LL-L 'Lexicon' 2007.01.14 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 14 January 2007 - Volume 01

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L 'Lexicon' 2007.01.13 (01) [E/LS]

From Heather Rendall:
I am so old that I was taught TWO words for telephone: Fernsprecher and
Fernhör.
I have frequently used them as examples of how a language  has to invent
new words for new inventions and how these can just as easily go out of use
as the device is improved.

The Fernsprecher/ Fernhör suited the wall mounted early telephones with
separate
mouthpiece and earpiece

And I seem to remember seeing Fernsprecher as a sign in Post Offices still
in the 60s.

But as the invention developed and became all of a piece -which word was
to be used? Easy to reject both and use Telephon!  and then Telefon.

How did Handy come about? What's that from? It sounds more like a comment
than a name!

best wishes

Heather [Rendall]

I was also taught "der Ferhsprecher" at school, and remember seeing photos
of German phone boxes with it written on the side.  My current Collins
German dictionary doesn't even mention the word, but my "Duits/Nederlands
Woordenboek", 1975, does.  I find it interesting that whilst "Fernsprecher"
seems to have died, "der Fernseher" does not appear to under threat from any
form of word based on television.

I believe one of the reasons English has tended to create pseudo-classical
neologisms rather than compound Germanic English ones, is precisely because
the meaning isn't immediately clear.  You don't have to know that
"television" comes from Greek for "far" and Latin for "sight" to know it's a
box that shows pictures from far away. A "farseer" by contrast could be TV,
a telescope, binoculars, even a clairvoyant!

Paul Finlow-Bates

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L 'Language maintenance' 2007.01.12 (06) [E]

> From: MWI <wintzermichel at wanadoo.fr>
> Subject: LL-L 'Language maintenance' 2007.01.12 (01) [E]

> Ron, I think there are two sides of the
> coin: Fernsprecher sounds funny, everyone
> says Telefon. Why not? But imagine
> Goethe coming back to the 21st century.
> He would understand "Fernsprecher"
> and "Kraftfahrzeug".

Being a polymath, he would surely also understand "telefon", from the
Greek? Around here, it's just something else that's been chucked into
the cauldron.

> He is not coming
> back, but we are rooted in our past
> including its literature. Allowing changes
> to occur too swiftly and being too lazy
> to find indigenous words for new things
> has the same effect as a "Rechtschreib-
> reform": It degrades and eventually
> destroys the bridges that link us to our
> written past.

In English and Scots "telephone" is a bit old-fashioned now. We're all
the way up to "phone"! Nor does the purity of "television" sully our
lips - it's "telly" or "TV" (though strangely, in my Scots dialect at
least, the phrase "television set" has been revived - possibly some
reactionary measure?). And it's a _long_ time since a bus was an
omnibus, or a pram was a perambulator. A "bicycle" is now usually a
"bike", a "microphone" is usually a "mike", and the "microwave" seems to
be turning into a "mikey".

I've asked this before but didn't get an answer - don't other Lowlands
languages abbreviate like this? Or is this all about the
Anglo-Saxon/Graeco-Romance vocabulary (or, as language students say,
"vokab") in English and Scots. Is it that if something becomes very
common, the word has to be "Saxonised" to match it with the rest of
everyday vocabulary - but not the "Fernsprecher"-style Saxonisation, a
different kind of Saxonisation where the word is cut down to make it
sound as if it's part of the Saxon vocabulary? Because of course in
English and Scots "Saxon" words are just a matter of perception, of
shortness and ease of use, whatever their true etymology might be.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L 'Lexicon' 2007.01.13 (01) [E]

> From: "heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk"
> Subject: LL-L 'Language maintenance' 2007.01.12 (06) [E]
>
> The Fernsprecher/ Fernhör suited the wall mounted early telephones
> with separate
> mouthpiece and earpiece
>
> And I seem to remember seeing Fernsprecher as a sign in Post Offices
> still
> in the 60s.
>
> But as the invention developed and became all of a piece -which word
> was
> to be used? Easy to reject both and use Telephon!  and then Telefon.

How do German period dramas cope with this? Will an actor in a film
supposed to be based in the 1960s remember to say "Fernsprecher"? Or
doesn't it matter since his accent and general speech is liable to be
modern anyway?

It might interest you to know that although these posts are about
language change, and whether we should make an effort to use internal or
external ingredients when mixing new vocabulary, in British Sign
Language, and presumably other sign languages, the issues are quite
different.

This is because Deaf sign languages each come with a classifier system
for using the hands to express shapes and actions in space. Many signs
are therefore constructed not from bits of earlier languages but from
the components of the actual objects described, or the actions performed
in using these objects.

So a telephone used to be signed with two hands - one for the mouthpiece
and one for the earpiece. Then it was signed with one hand, representing
the telephone receiver. This is still current but runs alongside the
sign for a phone as used by the deaf, which has one hand signing the
receiver and another signing the keyboard. And then more recently
there's a new sign for little rectangular mobile phone. Five signs, in
fact, depending on whether you're speaking over it, texting with one
thumb, texting with two thumbs, taking a photograph, or making a video!

Cameras have had an even more interesting development. Originally there
was the sign for someone throwing a cloth backward over their head. Then
there was the camera held in two hands with the big flash and the button
on a handle at the top that you pressed with your thumb. Then came the
nostalgia-inducing Box Brownie, that has to be signed by looking down at
a box held in the hands. Now current is the little camera where you
press the button with your finger, although this is now being threatened
by the cameraphone which you hold up with one hand and press with your
thumb.

