LL-L "Language politics" 2008.07.05 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 05 July 2008 - Volume 01
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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2008.07.04 (05) [E]

Hi Marcus e.a, the numbers of Low Saxon speakers in the Netherlands seem
to be completely different from those of Germany you gave.

Of the inhabitants in the Low Saxon areas of the Netherlands,

64,4%  between 18 and 39 yrs old know LS, and 38,5% good or very good
66,9% between 40 and 60 yrs old know LS, and 52,4% good or very good
70,1& over 60 years know LS, and 55,7% good or very good

according to Henk Bloemhoff's "Taaltelling Nedersaksisch - Een enquête
naar het gebruik en de beheersing van het Nedersaksisch in Nederland"
Groningen/Oldeberkoop 2005.

But in the same book there is a table "Dialektkompetenz bezüglich des
Niederdeutschen (Alte Bundesländer)" about competence in Low Saxon in
Germany, that gives much higher percentages than your 14,3 %:

Schleswig-Holstein:   sehr gut/gut 47%
                     ein wenig    21%
Hamburg:              sehr gut/gut 29%
                     ein wenig    26%
Niedersachsen/Bremen: sehr gut/gut 53%
                     ein wenig    20%
Südniedersachsen:     sehr gut/gut 27%
                     ein wenig    17%
Nord-NRW:             sehr gut/gut 27%
                     ein wenig    22%

Source: Niebaum & Macha 1999, based on Stellmacher 1987

So the situation seems to be not so bad as it seems for LS ;-)

Groeten
Ingmar

Marcus Buck schreef:

... Low Saxon was never an option to answer). The number of inhabitants of
the historical language area is 14 million. These numbers are comparable
to Low Saxon. Low Saxon's historical language area has (the Eastern
territories not counted, only Germany and the Netherlands) 29 million
inhabitants. A survey from 2007 had the result, that 14,3% of the people
in Northern Germany could speak Low Saxon. If we take the same number for
the Netherlands we are at 4.15 million speakers...
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