LL-L "Resources" 2008.02.08 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L  -  08 February 2008 - Volume 01
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From: Maria Elsie Zinsser <ezinsser at icon.co.za>
Subject: LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2008.02.07 (06) [E]

Hi all,

Jacqueline, I find this topic extremely interesting! I know that women use
different words than men. I've often sat through mining engineering
presentations listening to female seismologists using different words than
male seismologists to explain the same concept.

Research confirms that women speak in a higher pitched voice to lovers and
children alike. Nowadays women can empower themselves by going on courses
to learn which words to use within a male dominated industry.

Edith Raidt postulates (_Afrikaans en sy Europese verlede_) that women and
children were pivotal in the development of Afrikaans. Perhaps that is why
Afrikaans is so comfy with diminutives?

I am highly amused that my niece who married an American five years ago and
lives in RI actually does the typical American end pitch in Afrikaans! (Nee,
Willem is 'n wonderlike soet baba en slaap SNAGS DEUR?)

Regards,
Elsie Zinsser

 From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2008.02.07 (01) [E]

Maybe this does not belong on this forumat all. Or maybe it should go under
linguistics or History of Language Ron????

A Dutch friend and I were talking aboutdifferent ways in which women and men
express themselves. What boils down to apreference for different words like
"leuk" and "heus",may have existed already long ago. It could even have gone
to the extreme thatmen and women spoke a different language all together.
That of course is alsopart of our society, but at least we use the same
language.

It seemed to me that that would have beenmore prevalent when the tasks of
men and women in their society were far moredifferent than they are today.
It could also be a subject for a Science Fictionnovel.

Are there any indications that this istrue, or just another figment of my
imagination?.

On the other hand there are people in thegroup with wide interests and a
vast and arcane knowledge. Maybe you can helpme.

Jacqueline
----------

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

Hi, Jacqueline!

The topic you brought up does fit very well, as long as we pursue it with a
Lowlands focus.

Gender differences (just like differences between other social groups) can
be observed in all languages. In the West they may have been stronger in the
past, but only one or two generations ago.

There are or at least used to be extremes, such as societies (especially in
Oceania), in which men and women speak different languages among themselves
and have a lingua franca between them. What this means in most cases is that
boys start being raised with the neutral language but having rudimentary
exposure to women's language before they move into the men's huts and
acquire the men's language.

In most cases, as among the Lowlands languages, there tend to be gender
differences in terms of lexical and idiomatic choices, syntactic structure
prevalence and intonation pattern differences. In studies about English
varieties, for instance, it has been observed that women tend to use
interrogative tags more than men (e.g., "It's cold today" v "It's cold
today, *isn't it*?") Men tend to use such construction more often when they
are being particularly polite, actually submissive. In other words, the
theory is that women's speech habits contain vestiges of submissive
expressions, as opposed to declarative or authoritative expressions. Put in
yet simpler terms, women tend to more often use expressions that ask for
confirmation.

Some time ago I read that in some European languages certain expressions,
especially equivalents of "Yes," "True" or "All right," are sometimes said
while *in*haling rather than exhaling. In English I only once in a while
hear it from non-native speakers. One study I remember reading focused on
Finnish and claimed that this speech habit was far more prevalent among
women than among men. Ever since then I've been listening for it. Most
recently I've heard it from women speaking Russian and Farsi for instance.
I've never heard it in Mandarin Chinese. I also realize that the same occurs
in Low Saxon and in German, at least in the north. The other day I heard it
in the speech of one of my sisters on the phone, and it occurred twice: once
when she was confirming a not-so-happy fact, and the other time when she
acknowledged something I said about something worrisome. Now that I've
become aware of it, I've noticed that I do it myself once in a while, even
in English ("Yeah ..." or "Sure ..."). I am not quite sure if women do it
more often than men, though, and I wonder if any of you have made any
relevant observations. Once a native English speaker told me that he finds
this habit not only foreign but also anywhere between weird and annoying,
depending on his mood. I've heard other people, especially North Americans,
making similar remarks about frequently used tag constructions.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2008.02.07 (06) [E]

I remember a case of male versus female speech that I found very
interesting: in Tunesian Arabic, men have a different pronunciation of the
Arabic diphthongs aw and ay than women: if I'm right, the men have the
pronunciation with monophthongs ê and ô (or î and û?) as in Algeria and
Morocco, whereas the women have retained the diphthongs as in f.i.
Lebanese. Something that intrigued me too is that the Jewish Tunesians
have the female pronunciation with diphthongs, and so does the Christian
Maltese.

About Ron's "inhaling Ja": in the Netherlands, I only know that from
Frisians and from Low Saxon speakers in the Northern provinces, Drenthe,
Stellingwerven and Groningen. To be true, I've always found it a bit weird
and annoying too, it sounds like kind of a sigh, something like: I'm
pitiful, insecure, I can't help it that I'm here... But that's maybe just
what I hear in it.
I think women use it a lot more than men, but I also know it from gays.
And older, low-educated women use it more then younger ones.

