LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.04 (03) [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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04 November 2005 * Volume 03
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From: Isaac M. Davis <isaacmacdonalddavis at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.03 (11) [E]


Scríobh Críostóir:

> Norse seems to have had a relatively short life in Ireland. Though many 
> areas were exposed to
> Norse settlement - most famously Dublin - settlers appear to have 
> assimilated into the local
> population within a few generations. There are a number of loanwords from 
> Norse into Irish which
> attest to an essentially coastal and maritime commercial community (for 
> example, _margadh_
> "market" and _acair_ "anchor"), and a fair proportion of Irish families 
> are of Norse origin (for
> example, Ó Dubhghaill "descendant of the dark foreigner", Mac Suibhne "son 
> of Sven", Mac
> Amhlaoibh "son of Olaf"). The district north of Dublin is _Fine Gall_ 
> "fair haired foreigners",
> meaning Norse territory.

Well, not to be a pedant (as popular a position as that seems to be around 
here, heheh), but I believe "fair haired foreigners" would be Fionnghaill. 
Fine means tribe, or race. "The term is pronounced with stress on the second 
part, so that it represents not Fionnghall, 'fair stranger,' but Fine Gall, 
'tribe of strangers.' 'Fine Gall' was a well-known district in Ireland, 
coinciding with the part of Co. Dublin north of the Liffey, so called 
because it had been settled by the Danes of Dublin." ( 
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/institutes/sassi/spns/watsdg.htm)

You're right about Fionnghall referring to Norsemen, though. Apparently 
Fionnghaill were Norwegian, and Dubhghaill were Danes.

Also, I'm pretty sure Suibhne is a native name, rather than a 
Hibernicisation of Sven. Behind the Name (http://www.behindthename.com/), 
which is usually pretty accurate, seems to agree with me on this.

On the subject of Irish names, though, I ran across a wonderful tome in the 
university library here by a Rev. Patrick Woulfe. Irish Names and Surnames, 
I believe it's called. Absolutely wonderful, I must say. Exhaustive, and 
very accurate.

Oh dear me, I'm off-topic. Your pardons, please.

Isaac/Íosac
(wearing his pedant hat and his Irish hat at the same time)

-- 

Westron wynd, when wilt thou blow
The smalle rain down can rain
Christ yf my love were in my arms
And I yn my bed again

----------

From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.02 (10) [E]


Dear all (or, at the very least, those who are interested in Yola),

I have now had the time and space to digest the 1893 Yola letter by Kathleen 
Browne and will parse some of it here (this is part one; I will start on 
part two when I have a little more time). I invite list specialists in Early 
Middle English, Old English (particularly the Devon and Somerset variants of 
these two) and Flemish to help isolate and explain aspects of Yola, as my 
knowledge of these languages - so crucial to understanding the development 
of Yola - is nil. Comments on my analysis below welcomed.

"Burstheoune, Avril 10, 1893."

"Burstheoune" ("Bridgetown") seems to be a relic of any older form of Yola 
than the sort used by Ms Browne. This is to be expected: place names usually 
fossilise older forms of spelling and pronunciation. Browne appears to have 
tried to represent Yola sounds faithfully by her spelling system, which is 
reminscient of but not identical to systems used in other Yola excerpts we 
know. "Burstheoune" is analysable as "bur" ("bridge") and "theoune" 
("town"), with a possessive suffix on the first element. Phonemically, the 
spelling "theoune" (elsewhere in the excerpt it is "teoune") seems to be an 
attempt to represent a dental form of [t]. Whilst dental forms are usual in 
Hiberno-English, I do not know if they existed in Old or Middle English or 
Flemish. If not it would suggest that Yola (or at least the Yola of Browne) 
took them from Irish. I do not know the Old English form of "bridge".

"Avril" ("April") shows a characteristics that occurs later on with 
"livertie" ("liberty"). Yola seems to have innovated here in relation to 
what I know of Somerset and Devon English where [p] in this position is 
voiced to [b]. Yola has taken the shift one step further and changed this 
to, possibly, a voiced bilabial fricative [B].

"Vourneen Joan"

The first word is definitely a borrowing from Irish. The second is probably 
one from English, as the voiced post-alveolar affricate is otherwise absent 
in the text.

"'Cham goan hend a sparkeen wough theezil..."

