LL-L "Language politics" 2008.12.11 (06) [E/German]

[Lowlands-L List]

===========================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 11 December 2008 - Volume 06
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please set the encoding mode to Unicode (UTF-8).
If viewing this in a web browser, please click on
the html toggle at the bottom of the archived page
and switch your browser's character encoding to Unicode.
===========================================


From: Mike Wintzer <k9mw at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2008.12.11 (04) [E]

Paul wrote:
If they can't read maps, they shouldn't be driving trucks for a living.

Paul, you don't understand.
This is for the poor truckers  from New Zealand
who only read Maori written in Chinese characters...
Mike Wintzer

----------

From: Mike Wintzer <k9mw at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2008.12.11 (02) [E]

Mir fehlen ob dieses Blödsinns echt die Worte (Rademacher)

Da müsste doch eine Unterschriftenaktion wirken.
Ganz LLL gegen eine Handvoll Stadträte.
Besser: Die Welt (Globalisierung) gegen...
Mike Wintzer

----------

From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2008.12.11 (02) [E]

From: Jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de <mailto:jonny.meibohm at arcor.de

>>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2008.12.10 (01) [D/E/LS]

Beste Lowlanners,

yesterday I sent you a link about the intention to change street- and
placenames into Frisian in Fryslan/Netherlands:
http://www.leeuwardercourant.nl/nieuws/regio/article4109509.ece

Today Piet Bult (who got a copy of that yesterday's mail) sent me an article
from an insert of the same 'Leeuwarder Courant' just showing the other thing
in East-Frisian/Germany (i.e. change of Low Saxon street names into Standard
German). I found some additional links in German newspapers:

http://www.szon.de/news/kultur/aktuell/200811171040.html?_from=rss

http://www.ostfriesische-nachrichten.de/neu/index_volltext.asp?ID=24003

Let me give a short summary to those of you who aren't familiar with German:

The community of /'Großefehn'/ in East Friesland/Germany decided to change
some Low Saxon street names *within a new commercial area* of their village
into Standard German because they experienced that customers and drivers of
any delivery services, who don't speak LS, have difficulties to find their
addressees.

By the scandalised leader of the German 'Frisian Party' this step is
suspected to be against the spirit of the times - in other regions of
Northern Germany people try to add, sometimes to re-invent the Low Saxon
names of their locations. And furtheron he fears that this affair could lead
to the result that the EU will get everything out of this matter and make a
decision about  any regularized standard for new street names.

I'll enjoy to hear your opinions!


Rademacher's reference to EU regulating street names of course only tries to
stir fears of centralism unadapted to local needs. (The old crooked bananas
bureaucracy thing) Of course the EU will never regulate street names.
Just as you try to stir fears of invented Low Laxon. I don't know no single
example of "re-invented" Low Saxon names. Please give examples.
Some people *felt* difficulties with their Low Saxon addresses. Not cause
"delivery services could not find them". I have read most of the media
coverage since the issue emerged in late November (I look upon all news
covering "Plattdüütsch" on Google News). I haven't heard a single example of
actual delivery problems or any other severe problems. The only problem is,
that they sometimes have to say the name twice or spell it. On the phone for
example. That's most likely true. I too live in a street with a Low Saxon
name and regularly have to spell it. But that's also true for many first
names (my first name is Marcus and I have to inform people regularly not to
write it Markus), last names (my last name Buck is very simple and I still
often have to correct people who try to write Bock [in a move to correct it
to a more Standard German form]), place names (Rademacher gives the example
uf Upleward), many other street names (I guess, the inhabitants of the
Cuvrystraße in the Inner City of Berlin for example have to spell their
streetname just as often as the Hockereestraat people from Großefehn) and
names in general.

Were the names difficult in any special way? Okay, Hockereestraat was kind
of (I am not even sure this is the right spelling, it's a relatively new
commercial area and not yet in any directories and not visible on Google
Maps for example. In the press it was spelled Hökereestraat sometimes).
Schoosterstraat and Sniederstraat are not very hard to spell. And
Timmermannsring is even easier than the new name Hanomagstraße. Großefehn is
near to the Dutch border. If the companies in the commercial area Ulbargen
want to trade with the Netherlands too, I guess the Low Saxon names would
have been easier. And the special signs in the German names don't make it
easier in international trade. Perhaps Dutchmen can handle ß, but in most
other countries people will give up on ß, they often write a capital B
instead or similar things. Well, I don't know what kind of companies are
settled or want to settle in the area. Those commercial areas
("Gewerbegebiet") often consist of rather low level commerce (car washes,
carpentry, locksmithery, car dealers etc.) and not international business.
If this kind of commerce would be settling there, I could hardly understand,
why the names should pose problems, cause they would mostly have regional
customers and regional suppliers.

I have to admit, it's kind of a media bubble. It was pure chance that a
journalist was present on the council meeting of the Großefehn council and
covered the decision in the local newspaper from where it made its way into
national newspapers. If the journalist wouldn't have been present, it would
have went through unnoticed. That's a sad thing, there should be much more
awareness for things like that. It shouldn't be possible that things like
that go through unnoticed. Jonny, imagine Großefehn would have decided to
name the streets after people from the resistance against the Nazis in 2005,
when the commercial area was set up, and now in 2008 they would decide that
the names of those resistance members are too hard to spell and they want to
change it to names easier to spell. That would have been a national scandal!
Großefehn erasing resistance members from their streets!
It's irrational. From a pragmatic point of view it should be acceptable to
change both the Low Saxon names and the names of hard-to-spell resistance
members to easier ones without anyone objecting. But people still object,
cause they have emotions. They don't like people who want to stop Nazi
resistance commemoration, even if the commemoration is just three years old.
And it should be just as accepted to not like people who want to abolish the
cultural endurance of Low Saxon on the public, even if it is only three year
old.

Marcus Buck

PS: You too mentioned the move to Frisian names. Actually I am not a friend
of such moves. I am all supporting the move to fully recognize Frisian and
give it all the same rights, but that should not mean to abolish the Dutch
name. It's okay to write both names on the town signs or even to write the
Frisian name in big letters and the Dutch name in small, and it's okay to
write official documents in Frisian. But the Dutch name shouldn't be erased.
Why can't towns have two official names? One Frisian, one Dutch? "Official"
doesn't mean "only one".
(But I am anti-status-quo. Many people only look at the status quo and
support equal rights in cases like "Estonian vs. Russian" in Estonia. I
personally regard this as an invader/defender situation and would recognize
the right of the Estonians to put pressure on the Russians. As long as it's
not 'op'pression and a fair kind of pressure. The case of Dutch vs. Frisian
is similar. Frisian has the right to put pressure on Dutch but not to
'op'press Dutch [like erasing their place names].)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20081211/beee57e0/attachment.htm>