Ingmar

----------

From: Diederik Masure <didimasure at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2008.02.07 (06) [E]

Ron wrote:

Some time ago I read that in some European languages certain expressions,
especially equivalents of "Yes," "True" or "All right," are sometimes said
while *in*haling rather than exhaling. In English I only once in a while
hear it from non-native speakers. One study I remember reading focused on
Finnish and claimed that this speech habit was far more prevalent among
women than among men. Ever since then I've been listening for it. Most
recently I've heard it from women speaking Russian and Farsi for instance.
I've never heard it in Mandarin Chinese. I also realize that the same occurs
in Low Saxon and in German, at least in the north. The other day I heard it
in the speech of one of my sisters on the phone, and it occurred twice: once
when she was confirming a not-so-happy fact, and the other time when she
acknowledged something I said about something worrisome. Now that I've
become aware of it, I've noticed that I do it myself once in a while, even
in English ("Yeah ..." or "Sure ..."). I am not quite sure if women do it
more often than men, though, and I wonder if any of you have made any
relevant observations. Once a native English speaker told me that he finds
this habit not only foreign but also anywhere between weird and annoying,
depending on his mood. I've heard other people, especially North Americans,
making similar remarks about frequently used tag constructions.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron


Diederik:
I share this observation, in Scandinavian (Norwegian and Swedish at least)
the "ja på innpust" (ingressive 'ja'; puste = breathe) is quite common. I am
not sure if I can recall a man doing this here in Norway (maybe once or
twice?) but generally it are women. I don't have any numbers or statistical
proof but it is quite obvious:)

http://paraplyen.nhh.no/paraplyen/akiv/2001/juni/ja_pa_innp
Apparently it means to express the listener is following concentratedly on
what the other is saying, rather than really confirming facts.

Diederik.

----------

From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2008.02.07 (06) [E]

Thanks Ron that is quite an answer. It brings up more questions than I
started out with and it will take me a while to digest it all. However here
is one response to start with:

            Ron says: Some time ago I read that in some European languages
certain expressions, especially equivalents of "Yes," "True" or "All right,"
are sometimes said while *in*haling rather than exhaling.

Yes, I have noticed it too. I always equated it with a "thoughtful" answer
as opposed to an unquestioned answer. Yes of course, one might take this
hesitancy for feminine and the directness for masculine, but I have noticed
that many of my "intellectual" male English speaking friends do it too.
Their Dutch equivalent would say Mmm…and then continue with a more direct
answer.

How neat that you had the example that I hoped for in the example of the
Oceanic tribes. Does that makes the girls into bi-lingual and the boys into
tri-lingual? Unless of course, the tribe accepts warrior princesses.

There will be more questions forecoming. Thanks again. Jacqueline
----------

From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Sociolinguistics"

Beste Jacqueline,

You wrote:

A Dutch friend and I were talking about different ways in which women and
men express themselves. What boils down to a preference for different words
like "leuk" and "heus", may have existed already long ago. It could even
have gone to the extreme that men and women spoke a different language all
together. That of course is also part of our society, but at least we use
the same language.

It seemed to me that that would have been more prevalent when the tasks of
men and women in their society were far more different than they are today.
It could also be a subject for a Science Fiction novel.

Just a few general observations I've been making myself:

   - Men tend to use more subordinating (and coordinating) conjunctions
   than women (both in speech and written). This results in men making longer
   sentences than women. From a structural/logical point of view these male
   sentences are more tightly knit, women's are more loose. Maybe, this is just
   a wild guess, that men speak less than women, but when they do speak, they
   seem more keen on getting their act together (grossly exaggerated three
   registers: silence, command or speech :-D ...less thinking AS we
   speak)
   - Women have bigger vocabularies and are more precise in choosing the
   right word for the right circumstances.
   - Women use more fillers than men do ("does silence spoil the
   atmosphere"? ;-) ). Just notice, how often some American girls/women
   use "like". "Like" is sort of a prelude to a description that tries to drag
   the listener in, enhancing his/her empathy through a more personal approach.
   Belgian Dutch girls are already copying this style. Guys don't. Which brings
   me to my next point:
   - Women are more innovative. Maybe this is the result of women viewing
   language more as a tool, as a mouldable medium, something they can also use
   to their benefit. Here in Belgium, the number of female students majoring in
   communication sciences far outweighs the male one. Not sure though about the
   male/female ratio of translators and journalists.

Again, these are just my own personal thoughts, I have no statistical
evidence to back this up (except for point number 4).

Would written language resemble spoken language more among women than among
men?

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

----------

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

Well, well, folks, this certainly has struck some chords, and all your
responses so far have been fascinating.

So far it seems as though this is a Continental Northern European thing. I
was interested to hear Ingmar say that he knows it only from Frisian and Low
Saxon in the Netherlands. (I suspect that native speakers of these will
carry it over to Dutch as a second language.)

For  now I can include: Scandinavian (and I've heard it in Danish also),
Finnish, Estonian (two colleagues of mine), Russian (Finnic or Scandinavian
substratum?), Latvian (a doctor of mine), Low Saxon, Frisian, and Northern
German. For reasons of history and spread (areal feature) I would like to
know in this connection about Northumbrian, Scots, Shetlandic, Faeroese,
Icelandic, Lithuanian, Livonian, Kashubian and Polish.

Since this phenomenon appears not to be limited to equivalents of "yes," and
I quite agree with Jacqueline and Diederik that we are dealing with some
sort of "hmm ... well ... yeah ..." mode, I propose the technical term
"pensive ingressive" (not to be confused with "passive aggressive").

As you may have known already or at least gathered from Diederik's posting,
an inhaled sound or sound sequence is called "ingressive" in phonology and
phonetics. In many languages, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia,
certain consonants are ingressive. This sort of ingression appears to be
unknown in Europe with the exception of the phenomenon we are talking about
here.

On another note, if it is true that this phenomenon is more common among
women than among men, I wonder if a related, albeit contextually not
identical, phenomenon in English (at least in American English) is "I don't
know (about that/this) ..." I notice that this is also used more frequently
by women, especially by women responding to a man's statement. I consider it
an expression of polite disagreement and evasion, usually as another way of
saying "I don't agree with you but don't want to get into a discussion about
it."

Regard,
Reinhard/Ron
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