LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.22 (02) [E]

Tue Nov 22 22:15:07 UTC 2005

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L O W L A N D S - L * 22 November 2005 * Volume 02
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From: "jonny" <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.21 (03) [E/Spanish]

Ron, Sandy,

'Veermaster' again.

My (often heard and sung with version) of the refrain:

> >      Blow boys blow, for Californio.
> >      There is plenty of gold so I am told
> >      on the banks of Sacramento.
> >      Blow boys blow, for Californio.
> >      There is plenty of gold so I am told
> >      on the banks of Sacramento.

As I just found out- we always sung it a little bit differently:

"Blow boys blow, for Californio.
There is plenty of gold so _hey_  ('he') had told..."

...and so on. This way there came in some more Lowlandic specifications!...

Maybe it was wrong- but we are excused, I think.

Greutens/Regards

Johannes "Jonny" Meibohm

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From: "Paul Finlow-Bates" <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.21 (03) [E/Spanish]

From: CrÃostÃ³ir Ã“ Ciardha
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.19 (01) [E/Papiamentu]

"I'm actually researching the history of language use amongst Australian
Aboriginals at the moment, and what you say here is very relevant. As you
know, indigenous Australians are typically some of the most multi-lingual
peoples in the world, with trilingualism usual and quadrilingualism or
quintilingualism not uncommon."

  I actually wasn't aware of that, probably because the only Aboriginal
people I had
any contact with were east coast urban dwellers, few if any of whom speak
anything
other than English.  I assume your studies apply Outback?

"I do not know the extent of Tok Pisin in West Papua, if it has any presence
there at all"

  I don't believe it does; in fact, around the Green River area on the PNG
side
Bahasa Indonesian was a more common lingua franca than Tok Pisin, because the
community had more ties to the west.

  I recall an article in the Port Moresby Post Courier many years ago
saying that
some members of the OPM resistance movement in Irian Jaya were trying to
encourage
the use of Tok Pisin as a "nationalist" language, in order to reject
Indonesia and
all things Indonesian.  Not very successfully, I suspect.

  Paul

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From: "heather rendall" <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.21 (03) [E/Spanish]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>Aboriginals were usually addressed in a sort of baby talk by Europeans,
based on the racist prejudice that Aboriginals were incapable of higher
thought and so needed a "simplified" form of the language.<

I think everybody addressing a non-speaker of their language 'drops' into
this method of communication - where the language is stripped of all
'unessentials' and merely the main concept words are used.

It's rather like toddler talk - single words used as an invariable to
encompas a complete idea.   It is a very simple version of the 'motherese'
that researchers refer to i.e. language spoken by a mother to her child.

I think any kind of reasoning such as you give smacks of anti-colonialist
rhetoric - after the fact.

I've heard Germans in Crete do it - in German AND in English.
I have heard French people do it in England - and Yes there are people who
do not speak English.

On a different tack - I have an Aboriginal glossary written in c 1852/3 by
my husband's gt gt grandfather in a diary he kept between 1851 -59. Having
finished school, he was sent, aged 15, by his seemingly progressive father
to the Bendigo Goldfields. On arriving in Melbourne, heartily homesick, he
decided not to go and tried his luck in the town instead. His loss of both
Â£10 and a cow and its calf ( both wild) make for hilarious reading. He made
it to a wool station where he bacame a sheepherders' hutkeeper and learnt
how to make acceptable damper. After breaking a leg in an accident he
signed up as cook ( his damper must have improved!) on an expedition led by
Lord Audley, the Asst Surveyor-General, who was prospecting for new
goldfields. It was on their first trip that they met a family of Aborigines
and Philip compiled a glossary of 'small talk' enough to chat up the 15
year old daughter!

The diary is now very difficult to read as the ink has faded and he
necessarily wrote v small on tiny scaps of paper. It is the job I am
putting off till my old age - actually transcribing the rest. I have only
done the 1st few years that is all.

If you think the scraps of language preserved here might be on interest,
the whole diary is available in the Australian archives (in Canberra?) in
photocopy - which is easier to read than the original now.
It should be listed under our name   D I  & H Rendall.    The name of the
diarist was Philip Johnson of Birmingham England

Hope this helps

Heather

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