LL-L "Lexicon" 2005.09.26 (08) [E/LS/German]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 26.SEP.2005 (08) * 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: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Lexicon" [E]

> From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2005.09.24 (02) [E]
>
> Speaking of sizable vocabularies in various languages: here's an amusing 
> BBC
> link that fits the topic: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4248494.stm

In Scots a person who makes a mess with his food is a slaister, and 
dribblings of food on a person's shirt are slaigers.

Dist is dust but stour is dust in motion. The thing that you move slightly 
to deadlock a Yale lock is a snib, while the thing you turn to lock a window 
is a sneck.

A hillside is a brae and the brow of a hill is the snab.

Thin watery mud is glar and a thin spattering of cow dung on the road is 
shairn.

A river that's rushing and swollen from rainfall or due to snow melting on 
the hills is in spate, while light rain coming down in shimmering curtains 
is smirr.

It's hard to compare sign languages with spoken languages in these ways. Do 
sign languages have very few words which are very heavily inflected, or do 
they just have gigantic vocabularies?

For example, "angry", "annoyed", "really annoyed" and "furious" are all 
simple inflections of the same sign.

Classifiers blow things up even more: "sit", "kneel", "walk", "stand", 
"fall", "drunk", "go upstairs", "go downstairs", "go up a spiral staircase", 
"go down a spiral staircase" and "jumping for joy" are just a small sampling 
of the signs produced from a single classifier.

Is it cheating that you have several channels of expression that you can 
perform combinatorics on? Or that you have two hands so that you can (and 
often do) sign two signs at the same time?

And then you have to consider the large number of isolated ideas each of 
which are expressed by a single word (sign):

Eyes out on stalks.
Jaw hit the floor.
Heart leaped out of chest.
Fluttering eyelids.
I got egg on my face.
It knocked me for six.
Just have to put up with it.
Trying not to laugh.
Stand up for yourself.
That put me in my place.
It's beyond me.
I'm out to get him.

Some are even made with tiny discreet signs designed to minimise the chances 
of anyone other than who you're speaking to seeing:

They're talking rubbish.
I'm bored stiff.
You're embarrassing yourself.

I think one of my favourite signs is one meaning "swotting up on something", 
which is done with a single sign which means literally, "I'm reading like 
mad with all eight eyes"  ::::)

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Heiko Evermann <heiko.evermann at gmx.de>
Subject: Mauren

Moin tosamen,

wir haben in der plattdeutschen Wikipedia
(http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid) über die Mauren diskutiert:

http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskuschoon:Madrid

"Heet dat ok op Platt Mauren? Dat -au- is ja nich so faken in't Platt.
Nedderlandsch to'n Bispeel hett Moren. Dat is ja temlich wohrschienlich, dat
dat en oolt plattdüütsch Woort dorför gifft, de Keerls weren ja en groot
Thema in de Tiet, as dat Plattdüütsche noch en grote Spraak wöör."

Tja, wie steht es um die Mauren? Auf Niederländisch heißen die
"Moren" (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moren). Kamen die in alten
plattdeutschen Texten als "Moren" vor? Oder sollten wir da "Mauren"
schreiben?

Das ist mal wieder so ein Fall, wo uns unsere Lexika nicht weiterhelfen. 
Aber
vielleicht habt Ihr ja eine Idee?

Herzliche Grüße,

Heiko

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

That's an interesting one, Heiko.

The older Low Saxon and German cognate(s) of Dutch _moor_ is _Mohr_, and the 
English one is "Moor."  However, the German and Low Saxon word, being 
derived from Latin _maurus_ "Northwest African," has taken on the 
predominant meaning "black person," even being used in the sense of 
"blackamoor" and "Jim Crow."  This is now rather old, though, and seems to 
have lost some of its power.  I guess German reinvented the name _Maure_ to 
differentiate it from the negative connotation of _Mohr_.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with using _Mohr_ in a LS 
encyclopedia, in agreement with Dutch and English _moor_, in this "good" 
context. If in doubt, you could add a remark and a cross-reference to the 
old negative connotation.  I find _moor_/_Mohr_ more natural to the language 
than _Maur(e)_.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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