LL-L "Language use" 2008.07.17 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 17 July 2008 - Volume 03
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language use

The moral of the story first:

   1. The world *is* becoming a small place.
   2. There *is* still hope.
   3. Wherever you are, whatever you speak, never assume you can't be
   understood.

Last night I was waiting for a friend to arrive in downtown Seattle. I was
sitting on a low wall near a bus stop when two women sat down next to me,
one of them middle-aged, the other probably in her twenties. There was a lot
of street noise, but now and then non-English snippets of language reached
my ear. "Hmm ... Sounds pretty darn Lowlandic to me," I thought.

A bus just left, and with it most of the noise.

"Wenn 't nich noog is, denn bruukt wi man bloos wat totalen," ("We'll just
have to pay some extra if it isn't enough,") said the younger one,

"Tjer, man ik heff meist keen Lüttgeld hier, du al so nich," ("Yeah, but I
have hardly any change on me. You don't anyway,") said the older one.

They were looking at the bus transfers and were wondering if their
destination took them outside the current pay zone. And they were doing it
in Northern Low Saxon of Germany! It took me a bit to really believe it, in
great part because of the relative youth of the younger woman.

I knew full well that none of the buses leaving from there go beyond the
inner pay zone.

"Nee, totalen bruukt Ji niks, un noog Tied hebbt Ji ook noch up Joon
Schien," ("No, you won't have to pay extra, and you have enough time left on
your transfer ticket,") I butted in.

"Wat?!" the older woman called out, turning toward me, "Snackst platt?"

And so a longish talk began, and I shared some cookies with them. They were
mother and daughter visiting their son/brother and his wife here from
Germany, were from a small town at the North Sea shore a bit north of the
mouth of the Elbe.  The mother told me that she brought up her children
speaking Low Saxon as their first language. I told her I'd give her a gold
star for that if I had one on me. The daughter now lives in Hamburg and has
a few Low-Saxon-speaking friends there. Both of them were pretty well
informed about the Low Saxon language scene and movement, also follow Low
Saxon programming in the media. It turned out that the people they are
visiting also work at the university.

Later we saw their number bus to their destination go by on the opposite
side of the street and realized they had been waiting on the wrong side of
the street.

"Maakt niks," said the mother, "Anners harrn wi di nich kennenlehrt."
("Never mind! We wouldn't have gotten to know you otherwise.")

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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