Luckily, older deaf people sometimes make regressive errors and I've
seen all of those signs used. But you can't exectly say that the new
signs replace older ones. A camera where you throw the cloth over your
head is still just that if you're talking about a scene in a Charlie
Chaplin film (though it's only the hearing that use the old
manually-wound movie-camera sign, the deaf have moved on to modern signs
for modern video cameras).

Retro signs can even be invented retroactively. Interpreters for the
theatre don't necessarily point at their wrist to indicate "time",
although this is the only sign you'd use for it in modern conversation.
Instead they've invented new (but theoretically old) signs for Roman
time, Shakespearian time, Victorian time and probably some others I
don't know about, and nobody seems to have any problem with it!

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Hi, Sandy!

> I've asked this before but didn't get an answer - don't other Lowlands
> languages abbreviate like this? Or is this all about the
> Anglo-Saxon/Graeco-Romance vocabulary (or, as language students say,
> "vokab") in English and Scots. Is it that if something becomes very
> common, the word has to be "Saxonised" to match it with the rest of
> everyday vocabulary - but not the "Fernsprecher"-style Saxonisation, a
> different kind of Saxonisation where the word is cut down to make it
> sound as if it's part of the Saxon vocabulary? Because of course in
> English and Scots "Saxon" words are just a matter of perception, of
> shortness and ease of use, whatever their true etymology might be.

Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier.

In Northern Germany, Low Saxon os pretty much beholden to German.  German
tends to have lots of doublet terms of the *Fernsprecher *vs *Telefon *type,
another one being (*Photographie-Camera* > *Camera *>) *Kamera *vs (*
Photo-Apparat* >) *Fotoapparat*.  In more recent days there are such pairs
involving English loans, such as *Computer* vs *Rechner* (< *elektronischer
Rechner*).  I would consider these calques or "semi-calques" (the latter for
instance substituting "apparatus" for "camera").

Low Saxon under German domination tends to borrow such terms from German,
the Germanized forms usually as calques (= loan translations), such as *
Rek(e)ner* ~ *Räk(e)ner* (= reckoner = computer).  This should not come as a
surprise considering that all new technology is introduced to everyone in
German.

German seems to occasionally abbreviate foreign-derived terms, such as Foto(<
Photo) which comes from Fotografie (< Photographie).  (In this case it
stands for "photograph" and is countable, but it can serve as uncountable
"photography" as well.)  However, I'm not sure if this is a German
abbreviation or if Foto is a separate loanword.  At any rate, Low Saxon uses
Foto also, assumedly as a German loan.

I can think of Low Saxon Fleger ("flyer") for 'airplane' and German Flugzeug,
but Flieger can also be used in some German dialects.

However, as new technology becomes common-place there may be certain types
of lexical changes, or rather lexical expansion, in Low Saxon.
Sometimes this involves simplification in everyday modes, by which I mean
replacing a new term with an older one where specificity is not required.
However, I don't think that this happens independently from German, as the
same usually applies in German as well.  A good example of this is replacing
Foto with Bild 'picture', much as "picture" can serve as a substitute for
"photo(graph)" in English, namely where the exact semantics are clear within
a given context.

Where Low Saxon dialects do demonstrate independence from German is in what
some might call "slang."  I hesitate to go along with labeling it "slang,"
though.  I rather consider such terms "nicknames," so to speak, and some of
them eventually become established as colloquialisms.  There doesn't seem to
be social limitation slang has, and the terms don't come across as vulgar,
nor are they associated with certain population groups.  You can use the
terms in addressing pretty much anyone who understands the dialect.  Yes,
they are used in casual language, but casual language is appropriate within
most social situation (at least so among genuine speakers that do not
translate from German), since the speaker population uses the language "off
the record," so to speak, and has a type of cameradery, if not familial
relationship, in which injection of humor is usually appropriate.

Take for instance English "telephone," or nowadays the usual form "phone"
(also in North America, Australia and New Zealand).  IYou might use the word
"blower" instead, or "horn," or "ameche," but I perceive these as slang and
as somewhat vulgar.  The same would apply to "piece" for "gun" in American
slang; it comes from street slang and is widely known from TV "cop shows,"
as are "perp" for "perpetrator" and "stiff" for "corpse," for instance.

Low Saxon "nicknaming" are perhaps a bit more like rhyming slang.  The come
with a bit of humor.  For instance, in Cockney rhyming slang you get "dog
and bone" for "(tele)phone."  In Low Saxon you get *Klœnkassen *(literally
"chitchat box" or "yak box") for 'phone' in addition to *Telefoon*.  Here
are a few more:

Television: Kiekkassen ("look/watch box")
   Kiekschapp ("look/watch armoire/locker")
   Glotzkassen ("goggle/stare box")
   Puuschenkino ("slipper cinema")
   (English "boob tube" is of a similar character.)

Radio: Dudelkassen ("tootle box")

Mobile phone: Ackersnacker ("field talker," originally "walky-talky")

Helicopter: Dwarsmöhl(en) ("sideways mill")
   (English "chopper" is of a similar character.)

Dentist: Muulklempner ("mouth plumber")
   Kusenflicker ("molar cobbler/patcher")
   Kusenknacker ("molar breaker")

Spectacles, (eye) glasses: N*ä*senfahrrad ("nose bike")

Bicycle: Drahtäsel ("wire donkey")
   Flitzepeed ("whizz+< velociped)
   Peddomobiel (velociped = tread/pedal+mobile vs Automobiel)*

(* pedden ~ petten 'to tread', 'to step', 'to kick', 'to pedal')

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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