LL-L "Language survival" 2005.09.07 (13) [A/E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 07.SEP.2005 (13) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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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 (Zeêuws)
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From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language survival" 2005.09.06 (01) [E]

Beste Jonny, Ron, Mark,

Onderwerp: "Language survival"

> I woud frown upon any sugjestion of a 50-50 division or bileingual
> edewcateion.

!!!

Have any of you given thought to what happened in South Africa with English
& that other language Afrikaans? I do not accept that the representative
majority of my people do discredit to the English language in speech or in
print. I suppose you would also have to look hard for a Welsh lad or lass of
school-leaving age who would abuse the English so.

Om billik te wees, ouers het van die begin af die keuse gehad om vanaf die
eerste skooljaar hulle kinders of in Engels of in Afrikaans te laat
onderrig. Van toe af is hulle hele onderwys in die gekeuse taal (nie
noodwendig moedertaal nie, maar mens moes motiveer), hetsy die Wetenskap of
die Vrye Kunste. Een uitsondering alleen is die ander nasionale taal, en dit
is vanaf die eerste skooljaar 'n voorgeskrewe eksamen-vak. Die voordeel van
Afrikaanssprekendes is dat ons onderwysers in Engels lede van ons eie
gemeenskap is, met die nodige inwendige verstand van ons eie taalgange.

Die ander taalgroep het natuurlik die einste voordeel in hulle eie gekeuse
taal geniet, (met voorwaardes verbonde aan hulle eie kultuurbelange - bv. al
te min van die Engelse gemeenskap het onderwys as 'n beroeping opgevat). Die
gevolg daarvan is dat die meerderheid onderwysers nie inboorling
Engelssprekendes was nie - ieder immigrante uit Noord Engeland en Skotland,
en Afrikaners.

Ek sal julle laat raai in watter taal ek my onderrig ontvang het. Elsie en
Ron bly aub eers 'n bietjie stil.

I cannot imagine how it is that Welsh goes from strength to strength, while
the mother-tongue of my maternal Grandmother's people dropped from over
three hundred thousand under English hegemony in 1919 to twenty thousand
(averred & untested) under their own leadership in 2005. It is a scandal.

I suppose if in the first place teaching were viewed as a calling as it was
once in Scotland & in my country - that is highly respected and well as well
as promptly paid, so that the authorities could take their pick of
volunteers, it would help.
Then they would have to be marshalled to teach as many as volunteered (that
is their parents) to fluency in all subjects at every school-year right up
to the tertiary level, excepting only English, one lesson every day from the
beginning, as an examination-subject, taught in English.
A language-Academy would have to be established, NOT to prescribe how to
speak Irish, but to develop technical language rooted in the Irish language,
suitable for every modern pursuit & all crafts.
The State would need to guarantee secure employment for SUITABLE graduates
in Irish - not hard to do, they are surely tragically short of such people.
The State would have to seek out & subsidise worthy scholars fluent in
Irish, for teachers & researchers in that tongue.
If all this were done & ONLY those who volunteered were included in the
program they could start building on what survives of Irish.
The program would then become attractive to others with a cultural bias as
well as ambition in that subject.
Having established that foundation, the other official language, English,
could be honourably served by those committed to it, while at the same time
the radically reduced need for tuition in Irish to one lesson per day for
every pupil would the more easily be served.
Then you could start building up the population of native Irish speakers,
with adult language tuition, foreigner ditto &c.
Under such a regime I believe only those who loved the Irish would speak it,
& they would strive to speak it well. What are numbers, after all?

Is this too big a bite of reality? I don't think so. Once the same danger
threatened Afrikaans. Here was English, the conquerer's tongue, &
alternatively Nederlands, with an orthography & grammar as alien as English.
Afrikaans was dismissed as either 'Die Taal' or 'Kitchen Dutch'. It is no
surprise that so many of our people who went overseas to study past school
level went to St Andrews in Scotland - at least they could understand the
speech on the street! And while they were about it they converted the South
African Dutch Reformed Churches to Presbytarianism.

