LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.11.18 (07) [E]

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From: Tom Carty <cartyweb at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.11.17 (03) [E]

Id be grateful for any info on forth and bargy, and the response about other
distinct dialests such as the Fingalian English and Yola, both of which I'd
never heard of before, is fantastic.

If you have any written material could you post same to me at Tom Carty, 13
Church St, Tullamore, Offaly, Ireland?

The current Dublin dialect may be an extention of Filgalian, but noting the
similarity of accent and words to some working class areas of Waterford
City, it may go back indeed to Viking Times.

Tom Carty
www.teanganua.pro.ie

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

> From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language Varieties
>
> Hi Ron and All
>
> thanks for the link on Yola - never heard of it before
> but certainly seems to have a lot of West Country
> influences.
>
> One thing you mention Ron is
> "I find initial pre-vocalic /z-/ in place of /s-/ particularly
interesting,
> considering it coincides with Low Fanconian, Lowlands Saxon (Low
> German) and most German dialects."
>
> Interesting. In dialect maps of the middle ages and up to the recent past
> there's a broad swathe of the South of England that also has s and f
> pronounced z and v (it's where we get related words such as fox and vixen
in
> modern English - vixen being a loan from the South-West - I think this
> subject has been touched on before). I always thought that this voicing
was
> a innovation in the South West that was fairly successful at first but is
> since receding. However, could it not be possible that this was the
version
> that was brought over from the continent by the Saxons
> whereas the Angles who settled further north brought the voiceless
> equivalents? Maybe the continental Angles used to have the voiceless
> equivalent, but under continental Saxon influence have since also adopted
> the voiced equivalents.

It's not often noted but the fact is that is South-Western dialects the /z-/
is used in the Germanic vocabulary while /s-/ is used in the Romance
vocabulary. I don't know whether this means that the /z-/ precedes the
Norman invasion or whether there was a time when people just didn't use
Romance words and these were learned at school with more stndard
pronunciation, but I guess they precede the Normal invasion.

Crost ir  wrote:

> I understand that Yola preserved a very ancient system of personal
> pronouns which, for 'I' at least from memory, went something like:
>
> ich / cham / chamnt - I / am / I am not

I live in the village of Monatacute in Somerset near, the Dorset border. In
this village and a few nearby villages in Dorset people say 'utch' for "I",
so it's "Utch am". This was noted as late as the 1950's, I don't know if
anyone still speaks this way. Maybe I could ask around but it's a bit
difficult to get non-linguists to talk sense about how they actually speak,
in my experience!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at worldonline.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.11.17 (08) [E]

>>>>Gary: "Just a thought". Yes, but not a bad one.
By the way, in Low Saxon and Low Franconian (and German) not just  f>v  and
s>z, but  th>dh (ð)  too.
Hence Dutch, Low Saxon and German _danken_ to thank, _drie/drei/dree_ three
etc, d- < dh-
But in the case of initial th, there are a number of words in all Germanic
languages (except Icelandic) where it voiced to dh or d. English the, that,
thou, there, these, though, they etc Scandinavian du, det, din, dig, der,
den etc and Frisian do, dat, dêr, dy. Scandinavian and Frisian otherwise
have t < initial th.

I don't know if South Western English and special Irish dialects like Yola
voice their th's too.
Or if sh- [S] is voiced to zh- [Z] too in some dialects or languages.

But the thought that South Western English voicing comes from the voicing
ancestors of Low Saxon, and the non voicing from Old Anglian could be right
if we assume Anglian was more closely related to Frisian (with s, f, th) and
Southern English Saxon closer to continental Saxon (with z, v, dh).

