LL-L "Names" 2007.12.22 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  22 December 2007 - Volume 02
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Names" 2007.12.21 (01) [E]

Marcus Buck schreef:

Reinhard Hahn schreef:
> Low Saxon (Neddersass'sch). Maybe Low Saxon is called "Neddersass'sch"
> in Plattdüütsch. I think that Neddersass'sch is another name of
> Plattdüütsch or Niederdeutsch.
>
> Our language is known as /Nedersaksisch /in Dutch, which is much more
> appropriate. References to "German" come from the time when in Germany
> they /wanted/ the language to be a dialect group of German.

Well, the name /Nedersaksisch/ in the Netherlands is of relatively
modern date (I heard of the 1990s being the date were this went a common
term). Before there was much particularism with everyone calling his
dialect only after his region (those terms are still common, but now as
subdivisions of Nedersaksisch).

In the German part of the language area the one and only popular term
for the whole language is /plattdüütsch. Neddersass'sch /and
/Nedderdüütsch/ are only used by educated speakers.

True, "Nedersaksisch" is a quite new and not or not yet overall used or
accepted name for the whole of Low Saxon dialects in the Netherlands.

But about what R said about the references to German: I don't think this
was just because they WANTED it to be German, because Dutch was called by
the Dutch themselves "Nederduits" too, next to "Nederlands", until far
into the 19th century. The denominators High and Low rather have to do
with geographical features, High German, including Middle German,
generally spoken in the hills and highlands, and Low German in the even
plains of Northern Germany and the Netherlands/Belgium...

I think the term "Low German" or "Niederdeutsch" can still be useful, not
as a synonym for Low Saxon, but for the group of dialects of Low Saxon,
Frisian and Low Franconian in Germany... What this Low German group
languages/dialects have in common, opposed to Middle and High German, is e
a the lack of the High German consonant shift, the lack of diphthongues
(long i and long u etc) and a couple of Ingvaeonic characteristics...

Ingmar
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