As explained previously, "cham" is a contraction of "ich am". This is also 
found in the English of Devon. "Goan" for "going" suggests [go:n], but I 
think this usage in relation to doing things, as opposed to moving, is a 
modern English one, and not native to Yola. Does "going to have" occur in 
Old and Middle English or Flemish? "Hend" appears to be Yola for "have". The 
use of "a" probably represents a schwa. Later on, Browne uses "o" for the 
indefinite article. "Sparkeen" at first appears to be a borrowing from 
Irish, although of exactly what I cannot tell, but at second glance may in 
fact be a metathesised form of a word related to Dutch "spreek" and German 
"sprach", with "-een" actually being a Yola form of the English verb suffix 
"-ing". Stress in Yola seems to be stressed mostly on the final syllable. 
Browne takes great orthographical care representing this, which I will 
return to. "Wough" looks odd, but it is "with". It may represent nothing 
more than pronounced [wo:] or [w] plus a schwa. "Theezil" is "thyself" and 
should probably be written as two words. Yola has "thee" for "thee" and 
"tha" for "thou".

"...ing oure yola talk o' Baronie Forthe."

I think "ing" represents a palatised form of "in" rather than [iN]. 
Palatisation is characteristic of Irish, particularly around [i]. However, 
Browne alternates between "ing" and "yn" for "in". I propose that "ing" is 
the stressed and "yn" the unstressed form. "Oure" I reckon to be pronounced 
[u:r] or [y:r]. "Talk" must be a borrowing or interference form English - 
along with the use of apostrophes in places where someone literate in 
English would etymologically place them (e.g., "'cham" instead of "cham") it 
suggests Browne was not a native speaker of Yola and that her use of it was 
both self-conscious and imperfect. "Yola" itself is a most interesting word: 
it appears to remain faithful to the Old English pronunciation (as far as I 
understand it) of the same. The survival (or addition) of a schwa suffix 
occurs in other parts of the Yola core vocabulary. I am not sure why Browne 
writes "baronie" for "barony", unless she is trying to stress the final 
syllable or affecti! ng a presumed archaic spelling. Likewise, her addition 
of an <e> to Forth might be her attempt at showing a lengthening of the 
vowel, so [fo:rT], not [forT] or [fOT].

"Fan yartha goane t'yie ons hyme zwae?"

I do not know if "when" is "fan" in Devon and Somerset, but it is easy to 
imagine it is. "Yartha" seems to be a running together of Yola equivalents 
for "art thou". "Goane" for "goan" in the previous sentence is, I believe, a 
deliberate attempt to depict stress or tone. I find "t'yie" problematic. It 
seems to suggest the Yola word for "come" was cognate with modern English 
"go" (and that Yola "go" was "go") and that this was pronounced like [ji:]. 
"Ons" is "us", cf. Flemish. "Hyme" for "home" obviously represents the 
pronunciation [haim] or, more probably, [h at im]. The last word looks odd but 
I believe it to be analysable as "to we", with the <z> actually representing 
a dental [t] and <ae> being pronounced [ai] or [@i].

"Gee o gooude riesph to ee ball an Vreedie nyeght..."

The first word here is hardly unusual. Nottingham English has [gi:j] for 
"give". As stated before, "o" is probably a schwa; why Browne has an extra 
<o> in the Yola for "good" is not immediately clear, but I propose that the 
word should be pronounced [g at .u:d], that is with two syllables and the usual 
stress on the second. The origin and pronunciation of "riesph" is beyond 
me - I leave its interpretation to others. "To" must be pronounced 
identically as in English, that is [t@]. The pronunciation [i:] for the 
definite article in Yola is interesting, and may have parallels in Devon and 
Somerset, but I do not know myself. "Ball" is an understandable borrowing 
from English in this context, whereas [an] for "on" is still typical in 
Hiberno-English. I suggest "vreedie" for "Friday" is actually pronounced 
[vri:dai] or [vri:d at i], not, as one would suspect, [vri:di:]. This is 
because of the stress pattern in Yola on the second syllable. Voicing of [f] 
is also! found in Devon and Somerset to this day. Browne's writing of 
"nyeght" for "night" presents a problem because the orthographic <gh> may be 
interference from English rather than representative of a pronunciation 
[njext].

All for now. What does the list think?

Go raibh maith agaibh,

Criostóir.