By the way, in modern colloquial Dutch of the Western Randstad (Amsterdam
and other major cities) there is an opposite trend to devoice initial z, v
and g [G] to s, f and ch [x] again. Maybe that is due to Frisian influence
originally, because Amsterdam is not far South of formerly Frisian speaking
West-Friesland (part of the province of Noord-Holland), and large numbers of
immigrants of the province of Friesland moved to this city in the last
centuries.
And they all use devoiced consonants in their Dutch, too.
Ingmar

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From: Gavin Falconer <Gavin.Falconer at gmx.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.11.17 (08) [E]

Voicing can also be found in King Lear, Act iv, Scene vi, where Edgar
imitates Somerset dialect.

EDGAR
261  Ch'ill not let go, zir, without vurther 'casion.

OSWALD
262  Let go, slave, or thou diest!

EDGAR
263  Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor volk
264  pass. An chud ha' bin zwaggered out of my life,
265  'twould not ha' bin zo long as 'tis by a vortnight.
266  Nay, come not near th' old man; keep out, che vor
267  ye, or ise try whether your costard or my ballow be
268  the harder: ch'ill be plain with you.

OSWALD

--
All the best,

Gavin

Gavin Falconer

"Tharfor wordly happe es ay in dout
Whilles dam fortune turnes hir whele about."

----------

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

Gary,

I wouldn't be one bit surprised if you were on to something there.  As you
said, in earlier times, the dialects of English with initial voicing of /f/
and /s/ covered much of England's south (and assumedly was taken from there
to enclaves in Ireland).  It may not be coincidental that this is also the
original Saxon stronghold in England.

Angles occupied areas farther north, and their Continental homeland was also
just north of that of the Saxons, in Anglia (today's German _Angeln_),
roughly in what is now Slesvig/Schleswig, wedged between the Jutes to the
north and the Saxons to the south (the former of which were the southernmost
Scandinavians and the latter of which later fanned out southward from what
is now Holstein).  It is almost as though in Britain the Anglian and Saxon
settlers attempted to recreate the configuration of the places they left
behind, though I am not sure exactly where the British settlements of early
Jutes were, if they did not tend to congregate with Angles.

At any rate, we can fairly safely assume that Jutes were not given to that
type of voicing.  Furthermore, it may well be true that Continental Angles
and their language variety were a sort of bridge between North Germanic and
West Germanic and that their Continental descendants later became ethnically
absorbed into and linguistically adapted to Jutes in the north and to Saxons
in the south.  This may account for some of the pretty different features of
today's Southern Jutish (even when compared with Central and Northern
Jutish) as well as "Scandinavian-like" features of today's Lowlands Saxon
(Low German) varieties of the far north, of today's Slesvig/Schleswig.  One
of the striking features of those northernmost Lowlands Saxon dialects is in
fact consistent use of word-initial prevocalic [s] where in more southerly
dialects you have [z].  Incidentally, this [s] is also a feature in _Petuh_
(or _Petuhtanten-Deutsch_), a now moribund type of Missingsch-German of the
Danish-German border region.  This initial [s] in those Saxon and German
dialects is by many perceived as a "Danish" feature.

I think it is not entirely unreasonable to postulate that by the time of
migration to Britain Old Saxon (and related varieties that later moved
southward from the Elbe region to become the ancestors of German dialects)
had begun a trend toward prevocalic fricative voicing, and that this trend
continued in the varieties that further developed in Southern England, even
though this was not (or rarely?) reflected in writing.  Bear in mind also
that it is well accepted that in intervocalic position within words Old
English <s>, <þ> ([T] th) and <f> were pronunced [z], [ð] ([D] dh) and [v]
respectively.  It does not require an enormous stretch of the imagination to
think that in some dialects this spread to the beginning of words, perhaps
first intervocalically (i.e., after a final vowel in the preceding word) and
then generally.  Furthermore, remember that in Continental Saxon
word-initial <þ> ([T] th) ended up being /d/ in modern dialects (also in
German; e.g., E _think_ = LS _dink_ ~ _denk_ = D _denk_ = G _denk_, E
_three_ = LS _drey_ = D _drie_ = G _drei_, E _thumb_ = LS _duum_ = D _duim_
= German _Daumen_; cf., Old English _þync-_, _þrí_, _þúma_, Old Saxon
_thunc-_, _thrie_ ~ _thria_ ~ _threa_, *_thûmo_, Old Low Franconian
_thenk-_, _thrî_, *_thûmo_, Old German _dunch-_, _drî_, _dûmo_).  I am not
sure if anyone can tell if this is an inherent feature or emanated from
German to Saxon and Low Franconian (considering that Old German had this
feature earlier).

