LL-L 'Phonology' 2007.01.25 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 25 January 2007 - Volume 02

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From: Heiko Evermann <heiko.evermann at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L 'Etymology' 2007.01.24 (02) [E/LS]

> This shift must have followed the borrowing of *Quark* from Slavonic,
> considering for instance Lower Sorbian twarog, Polish *twaróg*, Upper
> Sorbian *twaroh*, Czech/Slovak *tvaroh*, Russian творог *tvorog* 'curd'.
> Alternatively, German speakers may have perceived foreign tv- as kv- at
one
> time, or it was their only possible way of rendering it within the
> parameters of their native phonological rules.
Well, this might not have been the first time. Plautdietsch has moved
"kennen"
to "kjennen" and to me it sounds like "tjennen". And Albanian has two
tsch-sounds. One is spelled "ç" (c with comma), the other is spelled q and
is
supposed to sounds a bit more like German "kch" with ch as in "Licht". When
I
was in Albania, I was told about the difference, but I was not able to hear
the difference.

Hartlich Gröten,

Heiko

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

Heiko,

In Mennonite Low Saxon (*Plautdietsch*) there appears to have been a
two-stage shift involving palatalization of velars before front vowels:

(1) Palatalization:

k > kj [kç]
g > j [j]

e.g. kind > kjint 'child', geel > jäl 'yellow'

(2) Fronting:

kj > tj [tç]

So, palatalization is the key here, as it happened in English and Frisian as
well (lǽca > lǽce / letze > leech 'healer' > 'blood-sucking worm').

There are Plautdietsch dialects that have *kj* [kç], and there are others
that have *tj* [tç].  The fronted variety is a hallmark of the so-called
"Russian" (*Russl**ända*) dialect spoken by more recent emigrants from the
Soviet Union who dominate the community in Germany, while the non-fronting
dialects predominate in the Americas.

It is often thought that fronting is a later development.  I now doubt this,
and the reason for my doubts is that apparently there were some
non-Mennonite *tj* dialects of West Prussian Eastern Low Saxon as well.
(Remember that Plautdietsch came to be isolated due to emigration and that
the remaining West Prussian dialects became extinct with the end of World
War II.)  I therefore suspect that among Mennonites migrating from the
Vistula Delta to Ukraine there were speakers of both *kj* dialects and
*tj*dialects, and that the latter began to dominate after the
departure of many
speakers and the rest found themselves locked into the Soviet Union and
shoved around the place thanks to Stalinist ethnic distribution engineering.

But what I was talking about with regard to foreign tv- versus German kv- (
qu-) is really the opposite.  I was talking about tv- having apparently been
rendered as kv- in German. It occurs far more rarely that t becomes k. Among
the few cases in which this happened is Polynesian, namely Hawaiian (e.g.,
iki < iti 'small', akua < atua 'god', ki`i < tiki 'statue').

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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