LL-L "Language survival" 2005.09.09 (04) [E]
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Fri Sep 9 17:53:10 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
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language survival" 2005.09.09 (02) [E]
Heather Rendall wrote:
"You know this for a fact? Or is this just anti-English prejudice?"
Neither fact nor prejudice, but (probably poorly) informed conjecture.
"A Welsh friend whose language in the home was Welsh, asked for her daughter
to be put in the English section reasoning that as she had a good background
in Welsh at home, she would be best served by learning English and so become
bilingual. She was told she couldn't and that all Welsh children were to be
in the Welsh section. She and the family moved to Liverpool! It was the
method that was wrong.... not the aim."
We agree on that much at least.
"By the way just to undermine your accusing me and mine of anti-Welsh
feeling, I belonged at the time to The Freedom for Welsh Language Campaign
that called for bi-lingualism rather then replacing a monolingual culture
with another monolingual one."
There is absolutely no chance whatsoever of Wales (and I consider myself a
socio-linguistic optimist) becoming monolingually Welsh-speaking again. This
takes us back to your original post which insinuated English was under
threat in Wales and that Welsh was now being forced on all on and sundry. In
that post you called for a bilingualism that struck me very much as the
continuance of English monolingualism on the part of English speakers but
bilingualism on the part of those with Welsh.
"I wish I had you in one of my sessions entitled 'The disadvantages of
English as a mother tongue', where I point out that the same characteristics
of English that make it so simple for other people to learn as a 2nd
language, actually pose huge problems for the monoglot English
speaker learning any other language."
I was a monoglot English speaker until I was thirteen. I have since learnt
Irish and Cornish and a smattering of other languages: I do not see an
English-speaking mind as inherently prohibitive of learning other languages.
What I do see is a mindset among English speakers that they cannot (and
should not necessarily) learn other languages, particularly where for one
reason or another English monolingualism in public life is challenged by
another language (for instance, Welsh). If I may be frank (and I apologise
if it comes across as offensive), it sounds like excuse-weaving of the
highest order. English speakers don't want! to learn other languages because
they believe English is superior and that, as a concern, the linguistic
world revolves around them. Hence the "say it louder in English" incredulity
of English speakers abroad when they encounter (heaven forfend) someone who
has the arrogance not to know English.
"Unfortunately the reverse is true for English speakers - it takes them ages
to be able
cogntively to arrive at the same confident standard of fluency in, say, the
Eurpean languages currently taught in schools here."
Heather, the reason British schoolchildren (of which I was one) are abysmal
at languages is that they only start learning them at the age of eleven, and
only then once or twice a week. What is more, teaching quality varies from
total immersion to little more than "ecoutez et répetez" from the
blackboard. Cognitive determinism has nothing to do with it. If British
schoolchildren were taught French immersion daily from age four as English
is taught on the continen! t, they would be fluent in that language.
"And we all know that if something is hard, we give ourselves excuses not do
it! ( Everyone out there speaks English - being the favourite)"
I think this makes much more sense than neurologically hobbled monoglot
English speakers, don't you?
Ron wrote of Sorbian:
"I do know that quite a few German-speaking parents, including those of
purely German descent, chose to route their children through the Sorbian
school system (as many still send their children through the Danish school
system in Schleswig-Holstein), probably the closest to bilingual you could
get there and then. Apparently, many believed this to be ethically right
and/or they assumed it would give their children an advantange over
others..."
I do not see any sort of moral dilemmas in providing two school systems, one
in language A and one in language B, as long as children of any linguistic
background are free to attend either and switch at any point. If parents
speaking language A choose to send their child to a school in which the
medium of instruction is language B, that is entirely up to them. I do not
really view that course of action as linguistic apartheid, but rather as a
survival mechanism for the demographically weaker language. Certainly it a
fairer course of action than compelling all children of both backgrounds to
attend a school in which only language A is the medium of instruction.
"In reply to my letter condemning one such school closure, Saxony's minister
of education explained to me that the affected school simply did not have a
sufficient number of students, was thus not economically viable, that this
was merely a consolidation effort, there still being plenty of Sorbian
schools in the state."
Matters of simple economics are usually no more than an excuse to act
against the demographically weaker language in the interest of what is
usually the state language. Schools can and do remain open with very few
pupils right across Europe, yet when language is introduced we some times
find that minority language schools suddenly "do not have the numbers" to
stay open. I think the situation is changing for the better (certainly it is
here in relation to Irish-language schools), but it is probably still not
good enough.
"I find it amazing how the pronunciation has changed, i.e., been Germanized,
! in my lifetime alone. Interestingly, this heavy German "accent" seems to
be standard among the moderators now, while once in a while you still hear
the older pronunciation when people "in the street" are interviewed, even
some young people."
>From what I understand, the earlier Irish-medium schools in Belfast were
staffed by people who had learnt Irish themselves in adult life, and the one
study I can recall indicated that the children had lost some of the
mutational system of Irish and adopted the more anglicised phonology of
their teachers - i.e., reducing palatisation and velarisation so that
"teach" (house) became ['tSak] not the traditional ['tjax] and "dhuit" (to
you) became ['gitS] instead of ['Gitj] (the latter with an initial ghamma
sound) I think the colour spectrum was aligned with its English counterpart,
as well. I am not sure if these phenomena are still the case.
