LL-L "Language use" 2008.06.09 (02) [E]

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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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L O W L A N D S - L - 09 June 2008 - Volume 01
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From: Travis Bemann <tabemann at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Songs" 2008.06.08 (04) [E]

> From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
> Subject: LL-L "Songs" 2008.06.07 (09) [E]
>
> Hey, thank you so much Reineling!
> Yes, that looks a lot like it.
> But I'm really intrigued now how an old Dutch grandmother with dementia in
> the US is able to remember children's songs in both Frisian and German
> dialect. I'll ask her grandson about that...

Mind you that in some areas in the US and Canada the final triumph of
English over all other non-first generation immigrant languages other
than Spanish and French only occurred in the very recent past. I
remember particularly my father's maternal grandma, who was born here
in southeastern Wisconsin and who was literate in German up until the
point that she died, which was only the early 1980s. Furthermore,
there are limited areas where that point still has not come yet, such
as parts of rural Pennsylvania and Texas (in the case of German
dialects), parts of rural North Dakota and Minnesota (in the case of
Norwegian dialects), and parts of the Chicago and, to a lesser extent,
Milwaukee areas (in the case of Polish). It is quite conceivable that
she may have spoken Dutch to a relatively old age, all things
considered.

Furthermore, in the case of dementia, it is not uncommon for
individuals to forget languages which they learned later in life and
regress to speaking only their native language or only languages
learned at a young age, even if they have not spoken them in decades.
That reminds me of a problem here in Milwaukee, where sometimes older
people with Alzheimers' will forget the English they learned decades
ago and regress to speaking Polish, but no one other than
zeroeth-generation immigrants under the age of 60 or so here speaks
any Polish; hence, there is practically no one who would be able to
take care of them who is able to communicate with them, due to Polish
having never been transmitted on to my parents' generation here.
(However, though, I hear that in the Chicago area Polish is actually
still a living language amongst people around my age (23 years old),
to my amazement; my sister moved down to an apartment down there, and
the people who run the place actually natively speak Polish, despite
being born in the US and being not much older than me myself.)

---------

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

Hi, Travis *et al*.!

German Americans still belong to the largest groups in this country, and you
are talking about far more people if we count people of partly German
descent, even if only those that are aware of it and retain some bits of
German linguistic and cultural heritage.

Here in Washington State, for instance, or if we only take the Puget Sound
area of Western Washington, is known for its Scandinavian heritage,
particularly its Norwegian heritage, and there's a long-standing
intermarriage connection with Minnesota. Also, many people here still speak
Scandinavian languages, and other Nordic languages can also still be heard
(including Faroese, Icelandic, Estonian and Finnish). However, a few years
ago I looked at a list of ethnic affiliation based on census data, and the
number for German was far greater than that for Nordic ethnicities combined.
It is only that even those that consider themselves German Americans, just
like those that consider themselves "Dutch" Americans (with fairly high
concentrations in the north of the state), are not very noticeable. Few of
them make a song and dance about it, literally or figuratively. Yet when I
talk to them they tell me what bits of German they learned as children, how
they celebrate Christmas in the German way, the German foods they eat, that
they called their grandparents Oma and Opa, and so forth. Many of them don't
even have German-sounding names because of name changes and so forth. And
among them I know several that are partly African American and/or Native
American. Also, there are those whose elders speak or spoke "Platt".
Similarly, I am told that many of the "Dutch" in the north speak or spoke
Low Saxon or Frisian. It is only that German and Dutch people tended to be
more ready to melt into the general population. Also, they arrived in this
country over a long period of time, while many Scandinavians arrived at
certain lean times in the old country and thus had an easier time seeing
themselves are communities. Furthermore, World War II caused many German
Americans to hide their heritage.

Furthermore, in the case of dementia, it is not uncommon for
individuals to forget languages which they learned later in life and
regress to speaking only their native language or only languages
learned at a young age, even if they have not spoken them in decades.

Quite so. A friend told me that after her stroke the only language his
grandmother could speak was her native Yiddish. Her Ukrainian, Russian and
English were altogether gone.

Some of the "older" Lowlanders will pardon me for relating the following
story again. I had an old professor who in his nineties fell seriously ill.
We took turns watching over him. He was heavily drugged because of pain. I
suppose that drugged state was a sort of dementia. All of a sudden he
started mumbling in Mandarin. His lack of Chinese proficiency had been known
to be *the* handicap in his line of research (Altaic Studies, particularly
Mongolistics). Officially his first language had been Finnish because of his
Finnish mother, and as a child he knew some German because of German
speakers on his father's side of the family. His father was a (Tsarist)
Russian diplomat in Manchuria. When things got really bad politically, he
sent his wife and son "home" to St. Petersburg, but the kid had never been
to Russia before. This is were he learned Russian while still speaking
Finnish with his mother (and during summers in Finland, then a Russian
colony), and German with certain relatives. Later we learned that in
Manchuria he had had a Chinese nanny with whom he spent most of his time and
from whom he learned Mandarin. Mandarin was thus his true first language,
even though he never advanced beyond child level. Later his father had him
visit him back in Manchuria and as a surprise had the nanny visit from
Beijing, but the kid had forgotten practically all his Mandarin by that
time.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

•

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