----------

From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.03 (08) [A/E/LS]

Dear Ron,

you answered:
> Right! The windows never get opened there, and there's a permanently fusty
> and musty odor, predominated by that of stale beer and moth balls.
And THIS odor I prefer to all that uniformity, having been and still is
spread nearly all over the world by the so called globalization.
A monotonous sterility in language, in food, in clothes, in smell and
thinking. What a poor, tasteless new world we are faced with.
No space left for individuality within some borders- things always have to
be changed, transformed into a 'scheinbar'(*) better, more modern and
fitting pattern- mass-production is the only scale.
America, forced by its own history, always was the trendsetter here, but it
sometimes forgets that in special there is lot of space and possibility to
find any very individual lifestyle, any niches, caused as well by the width
of the land itself as by the broadth of individuality to be found over
there.

What about those people over here, in the narrow homelands of the Saxon
dialects? Where to hide from Standard Dutch, Standard English, Standard
German influences? Did you, Ron, forget your own origin, all the
difficulties for young people willingly to learn this old languages? How
shall they ever be able to recognize the differences between any Patentplatt
and real, yes, old-fashioned dialects, to keep the *true* character of
Frisian, LS, Scots etc.??
Clearly- those few of them being on a genious-like level will be able,
perhaps. But- I mentioned it for several times: the majority of kids, and
it's increasing, are interested in this special archaic, charming simplicity
and originality of e.g. Low Saxon.

Some decades ago precious old pictures and sculptures were restored
'perfectly', e.g. no one should be able to recognize the repair. Today the
rules for each restorator are to do his work in a way that experts are able
to see the difference between the original and the restored parts.
If you find a way to make sure the same to occure in an old, woundable
language of minorities I'd say o.k. to a gentle modernization, and that
concernes in special word-creations for technical reasons. But it should
always remain obviously for coming generations.

Have you ever been at a 'Plattdeutsch'-contest among pupils? They don't look
for just another foreign, perfectly ruled language to express complex,
difficult facts. They want to feel the warmth and tenderness of a pastual
lifestyle, though it might never have been as idyllic as they imagine it.
I did experience children never having heard LS before sitting aside us
'oldies' talking 'Platt' to each other, them with fun and yearning in their
eyes. It can, in a special way, stand for an incarnation of a different,
nearly lost way of life within and outside the families, a homey language
for rough fairytales, cold winters and warm ovens.

A funny language? Yes, may be, for them, but not ridiculous as long as it's
keeping it's character and doesn't slip away into the neighbourhood of any
missingsch.

A relict of a lost world? Sometimes I have to think so, but perhaps these
children one day will find a way to bring back some values you can't weigh
up with money but easily spoil with the frigidity of opened windows.
Every guest will leave the room with chill and disappointment.

Only a few days ago in our local newspaper I stumbled about a LS-story
written by a lay-writer coming out of the region. Normally it's a pleasure
to read my home-dialect, but this time I was very disappointed to see a
slavish 'Sass'sche Rechtschreibung' with all those mistakes I mentioned
above.
That *was* another language!

I don't want to give the impression of myself being any fanatic or
separatist here. I always like to look over the fence into other people's
garden, and I'm grateful for new ideas and initiatives.
But I've often been confronted with damages caused by any incorrect
dictionaries (and other written stuff) which suddenly have become a kind of
'Holy Bible' for a great part of our LS-community, in special for people,
full of goodwill, who cannot control right or wrong because of their lack of
experience. Being far away from being perfect myself I should be the last
one to smile condescendingly about their mistakes but will encourage them to
go on learning, spreading and speaking this language. But:

It's not *just* another language! Let's have a watchful eye on it!

Friendly regards

Johannes "Jonny" Meibohm

(*)I couldn't find an English word for _scheinbar_; 'seemingly' for my
feeling is closer to G:'anscheinend'??!

----------

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

Hi, Jonny!

I was joking, but even I can be serious for a moment if you wish, and I will 
try to be brief about it.

(1) What you are talking about are two extremes, as though there were only 
an "all or nothing."

(2) Languages that do not adapt *will* die.  This is not a matter of opinion 
but a proven fact.