Go raibh maith agaibh,
Criostóir.
----------
From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Language survival" 2005.09.09 (02) [E]
I was wondering, since English is a Lowlands (Germanic) language and Welsh
is not, what side we have to choose here as a Lowlands (Germanic) language
site? Shouldn't the growth of any Lowlands language make us happy, so when
English over Welsh, Dutch over French, or Low Saxon over Sorbian gains
terrain over we've won another battle? Of course we don't think like that
in reality, at least that's what I guess and think to understand, but
isn't that a bit strange in fact? Ingmar
>From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
>Subject: LL-L "Language survival" 2005.09.08 (01) [A/E]
>
>Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>>It was highly unlikely in the 1970s that English-speaking children would
>know any Welsh, or wish to learn it.<
>
>You know this for a fact?
>
>Or is this just anti-English prejudice?
>
>Heather
----------
From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language survival
Críostóir (above):
> I do not see any sort of moral dilemmas in providing two school systems,
> one in language A and one in language B, as long as children of any
> linguistic background are free to attend either and switch at any point.
Oh, nor do I! Sorry if I came across as thinking otherwise. What I *would*
object to would be a situation I understood Heather as describing: children
being routed to "their" respective schools on the basis of their (official)
ethnicity, with no alternative choices, or, if there are such choices
officially, then shaming into making the "right" choice. This is what I
would consider a type of apartheid.
I do see the moral dilemma from a language activist point of view, since it
is not "according to plan/wish/agenda," besides the child's future being
affected, something that he or she may regret as an adult. Regrettable
though a "contrary" choice may be, you have to put up with it in an
officially "free" society. To compensate for "erraneous" parental
decisions, one could put in place a good "latecomers'" program for
adolescent and adult learners. (I started taking advantage of such a
program as a teenager when I decided I needed more than my school offered me
and my parents aspired to. We started learning English at age 10/11, and the
methodology was anything but ideal. I made up for it later.) This may not
make for an "ideal" situation, but it is much better than nothing, and it
offers opportunities to people that tend to be self-motivated and in charge
of their own futures.
Ingmar (above)
> I was wondering, since English is a Lowlands (Germanic) language and Welsh
> is not, what side we have to choose here as a Lowlands (Germanic) language
> site? Shouldn't the growth of any Lowlands language make us happy, so when
> English over Welsh, Dutch over French, or Low Saxon over Sorbian gains
> terrain over we've won another battle? Of course we don't think like that
> in reality, at least that's what I guess and think to understand, but
> isn't that a bit strange in fact?
Well ... Where do we start? Let me put this succinctly:
* There is no such policy, agenda or expectation. Subscribers are free to
form and choose their own views.
* As far as I am concerned, there are no sides, certainly none as a matter
of policy.
* Lowlands languages are not considered better or worse than other
languages, nor ought they be vilified for political, socio-economic and
historical reasons.
Hopefully, there is no prevalent soccer fan mentality on the List, where we
only cheer for the home team. It would make no sense, given also that we
have Lowlandic "villains" and "victims." We are interested in "our" area,
but that does not mean that we ought to consider other areas less worthy,
less important. I like to assume that we are all mature enough to be able
to focus on a certain area and still see the larger picture, that we do not
confuse the social and political roles of a given language with degrees of
worthiness of study and attention.
Críostóir again:
> From what I understand, the earlier Irish-medium schools in Belfast
> were staffed by people who had learnt Irish themselves in adult life,
> and the one study I can recall indicated that the children had lost some
> of the mutational system of Irish and adopted the more anglicised
> phonology of their teachers - i.e., reducing palatisation and velarisation
> so that "teach" (house) became ['tSak] not the traditional ['tjax] and
> "dhuit"
> (to you) became ['gitS] instead of ['Gitj] (the latter with an initial
> ghamma
> sound) I think the colour spectrum was aligned with its English
> counterpart, as well. I am not sure if these phenomena are still the case.
There may be a bit of that going on in the case of Sorbian. However, I
suspect that the phenomenon goes back a farther in time. (I listened to a
reading by the famous aged author Jurij Brězan, and he, too, sounded
"German.") Most, if not all of the "main players" may be categorized as
"intellectuals." The early leaders and writers tended to be exclusively
German-educated, and it may well be that they handed down the "accent" and
the rather Germanized syntax to new "players" in urban settings. In other
words, the more Germanized varieties may have become "elite" varieties, and
more original ones are preserved only in smaller rural communities and are
now disappearing. I can see something similar happening to the German
dialects of the general area. My cousins speak very, very differently from
my grandmother who was from the same Lower Silesian area (which includes
today's Lusatia, just a fraction of the original one). For example, people
of her generation used an apical /r/ in both Sorbian and German, while
younger people use the uvular /r/ as in mainstream Standard German. A
similar thing happened in many Northern German dialects on Low Saxon
substrates, and this has begun to spill over to Low Saxon.
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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