Re: Linguistic measurements

From: tgpedersen
Message: 23772
Date: 2003-06-24

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, g <george.st@...> wrote:
>
> >But the whole point of the Portuguese language is not to be
understod
> >by the Spanish. Similarly the point of Danish is not to be
understood
> >by the Germans.
>
> By Oberdeutsch and Mitteldeutsch speaking Germans. Niederdeutsch
> subdialects speaking Germans must understand a somewhat more
> Dutch and Danish (esp. Dutch).
>
> >Torsten
>
> George

Low German doesn'r help those people understanding Danish, inasmuch
as much of colloquial Low German is so to speak an on-the-fly back
application of the second German sound shift, as I saw in the "Let's
speak Low German" (vel sim.) programs on NDR (Germany III) on cable.
Awareness of that rule will help them understand some basic
vocabulary, but it won't help them bridge the gap between West
Germanic German and North Germanic Danish. I have a suspicion that
knowledge of Low German will be more handy for a German in
understanding English than understanding Danish.

Which is also why there exist no intermediate Danish-German dialects,
but intermediate Dutch-German ones do (and are called Low German).

Torsten