LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.12.15 (05) [E]

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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 (Zeeuws)
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   L O W L A N D S - L * 15 December 2005 * Volume 5
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From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties"

Hello Lowlanders:

I just returned from a trip to Curaçao.  My wife gave me a surprise trip for
my 55th birthday.  We left Austin on Thursday of last week for Miami.  I
didn't know until we arrived at the airport where we were going.  Then, I
didn't know our final destination until Friday morning when we left for
Curaçao.  It was a great trip.

Way back when I was in college, I wrote a semester paper on bilingual
education (Papiamento/Dutch) in Curaçao.  My wife typed it up, but had
forgotten all about it.  It was sort of serendipity that she chose to go
there.  She wanted to go somewhere that speaks Dutch, but she couldn't
afford to go to Europe.

I found that most everyone I came in contact with speaks four languages:
Papiamento, Dutch, Spanish, & English.  In my limited contact, it seems that
they all speak Spanish better than English.  I found it much easier to speak
to folks in Spanish than English.  They seemed more comfortable with
Spanish, and there wasn't the misunderstanding that there was in English.

Anyway, two unrelated things I noticed.  Papiamento is easier to discern
from the writing of it than from hearing it.  Even though the spelling
system reads like phonetically spelled Spanish, it doesn't "hear" that way.
At least to me.  I could pick up words that I recognized from my Spanish,
but so much of it I couldn't.

The other thing I noticed is from a tour we took.  The guide is a man from
Eindhoven who has lived in Curaçao for a long time.  There were 9 of us on
the tour.  Six people from the Netherlands, and three from the U.S.  The
guide spoke Dutch and English throughout the tour.  He would point out
something in Dutch, then say the same thing in English.  I discovered that I
could pick up about 50% of what he said in Dutch.  But the more interesting
thing is that his pronunciation of /ui/ was different than what I expected.
To me it sounded just like the English diphthong _ai_.  In fact his
pronunciation of the diphthong in "kijk" was just like the one in "huis".
If I were to spell it in English it would be "hice".

I remember from a few months back that Ingmar said the current pronunciation
is like that, but I got the idea that the "i" component  of "ui" was
rounded.  Is that not the case, generally?

Mark Brooks 

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