Re: American Dutch dialects

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...> wrote:

>
> --- 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/,

That point of view makes the English unnatural. In English /v/ is
obviously from French, the 'front line' between /v/ and /w/ being
frozen as a result of Norman elite realizing they had to come to terms
with the vanquished, after their ambitions in France were crushed.

> and therefore happened in many languages, but independently.

'Independently' is your claim, not a fact.

> Cf. Sanskrit, some modern dialects of Mandarin, Vietnamese,
> Finnish, etc. etc. And similarly /r/ could
> easily switch to /R/ independently in many languages.

But it didn't
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R


...

> Jysk has [w] only before rounded vowels,
> otherwise [v] (or the labiodental approximant), true?

Brøndum-Nielsen says, I think (I can't find it now) south of the
Limfjord /w/ before back vowel, /v/ before front vowel, north of it
(Vendsyssel, Han Herred, Thy) /w/ everywhere. It matches what I hear
from the few who still use that part of the dialect.

> > 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?

I'm pretty certain in the case of /r/ > /R/. And if a large part of
the city population in Denmark and Scania were German-speaking,it's
not difficult to imagine how it would spread to Danish and Scanian.

> 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?

No, I only meant to qualify the case of Russian with this reversal;
some circles in Russia adopted the uvular R sometime in the 18th or
19th century, but later dropped that habit.

> 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.

Please argue against my actual proposal instead of what you think I
ought to have said. Before the Napoleonic wars, French was the snob
language of German nobility, many were bilingual, before the Schleswig
wars German was the snob language of Danish artisans, many were
bilingual. I never claimed French was the direct cause of Danish R.

> And if it happens in one language (French), it can happen in other
> languages, just like /w/>/v/. Many other languages.

And yet it didn't happen in English, in which the French influence had
been contained.

>
> >
> > > 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.

Oh, no you don't. I've followed the rules; I made a proposal
consisting of a number of assumptions about events at specific times
and places, which should be easily falsifiable; as long as no one has
shown any one of the assumptions to be false the proposal stands.
Therefore, please refer to it as a proposal, because that's what it
is. Now if you want to call a truce based on higher principle, such as
eg. that this belief in the ethnic purity of the American English
language is a supporting wall in the construction of the American
identity, and should therefore not be subject to questioning, by all
means do, but don't forget that by opting out of preserving your
traditional claim the science way, you are accepting that your point
of view is a belief, but mine is a proposal.


Torsten