LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.20 (07) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 19 July 2009 - Volume 07
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From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.20 (01) [EN]

 Dear Wesley, Ro & All:

Subject: LL-L "Morphology"

This is an interesting string - keep it twisting.

You reckon a lot of the same sort of things caused the changes in Old
English that resulted in Modern English as well as those that changed Dutch
to Afrikaans: Noting "- there were quite a number of Saxon speakers who
migrated to the Cape in sufficient number and with a high-enough status to
make understanding their language necessary but not enough to make the use
of
of it necessary.  And of high enough status that their lapses in speaking
Dutch would be forgiven."

Mark: I'm with you there in your suggestion about Afrikaans, except that
FMP(0,02c)W it was an overwhelming majority of Saxons & other
Lowlanders *trying
to speak Dutch* - or at least Zeelandic - to their bosses, who were few.
Bearing in mind the low status of the Cape Station throughout most of its
history with the VOC, speakers of Algemeen Beskaafde Nederlands were even
more of a minority than in most colonies.

Reading 'Jan Alleman's Diary' it is plain that most of the Kompagnie's
employees were not any kind of Nederlander. This was certainly the case in
the lower ranks.

For my part I am fascinated by the appearance of convergent evolution in
Modern English & in Afrikaans, also the modern Scandanavian languages
compared to Old Norse. I have written before how a bunch of American
tourists roped me in to interpret the movie 'Fanny & Alexander', shown on an
Israeli kibbutz, in the original language. It helped, of course to have the
subtitles in Hebrew. I know I could not have done the same with a film in
Icelandic - subtitles or no subtitles.

Yrs,
Mark

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

But, Mark, the morphologies of Low Saxon varieties are very similar to the
morphologies of Low Frankish varieties, including Standard Dutch. I hardly
think that speakers of Low Saxon would be inclined to omit Dutch suffixes
and such.

Wasn't it rather non-Europeans, such as Malaiic (Malay, Javanese, Sundanese,
etc.) people and Khoe-Saan people, that were instrumental in transforming
(Cape) Dutch to start off the development toward Afrikaans?

Most Khoe-Saan (originally speakers of Khoekhoe varieties, on the Cape
especially Xiri and ǃOra, the ancestral varieties of today's Griqua
Afrikaans speakers) came to adopt Afrikaans as their first language, and
many of them were in constant contact with local Europeans.

People from the "East Indies" (i.e. mostly Indonesia), most of them slaves
in the beginning, many of them with at least a prior smattering of "Indies"
Dutch (such as early Petjoh), worked in and around the homes of Europeans on
the Cape. "East Indies" women tended to be cooks, maids and nannies
communicating with the families in forms of Cape Dutch. "Dutch" children
tended to spend more time with these women and their children than with
their parents. It is only logical that they took on the Dutch varieties of
those women and felt it was their actual native language, even though the
language of newcomers from the Netherlands and the language of the "High"
Dutch administration and church stood in contrast to this, and their "Cape
Dutch" was frowned upon for a long time.

It was similar in the south of the United States where slaves and their
descendants, especially the females among them, exerted strong influences on
the European-American children they largely raised, and this is partly
responsible for the development of certain southeastern American dialects.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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