Jonny, ek wet jou jy sal uit eie bodem 'n ordentlikke Laelandse vakkundige
woordeskat kan uitdelf in sommer enige onderwerp. Onthou die Hansa had mos
rekekundiges, boekhouers, seemanne, skipbouers, grofsmede, soldate en nogwat
volop ingeboek - sommer hordes. Hulle moes in die taal diens lewer en
kommunikeer. Dit sal my nie verbaas nie as u voorgangers hulle aandag op die
onderwerp gevestig het. Hou moed! Aanhou wen.

Ek is die laaste maande lank en laat in my werkies bebesig, en daarom kon ek
min bydra tot die gesellighede. Tog lees ek graag, Gabriele! Else, Ron en
almal.

Die uwe
Mark

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language survival" 2005.09.07 (10) [E]

Uilleam wrote:
>   Is it
>   really possible for a language to rise like Phoenix from the ashes like
>   that? I would love to believe that, but I have yet to be convinced.
>
> I think the example of Hebrew is quite convincing.

No, not really. That was a very special, intensely emotional and desperate
political situation, where everybody was very strongly motivated indeed. I
don't see the same thing happening for Lower Saxon at all (thank heaven,
let's hope that this kind of motivation will never arise again, anywhere).

Gabriele Kahn

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

Haai, Mark!

> Ek sal julle laat raai in watter taal ek my onderrig ontvang het. Elsie en
> Ron bly aub eers 'n bietjie stil.

Ja, ja ... Psss, Elsie! ;-)

Hi, Gabriele ... and of course all my other nearly five hundred favorite 
Lowlanders!

I certainly agree with you that the case of Hebrew started off under very 
extreme circumstances and that most language communities' circumstances are 
very different, less extreme, and thankfully so.

However – not to detract from your point but to sneak in a bit more 
perspective – let us not forget that the Hebrew renaissance movement had a 
rather mixed start in the late 19th century (when it grew as a result of 
continuous pogroms, chicanery, defamation and discrimination, then 
especially in areas under Russian domination). There were far more skeptics 
and naysayers than believers and enthusiasts at first.  Many considered it 
lunatic fringe stuff, even Jews that basically shared the belief they would 
be better off in their own state (by which not everyone meant the biblical 
lands).  Some would have settled for Yiddish as their common language, 
others for German, English, French … with Hebrew as a written and liturgical 
language as since times immemorial.  It was the more extremist Zionists that 
advocated Hebrew as the future national language, despite the fact that it 
had been Palestinian Aramaic their Middle Eastern ancestors had last spoken 
and Hebrew had long been extinct as a spoken language already when the 
Hebrews lived under Roman occupation. Those that at the turn of the 19th to 
the 20th centuries emigrated to Palestine and started living off the land 
and speaking Hebrew with each other (despite most of them being well 
educated and having Yiddish, Russian and German in common) were by many or 
most considered a romantic intellectuals' minority in pursuit of a 
pipedream.  The final and decisive boost to the movement came with the Great 
Holocaust, eventually resulting in the establishment of Israel and the 
beginning of the Middle East Conflict.

My point is that, despite dire circumstances, the early-stage Hebrew 
renaissance movement was by no means welcomed with open arms by all and 
sundry.  There were the skeptics making the point that the language could 
never again be made native and fulfill the needs of modern times.  Then 
there were those who thought it would be a waste of time and effort (perhaps 
remembering their trouble with Hebrew in preparation of their Bar Mitzvah? 
;-) ).  And, by no means least, there were the very religious who believed 
(and many still believe) that Hebrew and the Land of Israel would and should 
only be revived with the coming of the Messiah.  It sure was an uphill 
battle, aided by circumstances one would not want to wish on anyone.

It might be useful here to distinguish cases of *renaissance (rebirth)*, 
like that of spoken Hebrew, from cases of *revival*.  By "revival" I mean a 
sort of comeback, from *something* rather than from *nothing*, in a manner 
of speaking.  Situations of revival seem more germane to what we are talking 
about in the Lowlands context, since we are not talking about extinct 
languages but about "minoritized" and endangered ones.

Welsh, for example, having previously wasted away, has gone through a 
considerable revival lately, in great part due to ethnic, cultural and 
national reassertion.  Welsh had been spoken, but mostly in the countryside 
and more or less closeted in urban homes, and some parts of Wales had lost 
the Welsh language almost altogether.  This was much like Low Saxon in 
Northern Germany now.

