Re: American Dutch dialects

--- On Mon, 3/2/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> From: tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> Subject: [tied] Re: American Dutch dialects
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Monday, March 2, 2009, 5:32 AM
> > > That is wonderful news. Now you just have to prove
> that
> > > Baltimore was
> > > founded by king Alfred.
> >
> > Actually, it was founded by Lord Calvert, whose big
> house was in
> > Baltimore, Ireland.
> >
>
> This is what happened in Europe: with the arrival of the
> railway,
> towns of any importance (old towns with a railway, new
> towns at
> railway junctions) had four men who had an education in the
> big city:
> the station master, the doctor, the priest and the school
> teacher.
> That number meant they could meet on Sundays to play
> l'hombre or whist
> in the home of one of them, after the school marm wife had
> cooked
> dinner, which is what they were since no one is more
> conscious of
> getting socially ahead from the boorish masses they came
> from than
> they are, or they wouldn't have chosen that job. This
> is the beginning
> of what used to be the Standard Language in the European
> countries. It
> would be strange if USA weas an exception. I don't
> think the school
> marm would want to teach her pupils to speak like the
> frontiersmen.

Not too different but with one exception: the US is huge compared to Europe and school marms normally would not have come from far away. They simply would have spoken an acrolect version of the local language. In many, if not most cases, schoolmarms were small town girls who wanted to move up a rung or two in society, so they took a chance and went out to the country with the hope of marrying a pastor, a station master, etc. But we're talking about 50 kilometers or so in most cases. According to folklore, schoolmarms were expected to be single.
My maternal grandfather was one of the local gentry, and later in life, was a schoolmaster. He spoke a softer more standard version of the local WV dialect. He said "tomato" instead of "mater", etc. but with the local intonation.
Keep in mind that in the 1800s, the r-less Boston dialect was probably seen as the prestige dialect, but it certainly was not taught by schoolmarms in Appalachia and the Midwest.

>
> And since the Sinter Klaas -> Santa Claus plays a large
> role in the
> American pantheon (just kidding), the channel which brought
> that deity
> from the Dutch would be conducive to language peculiarities
> too.
> Remember that similar religions imply cultural influence.
>
> BTW I read in the archive that according to Miguel the
> retroflex r
> occurs in both Leids and Rotterdams.

Yes, but they also picked up Chivari, etc. from the French and I don't think we picked up our /r/ from them either.