Re: The personal pronouns of PIE (and other families) are loans

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, g <st-george@...> wrote:

>
> > One more BTW: on German TV yesterday I heard another 'mit die

<adj>

> > <noun>' with acc. 'die' for correct 'den'. How common is

this 'error'

> > in colloquial German (after eg. 'mit')?
> >
> > Torsten
>
> Quite common, but only in certain regions. I can't tell you which

of

> them exactly, but one of them is the Ruhr basin area (Ruhrgebiet).

Interesting, since this is close to Dutch use: 'met die
mensen' "with those people". The same area also has the
Dutch/English progressive, it seems: "Ich bin am Schreiben".

I should add that it was the announcer who used it, who otherwise
spoke 'proper' German, as far as I could tell.

> OTOH: not everywhere is a <die> (sg.) and <sie/Sie> (sg./pl.) an
> accurate [di:] and [si:/zi:], but (in various dialectal regions)

rather

> [de] and [se/s@/ze/z@]. (e.g. <Sagen Sie> ['sa:(g)nse]; in Bavaria

and

> Austria even more contracted: <Sagen S'!> ['so:(g)ns])
>

In other words 'sloppy' dialectal German is close to standard Dutch
(I should insert here the standard caveat that this does any bias on
my part etc etc)? That would mean that more or less 'creolised'
versions exist all over the Germanic-speaking area, they are just
valuated on the basis of sets of different sociological parameters.

> Thus, in various areas <mit de> is possible ([de] anyway very

close to

> fem. <der> ['d@], ['de@], [da]) ([wos hostn in da toSn?] or

[in 'dera

> toSn], where the emphasized <der> means "that", i.e. "in that

pocket/in

> that bag")
>

der > de means the collapse of the case system for the feminine
gender, such as is the case in Dutch (and Platt).



Torsten