[By the way, Heather, I quite agree that *all* children should have studied 
Welsh, that separation of English and Welsh children, albeit out of 
"consideration," most likely did more harm than good. After all, the English 
children were living in Wales and owed the country some sort of adaptation. 
Anyway, a second language is a always good thing, and separation is rarely a 
good thing.  Besides economic excuses, it was out of "consideration" for 
non-Saxon-descent children that Low Saxon contents were yanked out of our 
schools when I was a kid.]

Neo-Norwegian is another relevant case.  Today's majority Norwegian language 
(_riksmål_, _bokmål_) is really Dano-Norwegian, namely Danish on Norwegian 
substrates, with a more recent dose of true Norwegianization.  (Ibsen's 
language, for instance, did not differ much from Danish, might even be 
called a type of Danish.)  True Norwegian only survived as "dialects," 
mostly in the countryside – the more remote the less Danish-influenced.  It 
was with Norwegian nationalism and eventual liberation from Danish rule that 
Neo-Norwegian (_nynorsk_) or "Country Language" (_landsmål_) began 
developing, based mostly on a conglomeration of "forgotten" dialects with a 
shot or five of Old Norse thrown into the mix (Eine Mischung! Ach, du liebe 
Güte!).  This language has come a long way, even though it is used as a 
first language by only a bit over 10 percent of Norway's 4.6 inhabitants. 
It is established as one of two official Norwegian languages (and, 
additionally, Saami is official in six northern municipalities), has its own 
media and a good range of literature.  All Norwegians must learn both 
languages.  What is remarkable about Neo-Norwegian, as a Neo-Norwegian 
writer friend of mine once explained, is that there is no hard and fast 
standard language, just a soft lexical, grammatical and orthographic 
standard core and a lot of room for regional variation.  She told me that 
you can easily tell the region from which a Neo-Norwegian writer hails, and 
that this is considered an asset by most readers.  It is important to note 
that, as a result or national and regional reassertion, Neo-Norwegian 
advanced from a hotchpotch of moribund dialects to a fairly widely spoken 
and written language that, like revived Welsh, has fully adapted to all of 
today's needs.  (This case may be of greater relevance to the Low Saxon and 
Scots debate.)

Peripherally – or perhaps not all that peripherally – let's also mention the 
cases of the erstwhile neglected languages that after the collapse of the 
Soviet Union have been reasserting themselves in the newly reestablished 
countries of Eurasia.  While none of the languages we are talking about was 
moribund, they had been pushed farther and farther down on the colonial 
totem poles (despite official shows and dances), and Russian replaced them 
especially among younger urban Soviet citizens.  For instance, most younger 
urban Belarusans, Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz had become 
Russian-speaking.  Those that could speak their ancestral languages usually 
did so poorly, just enough to make grandma happy, and few could write them 
or use them in all walks of life.

While the effects of Russification have by no means disappeared, the 
respective languages have made variously strong comebacks, in great part 
because they are now not only official but are in fact predominant in 
education and in the media, and they are required in the job market.  Some 
of this can be seen also among the regional languages of the Russian 
Federation, partly because of political relaxation.  But it pales by 
comparison.  Despite being official in their respective republics, languages 
like Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash, Mari, Nenets, Ossetian, Khakas, Kalmyk, 
Buriat, Even, Evenki, Nanai, Selkup and Yakut are endangered, and many of 
the "smaller" ones are moribund.  When I recently asked for some help from a 
young ("pure") Volga Tatar who lives in Tataristan, it turned out that I 
could read more Tatar than he could … (and I read Tatar and closely related 
Bashkir pretty darn poorly, never without dictionaries flying all over the 
place).  He just uses Russian all the time, and the older folks' Tatar 
pretty much slides off his back most of the time.

I have been told lately (but I cannot vouch for its voracity) that some 
North American languages have been enjoying renewed interest and pride 
lately, some apparently gaining speakers.  (But this is of course still a 
drop in the bucket compared with the many moribund American languages.)

While much of the above deals with image-polishing as a consequence of 
liberation, secession and national renaissance, the case of Wales seems to 
show that total political separation is not a prerequisite for language 
revival.  However, aside from economic incentives, any kind of 
image-polishing and increased heritage enjoyment and pride (hopefully not of 
the chauvinist type) can go a long way.  Once the process is underway, 
appreciation and love are likely to follow.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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