaments and other split government agencies is totally absurd

It is an interesting footnote that the Irish, who have the most reasons to
dislike the Brits, speak and write English rather than Gaelic, and even use
"pounds" instead of "punts" when discussing their currency.

John F. Duvivier

-----

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

Thanks, Jean.

So, am I hearing you say that all of us should just forget about language
diversity, should all adopt English as our first language to get it over
with, that we should relinquish our native languages because they have
little or no international currency, that it is an entirely good thing that
the Irish have, to all intents and purposes, lost their own language and now
use the language of their former conquers?

Can you see a difference between loss of languages and the adoption of an
international auxiliary language (like English)?  Can't you retain native
language diversity and still have national and international linguae
francae?  Please bear in mind the possibility that the entrenched language
situation of Belgium is an aberration, that it may not be entirely justified
to draw internationally valid conclusions from it.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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