LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.23 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 23 January 2006 * Volume 03
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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.20 (04) [E]


Henno wrote:
"There are some trilingual schools, that offer classes in English, Frisian 
and Dutch, different subjects being taught in different languages."

Is this a co-ordinated policy or is it left up to the individual school to 
decide? Are there different models - such as in the Basque Country - where 
Model A, say, is all in Frisian, Model B is half through Frisian and half 
through Dutch, and Model C is entirely in Dutch? If so, are any statistics 
available on the number of pupils taught entirely through Frisian, partly 
through Frisian, and so on?

"About 98% of the population claims to understand the language, so it's not 
really an impediment."

This is also the case in Catalonia with Catalan. Are many children who have 
Dutch as their mother tongue and home language taught in Frisian or do they 
tend to stick to Dutch-language schools? Do most children with Frisian ! as 
their mother tongue and home language go to Frisian-medium or Dutch-medium 
schools?

"There are some initiatives in standardizing terms for other subjects (like 
maths) for
Frisian, but I suspect they are not used much, as of yet. People just aren't 
used to it."

The most recent surveys on attitudes toward Irish here, from the mid-1990s, 
show that a large proportion of people still believe Irish is not suited to 
business and maths - i.e., that it is a "poetic" language of limited use in 
the "modern" world.

"Place name signs are bilingual, and some communities have their Frisian 
name
as the only official name, and as such these names appear on official 
direction signs etc. There is some use of Frisian in advertising. Of course 
Frisian language institutions have Frisian signs outside. But it is not very 
visible, indeed."

This tallies with my experience in Fryslan. Public signage in Fr! isian is 
nowhere as evident as public signage in Dutch, except in place name plaques. 
This is the experience of most other minoritised European languages 
(particularly Irish in Ireland).

Go raibh maith agat,

Criostóir.

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From: Karl Schulte <kschulte01 at alamosapcs.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.22 (01) [E]

In an earlier discussion, the following was postulated:
>  I dont hink you could
> find any lines in Chaucer that read like modern English, even though
> Chaucer is a couple of generations after Dante.
Actually, while the point is generally valid, one can, in fact, find a
number of such lines (but they would have been pronounced differently -
likely much like Fries or Saxon - and this is true even of older
forms/written material (even Beowulf) where suddenly in the midst of
Norse/Old German appearing lines a modern English phrase or line jumps
out at you.

Karl Schulte 

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