LL-L "Proposal" 2005.08.18 (03) [E]

Thu Aug 18 15:22:38 UTC 2005

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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: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Proposal" 2005.08.17 (10) [E]

Ron wrote:
"Or sign language with a written version?"

I saw this treatment once. It was very like Lockwood's multi-lingual 
versions of the Paternoster, i.e., with pictoral representations of the 
signs ("text") above and literal translations in English underneath. It was 
effective and demonstrated very well the versatility and inventiveness of 
whichever sign language was being used. I believe it was ASL.

Go raibh maith agat,

Criostóir.

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From: Þjóðríkr Þjóðreksson <didimasure at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Proposal" 2005.08.17 (10) [E]

Well if you extend your proposal a bit into the absurd direction, we'd all 
have to write Common Germanic again 8) And every reader would then have to 
consider all the sound-shifts over the past 2000 years again when reading.
Like when you want to give one spelling for the word "more", and want to 
unite the various forms like more, meer, mehr, meir, meirr (or what is it 
inIcelandic?), mjeer, miër, etc etc. it's almost unevitably to write it as 
mair or meir... and then you'd have to teach all english to pronounce ai's 
as o or oa, all Nynorskers to pronounce it as you write it, and Antwerpians 
to pronounce it ië ;) And then one must also teach the English that f.ex. in 
laidian (or whatever "skryfwys" you'd take as the Gmc. form) one must 
pronounce it ea, and the Antw. to pronounce it ei, and the Norskers to 
pronounce it ei nonetheless.
So unifying all the germanic speakers seems a bit hopeless to me, but on a 
smaller scale (like only in Germany, or lowlands, or something) it is of 
course a bit more proable

Doederik Masure

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From: Ian Pollock <ispollock at shaw.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Proposal" 2005.08.17 (10) [E]

From: Ian Pollock <ispollock at shaw.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Proposal"

> But there is 'capability' in another direction too, but I couldn't say
> if it
> is good or not though Ron would know with his Chinese. The ideoglyphs
> of
> that language took no note of sound values, or even of some aspects of
> language, so although it originally served speakers of one tongue, as
> they
> spread out & changed into dialects that at this point many of them are
> mutually unintelligable, the script still serves matchlessly for sheer
> communication clear across the dialect divide, & even into some other
> unrelated languages.

Actually this has been a widely disseminated myth about Chinese which
really has little basis in fact. According, if memory serves, to Wm. C.
Hannas, who analyzed a good deal of myths about Chinese in his book
"Asia's Orthographic Dilemma", character writing does not contribute to
mutual understanding but in fact prevents it. A language from the
Chinese *family* (i.e., not a "dialect" of Chinese, which is a misnomer
propagated by the powers that be in China) is not intelligible either
by speech or by writing for a speaker of another language, although the
characters for *some* words may coincide. This is because their
grammar, vocabulary etc. are entirely different.

He noted at one point that in fact, when students in the West are
studying a Sino-Tibetan language not closely related to Mandarin which
is written in characters, non-heritage students generally do much
better, because they are free of the misleading associations with
characters that heritage speakers have.

Also it is good to remember that Chinese writing *long* ago ceased to
be "ideographic" and now carries purely phonemic information, albeit in
a very flawed manner. One may be able to see SOME characters, find out
what they mean, and then analyze their written forms for meaning (e.g.,
the character for "forest" does look a little like three trees), but
this process doesn't work in reverse. You can't tell what a character
means based on its shape without knowledge of the language proper.

-Ian Pollock

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

Thanks for clarifying the thing about the Chinese thing, Ian.  I was too 
tired to get into that one.  You did me a big favor.

Diederik,

(So is it "Dididoe" now?)

> So unifying all the germanic speakers seems a bit hopeless to me, but on
> a smaller scale (like only in Germany, or lowlands, or something) it is of
> course a bit more proable

Nah, not by country it wouldn't.  Shifts aren't *that* regular or apparent 
between German and Low Saxon, and, as I mentioned before, there are tons of 
non-phonological differences.  Even within the phonological area there would 
be serious roadblocks, in part because of "little shifts" that followed the 
"big shift," such as shifts involving vowel length.

LS    -    German
water - Wasser  [long - short]
(strate >) straat - Straße  [long - long]
(katte >) kat - Katze  [short - short]
gat - Gasse (different meanings) [short - short]
vader ~ vadder - Vater  [long~short - long]
vaten - fassen  [long - short]
stütten - stützen  [short - short]
laten - lassen  [long - short]
(ape >) aap - Affe  [long - short]
budder ~ bodder ~ botter - Butter [short - short]
bodden - Boden [short - long]
aant - Ente [long - short]
tousamen - zusammen [long - short]
hebben - haben  [short - long]
seggen - sagen  [short - long]
saak - Sache  [long - short]
liggen - liegen  [short - long]
eten - essen  [long - short]

Apart from different root vowels; e.g.

staan - stehen
gaan - gehen
sey(e)n - sehen
way(e)n - wehen

Not even talking about serious lexical differences; e.g.

vaken - oft 'often'
lüt - klein 'small'
laat - spät 'late'
(pogge >) pog - Frosh 'frog'
poggen-stoul - Pilz 'mushroom'
daal - hinunter 'down(ward)'
ruud - (Fenster-)Scheibe 'pane'
drempel - Schwelle 'threshold'
paal - Schote 'pod'

If it worked -- and I doubt it really does -- it would perhaps work in a 
rudimentary way within the "Low German" branch of West Germanic, namely 
between Low Saxon, Dutch, Afrikaans, etc.

> and then you'd have to teach all english to pronounce ai's as o or oa

But not Scots speakers (e.g., _mair_ [me:r] 'more', _stane_ [sten] 'stone', 
_bane_ [ben] 'bone', _lair_ [le:r] 'lore', _rair_ [re:r] 'roar', _laid_ 
[le:d] 'load', _laif_ [le:f] 'loaf').

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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