(3) Low Saxon *is* a language like any other, but it is not the same as any 
other.  What else would it be?  God's chosen language that is exempt from 
all that applies to the rest of the world's languages?  "But our language is 
special" is an old excuse, a cop-out signaling that one does not want to 
deal with serious linguistic research nor with universal facts, that one 
wants to pretend one has nothing to do with the rest of the world.  Yes, Low 
Saxon, including your local variety, *is* like all other languages in that 
it is "special* and *unique*.  *All* language varieties in the world are 
special and unique, for that makes them discrete entities. Thus, it is 
non-sensical to say that one's own or the one one cares about is "more 
special" and "more unique," just as these two expressions are ungrammatical, 
since "special" and "unique" are not comparative ideas.

(4) A language (variety) that is not restrained (i.e., is not confined and 
thus held back), that is used in all walks of life will develop in such a 
way that it can be used in *all* areas and ambients of life, for the 
capacity and adaptability of a language are virtually unlimited.  This means 
that it is not a case of "either or" but a case of "and."  By liberating a 
language from restraints, constraints and other manifestations of limited 
thinking you inevitably expand its scope.  "Expansion" is not necessarily 
the same as creating uniformity or blandness, is not the same as making it 
like other languages, or "selling out to globalization," if you will.  It is 
just this: a type of enlarging that results in unrestraint utility and 
adaptability, that fulfills all of a speaker community's requirements all 
the time rather than having to resort to another, "real" language in certain 
contexts.  Thus you could have your rural, olden-time evenings, any type of 
"globalization" talk, Silke Manholt's futuristic performance art, and ... 
and ...  Anything short of this does not make a real language, is a partial 
language, remnants of a broken pot that no one cares to mend because people 
have talked themselves into believing that a few disjointed shards are 
nicer, more impressive, more antique looking in a museum display case, that 
if we need a real pot we borrow our neighbor's spanking new stainless steel 
one.

(5) No one with any sense has ever claimed that a language is a lifeless, 
neutral thing that can be understood fully by means of research, just as no 
psychologist worth his or her salary has ever claimed that *all* of human's 
psyches can be understood.  What we are talking about is "insight."  All 
aspects of our world are being researched scientifically, the aim being to 
understand as much as we possibly can about whatever *can* be observed and 
analyzed.  This is part and parcel of man's need for knowledge, a need to 
understand the world and thus to gain a sense of insight and control.  This 
is not to say that the very same areas cannot also be approached, perceived 
in other ways, in emotional ways, in spiritual ways and in other kinds of 
partly immeasurable ways.  It is not as if even the same person must choose 
only one of these.  I do indeed deal with language (more than one) in many 
different ways: as an object of research, as an instrument of social 
interaction, as a means to give or receive precise information, as a medium 
that evokes mental images and emotional responses (e.g., reading and writing 
poetry), as an expression of philosophical and spiritual perceptions and 
aspirations, and yes, even in the form of mantras that defy all scientific 
analysis and description.  Again, it is not a question of "either or."  It 
is a matter of "what when."  It is not a matter of "taking sides," of 
"science" versus "emotion," or "local" versus "global."  You can have it all 
if you so choose, but you can only have it all if you open that box, open 
that window.  Fresh are does not create sterility; it allows you to breathe 
more freely.  If you open the curtain, the light that comes through the 
window varies will let you see the interior of your room in different ways, 
depending on the time of day and on the weather, and when you close the 
curtains for a while you can see the same things by electric light, the 
light of a candle or the flickering of a fire.  The room remains the same, 
but the ways you look at it and use it varies.  This is how language is or 
should be in my thinking.

(6) I perceive distrust and rejection of anything scientific and written for 
an allegedly elusive, immeasurable language variety as being an expression 
of left-over European class consciousness, the old divide between the 
"elite" and "ordinary" people.  ("I can't compete with your supposed 
learning, thus must do the obstinate thing. So, poo on your science!")  A 
lot could be accomplished once people embrace the idea that there are 
different ways of skinning a cat (and pardon the expression, fellow cat 
lovers!) and that people can work together rather than against each other, 
that there is no need for enmity, and that there is room for all of us.

I do indeed know what's going on "in the scene," not only in Northern 
Germany, and I read all sorts of Low Saxon literature, not only old-time 
stuff and not only newfangled stuff either.

Sorry. This got longer than intended.

> (*)I couldn't find an English word for _scheinbar_; 'seemingly' for my
> feeling is closer to G:'anscheinend'??!

Apparently? Assumedly? Ostensibly?

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron 

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