LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.12 (04) [E]

Sun Mar 12 21:23:11 UTC 2006

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 12 March 2006 * Volume 04
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From: Theo Homan <theohoman at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.11 (03) [D/E]

From: Karl-Heinz Lorenz <Karl-Heinz.Lorenz at gmx.net>
Subject: L-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.10 (05) [E]

[...]

>  " sin seveser "
***

???

vr.gr.
Theo Homan

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.11 (03) [D/E]

>From Paul Finlow-Bates,

Re the perceived similarities and differences in languages: this seems to be 
very much up to the individual, and what they want to hear, or believe. 
When I was in South Africa, many people stressed the strong differences 
beyween English and Afrikaans.  To me, always interested in language origins 
and relationships, I looked for, and found, the similarities.  When I 
mentioned to German friend that my background with Afrikaans and some Dutch 
gave me a helping hand with improving German, she said she couldn't 
understand how, as to her Dutch is completely unintelligible!

In Papua New Guinea there was a popular idea among expatriates that speakers 
of the Motu Lingua Franca, derived from the Port Moresby area, "could 
understand Indonesian"!  While they are both Austronesian languages, they 
are hugely different, probably parting linguistic company thous! ands of 
years ago, and I couldn't understand how this could be possible - then I 
learned the origin of the story:
The Green River area on the Indonesia border was part of the old Papuan 
administration, where "Police Motu" was used as a cross-language 
communication (as opposed to Tok Pisin in New Guinea).  That area also had 
strong contacts across the border in Irian Jaya, where Indonesian was the 
most common multi-purpose language.  People around Green River were in fact 
creating their own Motu-Bahasa hybrid!

Paul

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From: Leslie Decker <leslie at familydecker.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.03.11 (06) [E]

:-)

I especially liked the Elan versions of the files, with the info about
code-switching and the like.

I don't know much about Low Saxon in Texas (or Sorbian substrates) but I
would imagine this existed at one time.  How much has survived I'm not
sure.  I heard Professor Boas give a talk on this project a few years
ago, and he mentioned that one of the things about Texas German that he
found the most interesting was that because the immigration came from so
many areas, and because the contact between the speakers was relatively
good, the language had taken on features of many different varieties and
dialects.  A sort of lingua franca developed.

Dr. Boas has also been involved in collecting samples of other immgrant
languages that were formerly commonplace in Texas, including Czech,
Sorbian, Polish, and Swedish.  He's an extremely helpful and
enthusiastic person, and I'm sure he'd be happy to answer any questions
anyone might have.  His email address is on the website.  BTW, that's
him interviewing a great number of the subjects.

I wish that I had had the opportunity to hear my own family speak a
language other than English.  I did know several of my
great-grandparents, but all but one (the native English speaker) had
died by the time I was 12, and at that time it hadn't occured to me that
they spoke another language, because they were native-born Americans.
My paternal grandfather's parents spoke Texas German, but never passed
it on to my grandfather (his older sister didn't speak English until she
went to school, but he said that he was pretty much English-only before
he started school).  My paternal grandmother's parents, Walter
Teichelman and Lilly Olsen, were native speakers of German and Swedish
respectively, and so they mostly used English with each other, and as a
result their children were monolingual English speakers.  They must have
gone to a German church at one point at least, though, because my
grandmother's baptism certificate is in German.  The speakers of
Lebanese Arabic on my mom's side died long before I was born, so they
never really played into the picture for me when I was little, although
because of family reunions with grape leaves and kibbe I was always much
more aware of being 'Syrian' than being German or Swedish.

Leslie

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> Thank you so much for pointing us to that fantastic resource, Leslie!
>
> (If you keep this up you might end up with a Hawaiian name -- and I
> don't mean that in a threatening way.)
>
> Folks, while the background reading is great, the transcripts und
> recordings (under "Dialect Archive") are especially interesting to
> many of us.  To get access to all transcripts and recordings (sorted
> by county) you need to register, and I think it's well worth it.
>
> Very nice!  An exemplary resource!
>
> It would be interesting to find out if there are some speakers of Low
> Saxon ("Low German") left in any of the Texas communities, also if any
> of the existing communities have Sorbian roots and possibly Sorbian
> substrates in their German.
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron

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

Thanks again, Leslie!

I've never heard of Sorbian ("Wends" Grrrr ...) still being used as a 
conversational language in Texas (Serbin, Lee County) and Australia, 
probably because I had heard that it had been taken over by German, given 
that the communities had been bilingual to begin with.  However, it would 
make a lot of sense that they retained the language, given that their 
ancestors' emigration was primarily prompted by suppression of their 
language on the part of the Prussian government.

I have never heard of Low Saxon ("Low German") surviving as a community 
language in Texas, only in the U.S. Midwest and in some areas of the 
Northeast (apart from associations in several parts of the country).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron 

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