pielewe wrote:
> That is true, but do I detect the fruits of an East European
> upbringing here?
it reflects what's everyday experience in the "Reich,"
where German is made of different kinds of the language:
dialects and even such dialects that are perceived by
the native-speakers as... languages; e.g., not only, say,
Plattdeutsch or Swiss German or Luxemburg German are
deemed by common speakers as such, but for example
Bavarian too. In the German-speaking area, the gap
between the standard language (which is perceived as
something artificial, "papieren") and the dialects is
(still) enormous.
(The fruit of the E-Eur upbringing - at least valid for
the Romanian and Hungarian part of it - represents
an opposite attitude: people in general are eager to
get rid of dialectal aspects of their language (esp.
of phonetics peculiarities). On top of that, Romanian
and Hungarian don't have genuine dialects - only sub-
dialects. A relationship similar to that between
oberdeutsch and Niederdeutsch (Low German) you can
establish only between Romanian and Aromanian. For
Hungarian, AFAIK, there is no such similar comparison,
there is no such dialectal differentiation.
And these features are reflected even on... cybalist:
certain peculiarities of Romanian phonetics haven't
been propagated by Romanian or foreign linguists
simply because in most cases studied/compared the
material analysed is either taken from the standard
Romanian or from the subdialect of Muntenia, which
is the main contributor to standard Romanian. But
roughly one half of the native-speakers speak other
subdialects, which contain some important phonetical
aspects (both consonants and vowels) that are
*unknown* in the standard and Muntenian Romanian, and
for which in standard Romanian writing there isn't
any separate graphem either [except for linguists'
phonetic transcription systems]. For example, the
palatalization of [k or t; g or d; n] or the [O and
æ], that are as clear cut as the counterparts in
British English. And the native-speakers tend to
hide them esp. when they're educated. That's because
of the mentality in that part of Europe, a mentality
enhanced by ideologic centralist tendencies. This
is rather closer to... France, whereas the former
medieval "Reich" was the opposite. (Germany united
as late as... 1871. But leaving out Austria.))
> Brezhnevian and Titoist linguists were always going
> on about standard languages being "based on" dialects, completely
> losing from sight how irrelevant that is and, more importantly, what
> standard languages are about.
In totalitarian societies, of the bolshevik and the
nazi kind of "socialism," the tendency was & is:
emphasis on the standard language & marginalization of
dialects. This despite the fact that both ideologies
favor "working classes," the proletarians & the peasants,
namely the main carriers/preservers of dialects.
> Your account of the German standard
> language shows very well that the Brezhnevian picture is of limited
> relevance. Dialects are about what you talk in the street. Standard
> languages are basically about schools, culture (both high and low),
> mass media, etcetera. Those are different universes.
Yes, but we already have entered a new era, of the...
"cyborgs". Uniformization. And marginalization of regional
characteristics in favor of cultivating the 'lingua
franca' (the English language of the... foreigners :)).
This evolution will be more pleasant for Big Bro' than
to linguists, I suppose.
> W.
g