LL-L "Language help" 2009.01.09 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

===========================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 09 January 2009 - Volume 04
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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: RBlaustein at aol.com
Subject: LL-L "Language help" 2009.01.09 (03) [E/LS]

Dear Lowlanders,

I am not a technically trained linguist but rather a folklorist living and
working in the Southern Appalachian mountains of East Tennessee, so please
excuse my simplistic response to this thread:

As I understand it, "het" in Dutch is the same as "the" or "it" in modern
standard English, depending upon how it is used in a sentence.

"Het" has also survived in Scottish childrens' street game chants, as in
"...one-two-three, you are *het.* "

"Het" is closely historically  related to "hit" which is found in Chaucer's
Middle English and can still be heard today in Appalachian English, though
"hit" for "it" is considered an incorrect, stigmatizing substandard usage by
Appalachian people aspiring to middle-class respectability.

One of the founders  and leaders of the Appalachian Studies movement in the
United States,
the late Cratis Williams (1911-85), a native of rural Eastern Kentucky, was
fourteen years old when a high school teacher humiliated him  before his
classmates during an oral presentation in a freshman English class. In their
introduction *to The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come To Boone,* his son
David Cratis Williams and cultural anthropologist Patricia Beaver reproduce
Cratis' first-hand account of this emotionally devastating incident in his
own words:

     "But as he began his story Miss Roberts interrupted and requested that
he repeat the sentence he had just spoken:

     *"Hit was a-gittin' 'way up in the day," I responded.
     The town girls restrained giggles.
     "Say it again," Miss Roberts commanded.
     "Hit was get**ting *way up in the day," I repeated.

The town girls, now unrestrained, laughed outright. I could feel my face
flaming as Miss Roberts asked me to say it again.

"Hit was getting away up in the day, " I almost shouted.

The town girls, now joined by many of the country children, laughed louder
and longer.

"*It*, not *hit*," Miss Roberts corrected.

*At that,* *"the country children laughed uproariously while the town girls
merely smiled at Miss Roberts as she looked in their direction."  *(Williams
and Beaver 1999: v-vi)

     As Bill Best,another pioneer in the Appalachian Studies movement ,
comments :"Unfortunately such degrading experiences rarely inspire a
youngster to go forward in his own self-development." (1999: 14-15) One of
Best's friends took elocution lessons from a private tutor for eight years,
only to discover that "he had traded a Kentucky accent for an Ohio accent.
Such experiences probably inspired him to become a leader in the newly
emerging field of Appalachian Studies." (1999: 15).

As it turns out, there are some interesting connections to be drawn between
historical linguistics,
contemporary linguistic colonialism, and language politics!

All the best,

Richard Blaustein

----------

From: Henno Brandsma <hennobrandsma at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language help" 2009.01.09 (03) [E/LS]

 From: Ivison dos Passos Martins <ipm7d at OI.COM.BR>
Subject: Grammar

Hallo,

  I'd like to know more about Duch "het". Did the Dutch language
use "dat" like German "das"? I hear that the word het is very close to the
English "it".
  Thanks for your attention,

 God bless,

    Ivison.



Most of the time this is just pronounced [@t], BTW.

"het" is a coastal (ingvaeonic) word, from "hit" in older texts. Old Frisian
has "hit" as well.

I believe that this is only pronominal originally, and later extended to the
use as article, where

"that" (dat) was used before. Old Frisian had "thet" (and modern East
Frisian and North Frisian have descendents of this, mostly)

for the article form. "hit" is part of the "h-" ingveaonic family that also
includes "he/hij/hy", "his" (English) and "hja" for she (Frisian).



Henno


----------

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

Hi, Ívison!

Low Saxon (being one branch of Low German) originally used *it* or *et*where
*het* is used in Dutch (a member of the other Low German branch: Low
Frankish).

Some Low Saxon dialects still use *it* and *et* that way, both as the neuter
gender personal pronoun and as the neuter gender article; e.g.

*Kööp it later!*
Buy *it* later!
[Dutch: *Koop het later!*]
[German: *Kaufe es später!*]

*Ik heff it Book köfft.
*I have bought *the* book.
[Dutch: *Ik heb het boek gekocht.*]
[German: *Ich habe das Buch gekauft.*]

In most Northern Low Saxon dialects, however, *it* ~ *et* has been replaced
with *dat*, which used to be used only as the neuter gender demonstrative
pronoun like its English cognate *that*.

*Kööp dat later!*
Buy *it* later!
[Dutch: *Koop het later!*]
[German: *Kaufe es später!*]

*Ik heff dat Book köfft.
*I have bought *the* book.
[Dutch: *Ik heb het boek gekocht.*]
[German: *Ich habe das Buch gekauft.*]

To differentiate this *dat* from the demonstrative *dat* you either change
the intonation (i.e. emphasize the demonstrative *dat*) or use another word
or word combination in place of demonstrative *dat*, such as *dat
daar*("that there",
*dat Book daar* ~ *dat daar Book*).

Due to Low Saxon substrata, it is typical of Missingsch and of casual
Northern German dialects to used *das* instead of *es* (*Kauf das **später!*
).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20090109/0b7b74b5/attachment.htm>