I do not know if orthographic ambivalence between <f> and <v> in medieval
Dutch, Saxon and German is any indication that at one time there had been a
"struggle" between initial /f/ and /v/.  What at one time was written <v->
(of which there are still remnants in LS and G, as in _vad(d)er_ / _Vater_
'father') came to be pronounced /f/ in today's dialects, while in Dutch the
"infamous" and elusive "voiceless /v/" is involved that in native speakers'
perception is distinct from initial /f/ (which occurs in loanwords).

I often marvel about certain phonological similarities between the North
Saxon dialects of Lowlands Saxon (Low German) and the English dialects of
Southern England (and in extension those of Australia and New Zealand).  I
keep wondering if this is a matter of coincident or of early connections.

The diphthongs /ou/ and /ei/ are pronounced pretty much alike (including the
[eU] variant of /ou/, e.g., SE _toe_ & NS _tou_ 'to' [t_heU]).  Northern
English dialects (and many American dialects), on the other hand, tend to
have monophthongs instead, as does Scots.

The sequence /ar/ is pronounced alike in North Saxon, Cockney and the
dialects of Australia and New Zealand (e,g, E _car_ & NS _kar_ [k_ha:], E
_part_ & NS _part_ [p_ha:t]), and long /a/ in Southeastern English and North
Saxon is a very low [Q:] (e.g., E _father_ ['fQ:D@`] & NS _vader_
['fQ:d3`]).

Most of North Saxon (certainly its northern and central range) is
"non-rhotic" like the dialects of Southern England and those that developed
from them elsewhere.  ("Non-rhotic" means that a syllable-final /r/ is
"deleted," more precise, assimilates to the preceding vowel.)

Most North Saxon dialects (excluding the farwestern ones that border on
Dutch, and the fareastern ones if we consider them part of it) have
voiceless stop aspiration (SAMPA [_h]); i.e., /p/, /t/ and /k/ are
pronounced with a puff of air before a vowel).  However, the aspiration
patterns vary.  Prestigeous South English dialects aspirate consistently
anywhere in a word, as in Standard German.  North Saxon, like e.g. Cockney,
Australian, New Zealand and American English dialects, aspirates only in
syllables with primary stress (which tends to lead to "flapping" or
"tapping" (SAMPA [4]) intervocalic /t/ in syllables without primary stress,
a feature shared by North Saxon and American English); e.g., E1 _tatter_
['t_h{t_h@`], ['ts_h{ts_h@`], E2 ['t_h{t@`] ~ ['t_h{t(@)r] ~ ['t_h{4(@)r],
NS _tatter_ ['t_hat3`] ~ ['t_had3`] ~ ['t_ha43`] 'shake!', 'tremble!'  Note
that many North English dialects, like those of Yorkshire, do not have
aspiration, neither have the Low Franconian varieties of the Continent.
Among Lowlands Saxon dialects aspiration is absent only from those in the
extreme west (which have contacts with Low Franconian) and those in the
extreme east (which have Slavonic and Baltic substrates).  The presence and
absence of aspiration is an easily noticeable difference between the
otherwise very similar varieties of Lowlands Saxon and Low Franconian
respectively.  (It is much more diverse within German, though the general
picture is also that aspiration is absent in the extreme west and east.)

We tend to think about these sorts of features mostly in synchronic
contexts, as features of today's varieties.  Diachronically speaking, I feel
that it is not totally unreasonable to hypothesize that the roots or seeds
that brought forth these phonological developments or trends already existed
at the time Saxon was imported to Britain.

I would be interested to know what others think about this.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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