Re: German & al. Germanic

pielewe wrote:

> I was thinking about my own experiences when I was fifteen
> years old and learning German in school.

I assume you perceived it as a torture because of the insistence
of your teachers that you learn correct cases, declensions,
conjugations, prepositions & the like. Otherwise... In the
end, among all languages, German is the closest to your own
language. Way much closer than... English. (But, agreed,
English don't bother you with... Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ,
Akkusativ. :-))

> I was passionately interested in cars, but even after a
> year of German, reading "Das Auto, Motor und Sport" with
> the help of a dictionary proved to be torture and had to
> be abandoned.

Then what should say an Italian, a Russian, a Greek, a Turk
or a Japanese and a Chinese? :-)

> That is very difficult simply because I lack the necessary
> experience. Even with a knowledge of German, newscasts in
> Letzeburgisch tend to be pretty difficult for me to understand unless
> I know beforehand what it's all about.

But you are in command of both Dutch and German. I for one,
am only in command of German, but in spite of that, I am
able to follow, to a certain extent, Letzelburgish newscasts
(on TV via the Astra satellite).

> Some kinds of Platt are easy to understand, some aren't

Aha.

> (1) Unprepared people not from Limburg would find it strange, because
> to them German is just as foreign as any other foreign language.

How come? (I refer to "as foreign as any") It's the closest
kinship: it can't be thrown into the same bowl with, say,
pushto and ketchua. :)

> (2) People with a linguistic background would probably tend to say
> that, of course, German and Dutch constitute a single dialect
> continuum, so there is no problem in principle with using
> formulations expressing the idea that one is a dialect of the other
> etc. They would also tend to point out that your formulation is
> misleading from a sociolinguistic point of view because it is unclear
> whether you are speaking about dialects or standard languages.

Of both (actually the dialects, since the standard languages are
... artificial ones, but based on dialects and subdialects!).

> If you
> are speaking about the latter, then you are making a category mistake
> because a standard language is not a dialect.

I beg to differ: virtually in all languages the main corpus of it
reflects one dialect and the rest contains features found in other
dialects. Hence, in German, Southerners seem to be reluctant to
learn/use Hochdeutsch - this is because the Southern dialects are
a bit closer to the "artificial" language, despite superficial
observations. Whereas the Northerners (Low German dialect speakers)
must learn Hochdeutsch almost as a foreign language, so big is the
gap between Niederdeutsch/Plattdeutsch/Low German and Hochdeutsch.
Hence, paradoxically, the best professional blabla people tend to
be recruited in Northern Germany.

> (As far as I can see, the only important difference between
> the Dutch and the Swiss situation is the existence of a
> distinct standard language in the Dutch case.)

That's right, with the amendment that the Swiss actually have
two standard German languages: A - a standard Swiss German, and
B - standard German (Hochdeutsch), where only a peculiar vague
accent and melody differs from what you hear in Vienna, Stuttgart,
Berlin, Hamburg. In the Dutch case there isn't Hochdeutsch (so,
that it's up to... Rudi Carrell & Linda de Mol how they speak
German. :-))

(Thank you for the info.)

George