Re: American Dutch dialects

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>

> > I would ask, is the fact that /w/ became /v/ in Danish
> > also due to French influence?
>
> I think it came the same way, through the same stages, Jysk still has
> /w/, but also that it happened all over Europe, Belorussian still has
> /w/, says Piotr. It started in the 18th century, with French at its
> peak influence.

Only in the 18th century? In German it started soewhere around 1350.
But I can't believe that it was due to French influence. It's a
natural tendency for /w/ to shift to /v/, and therefore happened in
many languages, but independently. Cf. Sanskrit, some modern dialects
of Mandarin, Vietnamese, Finnish, etc. etc. And similarly /r/ could
easily switch to /R/ independently in many languages. BTW, if you
google Belorussian it says it has /v/. Maybe it's the labiodental
approximant of Dutch. Jysk has [w] only before rounded vowels,
otherwise [v] (or the labiodental approximant), true?



Also the 'thick' l, according to contemporaneous

> writers, was disappearing in Swedish late 17th century, due to city
> and German influence. English has been able to set up barriers against
> that kind of French influence. On the continent, /w/, apical /r/,
> thick /l/ all became marked as boorish manners.
>
> > Or could Danish and French have
> > developed them independently, and if so why not uvular /r/?
>
> Danish, German, Southern Swedish, Southern Norwegian, parts of Dutch,
> even Russian, later reversed, going through the same development
> simultaneously independently? No.

How do you know it was simultaneous? What exactly do you mean by
"reversed"? The order of languages in which this shift appeared
reversed, thus it appeared twice in each of the above languages? And
I would say that the fact that it appeared in so many languages over
such a wide expanse, many far from French-speaking areas, is evidence
that it was an independent change in each of them. And if it happens
in one language (French), it can happen in other languages, just like
/w/>/v/. Many other languages.

>
> > Similarly, why couldn't American English have developed retroflex
> > (and bunched) /r/ independently, from the original English
> > speakers, and not due to foreign influence?
>
> You gotta make up your mind now. Is it some English substrate or is it
> spontaneous, if it can't be the horrible Dutch? ;-) The Dutch were
> there, they had the retroflex r and r-colored vowels. I think making
> those two things independent stretches credibility.
>
>
> Torsten
>

I believe it was mostly inherited (either from Ulster or other Irish
and Scotch as Rick has mentioned, or from rhotic English dialects in
England, which in the 17th century were probably more widespread), but
perhaps slightly (spontaneously) modified (either made more or less
retroflex or made "bunched", or both). That is my belief, and if you
reject it that's fine, you believe something else, we can agree to
disagree. I can understand your belief and respect it, but I don't
agree with it.

Andrew